Category: Marketing

I can personally attest that launching a start-up marketing agency is no picnic! The sleepless nights, the unrelenting hours and the sheer uncertainty are a rollercoaster not everyone is clamouring to ride. Like a new parent taking the first tentative steps out of the maternity ward with their precious cargo or a well-meaning volunteer for a charity skydive… you’re not quite sure what to expect until you’re in the thick of it, and at that point you just have to hang on tight. But like both the aforementioned examples, there are so many moments of joy, pride and exhilaration that make it all worthwhile, when you hit an unexpected milestone or bag a new client in spite of stiff competition from longer established agencies.  

Businesses will always need marketing services, for a start–up the real challenge is getting them to choose you. Gaining the trust of new clients is not easy. At this point they’re taking a chance on you to deliver for them based on what you promise, but not necessarily a large track record. That’s why face-time (or virtual face-time) and a personal approach is so important, you can’t yet show them reams of high profile projects but you can show them exactly what they’re buying… YOU! And your word. Once a project gets underway you know they’ll enjoy dealing with someone who is passionate and hungry to achieve the best for them. They aren’t just another client on your roster, they can enjoy VIP status.  

In 2020, business moves fast, people have high expectations and they need to work with a marketing agency that understands the challenges they face and can deliver a plan in line with that. Downside being that businesses under pressure are often looking for a silver bullet, so they experience a tough month and that marketing agency they were relying on to deliver can suddenly fall out of favour. Becoming the trusted partner is tough, it requires over-delivering, relationship building and quite frankly, the ability to be straight up about what will and won’t work. In those early days it can be tempting to deliver whatever the paying customer wants, but give them the benefit of your expertise and your listening skills if you want to be there for the long haul.  

Your team are everything. In a big corporate there is the luxury of time and resources for formal team building, long recruitment processes and testing and even retreats. In a start-up marketing agency the only retreat your team are getting is a post-office pub sesh (when allowed due to Covid-19 guidelines) where you’ll probably end up talking shop. You have to take a chance on the people you employ just as they have to take a chance on you, and it’s about so much more than just credentials, you need to know they’ll have the humour and resilience to deal with those challenging early months. You will look back on these early campaigns and wonder how you pulled it off, and you’ll laugh a lot and maybe even cry a little but it’ll be worth it.  

In the end when clients start coming back for more and you can see your plans coming to fruition, your team gaining new skills and your client base consistently growing, you can calmly exhale safe in the knowledge that you weren’t a misguided glutton for punishment, rather someone with a sensible vision. When you can see the impact on your client’s business through the projects you’ve delivered for them and the collaborative efforts of your team, you know it was all worth it.   

Roots to Market are nearly two-years old and I’m yet to find a grey hair (yet), I can’t lie and say it’s been easy but I can be honest and say it’s been a blast to work with such a fantastically talented team and be entrusted with some incredible global brands. We’ve seen our clients’ businesses and our own business grow thanks to so much hard work and enduring dedication.  

Want to know more? 

At Roots, 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 what you need. If you’d like to talk more about how we can help you see results, get in touch today on 01392 796 702 or fill in our form here. 

Opinion piece by Verity Studley-Wootton, Associate Director.

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.

We live in a digital world where browsing the internet, especially social media, on a daily basis undeniably shapes and influences our lives. As marketeers, we have the power to use social media to make a significant difference to business performance – not only in the soft, traditional sense of building brand awareness but by Digital Lead gen – generating valuable marketing qualified leads.

Leads are a form of data identifiable through unique information such as a name, email address or phone number. Generating these leads is a primary goal of sales-driven businesses, aiming to maximise the amount of people from their target audience in their sales funnel. Leads tend to enter the funnel fairly cold and, once sent information that is relevant and of interest to them, alongside conversations are nurtured through to encourage conversion.

In this blog we discover why so many businesses use digital lead generation and provide you with our top 10 tips for success.

Why so many businesses use digital lead generation:

A high number of quality leads: Intelligent audience targeting and geotargeting combined with a vast number of users means that with the right content and budget, this type of marketing activity is an effective way to generate a high number of quality leads. What more could you want?

Cost-effective: With most social media lead generation activity on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, you only pay for activity. This is a great way to easily manage your budget and monitor spend against return-on-investment (ROI).

To track conversions: By integrating social media accounts with your CRM, you can track where your converted leads have come from and use this information to inform ROI. Real-time delivery of results also means that you can engage with leads immediately.

Optimisation: As changes to most social media channel algorithms now make it difficult to gain organic reach, businesses are always on the look out for other ways to optimise their social media accounts – paid activity is a fantastic way to do so. Additionally, being relatively easy to monitor and report, digital lead generation can be optimised through A/B testing to ensure budgets are efficiently spent on the best performing ads or LinkedIn InMail messages.

Top 10 tips for success:

1. Implement persona marketing to refine your target market.
2. Use visual content and copy that is relevant and interesting to your target audience.
3. Produce gated content (e.g. whitepapers, case studies, vlogs, infographics, webinars) and email opt-ins to capture lead data.
4. Include a call-to-action, directing leads to take actions that are going to be of value (e.g. form completion).
5. Consider what activities you are going to do to directly remarket to your leads and nurture them through the sales funnel (e.g. email marketing, direct mail, telemarketing and appointment setting).
6. Allow activity to run for 2 weeks, then set aside time in your schedule to regularly review and optimise.
7. Mix-up your strategy – use paid activity to complement organic outbound and inbound social activities.
8. Find and engage directly with leads on social media.
9. Stay up to date with the latest social media trends and channel updates – implement them to stay ahead of the game.
10. Outsource to the experts.

Is digital lead generation a part of your marketing strategy? Understanding your business aims, marketing goals and sales objectives, the Roots to Market team can help you shape your digital marketing to get the most out of your investment. We will advise you on the best strategy for your target market and your budget. Schedule a call with us to learn more: 01392 796 702 or email contact@roots2market.co.uk

Defining a target audience is simply a must for business success. But to stand out and produce a pipeline that delivers, it is wise to further refine your audience using persona marketing.

By implementing persona marketing, you allow yourself the opportunity to refine your audience into key segments creating ‘characters’. The way that each ‘character’ or persona experiences your brand will be influenced by their business needs, industry and of course, their demographics.

Getting to know your target audience in this way is a powerful tool that helps shape your marketing strategy. If you’re consistently generating unqualified leads from outside of your target audience, or your leads aren’t being generated at the rate they’re forecast to, it is likely your messaging is too generic. Persona marketing is a well developed technique best placed to help you meet and exceed lead generation and conversion targets.

What can persona marketing help with?

• Lead Generation: Identify with your audience and get to know them better – making them easier to target and tailor messaging.
• Lead Nurturing: Produce specific strategic content that appeals to your target audience to warm them along your sales pipeline.
• Client Satisfaction & Retention: Meet their goals and solve their challenges.
• Strengthened Strategy: Enhance overall marketing and sales performance.

Getting started:
Begin with a small number of personas and branch out as your original personas become more refined and sophisticated. Between 3 and 5 personas usually provide an accurate representation of the majority of your core audience, although it’s not unusual for large, complex businesses with a diverse product or service portfolio to develop up to 20 personas.

Using a template will help you to structure your personas into clear and concise sections. We recommend using:

• Name
  – Say hello to Justin, Gary, Francis and Elizabeth – the persona names of our sister brand, Air Marketing. Gone are the days of simply numbering your personas… be creative (but realistic) and bring your persona to life by referring to them in conversation, email and strategy planning as their name.
• Job title
  – Setting a brief job title or business area alongside professional seniority informs interest, goals, frustrations and decision-making ability.
• Company
  – It may be useful for your business to define a company or industry to inform interest, goals and frustrations.
• Demographics
  – Use gender, age, income/salary, family, location and education to learn about what influences your target audience.
• Background
  – Role, decision-making ability, motivations, loyalty and professional interests.
• Previous experience
  – Educational experience and career path.
• Personality
  – Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
• Goals
  – Career goals, company goals, targets and responsibilities.
• Expectations
  – Expectations, values and ability to influence.
• Frustrations
  – Frustrations and restrictions.
• Social
  – Interests in social media, digital content, events, education, professional development and purchase behaviour.
• Spare time
  – Interests in music, sport, TV, travel and socialising.

A persona template can initially be optimised by considering core areas of your marketing activities. For example, if you use social media and/or print advertising, for each persona include what social media platforms they use and what publications they are likely to read.

Collecting data:
Team Meeting: Meet with team members who have regular interaction with clients. Knowing your clients best, your team can provide valuable insights, each with different perspectives. As a group, put yourselves in the shoes of clients so that you can fully immerse yourself in characterising them into personas.

Client Interviews & Surveys: Discuss with your team which clients may be open to participating in an interview or survey. If you prepare questions around your persona template, client interviews are a brilliant way to discover in-depth qualitative data.

Data Review: Reviewing analytics and lead scoring (if implemented), will provide quantitative data about the audience and leads currently being generated. This activity is useful if you are happy with the quality of leads but you are aiming to increase the number generated.

Market Research: If you’re working in a start-up, lacking raw able data or unable to reach out to existing clients, we recommend using reliable market research. Using market research alongside other data collection methods is an optimal mix for highly informed and accurate personas.

Implementation:
Consider personas throughout your marketing activity:

• Demand generation
  – Target the right people in the right place at the right time. This will allow you to better meet client needs and generate marketing qualified leads (MQLs) with a clear website user journey including relevant landing pages, call-to-actions and forms.
• Marketing strategy and planning
  – Help shape strategy by determining a focus point for all marketing activity and attract more of those types of clients.
• Digital marketing
  – Easily analyse your campaigns – identify the best performing channels and platforms for your personas and use results to intelligently target prospects.
• Direct marketing
  – Start conversations with valuable marketing qualified leads (MQLs) via telemarketing, direct mail or direct email campaigns.
• Content creation
  – Blogs, articles, infographics, photos, videos, vlogs, podcasts and brochures are proven to increase lead generation and engagement if implemented effectively. Consider where content is broadcast, how it is used and change topics as new trends arise.

Optimisation:
We are all striving to continuously improve our business activities and make the most out of our opportunities. Take your persona marketing to the next level by:

• Testing and analysing to refine messaging and sharpen targeting.
• Reviewing on an annual basis, or ad hoc, when your target audience focus shifts to accelerate results.
• Using information to brief sales teams and outsourced telemarketers (see our sister company Air Marketing) for lead nurturing and conversion conversations.
• Produce negative personas to segment out ‘undesirable’ clients and avoid resource waste.

Reflecting on your own business and target audience, think about the quality and quantity of leads that you are generating, as well as the individuals that you are talking to. Are you consistently talking to your ideal clients?

If you think that your marketing could be improved through the implementation of personas, we would love to hear from you! Here at Roots to Market, we are driven by building intelligent marketing capabilities that generate demand and marketing qualified leads. Call 01392 796 702 or email contact@roots2market.co.uk

There is an open question posed in this title, “what is the purpose of marketing?” This may seem obvious – you may answer;

“to shout about your brand”, “to run social media”, “to create websites”, “to create campaigns to generate more interest”, “to reach your target market”, “to get your brand into magazines and papers with PR”, “to improve your search rating within Google”…

Essentially, these are all activities conducted by a marketing team, either internally or outsourced, but what really is the purpose of marketing in the eyes of the key stakeholders?

Sales Team

The sales team have a tough job on their hands. Most are tied into high targets which have a competitive monetary influence on the salary that they take home, this can both motivate and cause stress depending on the individual. So, in order to maximise their own success or reduce the pressure of the job, what are sales teams looking for from a marketing team?

Most salespeople I have met (and trust me, I work in the same office as 50 of them) need marketing to be aligned to their sales goals, supporting them to achieve their targets. But what does this mean in real terms?

• Marketing messages should be closely aligned to sales messages
• Marketing should be assisting sales in collateral support, such as pitch decks, proposal documents and sales collateral, ensuring it is on brand but also fit for purpose
• Marketing should be using intelligent techniques to create demand for a company’s product or service, when executed correctly this delivers marketing qualified (warmer) leads which the sales team can progress, rather than having to fish for cold leads
• Marketing should be using intelligent techniques to nurture and score leads, allowing them to determine when an opportunity is ready for a sales call, therefore only utilising the salespersons time when leads are most likely to convert

Marketing Team

Marketing is often a juggling act, balancing the key deliverables of your long-term marketing strategy, with ad hoc priority projects thrown into the mix, alongside the trialling of new technologies and theories. For both internal and outsourced marketing teams, it can at times feel like a thankless job, due to the age-old perception held that marketing is intangible and unable to report on the impact of activity or ROI.

But what would marketing tell you their purpose was? From my experience, this is a really interesting question, as it can differ depending on the focus of the team. For creative, brand driven marketing teams – they want to be trending, they want to win awards for their creativity, and they want their brand to be talked about across the digital space for maximum brand awareness. For campaign and opportunity focused marketing teams – they want to be maximising ROI for their spend on campaigns, generating exciting opportunities for sales teams and maximising customer spend through trackable campaigns. Ultimately in real terms this means:

• Demonstrating the importance of marketing for the whole organisation
• Enhancing metrics, whether this be in delivering opportunities or growing brand awareness and traffic
• Creating a smooth, brand cohesive user journey for prospects and clients

Business Owner

A business owner is often working long hours to make the business a success, pulled on by many people within the organisation as the ultimate decision maker, when it comes to spend and investment. Time is therefore very previous but also very scarce.

A business owner thinks less about the separated individual functions (and therefore activities) within the business and more about how these functions work with each other. Results focused, a business owner is looking for increased opportunities to be generated, and client/customer spend to deliver more revenue, whilst maximising the profit margins of the business. This is one of many functions within the business, and so they are likely to be seeking the guidance of a marketing team, internal or outsourced, to deliver the right activity to meet the desired metrics. What does this mean in real terms?

• Marketing should be working closely with sales to deliver tangible results for the investment
• Marketing should be building intelligence on competitors and the market before coming up with creative ideas on how to reach the target audience in the most effective method
• Marketing is a central function within the business and should be involved in cross-function conversations on communication and brand

What does this mean?

To sum this up into a neat conclusion for this article, the purpose of marketing can differ depending on the stakeholder who is viewing this function. There is, however, one common theme that runs through all three – that being alignment to opportunities generated for the business. Sales need these opportunities as part of their prospecting, a business owner needs to be assured of return before investing and marketing want to prove that their creative ideas can deliver results.

Why do we care so much about this? Because Roots to Market are a Demand Generation agency with a sales attitude. Born from a sales background, we develop strategies that are focused on delivering marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales teams using a mixture of direct, automated and inbound marketing.

Are you in need of more opportunities and looking to partner with a marketing agency who are serious about results and driving opportunities? Get in touch today, 01392 796702, or email verity@roots2market.co.uk.

We may be an ambitious and hungry start-up but we are anything but inexperienced. Collectively we have over 20 years of marketing knowledge and have worked with many businesses that struggle with marketing, both large and small within numerous industries.

Our experience has revealed that when it comes to marketing there are a number of circumstances that affect businesses and prevent them from really reaping the rewards that marketing can offer. We know that marketing activity can make a big difference to your business in generating leads, nurturing a sales pipeline and, importantly, creating revenue. For Roots it’s a matter of working smarter and delivering marketing that drives results…

We have identified the top 5 reasons why businesses struggle with marketing. So if you want to break through the marketing barriers experienced by businesses today, read on…

1. Strategy

Marketing has come a long way in the last 20 years; with advancements in technology there are now hundreds of ways to market your business. From hashtags to direct mail and search engine optimisation to email nurturing, there is a lot to get your head around and it’s difficult to know what works and what doesn’t. Is it any wonder business owners struggle to figure out where to start?

It may sound obvious, but like most things in life you need to start with a strategy and a plan. Working your way through all of the elements of a robust marketing strategy will help you to navigate todays marketing landscape and this will then identify what marketing tools to use, how to use them and when.

Your marketing strategy should highlight how you aim to build and nurture prospects and customer relationships for the long term. Identifying all the marketing activity that reaches out to your prospects, and guiding them through the sales funnel until you finally convert them into an engaged customer, a process known as Demand Generation.

2. Consistency

Even with a strategy in place and a better idea of which marketing tools to use, things will not be as straight forward as you think. As a business owner you will want to see instant results for the efforts of your marketing, but the best results come in time.

All too often we see companies panic and, in a desperate bid to increase sales, implement reactive marketing campaigns. In most of these scenarios, strategy goes out the window and time frames become unrealistic, as companies desperately try a whole range of activity to create leads and close sales.

The key to marketing is persistence and consistency.

If you have taken the time and the trouble to create a brand, and all the things that come with it, then the existence of your brand and offering deserves continued and prolonged attention. This helps your prospects to identify you and what you do in the market against your competitors. If you are also consistent with your messaging and marketing activities, your market will begin to trust you and when the time comes they will come to you for what they need.

Once you have a solid flow of consistent day to day marketing activities, it is important to keep trying new things, testing and measuring, learning and developing to improve the impact of your marketing and your results.

If you focus on using a mixture of proven marketing tactics to reach your target audience and produce marketing qualified leads for your sales team, you can start to prove the difference that great marketing can make on revenue.

3. Dedicated marketing resource

Marketing is one of the main areas of any business and as such should be treated accordingly. So many people don’t get started with marketing because they don’t have a dedicated marketing person to do the job, or it becomes part of someone else’s role.

There is so much to be done by a marketing team, and therefore marketing needs to be owned – implemented by someone who is going to get the work done. In order to be a success, it needs someone who can dedicate the time and resource to it, building knowledge about what works and what doesn’t.

Your dedicated marketing resource can facilitate implementing strategic Demand Generation techniques, to bridge the gap between the sales and marketing functions of your business, delivering leads that your sales team crave whilst also building your brand within the market. A Demand Generation strategy focuses on drawing in marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to your business who are already engaged with your brand. This helps align marketing to sales, who will be under pressure to seek out new opportunities, developing their own pipeline and convert sales qualified leads (SQLs) into new customers.

4. Time

Many businesses and business owners confess that they don’t have the time, or they don’t dedicate enough time to marketing. Business owners want to increase revenue and profitability in the most efficient manner but are quite often a central resource for many different individuals within the business. Detrimentally, in many businesses marketing lies at the bottom of the priority list and consequently is the last thing to get done, if at all.

Just like accounts or sales, marketing is an important business function and deserves dedicated time. You can have the best product or service in the world, but if you don’t spend time telling anyone about it by marketing it effectively, you’re not going to get the results that you’re looking for.

Demand Generation is a measurable strategy to invest in which will have an impact on both your marketing and sales departments. With the aim to drive leads into the business and to make an impact on your revenue. Delivering warm, MQLs directly to the sales team, allows the team to spend more time working on converting warm leads, rather than just prospecting cold leads which overall can save the business time.

5. Money

Many business owners think they need a lot of money to implement marketing activities, but surprisingly it doesn’t have to break the bank.

If you want to see ROI from your marketing efforts; you must trust and work from your strategy. By investing in a dedicated resource, you can ensure momentum and consistency are maintained.

Born from a sales environment Team Roots understand the importance that marketing has on all teams within a business, especially those responsible for generating revenue. We understand that seeing ROI is important to you and how marketing can slot into your business to save you time. If you’re looking to partner with a company that delivers intelligent marketing with a sales attitude– give us a call on: 01392 796702 or email: contact@roots2market.co.uk. Visit our services page for more information on the services that we offer.