Launch manual for out of this world marketing campaigns - Beyond Consulting

Your launch manual for out of this world marketing campaigns.

Hello! Welcome to your launch guide for out of this world marketing campaigns. Use it to create great content and campaigns that attract your ideal customers and build long term sales relationships. The bite sized steps give you a process to work through, along with questions to ask and points to consider to get the best results.

What do I know, anyway? I spent over 15 years working as a marketer in large corporations including Intel, Vodafone and NETGEAR, as well as setting up a successful Oracle CX solutions partnership – BPI OnDemand. Whilst at BPI OnDemand I built an understanding of the huge benefits process planning and automation through technology can bring to your organisation. I set up Beyond-Consulting to provide corporate grade marketing to small and medium businesses and this guide will take you through the key steps to generate great quality leads. I hope this guide helps you put some fantastic marketing out there. Best regards Michael, Owner of Beyond-Consulting

Why you need to do this Just having a great product isn’t enough to generate sales, you obviously need to attract customers. But to reach beyond your competitors and achieve your best revenue and margins you need to sell to the best type of customers - your ‘ideal’ customers. These are the customers that get the most value from your product and go on to be long term customers that rave about you. When your lead pipeline is full of these customers sales teams get much higher success rates: Lead to sale conversion rates improve; Sales timelines shorten; Up-sell and cross-sell revenues increase.

Whatever industry you’re in, attracting and retaining your ideal customers requires you to invest time, expertise and money into your marketing activities to create personalised campaigns that engage, educate and build trust in your business and brand, while proving your worth as a partner in their growth. Add to this the fact that sales leaders say 'poor quality sales leads' is a primary reason only 53% of sales people hit their targets (Forbes, February 2018), it's clear to see that you need to take your investment in marketing seriously so you can grow in a more consistent way. Only 53% of sales people hit their targets

How much should you invest? By making a suitable investment in marketing you’ll take a great leap forward in improving your sales pipeline. You'll be able to demonstrate that you understand your ideal customer’s marketplace and show how your company can help them achieve their goals and overcome their challenges. This goes a long way to building trust, which is a real tick in the box for you when the customer decides who to buy from. When 'ideal customers' buy from you they generate more than extra sales revenue.They’re far less likely to take up the time of your customer service team with basic issues and they’re more likely to purchase products across your range and upgrade to higher spec, higher priced versions. So what's not to like? • Higher quality sales leads • Shorter sales timeline • Increased sales ratios • Higher sales revenue • Higher margins • More cross-sell and up-sell successes • Lower customer service cost • Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) • More recommendations

How much you invest is up to you, but start by asking yourself “How did all the big brands I know build themselves to be so successful?” No matter what industry they’re in, they make sure they're attracting the right customers with the right messages and then nurture those relationships. In simple terms, they invest in marketing. Marketing spend within these companies varies from 10% all the way up to 50% of their revenue, depending on the market they’re in and where they are in their growth journey as a business or for specific product ranges. What percentage of your revenue are you spending on marketing? Could you invest more to get better results? Invest between 10% and 50% of revenue

Companies that are leaders in their field understand that without the right customers coming through as sales opportunities, even the best sales people can’t sell enough of the best product in the world to hit growth targets. This is where the investment in marketing pays off. When planned and executed well it delivers a predictable pipeline of high quality sales leads that are ready and willing to speak with your sales team and get involved in deeper conversations where the sales person can use their skills to show the customer how the product will benefit them...and close the deal!

Ready to commence launch sequence? 5: Your ideal customer 4: A clear proposition 3: Great Customer Journey 2: Engaging campaigns 1: Great content Launch: Automate. Measure. Improve.

5 Your ideal customer It all starts with understanding your ideal customer. One that will get most benefit from your products. It can help them in a direct way by being the solution to a challenge they have or help them achieve an opportunity, for example a piece of technology that will help them produce better quality versions of their own product, in a shorter time. Or, your product could help them in an indirect way, by helping them reduce costs or resource consumption, which can in-turn be used to invest in other products or services that can directly help them. An example of this would be software to automate processes, so team members could spend more time on innovative new product development. Whichever type of solution it is, direct or indirect, you need to identify who these people and businesses are and make sure you know as much as you can about them. Along with location and size, you need to understand more about: • Their industry sector; • Their opportunities for growth; • The challenges they face; • The changes occurring in their market; • Their influencers and decision makers.

There is so much information available from organisations such as Accenture, Deloitte, Forbes, The ONS and industry publications, a search on Google will provide invaluable insight on your ideal customers. If you're not sure what to look for, I’ve pulled together some research on the 'Industries' setion of the Beyond-Consulting website: www.beyond-consulting.co.uk Once you’ve researched your ideal customers you need to build profiles of their businesses and their buying decision makers and influencers for you to use when creating your marketing content and campaigns. Focus on the key points that you can use to highlight how well your product can solve their needs – their challenges and opportunities.

4 A clear proposition There are many companies that offer similar products to you, so it’s vital that you stand-out from the crowd when buyers are on the lookout for a solution. This starts with your proposition. Your proposition statement needs to make it clear what benefits your product and company brings to your ideal customers. You should be able to easily articulate exactly what your company and products offer in language that people from outside your company and industry can understand. Your proposition is most definitely a message you need to get right, because if you can’t articulate your proposition, buyers will ignore your marketing messages.

You can create your proposition statement from 3 key parts: 1. The BENEFIT your customer will gain from your product. 2. The OUTCOME of what your product does to create the benefit. 3. The FUNCTION your product performs to deliver the outcome. Benefit Outcome Function Bring together your BENEFIT, OUTCOME and FUNCTION in a proposition statement. “We help our customers BENEFIT of your product by helping them OUTCOME of your product through FUNCTION of your product”.

You also need to be able to back up your claims for the benefit and outcome of your product with supporting statements. There’s a good template to help create proposition statements and the supporting statements in one of Carmine Gallo’s TED Talk books ‘Talk Like TED’. It shows how 3-4 supporting statements help demonstrate why and how you deliver the benefits you’ve outlined in your proposition statement. These help you back up your main statement. A good test of whether you’ve got it right is to say it out loud as if you’ve just walked into a meeting or networking event and someone asks you \"What do you do?” If it sounds natural, you’ve got it right. If not, keep working on it. This proposition message and the supporting statements will be your guide when creating campaigns and content. It should all connect together and tell the same message.

3 Your Customer Journey Providing a great customer experience is critical to the long term growth of any business. The way you interact with customers throughout your Customer Journey will have a big impact on the relationships you build with them. Work out the process, set of external and internal communications and activities you should undertake to keep your customer happy and make your business efficient.

Need Starting with their ‘Need’, the buyer looks to educate themselves about what type of solutions exist to meet their need, how these work and exactly what they do. They’re not looking for sales pitches, they just want useful, trustworthy information. Where can you put your helpful marketing messages so that buyers see you early in the sales process? Research They then ‘Research’ the options they have to purchase the right solution to meet their need, including specific products or services and the companies that provide those options. What are other buyers saying about those companies and do those companies seem to know what they’re talking about? Select Once they’re ready to ‘Select’ the best product and supplier, they’ll want to know how the customer-supplier relationship will work, right down to how and when the product will be delivered and how will the supplier make sure it will provide the benefits the customer expects.

Purchase Now it’s time to ‘Purchase’. Is that an easy process? (It should be). How much hard earned cash does the buyer need to part with as an initial investment before they get any of the benefits they need? Are the timings of payments clear and understood? Receive They’ve paid, so now the buyer is waiting to ‘Receive’ the product. They want this to be a smooth process, especially if there is a switch over from a previous supplier or users of the new product need coaching and guidance to get the most out of it. Use With the product in place the customer wants to get on and ‘Use’ it and start experiencing the benefits they’ve paid for. This might not be something they can do on their own, especially in the immediate days and weeks after the product is up and running. Help should be at hand.

Maintain And talking of a helping hand, most products need a way to ‘Maintain’ them, whether it’s planned maintenance or errors and fixes that need to take place. Remember that your customer hasn’t just paid for the product, they’ve paid for a level of maintenance and care. Recommend If you can create a great experience for your customers throughout that Customer Journey, they’re far more likely to 'Recommend' your company and your products, including into other areas of their own business…and to themselves (think cross-sell and up-sell). Think about how you can make it easy for them to recommend you. Repeat This all leads on to the next wave of ‘ideal’ customers that are in the early ‘Need’ and ‘Research’ stages of the customer journey, looking for positive recommendations from businesses that had similar needs to their own. (This is also where existing customers decide to buy more from you). You should now be able to design your perfect Customer Journey by mapping out every interaction and step in the buying and ownership process for your customers.

2 Engaging campaigns Now that you know your ideal customer’s needs and you’ve built your perfect Customer Journey, you’re ready to start building your campaigns. Remind yourself of the stages a buyer goes through, especially those early stages of ‘Need’ and ‘Research’, where 57% of their buying process is complete before they contact you. What does your campaign need to include in terms of information and messages to start positioning you and your products as the best option for them? How do you nurture their trust in your business as one that can help them? This is what ‘nurture campaigns’ are all about. Built with informative and helpful content that engages and educates buyers through multiple interactions in the very early stages of their buying journey and continues to nurture their trust and interest in your business as the ideal partner for them.

People like to consume content in different formats. Some love imagery, so infographics and diagrams are great, while others want details and written content. Many people engage and react well to video and podcasts, so make sure this is part of your campaign (remember to add subtitles, because sometimes people will watch the video in public places and can’t have the sound up). As well as delivering your messages in different formats, also identify the different marketing channels that your target audience typically engages with, for example LinkedIn, YouTube, events, industry publications and 3rd party websites. Make sure you publish your content on the platforms where your target audience are already looking at content and remember to use the audience targetting tools that are available on many systems. To make the management and delivery of your campaigns smooth and consistent, use a Marketing Automation tool, which will automatically guide the buyer through the journey by presenting them with the best next marketing asset and piece of content for them to view, based on their previous actions and behaviours. This will also feed the sales lead into your sales team at the right time (you'll read about lead scoring in the next few pages).

Here's the Lead Scoring piece we just talked about. You need to work out when the sales lead should be passed across to your sales team. Spend time with your sales team to pick out what marketing content and activities a buyer needs to have engaged with before they should be passed across. What level of activity shows the buyer is serious about making an investment? This is where Lead Scoring helps. It's an activity that places a points value against each of the marketing pieces in your campaign and indicates when a buyer’s multiple interactions with your marketing shows they're ready to be passed across to the sales team. Some marketing automation and CRM systems can manage this for you.

Setting up Lead Scoring 1 Design a campaign with suitable marketing activities to nurture your customers in the early stages of your Customer Journey; 2 Give each activity a score between 1 and 5 to show how valuable it is in the nurturing process; 3 Identify which activities a customer needs to engage with to justify your sales team calling them; 4 What is the cumulative score of these activities? This is your lead scoring target; 5 Track customer interactions and calculate their lead score as you nurture them with more content; 6 Pass the “hot” leads into your sales team when they hit the lead scoring target.

1 Great content The goal of your content is to educate, build trust and nurture the buyer through the early stages of the Customer Journey – from ‘Need’, through ‘Research’ and on to ‘Select’ (and beyond). As we mentioned when you were looking at your proposition message, there are many other businesses that claim to offer the ‘best’ product in your market, but they’re only using ‘copy and paste’ marketing messages. These types of messages simply don’t cut through all the marketing noise that buyers see on a daily basis. It won’t engage. To stand out from the ‘copy and paste’ messages, you need to use the information you uncovered about your ideal customer and your proposition statement. Your content must relate back to this and give your audience a direct message they can relate to and easily understand.

Your goal is to make it really easy for the influencers and decision makers to see why investing in your product is a smart choice for their business. Pick out the needs they have and the particular challenges and opportunities that relate to their industry. Describe how your products can help the customer achieve their goals. This can be directly, such as performing a function, or indirectly, such as helping save money that can be invested in another product that helps solve their need. At this point creating guides (like this one), one page helpful hint sheets, how to videos and infographics are good options, because buyers are hungry for helpful information. Remember that your content also needs to include insight into your business, because people buy from people they trust and this is a chance to build a relationship by communicating how you conduct business with customers.

Once you’ve covered the buying stages through to the point of purchase, look at the aftersales stages of the Customer Journey and create content that helps your customer get the most out of the product they’ve purchased from you, as well as making sure they feel loved. How can you offer tips and advice on getting even more value from the product? Finally, you should be confident that your other products can be helpful for them too, so create content that demonstrates why they should buy more of your range and consider upgrading what they have to gain more benefits. It’s far less costly for you to get additional sales from existing customers than it is to attract and convert new buyers.

LaunchAutomate. Measure. Improve. You should now have your targeted content ready to launch across various marketing channels in different formats. But your work isn’t done yet. You need to keep an eye on the performance of your marketing activities by setting up some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will show the results of your efforts and investment. Make sure you include feedback from your customers. These are some of the most useful KPIs to track the performance of your marketing activities. • Number of new leads created • Lead to sales opportunity conversion ratio • Sales revenue increase • Total sales cycle time • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) • Sales team win ratio • Customer satisfaction scores • Cross-sell and up-sell revenue

The most efficient way to deliver, track and maintain your marketing campaigns is by using a Marketing Automation platform. These systems are more than just bulk email tools, they include all the marketing channels you use – email, web, social, events and more. As the name suggests, they have the ability to automate campaigns by creating a connected sequence of marketing activities that starts based on triggers you determine (time based or action based). Along with personalisation of the content, these systems give the buyer a very personalised journey along your sales pipeline. To give your sales team a good view of what buyers are doing, link with your CRM system and share the marketing campaign data from your email or marketing automation tool. This will also make your lead scoring process more effective.

Time to go beyond Now you know what needs to be done to help your company stand out from the competition, let’s get together for a conversation about how you can get the best results and start generating higher quality sales leads and delivering better customer experiences. You can get hold of me on: +44 (0)1275 794831 +44 (0)7816 787293 [email protected] Best regards Michael.

All systems go. Good luck out there.

You can find more resources and helpful blogs on the Beyond-Consulting website...or get in touch and we can meet up to talk about helping your business grow. www.beyond-consulting.co.uk +44 (0)1275 794831 +44 (0)7816 787293 [email protected]