If you take a look around Digital Agency Coach’s website you’ll see the two core services we offer to digital agency owners: Mastermind Groups and Coaching & Mentoring Programs.
Digital Agency Coach’s bi-monthly Mastermind Groups provide a peer-to-peer learning and networking environment for agency owners and are a brilliant way to share ideas, learning and insights with other like-minded professionals. Watch our Mastermind Group Explainer Video (1min) for a detailed look at how this service benefits busy digital agency owners.
Our Coaching & Mentoring Program is by far our most comprehensive and rewarding service, where our agency owners benefit from extensive 1:1 consultancy and expertise guaranteed to scale and grow their digital marketing agencies.
In this article, we share how our Coaching & Mentoring Programs work and what you, as an agency owner, will experience both during and as a result of the program.
1:1 coaching provides a dedicated space to solve problems, gain accountability, design and execute business plans through external, expert advice. You’ll make decisions faster, build better teams, deliver higher quality work and your digital agency will grow, and you’ll enjoy the journey.
All Digital Agency Coach Mentee’s have the opportunity to become one of our successful agency owners who:
Grew Their Revenue & Profit
You’ll achieve significant growth in both your revenue and your profit within the first 12 months of working with us.
Won More Leads, Clients & Awards
You’ll develop the skills to convert more leads, grow your client base and win noteworthy, genuine industry awards as part of your recognition.
Bought, Merged Or Sold Businesses
Want to grow quickly through Mergers & Acquisitions? We’ll guide you through the processes and purpose behind these growth strategies so you can benefit from the results faster.
Gained Freedom And/Or Early Retirement
You’ll be able to spend less time in your business and start working on it. Our mentees now have more time and freedom to do the things they enjoy, and many have been able to reap the rewards of their lifetime’s work and step into retirement.
Participating in our Coaching & Mentoring program generally follows this engagement process:
Onboarding — This where the scope of work is agreed and all our reciprocal learning and understanding is carried out.
Building — Together, we put together a strategy and a plan based on our learnings from Step One
Execution — As the name suggests, Stage Three is where we execute the plan and start to grow your agency.
This is where we get to know each other. We’ll begin with a discovery session, where our consultant will ask you to share details and insights about your agency’s current status and any plans, aspirations and goals you have for the future.
This then is reviewed, packaged and shared with you. We’ll put together a presentation that summarises your goals, business position and the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for your agency. We’ll also detail a top-level roadmap and a handful of quick wins for you to implement then and there which are guaranteed to have an immediate effect on your business from day one.
This onboarding phase usually takes about a month to complete and once we have this understanding we can put together a plan and roadmap for us to move forward with.
This is where we put together your growth strategy. We’ll use our Agency Accelerator Canvas to break down your business plan into achievable, bite-sized objectives, milestones and KPI’s for you and your team.
Our consultants will work with you to formulate a plan and share insight, context, benchmarks and tactics from our portfolio of the 250 digital agencies we’ve worked with. Creating these objectives and key results and writing your business strategy usually takes about 6–8 weeks to complete.
Stage three – execution, makes up around 75–85% of our program. This is where we put our planning into practice and start to make big, impactful changes to your agency’s operations.
You’ll chat with your consultant weekly for 10–15 minute accountability meetings to check in and make sure things are running smoothly. Between these sessions and our ongoing, ‘always-on’, ad-hoc support, you’ll execute the daily and weekly tasks in your business plan.
Every four weeks we’ll set aside a few hours to plan for the coming month and set the KPI’s to make sure the overarching plan is still in sight. Then each quarter, we’ll orchestrate a full review of the work completed and the work ahead and make any necessary changes to the master plan.
At Digital Agency Coach, we work deeply with a small roster of agencies at any one time as our Coaching & Mentoring Programs are long-term relationships that deliver long-term, long-lasting results. The average timeline for these programs is anywhere between 12 to 18 months, depending on your capacity.
Now that we’ve unpacked our Coaching & Mentoring Program and how our services can help you achieve stratospheric growth for your marketing agency — it’s time to ask yourself if this is the right fit for you and how you like to work.
If the answer is yes, please get in touch and Arrange A Free Consultation with one of our friendly consultants. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have and get you on the path to success.
When you’re trying to market yourself, it’s not enough just to have a clear avatar, a tagline or a good 60-second speech. Marketing yourself is much more than that, and focusing on a comprehensive marketing approach will help you get better and more sustainable results.
There are three areas that make your marketing work. And I want to share these with you in the form of a proven framework called BRAVE Marketing that has helped many self employed professionals get more confidence in themselves and their marketing approach in a very short time. The three areas are YOU, your CLIENTS and your MARKETING.
The first area is YOU. Marketing yourself and marketing an external product, in my opinion. are very different. When you’re selling your own time and expertise, it’s so important that you first master your own self awareness. Many people who talk to me about their challenges tell me that they actually know what marketing strategies to use. They have a clear avatar. They even have a nice slogan. But for some reason, they’re procrastinating or they live in self doubt. That’s a challenge when you’re working for yourself and by yourself. If you’re not mastering your internal belief system, if you don’t have a clear why and you’re not connected to your purpose, or if you’re not clear on your uniqueness and strengths, then all your marketing strategies and theories will not produce optimal results. So I love working with you on getting clear life goals behind your business goals (your reason for doing what you do), removing the limiting beliefs that block you and helping you build a unique business based on your strengths. When the internal stuff is sorted, you’ll start operating with more ease and flow and you’ll know what to do when your demons to pop up again.
The second area is to clearly identify your CLIENTS and build empathy towards them. People usually call this building your avatar. But I want to take this step a few inches deeper. First of all, how are you choosing your target market? Are you being too vague or wanting to serve everyone? And for some of you, you’re telling me that it’s difficult to segment them using a specific demographic. Well, sometimes it’s about segmenting them on their needs and problems. Whatever your challenge, it is very important to understand who you’re going to serve. And if you can serve more than one market, then the question is not “Who do you want to serve?” but “Who do you want to serve first?” Many times, it’s hard to come up with a sharp marketing campaign, if you’re trying to hit multiple audiences using multiple services all at once. Sometimes you’ve got to stop being opportunistic and start being strategic. Get clear on one group of people and market one service in one marketing campaign. When you’re getting good results, then you’re allowed to target another segment with another campaign. And after you’ve identified that ideal client, then empathise with them emotionally understand their needs and challenge. Layout their journey with you and the clear transformation they will get when they use your service. Remember, most of you are selling something intangible. So working on the customer process and transformation is key to developing a tiered product ladder that will help your audience understand what you sell and what you promise.
The third area is YOUR MARKETING. This area deals with helping you create an effective one-liner and marketing assets. I also work with you on designing an effective & comprehensive marketing plan. Here I want to highlight the importance of using your own style to market yourself. Many people use templated marketing strategies that are proven for others without getting really clear about their own personalities and marketing styles. When you are not comfortable executing your strategies, you will start to procrastinate or find excuses why it’s impossible. I find that in the beginning, you need to experience wins by doing the strategies that play on your strengths, feature you at your best, and give you fun and enjoyment. In my experience, the best marketing plan is the one you will execute! In my journey building a top-ranked firm marketing 6 coaches, I’ve learned that everyone’s got their own genius… everyone has their own style and their own appeal. Find yours and you’ll find more enjoyment in marketing yourself. Be authentic and the right kinds of leads will be attracted to you. Try to be someone else and you’ll end up frustrated and lost in self doubt.
These are the 3 areas that will make your marketing approach holistic and effective. If you focus on one without the other, you may feel confused why your hard work is not generating the results you want. Working on the YOU will help you increase your self mastery and be the type of person that will successfully represent your brand. Empathising with your CLIENT will help your core message be at the top of their hearts, not just their minds. And having a comprehensive MARKETING plan with the strategies that suit your style and your strengths will help you enjoy doing what you need to do to grow your business with consistency, confidence, and flow.
If you want a fresh perspective about your marketing approach, let’s have a talk. I’d love to connect with you. Email me at [email protected]
A lot of emphasis these days are being put on getting leads, but leads don’t generate revenue. Clients do! In this video, I go through the 3 reasons why clients may not decide to buy your services and what you can do to improve your sales conversion.
You’ve got the lead, they book a call, but what makes them say, “I’ll think about it” and never call again? Why do they prefer other service providers instead of you?
Let’s start off with confidence. How confident are you? I’ve been in sales since 1996 and I must tell you that confidence, not competence, is convincing. How confident are you in yourself? Are you discounting your abilities and unconsciously using negative self talk? How confident are you that you can help them? Are you confident in the value you can offer them?
If you want to improve your sales conversion, first work on your self confidence.
Confidence is affected by several things.
The next thing that affect sales conversion is your sales conversation. Are you acting like a human brochure or are you actually solving their needs?
We don’t all have lots of selling experience, but we’ve all had experience being sold. So think about what kind of sales conversations you enjoyed in the past; the ones where you felt comfortable, helped, and cared for. Think of that process you went through and how it made you feel confident to buy. What did the sales person do to you, with you, and for you? What kind of conversation did you have? Was it a one-way presentation about the products or was it a two-way conversation that used questions to discover your needs? Who was the sales person for you? Were they human brochures who just waffled about their features and benefits, or were they solution-providers who listened to you and suggested useful advice?
Now look at how you sell. No matter what you sell, there is a pattern in your selling conversations. How do you start? What do you spend the most time on? What is the ratio between talking and listening? What kinds of questions do you ask, or don’t ask? Here’s my favourite test for aspiring sales people: “Good sales people drink their coffee hot!” Let’s say you’re doing a zoom meeting with your prospect and you each prepare a cuppa for yourself before the call. Do you get to drink your coffee hot, or is it already cold by the time you drank it? If you get to drink it hot, well done! That means you’re discovering and listening to the prospects first before waffling away about what you can do for them. If you’re drinking it cold, well, you’ve been talking too much. And don’t be surprised if they reply with, “Uh-huh… ok… well, great. Let me think about that and I’ll let you know.” Your sales conversation should make the clients feel that you understand their needs. You have listened and your solutions are relevant. They should also feel that they co-created the solutions with you. People are less likely to say No to a solution, if they feel that they’ve co-created it.
And finally, the third thing that affects your sales conversion is follow up. It’s amazing to meet sales people who are so excited to have a sales meeting with you, but do not follow up afterwards. They make the proposal, send it off, and then expect the wheel to turn by itself. Or they end their proposal with, “Let me know if you have questions.” That’s a reactive attitude. End your proposals by making an appointment for another call to explain the details and to answer their questions. That’s another excuse to talk to them, and another chance to get a decision.
Marketing gets you leads, but leads don’t generate revenue! Clients do. So let’s focus now on your sales process, not just your marketing strategies. I hope this blog has helped and if you want to sharpen your sales process and need customised advice to do so, email me at [email protected]
Marketing yourself starts with mastering yourself. Many self employed professionals get stuck in self doubt and lack of clarity. In the end, this lack of self awareness keeps them from reaching their potential in their business. In this video, I will cover the 3 areas you need to master to strengthen your uniqueness and positioning. By focusing on these areas, you will increase the confidence you have in yourself and in your business. You will overcome your imposter syndrome, and have a clearer core message about who you are and what impact you make. You will attract the types of clients that appreciate your value, and as a result, you will have more fun growing your business. So let’s get started.
The first area to master is your outcome. What are you building and why is that important to you? Have you ever lost motivation to get things done? You know what to do, and even how to do it… but somehow, you just don’t have the drive? This is a great indication of not having a clear vision and purpose. Many people I speak to have a very cliche reason why they do what they do. “I want to be successful… I want to have more income… I want to help people.” Great, what does that look like? How clear is that vision? How much passion and emotion do you feel towards it? Why is all this important to you? If you’re struggling to find the answer, or if you don’t feel emotionally connected with your answer, then perhaps you need to work on mastering your outcome. This part is so important for at least 2 reasons. First of all, when times get tough, your connection to your WHY will keep you going. Without this, you will procrastinate and find many excuses to delay progress. Secondly, if you have a clear vision and purpose, it will be easier for people to know what you stand for. It will be easier for people to resonate with you. You will exert a type of energy that attracts the right clients to you. People are inspired by and drawn to people who are excited, passionate, and on a mission. Do you have that energy?
The second area to master is your belief system. What beliefs influence your feelings and actions? Your existing beliefs are usually shaped by past experiences, and they affect you subconsciously. Mastering your belief systems start by bringing them up to the conscious level. Whether or not they are empowering you, it’s important to be aware of what they are, where they might have come from, and whether or not they are useful to get you where you want to be. Beliefs are never good or bad; they’re just either useful or not useful. And if you’ve done the work of clarifying your outcome, you will have an easier time to select the useful ones that will get you there. The beliefs to master are usually those about yourself, your business, your likelihood for success, your clients, and how the world works. So basically, everything!
The third area involves finding your essence and your natural strengths. Comparing yourself to other people will just make you feel inadequate. Find your genius by understanding your WHY and your Ikigai. Finding your WHY will help you find your essence; this is what you stand for and how you’re designed to contribute. It’s a process that takes you back to realise how your past has shaped your purpose and passion. Your essence is not an aspiration or dream. It is who you already are. Your Ikigai helps you understand your reason for being. The crossover between what you love, who you love to serve, what they need & willing to pay for, and what you are good at will give you a very clear idea of your uniqueness and may even open up new opportunities that you have never thought of.
Behind every business is a human being, and most human beings actualise themselves through some sort of career or business. A business works when the human behind it is functioning well: body, mind and spirit. So it’s no surprise that an essential step to building a high-performing business is creating a high-performing human being; someone who understands what they want to achieve, and how to use their best self to achieve it.
So I invite you to start the process of enhancing your self mastery. Which of the three areas do you need to sharpen? Your outcome? Your belief systems? Your genius? Working on this during the last few months of year may help you create an amazing year ahead!
If you have any questions, email me at [email protected]
Is your digital marketing agency profitable on purpose, or by accident? At Digital Agency Coach we’ve worked with hundreds of agency owners over the years, some of whom were unaware of their profitability stats.
Many agencies end up being profitable by accident, as a positive consequence of the year’s work. In this article, we share our insights on turning an intentional and deliberate profit.
As a busy agency owner, it can be easy to prioritise managing the day-to-day operations and allowing your profitability to become an afterthought. With this mindset, it’s difficult for you as an owner, to have that profit-oriented, strategic mindset that is key to growing your agency.
At Digital Agency Coach, we always recommend approaching profitability with intention and purpose. This approach can feel foreign and a little acquisitive at first, but it’s important to remind yourself that it’s completely genuine and moral to design your business in such a way that it earns you money.
Having a profit-driven mindset enables you to reinvest into your business, enhance the quality of your service and grow your agency.
When it comes to an agency’s profitability, there are typically three different degrees of intent and three defined profit groups as an outcome.
Agencies who generate anywhere from 0–12%* profit are generally doing so by accident. These agencies usually no profit strategy in place and the year-end results are unpredictable and often speak for themselves.
Those digital agencies turning anywhere between 13–22%* profit, are almost always doing it on purpose. The closer the number lies to 22%, the more deliberate and considered the profit is. The lower the number, the less intentional their outcomes have been.
And as for those generating a profit percentage anywhere north of 22%*, we classify those guys as purposeful, profit machines. These digital agencies know their services, their clients, their team, and their business like the back of their hand. Their sales pipeline and financial systems are geared toward driving high volume, quality leads which convert.
*These figures are general only, actual profit margins will depend on the agency size. Large organisations with substantial overheads typically will have tighter margins.
Address these six top-line areas and improve your agency’s profitability today.
Take a close look at your gross margins. If they’re outside the range of 50–60%, unfortunately, you’re not profitable enough. Your gross margins are calculated by taking the overall revenue of your agency, less the sum of those direct salaries and/or contractor and freelance fees required to deliver your particular service.
As a service-based business, your agency sells time — utilisation looks at how many billable hours you have available to your clients. If you are operating at less than 72% capacity, there is scope to improve your profitability by maximising your utilisation.
These can be either your employees or clients. If you attract and retain poor performers, this will lead to inefficiency and low profits within your agency. It might be that you need to address some of those long-standing, legacy clients from your start-up days, or certain team members who are less efficient than others. The solution? Try raising your fees or developing the skills and/or expertise of your employees.
Usually, those agencies who fall into the 0–12% profitability category, have no insight or oversight on their financial or sales reports and forecasts. Having a robust sales pipeline and reporting structure in place will allow you to understand when, where and how you can maximise your revenue and minimise your expenses — which we know will lead to a direct increase in your profitability.
For digital marketing agencies within the UK, it’s recommended you charge £90 per hour as an absolute minimum for your services. At Digital Agency Coach, we advocate charging anywhere between £100 — £150 an hour and ensuring you bill all for those all hours at your full rate in order to maximise your profitability.
Is the service you provide right for the current market? This is a big question for web design agencies who are competing against the likes of Wix and Squarespace. These ‘done-for-you’ website builders have significantly devalued the product to where it’s now within the reach of many small businesses and small budgets. As a specialist agency with a highly skilled team, you need to be bold and honest with yourself and ask if there is a future within your market. If the answer is no —you have to innovate and change with the times.
Remember, it’s perfectly moral and genuine to gear your agency to become a profitable, money-making business. As a business owner, you are doing your customers, employees, and your market a disservice if you are unable to reinvest your profits back into your industry.
Ready to begin? Start by asking determining which of the three levels of profit and intention describes your agency. If you’re turning a profit anywhere south of 20%, it’s time to change your mindset and address these six ways to increase your profitability.
Watch Our Free Video Class: Profit On Purpose (7min) & kickstart your journey toward profitability
Of course, if you have any questions or would like to chat with one of our Digital Agency Coach Consultants, please Get In Touch — they’d love to help.
Bristol-based Gather Round is a growing family of unique, soulful, creative workspaces, purposefully designed for creatives by creatives. Its mission is to build remarkable co-working spaces where creative thinkers and doers can connect, collaborate and thrive.
Founded by Fiasco Design owners, Ben Steers and Jason Smith, Gather Round’s flagship workspace, in the Cigar Factory, Southville, opened its doors to Bristol’s curious creative community in 2019 and it will be opening the doors to a second venue, in Brunswick Square, St. Pauls, in early September 2021.
Its members are creative industry professionals; designers, writers, filmmakers, publishers, photographers, brand strategists… A truly eclectic and talented bunch, and the diverse mix of businesses within its member community is valued as highly by members, as the beautifully designed workspaces themselves.
New Gather Round, Brunswick Square
Gather Round, Brunswick Square, breathes new life into 15-16 York Street, a unique, historic building in one of Bristol’s most vibrant neighbourhoods. From early September 2021, a supportive community of 80-90 creative professionals will take residence here; freelancers, self-employed and micro-businesses, from the surrounding areas of St Pauls, Montpelier, Easton, St. George, Kingsdown, etc.
The space will provide flexible areas with fixed and casual desks, a mix of small to medium-sized studios, private meeting rooms, hang-out areas, communal kitchen tables and quiet areas for thinking. It will also have a dedicated public event space with room for 50-60 person events.
Gather Round offers private studio, resident and co-working membership options, with part-time flexible co-working costing £110 per month plus VAT, and full-time memberships from £195, plus VAT.
First month’s membership FREE
Knowing that signing up to a co-working space can feel like a big step, Gather Round are offering new members who join Brunswick Square before Monday 16th August, their first month free.
Community Support Commitment
Gather Round creates nurturing environments in which local creative businesses flourish and it is also committed to supporting its neighbouring communities in the following ways:
Founders Ben Steers and Jason Smith say, “By design, Gather Round provides an intimate, supportive creative environment. We know that a nurturing community makes all the difference to our members’ businesses and we’re delighted to be extending what we offer in Southville to residents of North Bristol. Our aim is to open the doors at Brunswick Square in September, with a ready-made creative community.”
Find out more about Gather Round’s latest creative co-working space and membership options, or contact Amie Thompson, Community Manager for Gather Round – [email protected]
*Image: Gather Round members attend a ‘Campfire Talk’ at Gather Round, Cigar Factory, Southville
Our friends at TechSPARK are celebrating the CreaTech sector this month so we thought we’d join in and highlight five awesome businesses from the Bristol Creative Industries member community.
As outlined in this article, CreaTech is the term used to describe where creativity meets technology. The Creative Industries Council defines it as “bringing together creative skills and emerging technologies to create new ways of engaging audiences and to inspire business growth and investment”.
The CreaTech sector is strong in the UK as a recent report by Tech Nation showed. Despite a very tough year in 2020, CreaTech companies raised a record £981.8m in 2020. That puts the UK third in the world for CreaTech venture capital investment, behind only the US and China.
The sector is big news in our region too with the South West having the highest median investment between 2015 and 2020, ahead of Scotland and London.
With that in mind, we thought it was the perfect excuse to showcase five businesses from the Bristol Creative Industries member community doing amazing things. Connect with them by visiting their member profile. If you want to join the community, you can sign up here.
This company describes itself as “changing the face of cyber security education for young adults” through its CyberStart product. The platform that gamifies cyber security education has been used by over 200,000 students. Teaching cyber security to 13-18-year-olds is hard so this is a really innovative way to do it. In the game, participants take on cyber-criminals by solving puzzles and using learning techniques like code breaking and password cracking,
The company has a US version of the product and it was recently part of the National Cyber Scholarship competition with over 10,000 high school and college students taking part.
Congrats to the 70 CA HS students named National Cyber Scholars! Thank you @CyberStartUSA @NCScholarship for nurturing + empowering our next generation of #cybersecurity experts. See full list of our rising stars https://t.co/OCBYY1nwfo pic.twitter.com/HGd8RI119W
— Dept. of Technology (@CADeptTech) June 8, 2021
Visit Helical Levity’s BCI member profile
In the midst of Euro 2020 (come on England!), it seems appropriate to include this Bath-based business. Founded in 2017, StatsBomb provides football data and analytics to clubs, media and gambling companies across the world. The company has developed its own proprietary, industry-leading data collection and analytics software with a user-friendly high-vis front end.
The business started out as a team of three but now has over 150 employees based in its head office in Bath and in the US and Egypt.
Yerson Mosquera, Atlético Nacional 2020 & 2021
Wolves have become the latest club to dip into the South American market 🇨🇴
Scouting from a global database has never been more important. StatsBomb customers can shortlist players from 80+ competitions 🌎https://t.co/TY2rzzCOBN pic.twitter.com/XxJ480y2uP
— StatsBomb (@StatsBomb) June 17, 2021
Visit StatsBomb’s BCI member profile
Bristol-based Gravitywell describes itself as using “technology and creativity to guide businesses through digital transformation and help startups blossom and achieve their goals”.
The company has delivered some impressive projects including working with English Heritage and artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins to creatre an interactive illustrated web app map of English myths and legends.
In just six weeks, the team designed, built and launched the web app. They turned Clive’s analogue artwork into a digital production that brought the creatures and characters to life. The map picked up a number of awards, including best digital design at the 2919 SPARKies, TechSPARK’s annual awards celebrating the best tech in the west.
View Gravitywell’s BCI member profile
We are all craving the return of international travel and here’s a company that can help when we can finally go on our next adventures. Bristol-based TravelLocal is disrupting and bringing online the huge tailor-made holidays market and pioneering the “buy local” movement in travel.
The company’s cutting edge web software platform connects locally-owned travel companies in more than 60 countries worldwide with a global client base of travellers, to create and deliver tailor-made holidays.
TravelLocal was started in 2008 by founders Tom and Huw who felt something was missing from the travel industry. Big tour operators were dominating the market and the local experts that planned the trips were treated as a “trade secret”. They started TravelLocal to change that.
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Visit TravelLocal’s BCI member profile
This Bristol-based company believes “there’s a brilliant storyteller in everyone but sometimes you just need a little help unlocking your superpower”. Sparkol was “born out of the simple belief that everyone should be able to share their stories quickly, easily and affordably (without any special skills)”.
The company’s flagship software, VideoScribe, has been used by over two million users worldwide. It allows users to quickly create professional-looking animations.
Another service is Scribley which gets you creating engaging video experiences in minutes using a browser on desktop or tablet.
If you don’t want to do it yourself, Sparkol Studio can help by taking your wildest ideas and transforming them into ‘share-worthy’ video content, and Sparkol Academy provides training on video skills and animation.
Visit Sparkol’s BCI member profile
We love the creativity of Bristol Creative Industries members and there are hundreds more we could have shared. Meet them all in the member directory. If you want to be featured, join as a member.
The Creative Industries Council CreaTech Ones to Watch competition is celebrating inspiring companies and consortiums from across the UK. We’d love to see some BCI members featured. You can enter here until 28 June.
Taking place on 1 July, EntreConf is the dynamic new virtual conference to inspire the region’s entrepreneurs and advisors. To help with practical advice – financial, legal, marketing, management. And to broker valuable new relationships before, during and after the event.
Free conference passes are available via the website, entreconf.com, supplied by the EntreConf Sponsors.
The Running Order for the day can be seen on the website here. It includes three unmissable Keynote Speakers:
Chris Anderson: Owner of world-renowned TED Conferences on wisdom from dozens of inspirational entrepreneurs he’s known plus his own remarkable entrepreneurial story.
Ann Hiatt: Unrivalled top-level first-hand experience as a former business partner of Jeff Bezos at Amazon and then chief of staff at Google. Ann will be talking about business strategies.
Dale Vince: leading green energy entrepreneur and pioneer, also owns the eco-friendly Forest Green Rovers plus a portfolio of green companies, and was the executive producer of Seaspiracy.
Plus highly-practical sessions for entrepreneurs at all stages, provided by EntreConf’s expert partners. Take a look at what each expert insights session will be covering here. Business strategy, start-up help, advice on funding, developing business thinking, exclusive research, futurologising – and much more.
EntreConf also features the EntreLeague. The top 50 of the coolest, brightest, most interesting entrepreneurial businesses in the region. Chosen by a panel of experts, themselves chosen for expertise across a wide variety of sectors and business types: entrepreneurs, advisors, financial companies, lawyers, academics, incubators. These will be unveiled live at EntreConf on July 1.
EntreConf is sponsored by: Bath Spa University, Bevan Brittan, Burges Salmon, Lombard Odier, Rocketmakers and University of Bath School of Management. Plus Associates and Partners: Bristol Creative Industries, Creative Bath, Digital Wonderlab, EIP, MediaClash, PG Owen and Storm Consultancy.
This year, EntreConf is running as a virtual event with a select, in real life dinner in the autumn. The event is organised and run by MediaClash, publishers of Bristol Life, Bath Life, Cardiff Life and Exeter Living and organisers of over 100 events a year, including the Bristol Life Awards, Bristol Life Business Clubs and Bristol Property Awards.
Since my earliest years, I’ve been a fan of athletics. Long-distance running in particular. I’ve watched it on TV. Chatted about it with friends. Followed its greatest exponents with fascination and even become something of an (armchair) expert on the subject.
But until a year or two ago, I’d never taken the plunge and given it a go myself. It felt like something reserved for others. Something that you needed to prepare for meticulously, before ever getting out there and hitting the pavements for yourself. It just seemed altogether too difficult to try.
Then something changed. I was persuaded by a friend to join them on the journey from ‘couch to 5K’. And, at the risk of being that annoying running evangelist, I’ve never looked back.
For many in the marketing world, account-based marketing holds the same appeal – and presents equally erroneous perceived obstacles. It looks great. It seems to work brilliantly for others. But it can also appear prohibitively complicated and quite possibly hideously expensive.
Happily, if you get account-based marketing right, those negative perceptions are some way wide of the mark. And in this article, I’ll explain why it’s an approach you can’t afford to ignore.
There are websites, books, research papers, even degree courses devoted to an explanation of account-based marketing. But for our purposes today, I’m going to keep things straightforward. At Proctor + Stevenson, we view ABM as marketing that identifies high-value companies within defined sectors, and focuses on generating quality sales leads through targeted strategy and pinpoint messaging.
It’s an approach we’ve employed to great effect over the past few years, helping clients including Panasonic outperform campaign goals by as much as 100%. And we’re not alone: Forrester research reports that 62% of marketers have reported a positive impact on their marketing performance since adopting ABM.
It comes with strong credentials then. But if that isn’t enough to help you persuade your colleagues that account-based marketing is the way forward, here are those five key reasons that should really turn the argument in your favour…
The pandemic has taught us that certain sales and marketing approaches are affected by external conditions and factors beyond our control. Exhibitions and events being an obvious one. Account-based marketing remains impervious to those irresistible forces, replacing sales meetings and product demonstrations with digital outreach and online communication. It also has the flexibility to incorporate more ‘traditional’ tactics (personalised direct mail, for example) when the time and targeting is right, making it the marketing strategy for all seasons.
The beauty of ABM lies in its focus. Unlike other broad-brush strategies that make marketing a numbers game, account-based marketing is lean and keen, ensuring that your financial resources are allocated only where they’re going to have maximum, direct impact. Even in those longer B2B buying cycles, there’s no wastage. Communications and marketing collateral are sent to those prospects you’ve identified as interested, via the channels they use, carrying messages you know will resonate with them.
Most ABM strategies are built with digital communication at their core. So you can account for every penny or euro you spend, and attribute every click, reply, meeting booking, expression of interest or sales opportunity you elicit directly back to the activity you’ve instigated. And there’s little that will make your board-level colleagues happier than that.
Ah, the old sales vs marketing conundrum. Should be best of friends, very rarely are. In this respect, you can think of account-based marketing as the United Nations. Employed properly, an ABM strategy achieves that holy grail – a harmonious collaboration in which marketing and sales work in tandem, generating interest, qualifying leads and nurturing prospects until they’re ready to hit ‘buy’ (and beyond, if your ABM strategy is far-sighted enough).
As I mentioned a little earlier, our clients have enjoyed great success with account-based marketing over the past year or two. Working with them, we’ve doubled projected lead targets, improved ROI, achieved better conversion rates, even generated six-figure sales pipeline. And all within the parameters of tight marketing budgets.
The final advantage of ABM that I’ll mention here is that it isn’t an all-or-nothing strategy. It looks different for every business. And we can help you take those first steps towards making it work for yours. So if you’d like to know more, don’t sit on the side lines any longer. Lace up your shoes, get in touch and let’s see where account-based marketing can take you.
More and more businesses are taking sustainability seriously.
The Purposeful Company recently announced that 14 of the UK’s top companies have pledged to put employees, communities, and broader society higher on their boardroom agenda.
In the UK, on average, one company per day is gaining B Corp certified status. Even the FT has recently said that “rewards await those who put sustainability ahead of short-term gains”.
There has also recently been a wave of books devoted to the concept of ‘conscious capitalism’, from John Elkington’s Green Swans to Mark Carney’s Value(s) via Bill Gates’s How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.
The consensus is that we still need to make significant changes to the way we make, sell and buy our stuff; but change is happening, and businesses are realising that sustainability and profitability are not contradictions (in fact, they are often catalysts).
What can we, as advertisers and marketers, do to help? Well, according to the World Federation of Advertisers, quite a lot…
They’ve recently launched ’Planet Pledge’ in an attempt to create a framework to galvanize our industry to make a difference.
We need to stop thinking of ourselves as merely ’consumer drivers’ and look at the bigger picture – and who else is better placed to help shape consumer behavior and preferences than marketing and advertising specialists?
As someone who works in conversion optimisation, I’ve been considering how to add this way of thinking to our armory. We’re used to considering various heuristic frameworks, cognitive biases and persuasive mechanisms when seeking to refine customer journeys; let’s overlay the importance of sustainability factors too.
In order to do this, I found an incredibly useful resource from the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board: their ’Materiality Map’. It’s a detailed summary of the sustainability issues most likely to affect the performance of companies in different markets and industries.
These issues can act as a proxy for consumer preference and help us move away from just thinking about ’sustainability’ as a whole, and dig deeper into what really matters.
From the SASB Materiality Map we can see that under the building products and furnishings section, one of the key factors is product design and lifecycle management. As they state themselves, this relates to the way a company manages the product lifecycle, including end-of-life.
Our conversion optimisation experience also tells us that consumers respond well to reciprocity (will feel a need to give back to others if they’ve gained themselves) and also commitment (when someone publicly commits to doing something that aligns with our values).
With this in mind, you can see why Ikea’s ‘buy-back’ service could be a great success for them… as well as generate some fantastic PR.
Nationwide has always created compelling messaging built on their heritage as a building society, hence their investment in community.
When it comes to typically persuasive messages that would align with this, we’d probably lead with social proof (evidence that other people have been here before) or liking (we like to buy from people and organizations that seem ‘similar’ to us).
But if we consider the sustainability factors, it reminds us that financial institutions are judged very closely on factors such as privacy and data security – remember, sustainability isn’t just about treating the environment well, it’s about treating people and society well too.
If you take a look at the Nationwide website, and many of their advertising campaigns, you can clearly see plenty of references to the crossover between data security, privacy and community. It’s not at all surprising why this is impactful.
Sustainability has always been a core part of the mission for Bamboo Clothing (you can read their story here), so messaging around sustainability obviously features significantly along the customer journey.
However (and I’m trying to be objective because they are a client of ours), they display these messages in some fantastic ways.
From a conversion optimisation perspective, the journey contains prominent, product-level, third-party reviews that provide reassurance.
The website has loads of great content around sustainability, which cements their value proposition as a leader in this area; plus, they do a great job of reducing anxiety by providing clear messages around their flexible delivery and returns policies.
But it’s one specific sustainability element that I want to highlight.
If we go back to the SASB Materiality Map, we can see that in the apparel, accessories and footwear sector, two of the key factors are supply chain management, and materials sourcing and efficiency; consumers want to know their product has been produced in a truly sustainable way.
What better way to do this than show the impact of every item’s production on the environment? Bamboo Clothing has worked with Green Story, a Canadian business specializing in supply chain evaluation in the fashion industry.
The objective credibility of this is great, but it’s the execution that’s brilliant. For each product, they then display the positive impact the consumer will have if they purchase this product from the supplier in question compared to a regular fashion retailer.
Sustainably-conscious customers can toggle between a view that shows the ‘equivalent’ impact (for example, water saved is shown in ‘days of drinking water’) or the ‘actual’ (water saved shown in liters)
Each of these businesses has taken an approach to sustainability that is more meaningful and widespread rather than using it simply as a tool to nudge someone along the customer journey; for an increasingly sustainability-conscious consumer, that authenticity is key.
However, it’s the way they are then leveraging that approach, inserting compelling signposts to improve their website performance, that is impressive.
I expect to see more and more of this over the coming year; as such, maybe those of us working in conversion optimisation just might be able to do our bit extra to help save the planet.