Category: Blog

Marketing is a fast-changing and often fickle landscape; how do you really know if today’s buzzwords will translate into a meaningful line in your future strategy. Marketing in 2010 is a far cry from marketing today and that’s just the job titles. The growth of digital has changed everything, bringing businesses closer to customers than ever before – it’s been a steep learning curve with brands striving to meet the seamless technology and customer experience expectations of today’s consumer.

Then there’s the searching, no pun intended, questions; is everything offline pointless? Where should I be focusing the marketing strategy?

We can’t see into the future but here’s our take on the trends to watch in 2020.

AI is here to stay

Artificial intelligence (AI) has powered big strides in marketing efforts in 2019, with data insights helping build a more accurate picture of target audiences, campaigns can be much more predictive and focussed. And that’s just the start, AI allows marketeers to target content to potential buyers and deliver a refined content strategy personalised to their interests, which allows marketeers to predict trends. Past research suggested that by 2020, businesses that leverage AI to power customer insights could make $1.2 trillion more than their comparatively less-well informed peers! So it’ll be interesting to see the up-to-date figures this year.

Conversational marketing

In 2020 real-time matters. Immediacy is the new ‘we’ll get back to you in 24 hours’, with research showing that 82% of consumers rate an “immediate” response as very important when they have a question. Interestingly, only 36% of companies use live chat for marketing, sales or customer service enquiries (Hubspot, 2018). There’s a huge opportunity here for businesses ready to invest in their real-time marketing efforts. Chatbots can make this truly scalable, offering your customers true responsiveness. The challenge for businesses is ensuring those scripts are well researched and provide the answers consumers need. It goes beyond product specs and must replicate a friendly, authentic conversational experience.

Customer Experience (CX) really matters

Businesses across the board are recognising the shift of power towards the consumer. Gone are the days where customers gleaned the benefits of your product from your carefully crafted magazine advertorials; today’s consumer comes armed with research, making your website an absolutely crucial first touch-point. Your entire reputation is predicated on how customers perceive you, how easy it is to interact and buy from you. The value of your interactions and approach adds to the buying experience. That means everything from your Instagram videos to your customer service conversations has to be seamless, intuitive and in-line with consumer expectation.

Video just makes sense

It’s easy to generate, and a versatile and imaginative storytelling medium. People love consuming video, whether it’s for learning or educational purposes or to hear others’ experiences – it’s arguably the most powerful tool for brands wanting to win hearts and minds and it’s set to stay that way. In fact, your customers are far more likely to share a brand/ product video than anything else you produce. According to Optinmonster, video marketeers get 66% more qualified leads per year with video marketing achieving a 54% increase in brand awareness. Additionally, 93% of marketeers say they’ve landed a new customer thanks to a video on social media.

At Roots to Market, we build intelligent marketing capabilities using a mixture of proven marketing tactics to reach your target audience and produce marketing qualified leads for your sales team. We offer tailored, blended services of inbound and direct marketing, automation and complete tactical campaigns, dependent on clients’ needs. If you’d like to talk more about how we can help you design a future proofed marketing strategy that delivers results, get in touch today on 01392 796 702.

Demand generation demystified

Demand generation is exactly what you’d think, generating demand for a business’s products and services. Where it differs from lead generation is that it’s a long-term, nurturing approach that takes prospects on a journey, moving them from interesting browser to converted buyer. As prospects move through the funnel towards becoming customers, an integrated marketing and sales approach is used to ensure they remain engaged and are targeted with timely relevant content. The upshot, marketing activities can be focussed on delivering quality leads to sales teams that are much more likely to convert. Prospects that aren’t ready to buy today remain under marketing’s watchful expert eye, targeted with relevant messaging designed to maintain the relationship and influence a future purchase.

What’s involved?

Demand generation encompasses all marketing activities from brand building, tactical campaigns, social and digital efforts to targeted email marketing, what makes it distinct from traditional marketing programmes is that all activities build and nurture key relationships for the long term and closely influence the sales cycle.

Why invest the time and effort when I can reach out using lead generation activities on ad hoc basis?

Lead generation, done well, is a vital part of any successful sales strategy, but consider the following: Only 3% of your market is actively buying. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin (source: Vorsight). And 63% of consumers requesting info on your company today will not purchase for at least 3 months (source: Marketing Donut). This makes every interaction a valuable touch-point and an opportunity to convert prospects down the line and importantly, one that can’t be wasted.

But my marketing team are delivering stacks of leads, why would I outsource demand generation?

79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of nurture is the main cause for this (source: Marketing Sherpa). Research shows that targeting users with content relevant to where they are in the buying process achieved 73% higher conversion rates (source: Aberdeen).

Delivering content that’s relevant to where your prospect is positioned in the buying cycle is the most effective way to achieve conversion. Unless you have a full roster of content specialists in your team, it’s a tall order to expect your in-house resource to design and implement demand creation strategies that deliver immediate results. Producing high-quality leads is the number one challenge that B2B marketers face (source: Hubspot) and, with nearly 7 in 10 marketers still unable to identify their funnel (source: Marketing Sherpa) it makes sense to on-board a partner that has deep expertise in delivering results focussed demand creation strategies into businesses. There’s no need to do away with what’s already in place, often these programmes can work in partnership with the existing marketing plans to leverage existing best practice and content.

Why Roots to Market?

At Roots to Market, we build intelligent marketing capabilities using a mixture of proven marketing tactics to reach your target audience and produce marketing qualified leads for your sales team. We offer tailored, blended services of inbound and direct marketing, automation and complete tactical campaigns, dependent on clients’ needs. If you’d like to talk more about how we can drive tangible results from your demand generation strategy, get in touch today on 01392 796 702.

In-house vs outsourced. You’re a business owner or a Marketing Director and you need to decide whether you invest in building a marketing team to conduct activity in-house or outsourcing it to an agency – so how do you decide?

Clearly there are pros and cons to each option and to ensure that you are making the right decision for your business, we’ve taken a look into some of the considerations below.

In-house

Pros

An in-house marketing team are absorbed within the culture of your business each and every day. They are bought into the company growth and success. This means that they live and breathe your brand voice, values and mission, providing consistency throughout all of your marketing activity.

Your in-house team benefit from continual training opportunities on your product/service portfolio as they will be working alongside the likes of Product Managers, Operations Directors etc. This gives great clarity of your offering, messaging and benefits to your customers etc which will be advantageous to your marketing activity.

Communication in many instances can be quicker and more streamlined. Unless you are a large corporate, you’re likely to be working in the same time zone, in the same language and in many cases, in the same office.

There is a perception that you have more control of your marketing team if they are working for you in-house rather than outsourced. This point is debatable as some marketing teams work very independently and many are now flexibly much more homebased, but there is still a perception that as they are ‘your’ team, their workload, working times and focus areas are within your control.

Cons

You have to invest your time and budget into the recruitment and appointment of the right marketing individuals to make up your team.

You have a high ongoing cost for the management of this marketing team – not only should you consider salaries but also all costs such as national insurance, work socials, training budgets, travel budgets etc.

Finding the right talent for your budget can be a challenge for some businesses. There are so many aspects to your marketing strategy and plan that you need a wide range of skills and expertise which are not necessarily found within just 1 or even 2 people. If you’re unable to find the right talent to cover all aspects, you may have to face the extra expense of supplementing your team with freelancers.

Creative idea creation is an extremely important aspect of the marketing team, but when your head is within the brand every single day it can have a negative impact on your creativity, making you more stagnant.

Outsourced

Pros

You have no people overhead costs, only the agreed agency spend budget to be concerned about. For this agreed agency spend budget, you’re likely to have a wide range of skillsets at your fingertips. The individuals employed within an agency should be up to date with access to the latest trends, technology and training to deliver the best possible experience to their clients. You benefit from this without having to invest your time alongside money to gain the skills of these marketers.

In many cases an outsourced marketing team are likely to have much more focus than an in-house team. Whether it is a project or a retained activity/number of hours an outsourced team have to be accountable for what happens to your investment and will be keen to demonstrate the value they have added. This means they are likely to be working in a much more efficient yet focused way to meet/exceed KPIs and target deliverables.

An outsourced agency can bring a new perspective because they spend their time being immersed in different campaigns/projects/brands. They experience what works well for other companies or industries and they can take those learnings and help apply them to your business. This can open an in-house marketer’s eyes to a tactic or strategy that they may have never considered before.

The flexibility and reactiveness of an outsourced team will always be greater than that of an in-house team. Whether you’re looking to outsource all your marketing activity or just a project. Whether you are a strategic marketer who needs assistance with delivery, or you have delivery resource in-house but you’re lacking the strategic thinking. All these bespoke options can be available much faster and more flexibly by working with an outsourced team rather than having to go through further employing in-house.

Cons

At the beginning of your partnership with an outsourced agency you will have to invest your time in immersing and training the agency on your brand, products/service offering and importantly your tone of voice. It is to be expected that even after this initial training you’re likely to need to support the agency with proofing/approving content and design in the early stages of an engagement. But the longer your relationship grows and the more you partner together; the outsourced team should become an extension of your in-house team.

In some cases communication can be slower between in-house teams and agency teams. Not being based in the same offices, sometimes not in even in the same country/language can add restrictions. What we find important is setting a clear process at the beginning of our partnership together. What is the best method of communication, how often should we be having account calls and who needs to be involved, how often do you want/need reports etc.

For some companies, outsourcing is an expensive option in comparison to utilising individuals who already reside in-house. Marketing should always be viewed as an investment rather than an expense, but if costs simply outweigh the value you feel you’d achieve from outsourcing then you need to seriously consider if it is right for your business.

Consistency of quality can be a con for partnering with an outsourced agency. If you experience a gap in perception between what you the business considers as good quality and what your outsourced agency considers as good quality, this is going to cause issues. Whether it is a one-off or an ongoing series, you have to be assured that the agency you have chosen to partner with are aligned to your perceptions, your aims and your expectations. If you cannot align, your partnership is unlikely to be long lasting.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to in-house vs outsourced and is not a decision to be rushed. Research is key, alongside analysing your business’ goals against the skills and experience and strengths and weaknesses of your in-house team or your available talent pool. Be realistic not optimistic with this decision. What is the best decision for the business at this moment in time and for the near future to reach your business goals? There is of course nothing to say that you don’t opt for a mixture, dependant on your budgets, where you seemingly are able to acquire ‘the best of both worlds’ if this works for your business, your team and your bank balance.

Key points to research include:

• Checking your values align with the prospective agency
• Understand if they have the expertise to help you reach your goals
• Checking their case studies and testimonials for real life examples of their work
• Starting the conversation with them to have a frank chat about your challenges and their experience to help you

If reading this has inspired you to get in touch for a chat, reach out on 01392 796702.

Are you marketing or are you starting a movement?

‘Marketing, it’s just about making things look pretty and fussing over colours and typefaces.’ Believe it or not, I’ve heard someone say this recently, and I’ll be honest I was surprised. I know that this is the opinion of the skills of the industry from times gone by, but I actually believed that these (simply incorrect) opinions had diminished. But it looks like us marketers still need to educate people on what our skills and goals really are.

Now I appreciate that every marketer, marketing department and organisation will have a different focus, different budgets and different methods which they find successful. But I think there is an overriding change of mentality here which should be considered. What is the goal – to simply conduct ‘some marketing’ or to create a movement towards your brand.

You’ll notice that over the last few years, across the globe but especially here in the UK, we’ve felt a movement happening. It’s been across every channel that we come into contact with whether it’s, watching a documentary on TV, hearing a news bulletin, overhearing discussions between colleagues/friends/family, seeing more ‘environmentally friendly’ branding and packaging, the list goes on.

The movement I am referencing of course, is that of climate change and the impact that humans are having on the earth including plastics. You may be thinking, why is a marketing agency writing about this, unless they want to be seen to have extra corporate social responsibility (CSR) points by covering this topic.

No, that isn’t the reason for this blog.

It was brought to my attention recently that a successful movement, such as the climate movement, has all the same ‘ingredients’ that you require for really powerful and effective marketing movement. So let’s look into that:

MESSAGE

A strong, clear message that people want to be part of, get behind and believe in. For any marketing movement, the message needs to be truthful (we’ve all seen a car wash garage who are the best in the UK, then you drive up the road and see another, how many are there claiming to be the best) and uncomplicated (people need to remember your message to get behind it).

AUTHENTICITY

There are so many messages trying to capture our attention every day, how do you get a message to people that will actually get heard and make a difference? This is where authenticity makes the most impact. People are inherently less trusting in this digital age, so you need to gain peoples trust and find a way to ensure people care about the values behind a marketing movement. People put more research goes into the why before any form of engagement can begin, especially the younger generation, as they want to align themselves with brands who share their values and who they truly believe are authentic.

CHAMPION

Putting ‘a face’ to a brand adds to your authenticity, providing it is a carefully chosen and seen as the right face. Don’t purely pick the person with the most followers, the cheapest or the one that the MD likes the most – find the champion with the most affinity who can really drive your marketing movement forward in the right way.

DELIVERY CHANNELS

You’ve got your message, your champion and you’ve established your point of authenticity, now you need to get this out to the public. Deciding on the most effective delivery channels to get your message in front of people to form your following is something that can be a struggle. It all takes time and in many cases costs money which can be restricted for some brands. There are so many delivery channels available meaning it is important to conduct the right research to discover the most relevant channels to utilise for your key audience and even why they use those channels – are they listeners, are they active, do they just utilise it for research etc. Social media, videos, TV, snippets in magazines, posters, gathering protests; are all examples of delivery channels available to your brand.

FOLLOWING

The way that any brand can make a difference is by creating a strong and loyal following. If a following isn’t established, you just become another noise in an already noisy world.

As a brand your aim is to create a movement, give your followers something strong to grasp hold of, keep them aware of everything that you are doing and give them a reason to stay passionate about your brand.

Not every brand can afford to create a movement like that of the climate movement, that I know. However, what I take from this is that for marketers to really hold their ground within organisations and at the board, we need to be able to demonstrate the value that we hold. We have the ability to create a movement, with the right ingredients and the right budget, and with this in mind the skills that we bring to the table should be not only utilised but appreciated. Every brand would love to reap the benefits of starting a movement – so is it time for us to rethink how we market?

I’ll leave you with one last thought:

“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling. In other words, it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.” ― Greta Thunberg

Opinion piece by Head of Marketing Services, Verity Studley-Wootton.