Category: Marketing

On a daily basis, prospects are bombarded with generic sales and marketing activity from businesses claiming to solve all of their problems and offer services that are tailor-made to suit their individual needs – but are businesses communicating their value to prospects, or are their voices drowning in a sea of sales noise?

Prospects can now find all of the information that they need to make a purchase online, be it through web searches or social media, so it is vital that all marketing activity has a clear message that stands out. With more tools than ever at their disposal, businesses should drive prospects through the sales pipeline with targeted marketing that engages, hooks and helps sales teams to convert them. The easiest way to do this? Simply tell your prospects how your product or service can be of value to them, as an individual.

At the end of the day, buyers are only interested in the value of a product or service – does it help them to achieve a goal or solve an issue? Whether you’re sending your prospects an email, speaking to them via telemarketing or directing them towards content that you have written, tell them exactly what you offer and how it solves their problems. Your offering may be ground breaking and exciting, but if you don’t communicate its value and how it can help them, they simply won’t be interested.

An inability to communicate their Value Proposition is one of the biggest inhibitors to businesses when looking to attract new customers and reach sales targets, with only 24% of organisations agreeing on the definition of their target audience. So how can you avoid that and make your value known?

1. Understand your offering: Make sure that you and your sales team have a clear understanding of exactly what value your offering can bring to your prospects. If you and the people selling your product or service don’t understand the true value of a product, how will your prospects?
2. Be customer-centric: Before even attempting to market your product or service and begin the sales process, it is vital that you know your target prospect inside and out – what are their pain points, industry, business size, etc. When you truly understand your target audience, your sales approach will appear more personal leading prospects to trust you and take the value of your offering seriously. This allows you to engage in proper conversations and address problems a potential customer may not be aware they were struggling against. By making every effort to show you understand them, you may just go that one step further than a competitor that they are also talking to.
3. Hire well: If you want to demonstrate the value that your product brings, then you need to ensure that the right people are delivering this message. You need to attract, train and retain exceptional sales people. Ask yourself, would you trust your sales team if they were selling to you, do they engage you?
4. Use the human voice: Encourage your team to use their voice well. By this we don’t mean having endless conversations but having quality, credible conversations. Are they assertive, demonstrating their knowledge with a confident voice? Or do they lack confidence and allow upwards inflection to creep into their voice and make it sound like they are questioning what they know? If the sales person sounds doubtful in the value of your product or service, the prospect simply isn’t going to buy into what you’re selling.

If you’re looking for a confident, driven sales team to communicate the value of your offering to prospects, get in touch today. Email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk or call: 0345 241 3038

To put it bluntly, if you don’t invest in marketing, you won’t make progress. You may have the next big product, but without any marketing activity you will reach a standstill. From small start-ups to big corporations, every type of business in every industry can benefit from the increased brand awareness and heightened sales that marketing activity can bring. You only have to look to major companies, such as Apple, to see big business returns that come from one simple tactic – make a great product and market it well.

We know that sales are important to business success and that marketing is often an afterthought, or an add on when times are good, however with at Roots to Market, we combine sales and marketing. We call it marketing with a sales attitude and we provide sustainable brand awareness and delivery of marketing qualified leads.

What can marketing do for you?

• Increase sales – When you invest in marketing your business, you invest in your business success and future profitability. Customers like to absorb information about a product as they make their way through the buyer journey, so it is key that you advertise your products or services. Using these advertisements, you can test, measure and refine your offering very quickly. This allows you to tightening your marketing efforts and, ultimately, obtain better results.
• Raise brand awareness – Raising awareness is vital, so don’t be dismayed if sales aren’t instant. Customers may see an advert many times before they make a purchase but without putting marketing materials out there, they won’t see you at all. The markets are crowded, so it’s vital to make yourself heard.
• Understand your metrics – Even if a campaign doesn’t reap amazing returns instantly, it will have provided you with vital data which will, in time, put you in the position to grow your sales. From understanding how much to bid on an advert, to how long your average customer takes to buy, understanding your metrics is key.
• Build trust – You wouldn’t trust a total stranger with your money, would you? No, so why would a customer trust someone who has no presence? Customers will want to get to know you as a brand before even engaging with you, let alone making a purchase. The earlier you market your business, the longer your audience will have to follow your story and buy into the brand.

At Roots we have the advantage of being closely aligned to our sister company, Air Marketing Group, who specialise in outsourced B2B sales. Born from a sales environment, we are a marketing agency with a sales attitude and our results speak for themselves. Unlike other marketing agencies, we don’t solely focus on the ‘fluffy’ aspects of marketing. Whilst we know that those elements are important to build you up as a business, we integrate proven marketing tactics into activity to achieve not only brand awareness but also marketing qualified leads, including targeted content creation, intelligent direct marketing and lead scoring, so that you know exactly where prospects are in your pipeline and how likely they are to convert.

So, how can our marketing services help you? Here are just a handful of examples:

• Social Media – Having a social media presence is a sure-fire way to grow brand awareness. As consumers are turning to social media and the internet to conduct their own research before making a purchase, it is vital that you have an online profile of some kind, even if it is just a space to push company news and updates. In fact, 91% of marketeers say that they noticed an increased in their brand visibility by spending a few hours a week on social media. We know how to get you started and implement a social media plan that gets you to where you need to be, a recent client saw a growth of 3122% in their prospect reach on Facebook.
• Email Marketing – Email is a faithful friend of ours. Whilst some people may see it as a dated means of communication, now that many companies are investing spend in social media marketing, 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email. Email marketing is an adaptable and engaging way of communicating with potential and current clients. Whether you are looking to introduce yourself or nurture warm leads, email marketing is a direct way of getting your product in front of those you want to see it. Our team will get you seen, in a recent email campaign, for a client looking to target the health sector, we beat the industry average open rate and secured them 50 opportunities to nurture.
• Marketing strategy planning and implementation – In order to get your business to where you want it to be, it is vital that you have a plan in place. According to Professor Richard Rumelt, there are 3 key elements to reaching your goal; diagnosis (what is the challenge you are facing), guiding policy (how will you deal with the challenge) and coherent action (what will be done to achieve this). We can help you come up with a solid plan that will gain tangible results for your business, in fact we did just that for our sister company, Air. With a marketing strategy in place that was implement by us, they saw a growth of 245% in just their second year of trading.

If you’re looking to invest in intelligent marketing that drives tangible results, get in touch with Roots to Market today. Call 01392 796 702 or email contact@roots2market.co.uk

Supposedly, it takes multiple contact with a prospect – studies say as many as eight are required – before a sale is closed.

In 2018, 75% of companies said closing more deals were amongst their top priorities. However, with 63% of prospects having little to no knowledge of a company before a sales rep approaches them, with a new product or service, it’s no surprise that 40% of sales people are finding closing the deal more challenging. So, how can direct marketing help?

Direct marketing is a great way of introducing your product or service across multiple touchpoint, over a variety of different platforms which include: direct mail, email marketing and telemarketing to name just a few. When delivered tactfully this marketing tactic will:

• Help you build relationships with new customers using personalised and targeted messaging
• Test the appeal of your new product or service
• Take your prospects or current customers on a brand journey that appeals to their own values
• Measure and advise you on which marketing platforms connect with your target audience best
• Provide customers with compelling content that will help nurture them through your sales cycle
• Indicate where prospects sit in your sales cycle using specific call to action that inform you if a prospect requires more information, a follow up call or a way of purchasing your product
• Allow you to base your sales strategy on fact and customer needs, increasing your overall success rate

So, how does direct marketing nurture your prospects through the sales cycle and at what stage does it need to be implemented if you want to reap the best reward?

We like to think of marketing and sales as the gatherer and the hunter. The gatherers job is to go out and make the initial contact with the prospect, discovering where they spend their time, what needs or problems control their impulses, and how best they can nurture this prospect to help them improve their situation. The hunter on the other hand is programmed to close the deal. Using the information/data the gatherer provides the hunter can increase his chances of success, he has inside knowledge of where the prospect can be found, he understands what problem areas are best to attack and he knows the prospect is at a stage where they feel safe enough to take a closer look.

In our 7 step sales and direct marketing diagram you can see exactly how we optimise this integrated approach:

We have learnt that both direct marketing and sales need one another to be truly successful, so, investing in a strategy that aligns the two is a wise move heading into the new financial year.

There’s even evidence that supports this approach, according to 2018 statistics, companies who better align their sales and marketing teams experience 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts, 73% agree their buyer’s journey has a higher conversion rate, 38% have higher sales wins and 36% experience higher customer retention rates.

Looking to better align your sales and marketing strategy, increase customer loyalty and boost your ROI?
Air Marketing Group work closely with their sister company, Roots to Market, to deliver multi touchpoint campaigns that benefit our clients bottom line. To get in touch call: 03452413038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

On average, for every £1 our clients invest they achieve an £18 ROI. Are you ready to see results?

Marketing a product or service by email is nothing new, but in an ever-changing digital world, where target markets are becoming more discerning and wanting that personal touch, we think of email nurturing as a faithful old friend.

No one wants a spam email, or with the onset of GDPR, should be receiving one! We are constantly hit with impersonal advertising in our inboxes, so unless it seems that some time and effort has gone into providing us with the information we seek, we simply aren’t going to buy into it.  According to Experian, personalised emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. Therefore, it is worth taking some time to think about what an individual may want to receive.

If you have identified a group of individuals or businesses with a legitimate interest in your product or service, running a personalised email campaign is the way to go. Thanks to many email packages now offering comprehensive reporting insights, a simple introduction to coding and segmentation, there is no excuse for not using personalisation. Such sites also allow you to send as many personalised emails as you like in one hit. 100s of tailored emails can be distributed in a matter of minutes, each addressed to a specific person/company, putting your product or service directly in front of decision makers in a format they like.

But you need to keep in mind that personalisation alone will not make your email campaign stand out – it is also important to get creative! We’ve created the email below to give you our favourite hints and tips for a basic, personalised, introduction email:

Once you have sent out your first email, it is key to then follow this up rather than just providing sporadic, one-off communication. A fantastic way to do this is with a nurture stream, this is a sequence of emails that send your recipients on a journey of your story and works especially well for those that express interest or for those that might consider your product or service at a later date.

A key addition to these emails are testimonials. Research has shown that 92% of customers read online reviews, with 88% of people trusting online recommendations as much as ones given in person. An impressive 72% of people claim that positive testimonials lead to them trusting a business.

We’ve created an example nurture email and featured the use of testimonial, have a look below:

If you are interested in using email marketing as a part of your campaign, but perhaps don’t have the resource or expertise in-house, get in touch with us and we will help you by creating a tailor made campaign for your business – give us a call on: 01392 796 702 or email: contact@roots2market.co.uk.

Whether you’re working with a telemarketing company, a marketing agency, or any other form of outsourced supplier, one of the main concerns is trust.

You’re letting that company deal with your contacts, whether clients or prospects, which can be slightly uncomfortable, regardless of the size/type of business you may be.

Consequently, any organisation outsourcing their work will ask:

Can we trust our suppliers?

… And will they do a good job? How do we know what’s going on with our campaigns? Any business owner wants to know exactly what’s going on to ensure a successful operation, so it’s completely natural to feel uncertain to pass a core process (such as your outbound sales/telemarketing) to someone else.

And here’s an even bigger question…

What happens if it doesn’t work?

The reality is that there is risk associated with any campaign you run. Whether it’s inbound marketing or outbound telesales, there is no guarantee that each and every lead will convert.

What’s important is to acknowledge any mistakes that may have been made, before finding a solution and moving forward.

To alleviate your fears, we recently wrote a blog (10 Point Checklist: How to Brief a Telemarketing Agency) which covers core discussions that are important to have before taking on an outsourced business development campaign.

It’s imperative for you as a company to feel that you can talk to suppliers, ask questions, and be safe in the knowledge that they are always on hand to talk should you have any concerns.

Trust is a two-way street

There must be trust on both sides. When campaigns are difficult, or the client-supplier relationship is put on a thin line for one reason or another, it can be detrimental.

So, both you and your supplier must cultivate trust on both sides, to ensure a smooth relationship, regardless of any bumps in the road that might occur.

Communication, transparency and honesty

Here are three elements we stick by here at Air, to help ensure that you know your business is in safe hands:

Communication

If you haven’t heard anything from your supplier, or you can’t get hold of them, it can be uncomfortable and frustrating.

We never go more than 48 hours without talking to clients. In our eyes, no update is still an update so you know your campaign is still running smoothly.

Transparency

Ask your supplier questions surrounding reporting, results, what’s being done and what could be done to improve. Ongoing recommendations and monitoring is key for all campaigns.

The Air client portal provides live, real-time results on campaigns so you know exactly what’s going on at all times.

Honesty

… is always the best policy. If something isn’t working, you’ll want your supplier to tell you. And if the supplier isn’t aware of something – be open and honest and tell them exactly what you need.

You need to be confident in the campaign and in your suppliers’ abilities, which is why our values are based around transparency and honesty.

At Air Marketing Group, we work closely with our clients to adapt and tailor each and every campaign to your business.

We’ll work to be flexible and adaptable not only on the campaign setup, but we’ll ensure to monitor and review your campaign every step of the way to focus on getting the best return on investment for you.

What’s more, we’re here to answer any questions you may have, at any point before, during and after your campaign finishes.

Got a question? Call us today on 0333 251 9670 or get in touch here.

Request a brochure