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.
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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.
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.
At Proctors, our people make us who we are. Bold. Brave. Imaginative. Resilient. But resilience doesn’t mean things are always easy.
It’s truly taken a village to see us through the last 12 months. And this article explains more about how our team spirit and collaborative culture have helped us to balance the books throughout these difficult times – and flourish, rather than just float.
When COVID first hit in the beginning of 2020, the consensus was this epidemic would be around for three months in the UK, and we should start to see signs of economic recovery beginning in July 2020. (No comment!)
At the time, we’d just finalised our financial forecasts for the year ending March 2021, but it was clear we needed to review these figures.
After revisiting our forecasts, we worked on a realistic model which would see a dip of around 30% in the company’s income for the first quarter of 2020, before gradually returning to 100% by the summer. We then expected we’d see an uptick in work – to around 130% by the end of the year – as clients rushed to spend already -approved budgets.
Despite knowing now that the information on the pandemic’s duration proved to be inaccurate, this approach placed us in excellent stead.
Our biggest challenge was managing cashflow. With fee income dropping, we still had to cover our business costs. It became crucial to cut costs wherever we could – and quickly.
We reviewed our overheads, and any payments deemed non-essential were stopped or placed on hold. The government also launched an initiative called the CBIL Scheme, and allowed us to defer our PAYE and VAT payments, helping us manage cashflow.
We also made the decision to place any money received from loans or PAYE and TAX deferments into a savings account. As we knew the funds were always going to have to be repaid in March 2021, we decided to only use them if we had to.
Employee utilisation is something we’ve always used to measure productivity across the business at Proctors. It describes how much time any staff member is spending on achieving paid work each month.
During the pandemic, we were able to use our employee utilisation data to forecast upcoming work, and quickly identify the staff members who would be under-utilised over the coming weeks and months, and the skillsets where there wouldn’t be a lot of work coming in from our clients. We could then place those affected employees on furlough, whilst ensuring all other staff had high utilisation levels, reducing our costs while keeping our clients happy.
Over the last few years, we’ve introduced a number of KPIs to ensure we’re always performing efficiently, aiming to be within the top 10% of agencies of our size, financially. This has given us a strong financial foundation, allowing us to continue to support our clients who were also struggling though uncertainty.
Our relationships
Externally, we’ve been part of a working group of Financial Directors within creative agencies for the last four years. Pre-COVID we would meet quarterly, discussing all things financial and operational as well as sharing ideas, best practice tips, and KPIs.
At the beginning of the pandemic we met via Zoom, and as usual shared our latest updates – only this time, we discussed how to approach the upcoming challenges which would affect all of us.
Many agencies cut back on their non-fee earning staff, including new business and marketing. But our own stance differed: as long as we weren’t at a net loss, we would continue to look for new clients and deliver new initiatives to our existing ones.
We kept our new business and marketing team together, giving them the creative and technology staff needed to work on pitches and ideas – and for us, it paid off, resulting in new clients and new business.
Despite a number of businesses in the aforementioned Financial Directors group making different decisions based on what might work best for them, being part of a community that shares knowledge, resources and support has been invaluable.
Those invaluable relationships have extended to our clients too. Like many other businesses, we’ve been there for our clients – and vice versa – during an incredibly testing year. In most cases, we’ve gotten to know each other even better, and have built even stronger business and personal relationships with many of them.
A challenging time for the world, for our business, and for our people. It was so important to us to ensure our employees felt valued, informed – and were able to have just a little fun wherever possible.
Over the last year we’ve introduced a number of new staff initiatives, including our Quarantine Quiz. We originally introduced the quiz to raise money for the Quartet Community Foundation, donating to their Coronavirus 2020 Response Fund, as well as to boost our teams’ morale while we’ve all been forced to work remotely.
And unlike many of the Zoom quizzes we might have held in our personal lives, to this day The Proctors Quarantine Quiz lives on! The format has now evolved slightly, with different staff members hosting each Wednesday, and one lucky winner claiming a £50 Amazon voucher in a nice little midweek boost.
We’ve been rewarding staff for more than just their general knowledge, too. 2021 has seen the return of our famous Proscars awards. The Proscars are our quarterly awards by employees, for employees, with every staff member able to vote for three colleagues they believe should be rewarded for their hard work. Our three winners then get to choose a prize – either £250 in cash or £400 in vouchers.
To get us all moving, we’ve been further breaking up the working week with weekly lunchtime fitness and yoga sessions, hosted by a personal trainer online. And if you’d rather gin than gym, on Fridays our weekly virtual social kicks off at 5pm – although, it’s strictly BYOB!
If all that wasn’t enough, each Friday afternoon our Chairman, Roger Proctor, sends out his weekly ‘Good News’ email. Just as it sounds, it’s a cross-department weekly catch up about all things good – inside and out of work – and an informal welcome to the weekend.
As well as looking after our finances, it was also critical our staff had access to the support they needed to look after their personal wellbeing.
We engaged a psychotherapist and Mental Health Consultant to run a series of wellbeing workshops and Q+A sessions with all Proctors employees. This was followed up with a further series of workshops with our managers, providing them with additional tools to guide and support their team, as well as handouts on working from home, managing stress and more.
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve continued to promote our Employee Assistance Programme, offering 24/7 GP, legal and financial helplines, with options for counselling and psychiatric therapy available through our private medical insurance.
We also felt it was important to offer extra help to those who might be struggling with the pressures of family life in lockdown. Therefore, we sought to share helpful guidance and tips to P+S parents for effective home school and balancing with work as well as providing additional flexibility for maintaining work balance and wellbeing during additional childcare and home schooling. We even set up regional and international remote working agreements for those who benefited from being with their family outside of Bristol.
Christmas looked different in 2020, but we still managed to celebrate in style. In lieu of our traditional knees-up, we sent a hamper brimming local treats and bubbles from The Mall Deli in Clifton to each of our staff. But it was also important for us to give back too.
We joined forces with Caring in Bristol to donate a video in aid of homelessness in our city, helping to raise over £20,000. And we’ve kicked off the new year in a similar way by sponsoring Lebeq Ladies – a local women’s football team, in our community of Easton, Bristol.
Our future
None of the positive action we’ve taken should be viewed as temporary.
We intend to continue treating Wellbeing as a priority across the Group, and are continuing with initiatives in this area, such as with Mental Health First Aid training for select staff in June.
Above all, our people will continue to steer our direction moving forward: whether that’s via team surveys, policy and process updates or with lots of creative ideas. Because this has been one of the hardest times in recent memory to manage and market a business. And tough times lie ahead. But with a strong foundation, and an overwhelming commitment to your original values, it is possible to stay above water – even in the most testing of times.
If you’d like to talk to a truly ‘people first’ agency, we’re herewith a listening ear. So talk to us, at [email protected].
On June 16th, Adapt is hosting a webinar in conversation with Head of Ad Tech at IAB UK, Tina Lakhani, about how businesses can start preparing for life after third-party cookies. Register here…
Third-party cookies are soon to be a thing of the past.
This – we hope – shouldn’t be brand new information, as Google announced in February 2020 they were going to begin phasing out third-party cookies on Chrome next year.
What’s caused a stir more recently is Google’s further announcement that they are not going to create “alternative identifiers” to track users and will not use these in their products.
And that was not the way many marketers wanted the third-party cookie to crumble.
For marketers, these trackers were our bread and butter – they allowed us to not only track our website users, but we used them to improve user experience and, most importantly, to ‘collect data that helped us target ads to the right audiences’.
It’s obvious that we need to go, at least partly, back to the drawing board and properly prepare for life after third-party cookies. But a lot of us don’t know where to start, despite the fact many of the points below are, arguably, best practice already.
To help you better prepare for life after third-party cookies, we’ve put together a list of the 11 ways we think you should be readying your business for the incoming data gap.
This again is one which we hope you have begun exploring. If you haven’t then now is the time to start.
Google’s customer match is a very nifty tool. You can use information that your customers have shared with you to create targeted ads across search, the shopping tab, Gmail and YouTube. It will also help target new customers who have similar interests to your existing users.
Another great tool to have in your wheelhouse is Facebook’s custom audiences. With this, you can opt for your chosen ad to target your desired audience among Facebook users. It also allows you to utilize Facebook’s customer lists and website traffic to develop a tailored audience of users who have engaged with your brand.
Now is the perfect time to get creative and come up with new ways that will encourage users to share data with you. Here are three ways you could grow your database:
This shouldn’t be a new concept for you since GDPR came into effect.
Be sure to check the data you already have in order to gain a clear insight into what data you’ve got, and then update your privacy policy to shed light on how you are using this data.
Permission management tools should be on your radar, and you can add these to your website so users can take control of their consent and data.
As we are now losing valuable data, we need to start thinking beyond the usage of cookies. We can do this by optimizing our usage of the data we still have.
Now is the perfect time to experiment with various management strategies to see which ones are most effective. Once you have found which strategies work best you should make these bulletproof for the future.
Many industry-leading tech companies are developing new ways to harness first-party data, so it’s worth taking an active role in as many tests as possible.
Google is encouraging businesses to lean into using privacy-focused solutions, and one they are championing in particular is the use of ‘value-based bidding’, as well as a new first-party cookie solution to assist with conversion tracking.
Contextual targeting is often overlooked, but it’s a great strategy to use as it doesn’t use third-party cookies.
While it does involve dedicating a great deal of time to figuring out where best to place your ads on certain platforms, it is certainly worth the effort.
Your targeted audience is more likely to respond to these ads as they won’t feel as though their privacy has been breached. Once you have gained the trust of your customers, you will be able to build strong lasting relationships.
These relationships can help you further as you will soon be able to spot patterns and user behavior within specific groups, which will provide you with vital data you can track.
MartechSeries defines people-based marketing as “a means to create a customer-centric, cohesive marketing system that revolves around customers and their real-time behavioral data”.
When you combine this data with your first-party data you will be able to target your desired audience in real-time across a variety of channels. People-based marketing is a great solution as it does not rely on third-party cookies and it also allows you to engage with users directly at a time that suits them.
According to BounceX, a successful people-based marketing strategy has three key elements:
GA4 will be an excellent tool to use as it is being developed with stronger cloud-based, machine-learning modeling and will pair nicely with server-side tracking.
While GA4 won’t be a replacement for the current iteration of GA, having both these analytics tools at your disposal will have a considerable impact on your data tracking.
Or you can use other systems like Google Tag Manager that focus on site-wide first-party tagging. These are designed to drastically increase the volume of the conversion data you already have.
To put it simply, you really should be using these, as these ad platform tools have been created to help optimize these conversions.
With this amount of data, you will be able to distinguish in more detail what campaigns are proving effective, and which need to be restructured.
It’s not just about quantity when it comes to collecting data, it’s also about quality. So rather than worrying about what data you don’t have, work with the data that you have now.
Focus your energy on hiring the right people who will be able to go through your data with a fine-tooth comb and optimize your business models.
We also recommend giving your contact lists a refresh on a regular basis to ensure you don’t have irrelevant contacts. You could make this automatic by creating a system that deletes contacts who haven’t reacted to your messages for a pre-determined period of time.
Allowing your users to have the power to opt in or out of their subscriptions is another great way to maintain the quality of your database. Those that leave are contacts you do not need, and this opt-in system shows users you comply with the data protection legislation.
If you want to get ahead in a cookie-less world, you need to understand what identifiers your business is using, and with this information you can begin to profile your visits.
Create ‘collection points’ throughout your website and then you can use this collected data to understand your audience in a more detailed light.
CookiePro, for instance, is talking about two types of User IDs that could be used in the future. And while we’re not confident enough to make the same claim ourselves, they do offer an interesting glimpse at the types of solutions that are incoming.
The first is Probabilistic ID, which is a type of ID used to reap the rewards of anonymous data points. You can use this type of data to find behavioral parallels between these anonymous users and your known users.
Deterministic ID is basically a form of identifiable data. Examples of this type of ID are log-in data, offline data, or information the user has agreed to share with you.
The departure of third-party cookies is something that we can’t ignore – it’s going to drastically change the digital marketing landscape as we know it.
But we still have time to re-think and re-model our marketing strategies, and the earlier we start to implement these changes, the more prepared we will be when third-party cookies have gone stale.
As of March 2021, P+S are now an official Amazon Web Services (AWS) Select Consulting Partner. Hurray! Exciting news for us – but why should anyone else care?
Don’t worry. This isn’t your typical self-congratulatory post.
What this means is we can help clients to grow and scale their businesses on AWS. So you could get a cost saving, industry-leading and super secure application.
To achieve our AWS Select Tier status, we had to demonstrate a whole lot of team knowledge and prove the strength of our experience too. So, over the past 4 months, we’ve delivered High Availability architecture for clients like Osborne Clarke and the UK Hydrographic Office.
So, we’ve written this blog to tell you just why you should take note about what AWS has to offer, and answer a few of the questions you might have.
Because they’re the industry’s leading cloud provider.
AWS offers a huge list of services and a robust global infrastructure that we knew could serve our clients around the world. If it’s good enough for 90% of the world’s Fortune 100 companies and the majority of Fortune 500 companies, it’s good enough for us.
And now our partnership status is testament to our experience and knowledge when it comes to designing and implementing cloud architecture.
As an application implementation, development and infrastructure partner, we can achieve a very close link between your applications’ functionality and its environment, ensuring you always get the very best performance.
We can save you time and money.
It’s likely you already know on-premise infrastructure can be hugely expensive. Or you might be using cloud computing, but finding it’s still costing you a fortune. With the right cloud architecture in place, not only can you gain a huge price advantage, you could also save countless hours of time, too.
Commissioning just one new server can take several days and thousands of pounds of hardware investment. But in the cloud, the same process takes just a few seconds. Plus, you can spin servers up and remove them again easily, and without having to worry about hardware.
Our use cases are normally centred around creating web architecture, where this flexibility is useful for creating cost effective solutions. A traditional web architecture might consist of several web servers behind a load balancer, where traffic is distributed across the instances according to some rules.
The problem with this traditional set up is that during lulls in user activity, e.g., overnight or over the weekend, you end up with more servers than you need – you’re just haemorrhaging money.
Conversely, during traffic spikes, you might not have enough capacity to meet demand, putting your application’s performance at risk.
Auto-scaling prevents this by automatically adding more servers to the group if demand requires it. When the demand drops, these servers are removed.
Because in the words of Werner Vogels, “Everything fails, all the time”.
All technological solutions – no matter how perfect we might like them to be – will have points of failure and downtime. In fact, even cloud solutions within AWS are subject to the same risks.
By creating an infrastructure that anticipates this failure, we can overcome the risks and mitigate the impact before a failure ever happens.
For example, the AWS network consists of several geographical regions based around the world. These regions are further divided into Availability Zones. An Availability Zone is made up of separate physical data centres that are connected within a region.
You can then split your services across Availability Zones, so should one develop a problem, you’ll hardly notice – your application will still be up and running.
At P+S we follow the AWS principals for High Availability across all of our clients’ architecture to ensure there are no single points of failure, and recovery is automatic wherever possible.
Yes. In fact, at AWS, they have a saying: Security is Priority Zero.
This is for good reason, given the critical nature of data security and harsh penalties for businesses who breach regulations.
There are multiple features in AWS’ tools and services ensuring every design meets stringent compliance requirements, with our own architecture including many of these features as standard.
For example, we deploy AWS CloudFront as a CDN as standard in front of all our sites, together with AWS Web Application Firewall and AWS Shield to protect your site against web vulnerabilities and attack vectors, including the OWASP Top 10 – globally recognised by developers as the top 10 risks to application security – and Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS), which you may have seen recently taking a number of the Belgium government’s websites offline. It also ensures you’re compliant with Data Protection standards such as ISO 27001.
AWS also provides the ability to create entire virtual networks and subnets within the cloud, with complete control over data and user access and flow. This gives you the ability to lock down access to subnets, instances, and services to only authorised sources. For example, you can block physical access to web application servers, ensuring access can only be gained from the load balancer or approved IPs.
No. One of our favourite methodologies in cloud infrastructure is ‘server-less architecture’.
Server-less architecture means the servers or machine resources used to run a particular task are handled by the cloud provider. So you don’t have to worry about provisioning a server or maintaining it. This saves a lot of time and money; we can simply spin up a database or run code.
This methodology is extremely useful when working on prototypes, for example, allowing us to quicker develop and verify our ideas. It’s also useful for running Continuous Integration workloads to speed up deployments (useful for Autoscaling groups) and helping you manage repetitive tasks or queues.
For example, we successfully offloaded some database queue processing from the application into AWS Lambda. This meant we could configure a smaller database instance than would otherwise have been necessary.
Our summary
At P+S, we believe every business should be able to offer an excellent digital service to their customers. That means creating flexible digital architecture that grows as you – and your customers – need it to. It’s faster, more adaptable, and because it’s flexible, you won’t waste money on servers you don’t need.
Your application shouldn’t go offline unexpectedly. And we don’t believe you should have to pay more for a secure website, so we’ll ensure both your data and your customers’ info is protected at all times.
And our newly earned AWS Select Consulting Partner badge proves that commitment.
Want to find out more? Talk to [email protected] for a no-obligation chat.
During our Digital Marketing Futures series earlier this year, we gave a conceptual view of the marketing trends those in our industry need to keep their eyes firmly trained upon.
Following on from this, we’ve picked out seven specific trends that we’ve seen change or accelerate during the recent lockdown, and that we think you should watch out for over the next 12-24 months. So here’s our list of seven post-pandemic trends to look out for in 2021 – and beyond.
This trend is easy to predict and is one that – hopefully – you have already begun implementing in your campaigns. It’s reported that by 2022, 82% of global internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads. What’s more, 72% of businesses have reported that video increased their conversion rates.
Video covers such a huge range of mediums, including live streaming, one-to-one videos, long format, short format – the list goes on.
In lockdown, we’ve seen huge gains in people using over-the-top media. The most mainstream example of this is YouTube, but it also encompasses all the paid searches such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and HBO.
It’s no surprise this has increased over lockdown, however what is surprising is why people are doing it. More than half of 13-39 year-olds planned to watch TV series and films on these streaming services as a way to maintain their mental health in lockdown.
Now even TV remotes have buttons installed for Netflix and other streaming services. We can now programmatically get at users with video on these connected TVs through different over-the-top media outlets – and this is pushing forwards the decline we are seeing in linear TV.
This again isn’t a trend that’s new to us, but it’s something that has become much more mainstream. Nowadays, 62% of gen Z and millennial consumers want visual search more than any other technology.
We are fundamentally getting much lazier in how we do day-to-day activities, and users now are choosing to search for information through pictures. Google, Pinterest and Microsoft are all leading the way with their various technology features that allow you to find similar products based on things that you upload.
These days, it’s not uncommon for you to take a photo of clothing, furniture or kitchenware at home and then use available systems to find similar products that are available to purchase. Or you can use your camera to take a picture of a barcode and then use a system to find that product online and where you can buy it from.
It’s going to grow as consumers become more familiar with these systems post-lockdown, and it will likely be used by many on a daily basis. You will need to start thinking about how this will play into your marketing strategy over the coming months. To start with you should ensure your structured data is sound and you have high-quality imagery, and make sure your site is optimized for speed.
This is a trend that has crept up on us; it’s really everywhere now and demand for it is going to accelerate beyond lockdown. Research shows people are now more comfortable chatting away to Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa or Cortana. Predictions now are suggesting that 50% of searches are expected to be carried out through voice activation over the next few years.
Voice commerce is also expected to drastically increase as these types of sales are expected to hit the $45bn mark by 2022 in the UK and US. Another recently-released survey from YouGov showed that one in four Britons reported owning some sort of smart speaker.
When implementing voice search into your strategy, you need to consider the types of searches that are most common among users – for example, ‘near me’-type searches are huge. In this instance, you should make sure that you’re a local entity and you’ve used localized keywords in your web copy.
From a technical perspective, over 50% of these searches are going to be on mobile, so your mobile site needs to be up to date. With the Core Web Vitals update just around the corner, they become much more important.
AI has gone from being a buzzword to very much a reality, and marketers’ use of AI soared to 190% between 2018 and 2020. With the likes of Microsoft Azure’s cognitive services, it’s very much now something that’s within reach of every website and every developer.
The API is there and designed to make it accessible, and from a pure marketing perspective AI is baked into the platforms that we’re using. It’s used to collect data, generate insights and anticipate customer trends and moves.
Until now, we’ve taken this kind of automation for granted. Bidding strategies and responsive ads all use forms of AI and machine learning to adapt to the signals that are coming in to improve results in real-time.
One of the other interesting areas where AI will play a huge part is how it’s currently being explored as an alternative to cookies and other third-party trackers as we transition into this cookie-less world over the coming years.
The IAB is expected to release some guidelines and best practices for the use of machine learning at all the different levels of digital advertising production. In a post-pandemic world, leveraging AI becomes even more important as we see these trends shifting all the time as lockdowns come and go. It’s about them being able to react to those changes in real-time.
The need to lean into AI more means this sector will continue to grow to the point where we’re not talking about AI because it’s something we all expect.
Conversational marketing is a way of moving buyers or customers through a marketing or sales funnel by using real-time conversations. It’s about fast, real-time interactions, and a lot of businesses are now turning to chatbots.
Over 50% of customer queries may be managed today via AI chatbots. These bots are not necessarily new, but the uptake has accelerated the technology behind them and it’s helping marketers to establish and maintain relationships during the pandemic.
More and more brands are turning to chatbots and conversational marketing to do some of the heavy lifting exercises around support inquiries or sales, and a great example of this is Facebook’s Messenger bots.
However, these bots can be used for more than just support inquiries. Lidl’s wine bot called Margot informs you of the different types of grapes that are used in their wine and will give you wine pairings based on what you are planning to eat. You’re invited to have fun with these chatbots and use it all the way through the funnel, from sales activation to more of a brand-building exercise. We will soon get to the point where it’s hard to determine whether or not you’re talking to a chatbot.
This may be a new term to you, but it’s actually an umbrella term for three immersive technologies that you certainly know. Those terms are:
This is a trend that’s growing at lightning speed, as the global market size of extended reality is estimated to increase 7772% to over $3.7bn by 2025.
These may not seem applicable to the marketing world, but in reality it’s a technology that has been thrust forward in the past 12 months by the reduction in the hardware costs, the availability of them, and the increased demand from people trapped at home looking for some alternative ways of engaging.
It’s not just big, heavy headsets now. It’s using YouTube’s 360-degree videos or the augmented reality filters that come with Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, all the way through to DIY VR equipment. These are changing the conception of this immersive experience so that it is available to all.
Marketers need to meet this demand quickly by upping their game in terms of engagement, interactive content and the personal experiences they produce. Users can now connect with a brand with the kind of intensity and emotional response that hasn’t been possible with one-way traditional media.
For those who are unfamiliar with this term, neuromarketing is a strategy that analyzes and measures people’s brain activity and reactions from their nervous systems to determine which types of content they find engaging.
Essentially, you’re checking when a user has an emotional response to something. Thanks to the advances in tech over the last few years, it’s becoming much more of a reality that these types of tests can be accessible to all.
A good example of this is eye-tracking. This is where you use technology to track eye movements to understand where someone fixates on a particular point of a website, or to count the number of blinks that are occurring, which can be an indicator of how much attention someone is paying to your ad. You can also use emotional response analysis, which is where you use technology to identify whether there has been an emotional response to an ad.
A successful neuromarketing campaign that used emotional response analysis was created by Always in 2014. The brand took the phrase ‘like a girl’, flipped it on its head and turned an insult into a movement of confidence. This brought the emotional response that you would expect, it generated revenue and popularity and even won the Brandon Emmy for their campaign.
Advances mean that this kind of marketing has gone from being a more sci-fi way of marketing to something that’s very much mainstream.
If you’re looking to get ahead of your competitors in 2021 and beyond, then you should definitely consider implementing these trends into your marketing campaigns where possible.
While these trends have emerged as the ones to watch in recent months, we do have to bear in mind the circumstances in which they have appeared.
One of the key things we will have to do over the next 12 months is to identify which of these trends are actual trends and which are just passing fads born out of necessity from lockdown.
The West of England has a strong legacy as a creative industries hub attracting major broadcasters, film companies and digital industries alike to our vibrant towns and cities. Like all industries, however, COVID-19 has hit creative companies hard and the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) has been here to support the creative industries as they work to get through the impact of the pandemic.
To support this, WECA has launched a new business support programme for businesses and individuals working in the creative industries, as part of its Regional Recovery Plan. The programme is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) working in the creative industries, including creative freelancers, and is designed to build resilience and support change in response to COVID-19.
There is also a grant fund for creative freelancers that will give self-employed people the opportunity to become more resilient by developing their own creative product, practice or service, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Grants for creative businesses will fund creative projects that support recovery and resilience, employ freelance creatives, engage local communities and advance diversity and inclusion.
The business support programme has been designed in consultation with members of the creative and cultural sector. The programme also fits with WECA’s ambitions to establish a West of England Cultural Compact, an initiative jointly funded with Arts Council England. This will involve the creation of a new strategic cultural partnership which will lead on the development of a Cultural Strategy and new activities to help increase investment across the creative and cultural sectors in the region.
WECA recently announced a £11.8m investment to boost creative jobs with the expansion of Bottle Yard Studios, which plays host to a wide range of productions, including drama, children’s TV, feature films, gameshows and commercials. Bottle Yard’s growth will also help to support other businesses across the region which rely on film and TV production opportunities.
Almost 60 companies from a range of creative industries across the region have also benefitted from WECA’s Creative Scale-Up programme. This two-year pilot helps creative businesses access finance and peer mentoring through an intensive six-month minimum sustainable growth support programme. WECA has opened applications for the fourth cohort of the programme
Here’s a snapshot of some of the businesses that have benefitted from the programme:
Since joining the Creative Scale Up programme in January 2020, Bristol-based independent development studio and games consultancy Auroch Digital has secured a new publishing deal and taken on 15 new members of staff.
“The Creative Scale Up programme, particularly the mentoring process, was great – we were able to pick mentors targeting specific needs we have. We got direct support with business questions as they arose and that helped us deal with them and move forward.
“As a result, we’ve been able to advance some key areas of the company. We’ve landed one big publishing deal for a new IP game and are circling a second big project, and that mentoring advice has been part of the mix of positives getting us there. Information provided by the Creative Scale Up team also led us to a UWE Digital Innovation Fund grant.” Dr Tomas Rawlings, chief executive, Auroch Digital
Noiser, which specialises in history and drama storytelling with immersive sound design, used the WECA Creative Scale Up £2,000 business grant to develop a sales team and define a clear strategy to drive sales.
“For Noiser, we are not looking for generic business support; I liked how the scheme’s supervisors made us aware that we could find our own mentors and they were able to help connect us with pertinent professionals they were in touch with. This was crucially important.”
Stornaway.io accessed grant funding to re-invest in the creative development of the business.
Having identified a gap in the market for a collaborative web application that lets media producers write, test and publish interactive films easily and affordably without coding, the team was, understandably, wary about how to effectively promote and launch a new product in lockdown.
To showcase the product’s capabilities, Stornaway.io used grant funding to commission and produce a short film called “A Little Hungover”, which would premiere as part of the Immersive Encounters Festival. In order to help futureproof the business, the team at Stornaway.io also made great use of the peer mentoring aspects of the Creative Scale Up programme.
“Launching this new product in the middle of lockdown, the Creative Scale-Up peer mentoring programme was an invaluable community of practice. It was fantastic to meet and develop connections with the leaders of such a wide range of creative businesses in the South West. We have developed a number of ongoing relationships with our peers which we hope will continue to be mutually beneficial.” Kate Dimbleby, co-founder, Stornaway.io
Creative scale-up support includes a £6,000 grant to spend on mentoring support, a dedicated Peer Support Network and sector specific business development training. Businesses are also supported to consider their future finance options and are supported to learn about investment and engage with investors.
Creative businesses wanting to find out more about the new business support programme, grant funds and the Creative Scale Up programme should visit WECA’s Growth Hub page.
The West of England Business Support Guide can also help you navigate the range of support available via the combined authority’s dedicated business support service, the Growth Hub, which provides tailored one-to-one advice and access to finance, support and expert guidance.
Advertising in 2030 will be fundamentally different to how it has been for the past 10 years.
Of course, we accept that for the most part, the same tried and tested methods will continue to work for a while yet – entrenched approaches don’t change overnight.
But individuals and organizations that fail to adapt over time will gradually fade out of relevance. They will slowly become less equipped to support and grow their employees, to help them in their careers and, therefore, the business they are part of.
As customers increasingly embrace digital platforms, the challenge is on.
The challenge is on for business owners to embrace the changes in advertising over the coming years. Doing so enables us to remain relevant and able to foster enduring relationships with customers in cost-efficient ways.
“All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation” – Max McKeown
The one thing I will say before I get into these trends is that they are exactly that…
It is critical we monitor how advertising evolves, but a lot of these topics are fueled by folklore.
These topics change as the facts become clearer. We are in danger, as an industry, of creating that folklore through loud herd debate, which then becomes misunderstood fact.
It is our job as an agency to monitor these topics, contribute positively to the conversation, establish our own stance through investments and ensure we can support our clients as the future becomes clearer.
But be in no doubt – these trends and topics are driving the future of advertising and we need to embrace the conversation.
Marketing clouds will become indispensable elements in the advertising processes of the future. They control the creation and management of marketing relationships with your customers and manage campaigns.
This is already best practice, but it will become standard to integrate solutions for customer journey management, email, mobile, social, web personalization, advertising, content handling and analytics.
AI is ubiquitous in the advertising space. It supports our decision-making and analyzes consumer behaviour.
Enriched with data about how consumers interact with advertising, it substantially optimizes campaigns to perform better. Implemented consistently and to its full extent, AI understands consumers better than they do themselves.
This is very clearly tied to the performance improvements that we have seen in recent years by increasing our adoption of AI within campaigns.
The large tech vendors will continue to embrace artificial intelligence because of the opportunity to scale and, in the future, perform better than humans.
As an agency, we will spend less time in the future on the implementation of administration (eg search query reports) and more time on strategic conversations with our clients to support their business growth.
Programmatic will be standard for digital advertising. It is also the future of more traditional advertising methods.
Think first-party data collected through radio stations (like Sonos radio) and how that could be used over time for programmatic purchasing of audio.
It’s already used for TV and outdoor. Expect to see this more.
Digital advertising is predominantly contextual. This will grow – cohort advertising, for example, is still contextual.
Ads will be selected and placed by automated systems, based on ever more detailed user-profiles and the content displayed. There will be a continued increase in mobile and location-based advertising, which will strengthen this trend.
The fragmented supplier landscape within adtech will consolidate. Large adtech players will acquire almost all their smaller but highly specialized competitors that manage to evolve.
Alternatively – and more likely in my view – is that these smaller vendors will be rendered redundant through policy and legislation evolution.
The desire for improved services, additional scale and more first-party data will be the main driver behind any M&A activity.
The agency model is changing and the type of people we need in our agency will change over time too. Client-side, supplier-side, agency-side – everyone will be competing for the same kind of job profiles.
It will create a battle for the best talent and create a requirement to deliver the best training.
Employers will compete for experts with scarce, specialized skill sets.
As is the case now, agencies and vendors will be breeding grounds for some of the best talent and we have a responsibility to embrace that change and train people in their careers to create the best outcome for clients, but also the best opportunities for our colleagues in the future.
Demand for data scientists, analytics experts and creative minds is huge at present and will remain high or become more competitive in the future.
After print, traditional linear TV will lose its importance.
Large digital platform companies generate similar reach through video-on-demand, social or messaging functionalities.
This reach combined with first-party data and artificial intelligence will create incredibly efficient opportunities to reach audiences at scale through digital platforms.
Dr Matthew Freeman, Reader in Multiplatform Media at Bath Spa University, has founded Immersive Promotion Design Ltd., a new marketing consultancy for the world of Extended Reality. It supports Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) businesses to better communicate with their audiences about the magic of immersive content.
The company builds on sector-development research funded by StoryFutures Academy and Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, and brings together expertise from the BBC VR Hub, Limina Immersive, StoryCentral, Raucous, Bath Spa University and beyond. Last year the team partnered with The National Gallery, Anagram and Studio McGuire to build research-led and audience-tested promotional campaigns for live VR and AR experiences. This led to the creation of new promotional strategies, prototypes, industry bibles and teaching resources for how immersive experiences can be better marketed to today’s audiences.
Talking about Immersive Promotion Design’s success so far, Matthew said: “Many people have recognised the enormous potential of immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality to transform the creative industries as we know them. Up until now, however, the immersive sector has struggled to reach bigger, more mainstream audiences – the kinds of people used to streaming Netflix but not yet interested in VR headsets.
“The challenge is obvious: How do you communicate the magic of being in a VR experience via social media, posters and trailers? Immersive Promotion Design Ltd. provides a step towards establishing a new promotional language for VR and AR, opening the door to a bigger, more diverse immersive audience. We are very excited to see where this journey takes us.”
Visit www.immersivepromotion.com to find out more.
When you meet with prospective customers do they go away impressed ready to take the next step or are they underwhelmed because you’re the same as all your competitors?
If it’s the latter then clearly something needs fixing. In today’s market you cannot afford to be just another supplier and leave prospective customers cold.
In our opinion, the moment you meet with a potential customer is the most important part of the entire buyer’s journey; by this point you’ll have invested a huge amount of time, money and effort into developing products, marketing them and nurturing leads. The buyer will also have invested time and effort in researching suppliers to find the right fit. Those initial meetings between you and the customer are crucial and will determine whether you can secure their trust and win their business.
“Before making a detailed supplier evaluation 79% of buyers are already aware of at least three potential suppliers, and 86% already have a preference.“ B2B Marketing
When you meet with customers, you have a narrow window of opportunity to impress and in that narrow window you need to demonstrate your capabilities; the value you deliver and the opportunities you can create. You need to access any content the customer wants, instantaneously, and this all needs to be delivered through a personalised, visually compelling experience that leaves them empowered, visibly impressed and keen to move forward.
“97% of senior decision-makers said the professionalism of a potential suppliers presentation was very important or important in awarding a contract”, RSW New Business Survey
So, how do you make sure the customer walks away impressed?
The key is to give your sales team and the customer everything they need to support their conversations and create the WOW and an interactive sales tool is the backbone of this. It acts as a window into the core of your business and brings your proposition to life.
A great sales tool needs to be built around three parties:
And, it must seamlessly connect and work for all three together
1. Your Customer
Give them a personalised sales experience
This is probably the single most important element for your customer.
Firstly, they want to feel that you’re addressing their challenges and requirements specifically, and not being presented with generic information. They want to know that what you’re presenting is specifically tailored around them, their role, their needs, their business and their industry sector.
Personalisation helps with familiarity – your customers will quickly understand your proposition if it’s presented to them within a familiar format, using terminology and visuals that they understand and that resonate. This is all the more important if some of the decision-makers are not technical experts in your field.
A personalised experience is memorable – it will be much easier for your customer to remember the salient points of your proposition and be able to articulate and sell your proposition internally to other key decision-makers if you use visuals that are easy to recall. Nobody remembers a list of bullet points.
A flexible narrative
You can never second guess a customer and know exactly what they are interested in or thinking, an interactive sales tool means you don’t have to adopt a linear approach and hope that you’ve covered everything needed.
Interactivity allows you to take a different route as the conversation progresses, letting the customer steer the conversation in the direction most relevant to them. It opens areas for a conversation that perhaps previously you hadn’t thought the customer would be interested in.
Simplicity
Simplifying complex ideas and being able to articulate them clearly and simply is key to demonstrating a greater understanding of the customers’ business, challenges and where your solutions fit. It’s all too easy to think that by overcomplicating your narrative you’ll be demonstrating your deep understanding of their business.
Wrong, you don’t want to have to make your customers think hard about what it is you can do for them, that wastes time and creates risk in the customer’s mind. And equally, you want to equip them with information that they can easily relay internally to other key decision-makers within their business who you’ll need on your side to make a buying decision.
Value led not product-led
Always focus on the value you deliver for your customer. If your conversations are purely product-led it makes it harder to differentiate yourself from a competitor and you’re not addressing the underlying reasons why a customer is interested in your product or service in the first place.
Value is a key differentiator and it directly addresses the reasons why a customer came to you in the first place. It’s also important to consider that sometimes a customer doesn’t necessarily know what the true value is that they are actually after and a good sales experience should help them to understand this. This is where the conversation becomes more consultative and helps to elevate your position beyond that of just a supplier.
Make it visual, make it memorable
Images and graphics are far more memorable than just text – your brain can interpret visual information 50,000 times faster than text alone. So, it’s important that key information is visualised in a way that is familiar to the customer so they can easily recall and retell the key points of your value proposition.
You’ll also save considerable time in explaining complex ideas and processes if you can simply visualise them, giving your customer more time to ask the questions that are important to them.
A clear & logical narrative structure
This should be obvious but more often than not we find customer presentations are badly structured leading to confused messaging and a lack of a clear narrative progression.
Your conversations with customers have to follow a logical narrative progression so that you can address a customer’s issues, answer any concerns or push backs and provide them with clear answers as to why they should give you their business. This will also help them internally when they need to persuade other decision-makers within their business that you are the right choice. You’ll have armed them with a clear argument structure.
Create the WOW
Almost every company is proud of its R&D and likes to portray itself as an innovative and dynamic business. It’s not good enough to talk about it you need to live it and show it. Creating the WOW is not just about the message and demonstrating your capabilities it’s about leaving a lasting impression and that also means portraying a strong brand and using immersive visuals.
So, if you can demonstrate you understand your customer, their sector, business and unique challenges, you’ve helped them to understand where you can add value and how you can help their business in a clear simple and logical format this will go a long way towards building trust, and building trust is central to the whole sales process.
2. Your Sales Team
Clear narrative structure & sales guide
Every salesperson has a unique style and you don’t want to hamper that but at the same time you do want to ensure that nothing gets missed in conversations and that messaging is consistent across all your team.
The best way to do that is to have a clear narrative structure but one that is flexible enough for different presenter styles and which ensures that whoever uses it, important messages and arguments are not missed.
Flexibility of message
A recent study by Aberdeen.com found on average sales teams spend five working days every month searching for relevant content they need to make a sale. This is wasted time.
A well-developed sales enablement tool will be able to flex and address the needs of all of your customers no matter what job role, sector, or geography.
This is where non-linear sales tools make a difference as you’re able to personalise the conversation with different customers without having to create new sales presentations each time. You’re also able to address role specific issues within one meeting – for instance, you might have representatives from Accounts, Logistics, Operations and Technical in one meeting and you have to be able to quickly and confidently address the unique challenges and perspectives each has within the business.
Access anything, instantaneously
When a customer asks a question you have to be able to address that question then and there you don’t want to tell them you’ll have to come back to them at a later date. A digital sales enablement tool ensures that you have access to everything a customer might need whether it’s case studies, specifications, technical data, videos, PDFs etc. to cover all eventualities.
Share content instantly with your customer
As we know customers are impatient and don’t like to wait for things, if they are interested in something you need to strike. Having the ability to send them content they’ve just been looking at such as case studies, videos, technical sheets or product details as you’re discussing it is invaluable.
Not only have they got a record of everything they were interested in but a copy can also be sent to your CRM or head office so that you have this vital data too.
Online & offline
It’s not always possible to access online content when meeting customers and you don’t want to be accessing large video files during a meeting. Sales enablement tools are designed to run both online and offline, whether you have an internet connection or not you can still access all that valuable content.
Any device
You don’t want to have to tell your team or customers that they can only use an iPad or laptop to use your sales enablement tools. They should be able to access all of this great content no matter what device – iPads, smartphones, laptops, PCs – or operating systems, Windows, iOS etc. It’s all about making things easy for your team and the customer.
To sum up, a well thought out sales enablement tool with an intuitive user journey, simple (but not simplistic) visuals and a strong narrative will help to make the sales rep’s job a whole lot easier but not only that they’ll be spending a lot less time explaining what you do and how you do it so that they can focus more time on the customer’s specific needs.
Confidence is everything and if they can go into a meeting knowing they have absolutely everything they need to impress a customer that goes a long way towards creating a great first impression and building trust.
3. Your business
Data & analytics
Crucial to ongoing success and optimisation, sales enablement tools can have sophisticated tracking tools embedded which will report back on every interaction a sales rep and customer has whilst using the tool.
This isn’t about keeping tabs on what the sales team are up to but understanding exactly what the customer is interested in and what content is resonating with them. This means you can channel your efforts and budget into that content proving to be most effective
Consistency and control
An issue for Marketing is always around the consistency of message and branding. How often do your sales teams make their own presentations just before an important meeting? How can you be sure that they are on message and on brand? A well designed and constructed sales enablement tool will negate the need for them to do this as everything needed will already have been carefully built into the tool.
Single source of truth
Ensuring all your sales team have the latest documents, videos, specification sheets, case studies, whitepapers etc. can be a real challenge not to mention time-consuming.
Sales enablement tools can be connected to a central source of information, such as a CMS (Content Management System) and/or DAM (Digital Asset Management System). Any changes made in the CMS / DAM will automatically be reflected in the sales tool, both the sales and the marketing teams can be assured that only the latest, compliant information is being accessed in front of customers.
Integrations
Within your business you’ll have numerous digital platforms to support your efforts. Key amongst those will be your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System – an invaluable sales and marketing support tool. Your sales tool can connect to your CRM so that any information shared with a customer can be recorded directly back into your CRM
Knowing that your sales team has everything they need to have a productive conversation with a customer, that the customer will have access to all the information they need, and the fact that you know both parties have the latest content will give you peace of mind and confidence.
At POP we have a single-minded focus on supporting businesses at this critical phase, it’s all we do.
We work with businesses on every stage of the process from establishing what success and the perfect sales tool will look like to how it will function and support you, your sales team and customers as well as being aligned to your wider business objectives. This is backed up by our agile design and development methodology to deliver, integrate and constantly improve on your sales tool.
Our sector expertise covers Advanced Manufacturing, Medical Devices, Pharma, Construction and The Built Environment and Technology.
If you’d like to have an initial exploratory call then you can talk to me directly on the number below or just email
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