Most people don’t go into business because of their love of finance (except us, of course). Whatever your ‘why’ is, it’s unlikely that involves organising invoices, chasing debts, and delving into your reports. But even as a team of one, having a financial forecasting model in place can actually take the pressure off and give you the confidence in your numbers you need to get on with the parts of your business you really love.
Once you understand the benefits of having an accurate and realistic forecast that can support your day to day, it’s much less intimidating and far more empowering. So, let’s get into some of the reasons you should make a financial forecast a priority in your business.
The money coming in and out of your business doesn’t always line up with your plans. An accurate forecast will give you a good view on your cash flow over the coming months so you can be prepared when things don’t always go to plan. For example, before you go and spend big on a new piece of equipment, you’ll be able to see what will happen if invoices get paid late next month and make sure you don’t end up in the red. Mismanaging cash flow is the biggest reason that small businesses fail, so this is an important one.
Have you ever been caught out by a surprise tax bill? Or maybe your invoices go out and before you know it, they’re a week late and you’ve not chased up? Setting up a forecasting model will give you a chance to make sure everything is accounted for. You can siphon off small amounts across the year to make sure big bills don’t hit quite as hard and implement revenue recognition strategies to make sure that money coming in is acknowledged in the right period. If you do project work and get paid in large lump sums, it’s advisable to spread that income across the time it takes you to do the work so that your finances tell the story of the reality of your business.
Having an up to date and realistic forecast will impress any stakeholders that you need, from the board to potential investors. It can act as a communication tool to express your plans, concerns, and ideas as well as help answer any questions they have, no matter how detailed.
Once you have a forecast in place, as long as you update and engage with it regularly, you can use it as a tool to support your decision making. Having all the elements of your business in one place will give you an overview of how one decision will affect another. It will be easy to see how each decision, big or small, will impact your finances and future.
While a forecast needs to be realistic, you can use it to do more than tell the story of your business – utilise it to take control and make your goals happen! Once you have a clear picture of your numbers you’ll be in a much better position to see the path you’re heading down and change course to get where you want to go.
Getting started is usually the hardest part, but having the right expert to help can make it an empowering experience. They’ll be able to support you in finding the right model and make sure it’s set up in a way that makes sense for you. Having a bespoke model will make your experience with forecasting far more efficient and effective.
FD Works know what’s involved in running a small business, from startup to success. We’ve used our experience to create a customisable forecasting model to specifically support complex, small businesses.
If you want to know more about how to get started with forecasting and how it can support your business, read our research report on SMEs and their relationship with forecasts.
If you’re looking for a forecasting model, or some guidance around financial forecasting then get in touch on 01454 300 999 or [email protected], or head over to www.fd-works.co.uk to find out more.
Most agency owners are familiar with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) — these are values that measure the success of your ongoing progress against a defined metric. In essence, a KPI will measure, or indicate, how an agency is likely to grow.
For most of us, KPIs have been a mainstay of working life since our internship days. However, what often comes as a surprise to many of my clients is that KPIs can come in two forms, Leading & Lagging.
In this article, I discuss leading & lagging KPIs, how and why you should measure both types and why the high performing agencies do just that.
As we all know, a KPI is a pre-defined metric or milestone which is used to gauge progress across all functions and departments. KPIs are tangible, valuable insights that help inform decisions about how an agency is run.
A Leading KPI is input related. Leading KPIs measure the current activity in your agency, whereas a lagging KPI only demonstrates what you’ve already achieved.
Lagging KPIs are important to monitor, as they give a good snapshot of the topline performance of your agency. However, if the numbers are a little off, and this is the only metric you have, it can be tricky to pinpoint and fix where things went wrong.
The idea behind Leading KPIs is that they create targets, focus and accountability within your agency on a daily basis. This helps to keep you (and your team) on track toward successfully meeting your lagging KPIs.
To get a good handle on your agency’s growth trajectory, me and my fellow Coaches always recommend tracking more leading KPIs than lagging ones — with a ratio in and around 4:1.
This is often the secret sauce to success — monitoring, reporting and acting upon leading and lagging KPIs is what sets the high-performing agencies apart from the pack.
Because I love an analogy, let’s imagine your digital agency is trying to shed some pounds. In this instance, you would have a Lagging KPI of ‘Total Weight Lost’.
Jumping on the scales once a month just to measure the outcome and see how much weight has been lost is going to make for slow, blinded progress.
Instead, you could measure your daily exercise, track your diet and weigh yourself on a weekly basis. These metrics would be your Leading KPIs and will give a more accurate reading of how you are tracking toward your weight-loss goal.
If you reach the end of your third month and you still haven’t lost any weight, then you can review all your KPIs and see where the shortfalls or issues might be. The more Leading KPIs you track, the easier it is to identify areas of improvement.
A key differentiator between high and underperforming agencies is how many, and what kind of KPIs they are measuring and learning from.
Successful digital agencies have more Leading KPIs than lagging. This helps them predict and prepare for their growth — they’ll know where their agency is heading before it actually gets there.
By monitoring both types of KPIs, you are able to see the relationship your leading efforts will have on your overarching goal. By keeping an eye on both figures, you’ll be able to attribute any issues with your Sales to any increases or decreases to your Call Tally or Event Attendance.
At Digital Agency Coach, we host bi-weekly Mastermind Groups for digital agency owners. These informal workshops are centred around peer learning — you’ll learn from other agencies who are navigating the same challenges as you and will pick up game-changing tactics such as today’s KPI hack, which improve the performance of your agency.
Get In Touch with myself or my team of friendly digital agency experts, we’d be delighted to help answer any questions about this article, our Mastermind Group or our Coaching & Mentoring Programs.
If your understanding of the startup world is based on the series produced by (and starring) mid-noughties nerdy heartthrob, Adam Brody, it might surprise you to learn that most tech ventures aren’t funded by dubious dosh from the criminal underworld. That isn’t to say that StartUp isn’t an entertaining show, by the way, but it’s not exactly an accurate representation of how startup founders might seek investment.
While there are some great examples of companies that have ‘bootstrapped’ their way to billions, most successful tech businesses will raise equity finance at some stage in their scale-up journey — usually over several funding rounds. The right investment not only unlocks the cash you need to accelerate growth but also provides you with a new business partner who is aligned with your goals, brings business acumen and an invaluable network of industry contacts.
Knowing how to turn your venture into an investment magnet is key to getting the attention of the right type of investor while never feeling pressured to settle for a bad fit. So, how do you as a startup founder attract that perfect investor? Here are 6 qualities investors will be looking for in your tech startup.
As a startup founder, being passionate about your project should be a prerequisite. If not, then it’s probably the wrong venture for you. You need to truly believe in the product/service you want to provide and be confident that it’s either an improvement on what’s available on the market or an entirely new take on addressing an old problem.
Beyond your bright idea, you should also be mindful that investors are investing in you as much as they are in your business. Are you able to distil and describe the journey you’ve been on thus far? Can you showcase your passion, skill-set and creativity?
However, while passion per se is great, would you put your money where your mouth is? Most investors are looking for founders who are willing to invest their own capital — hypothetically, at the very least. After all, why should someone part with their hard-earned cash for your project if you’re unwilling to do the same? The same applies to investing your time. If you’re unwilling to work hard on your own project, then it’s unrealistic to expect anyone else to.
To get your business off the ground, you’ll have to — or will have had to — raise the initial capital yourself. This can come from your own savings, borrowings, or even friends and family. Either way, this is a concrete example of demonstrating that you believe in your product/service, so much so that you’re willing to invest money into it.
To be worthy of investment, any new product/service needs to have a proven market and be appealing to that market. Ideally, your venture will have begun operations and demonstrated an ability to sell that product or service — essentially, you need to have a robust ‘proof of concept’ to show investors. Investors will look for the following:
For a tech startup, the proof of concept is often an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) — a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide adequate feedback for future product development. Through our experiences building brilliant launchpad apps for businesses, we’ve come up with a checklist to help you get started with your MVP ASAP.
Most investors are looking for business opportunities that have potential — primarily, for growth. This is all relative, of course, based on the size of your market, but ideally, you need to have a market with significant reach — regionally at least — depending on the nature of your product or service.
Not every product/service is going to have a worldwide market, of course, but a large enough market to increase scale and margins within your operations is typically a requirement for investors.
If your startup is a would-be disruptor in an existing, saturated market then the same rules apply. However, your growth potential is likely to be deeply scrutinised because any market share gained is being taken directly from a competitor, therefore your competitive advantage needs to be demonstrable.
Which leads us on nicely…
No matter what the product — whether it’s clothing, music or a new software platform — the same question always applies: what makes your product unique? To be worthy of investment, there has to be something that sets you apart.
If your product or service is genuinely the first of its kind (something that many founders wrongly convince themselves is the case), then that’s your competitive advantage. What’s more likely, however, is that your startup will be entering an existing market. This is where having a real differentiator is crucial for success.
Take German neobank, N26, for example. Voted ‘Best Bank in the World 2021’, N26 is by no means the only player in the online-only banking market — competitors include the likes of Monzo and Revolut. However, by taking a service that people have to consume and generally dislike (banking), and turning it into an enjoyable process by focusing 100% of its efforts on user experience, N26 has confidently positioned itself as ‘the bank you’ll love’.
To save on cost, most startups will have very limited staffing (at the start of their journey, at least), usually consisting of one or two founders. Whether it’s a team of two or ten, the number of staff isn’t an issue so long as the key areas of the business are covered. For example, if your business is centred around AI technology, do you have someone in the team who is a specialist in this area? It’s extremely important that you have an expert in the tech or market you’re entering.
Operating control is another area investors will be looking at before taking a punt on your startup. They’ll expect you as the founder to have developed (or be in the process of developing) policies and procedures to control the business and ensure their investment doesn’t go to waste.
It’s also important that as a founder, you’re able to ‘let go’ and delegate authority across your team. We get it, your startup is your baby, but over time, you need to trust someone else to take care of the proverbial nappies. Or bedtime story. You get the gist. Investors will take comfort in seeing expertise and autonomy spread across a fully engaged team.
The coldness with which investors approach this topic can be a bit of a shock, but getting into their mindset — ie. looking for a return, can keep you focused on what’s important for your startup. It’s important to know that from a financial perspective, investors will have two primary questions when looking at a project:
These questions can be answered by a thorough financial projection which you can do yourself, but if you’re struggling, there are people you can hire to help out.
Essentially, investors want to know what their ROI (return on investment) will be and when they’ll begin to see it, so including a full ROI analysis in any pitch to an investor is highly advised.
At Gravitywell, we love working with enthusiastic startups and help with prototypes, pitch decks, MVPs and conceptual work. If you’d like to discuss how we can take your idea to the next level, get in touch.
Andy Nairn, who has been named the UK’s number one brand strategist for the past three years, joined us for a fascinating and entertaining event to share insights from his new book, Go Luck Yourself: 40 ways to stack the odds in your brand’s favour.
In the book, Andy explains how the history of marketing and advertising is full of brands that stumbled across great ideas by accident or turned misfortunes into huge successes. During the event, the co-founder of advertising agency Lucky Generals highlighted some examples and outlined the lessons for creative companies. Dan Martin summarises his insights.
Opening his talk, Andy Nairn explained that we have a strange relationship with luck in the UK. “Other parts of the world find it completely natural to talk about luck and it’s a perfectly acceptable part of business conversation,” he said, “In the West, we’re a bit snooty about the whole thing. We think of it as a bit primitive and not to be trifled with.”
The negativity around luck was cemented in Victorian times, Andy said. The Industrial Revolution and the Protestant work ethic created the belief that if you were rich, you were successful because you had worked really hard for your money and God had smiled upon you, but if you were poor, it meant you hadn’t tried hard enough, you were work-shy and you should try harder.
That attitude around only hard work can generate good results still prevails, shown by the blurring of work and personal lives during the pandemic, Andy said.
“We can all think of situations where working an extra hour hasn’t given us a creative breakthrough and it can actually sometimes make it worse. Working hard means we’re stuck in the middle of it and what we really need is to get some fresh air and space around us.
“The book says yes, hard work is a good thing but you also need a bit of luck. The more you think about luck and the more you’re conscious of it, the more you can do to increase the chance of it coming your way. If you just deny that luck exists, it’s very hard for you to do that.”
There are 40 tips in Andy’s book that fit under the following four themes:
You might not realise it but you are highly likely to have assets in your business that you are not taking full advantage of. Andy used three non-business examples to illustrate his point:
Many businesses are guilty of not appreciating what they’ve got, Andy said. Brand history, heritage and provenance are often neglected by brands but talking about the history of your business, where it’s from and why it’s called what it is could be a valuable benefit to your marketing and other business activities.
Other examples include the data your business holds and the window display in your business’ offices.
And what about your logo? Could that be used in a different way?
Andy’s business, Lucky Generals, was asked to come up with an advertising campaign for Amazon that worked in multiple countries. The answer turned out to be a simple but very powerful one that was inspired by the company’s existing smile-shaped logo. As the Lucky Generals website says: “We hit upon the simple idea of heroing Amazon’s iconic packages and the epic journeys they make, to put a smile on the faces of people around the world.”
To illustrate this point, Andy highlighted a 10-year study into the nature of luck by Professor Richard Wiseman. As part of it, he gave a group of people a newspaper and asked them to count the number of photographs. The unlucky people took around two minutes whereas the lucky people took just three seconds. The reason was that on the second page of the newspaper was the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.”
The study concluded that lucky people are good at constantly looking for opportunities beyond what they’re working on or the thing they’ve been told to do.
This can also be illustrated by the world of science, Andy said. Several important discoveries have been made accidentally and of the most famous is Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin after spotting some mould that had accidentally developed on a plate.
Diversity of teams is important here too. It’s easy to recruit people who are the same as you but that can mean you’ll just come up with the same ideas. However, if you take on people from different cultures, backgrounds and experiences, “it gives you a much better chance of striking it lucky” and spotting opportunities you might never have discovered.
There are many examples of businesses converting a bad experience into a good one. One brilliant one is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an early character created by Walt Disney in 1927. It was popular but a contract dispute with his producer led to Disney quitting work on the cartoons. On the train home from a meeting, he came up with a new idea. It developed into Mickey Mouse, the most successful cartoon character of all time.
“We’ve all experienced our ideas being pulled, budgets being cut, timings being changed and clients changing their minds, but what we have to do is go again and come up with something that is even better, like Walt Disney did,” Andy said.
“The best companies don’t just deal with a bit of bad luck, it’s almost like they go running towards the bad luck. There’s a good energy that comes out of that.”
Steve Jobs was known for killing off his own products (the iMac killed the Macintosh and the iPhone killed the iPod) because, as Andy said, “his attitude was, if I don’t kill them off, someone else will.”
There are also some brands that take on taboos and talk about them directly. Bodyform and periods is an example.
Others take what could be seen as an annoying product flaw and turn it into a positive. Think of Guinness and “good things come to those who wait”.
When working with a big brand, Andy said he goes to the “darkest corners of social media” to find the negative conversation about that brand. “The jokes and nasty comments often have a truth and by acknowledging them, you can own the joke, turn it on its head and turn against those people.”
Andy’s last point is about deliberately building luck into your processes. He illustrated it with examples from music.
What similar techniques can you build into your business processes so you constantly generate ideas?
Be lucky!
The next Bristol Creative Industries online keynote is with Anne Thistleton, marketing veteran and former strategy lead for The Coca-Cola Company in South Africa. She will share easy and practical lessons from mind science to make sure your audience really hears you. BCI members get £15 off tickets. Book your place here for the event on 21 October.
We’ve been taking stock of the latest trends in the eCommerce world and reviewing tips for improving conversion rates and lifetime value. Earlier in the month, the Ecomm World Event had some exciting speakers. While, the Shopify Unite developer conference introduced some fantastic new features and improvements to the Shopify ecosystem, which we’ll be covering in another article.
The latest Treasure Data and MarTech Alliance survey also provided good insights into the challenges facing marketers in delivering better customer experiences. The report shows that 50% of marketing managers questioned are focused on joined-up digital and offline experiences, while 37% are committed to omnichannel integrated marketing campaigns to deliver consistent customer experience and grow top-of-funnel volumes.
Key takeouts and trends to follow this month are as follows.
Once you have addressed the big-ticket optimisations on your store, it’s time to start identifying the micro-moments in your customer journeys that impact propensity to purchase even in a small way. These moments could be viewing an alternate product image, engaging with video or on-page chat, as well as viewing shipping/tax info or fitting guides. Pick one or two of these moments to focus on, set up your analytics to track the events, and work on optimising the experience with A/B testing by making small changes such as underlining links, changing sign-post copy, etc.
What’s great about this way of tweaking your site is that it’s very reactive. It’s all about continuous optimisation. Plus, individually, these might all be low risk changes that lead to better conversion rates when combined.
Your product page is the most important page on your store. Over time, it’s easy to focus on landing pages, supporting content, and more extensive site-wide changes to drive conversion. To help decide if your product pages need some love, here are some key questions to ask:
Depending on the type of products you are selling, you may want to develop a product microsite giving your users easy access to product benefits, FAQs, the product origin story, detailed usage instructions, and strong advocacy links.
When you are ready, plan your changes and set up A/B tests to further improve conversion rates.
The brain is a funny thing. It’s very irrational. We know that £49.99 is just a penny less than £50.00, but there’s still a perceived saving. We can use this irrationality to shape buyer behavior and improve conversion rates. Some top tips from Alex Chahin include:
With CMO’s focused on customer experience, joined-up digital experiences, and an ongoing shift to online purchasing, you should be watching your competitors closely. Sign up to their newsletters, buy their products and interact with their loyalty programs – what’s working for them can be adapted for you. In addition, you will spot opportunities around weaker points in your customer experience of their brand.
We’ve said it before, but never more is it truer. Your customers are your biggest advocates. Building advocacy into your customer experience from the start will help you build loyalty, trust, and a growing customer base, as well as improve onsite conversion rates.
To do this, you need to get personal:
Remember, what works for one person may not work for another!
Why not reach out to us and let us how you get your customers talking. We’d love to hear how you do it.
While you are here, check out what we’ve been doing for McCormick and Symprove to optimize conversion rates.
In our previous blog, we explored a joint report from LinkedIn and the B2B Institute, ‘5 principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ to find out how businesses make their purchasing decisions.
In the second part of this series, we’re exploring the case for brand memorability – or mental availability – and why you should consider a route to B2B fame.
Expanding your customer base
Acquiring new customers is expensive.
Many B2B companies believe increasing loyalty is the most profitable way to grow their businesses. Others focus on acquisition strategies, targeting new key accounts they want to penetrate.
The jointly commissioned report ‘5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ by LinkedIn and the B2B Institute shows that campaigns which talk to both new and existing customers – also known as reach strategies – are the most effective.
In fact, the report’s data reveals that those relying on a loyalty strategy alone showed a zero-success rate. Loyalty tends to be a side-effect of market share, and brands with a high penetration tend to have better loyalty rates.
Please see original article for picture: https://www.proctors.co.uk/knowledge-hub/b2b-marketing-masterclass-part-2
So that’s the science behind B2B decision making. But is it rational or emotional? The answer, according to psychologists, is that we’re all human. and our thought processes follow the same basic patterns.
One of these is our tendency to use mental shortcuts to reach a decision. NobelPrize winner, Daniel Kahneman, famously put it this way:
“Human beings are to independent thinking as cats are to swimming. They can do it, but they prefer not to. The brain is largely a machine for jumping to conclusions.”
Essentially, when presented with choices, or asked a question, we usually prefer to select the answer which comes to mind easiest. You may have experienced this yourself when put on the spot. Psychologists call this ‘mental availability’.
For brands, ‘mental availability’ has two levels.
The first level is awareness.
Your brand will have lodged in your customers’ memories, and they’ll recognise your name.
However, awareness will only get you so far, and the most you can expect is to be shortlisted from the long list of potential choices. To reach the top of your customer’s mental availability, your brand will need to level up.
The second level is fame.
Take IBM, for example.
Everyone knows their name, and I probably don’t need to remind you of their famous line: Nobody got fired for hiring IBM. This single creative line was repeated over and over again, forming an emotional connection that made it easy to make the choice. Long after they campaigned it, we still remember it, talk about it, share it.
And here’s the data which proves the point.
Please see original article for picture: https://www.proctors.co.uk/knowledge-hub/b2b-marketing-masterclass-part-2
Success isn’t a contest between lead generation and brand in B2B marketing. We can see that winning B2B companies apply both in their marketing mix. But if your Sales Director still isn’t convinced by the data, perhaps this story will help.
You’ve successfully launched your lead generation campaign. In fact, it’s been so successful that your sales team have followed up with an excellent meeting with Key Prospect Biz. Your salespeople do a great job of pitching the benefits of what you offer, and your brand makes it to the Key Prospect Biz’s shortlisting stage.
But now, your salespeople have left, and things go quiet. Key Prospect Biz’s decision goes to committee, and you’re not in the room to influence the conversation.
It’s been a while since your guys’ presentation, and human memory is short. This isn’t the final stage, but you know it’s more than likely they’ll use the easiest route to jump to their conclusions. This is where brand awareness will likely drive their mental availability and get you on the shortlist. Great news!
Now it’s a three-horse race. You’re each invited to pitch to a panel of C-suite decision-makers and the influencers who got you this far.
There may be an upstart challenger brand in the running for comparison, but the other two will be recognised brand names.
Now no-one doubts your abilities to work the room as a great salesperson. But it’s a fair bet that the famous brand amongst the pack will already have had an impact on the C-suite. In fact, they’ve probably already jumped to a conclusion before you enter the room.
So, which of the three would you rather be?
Ah yes, your Sales Director says, but our ABM campaigns have made sure that everyone in the room knows who we are and what we stand for.
True. ABM is by far the most effective B2B sales activation tool in your armoury, and a good campaign will have got you this far. But it won’t have made you famous.
Fame takes time to grow. The famous brand will have been imprinted in the minds of those executives consistently over and over again. Talked about with colleagues. Acknowledged as leaders in their sector. Collectively famous for what makes them great.
It will have made them the first name that springs to mind.
Your sales director still doesn’t buy it? OK, here’s a final question for them. Why is it that when successful salespeople move jobs, they’re usually tempted to work for bigger brands to advance their career?
If you’re still not getting anywhere, maybe it’s time you thought about moving jobs to a bigger brand yourself! (Only kidding.)
If you’d like to talk about supercharging your brand strategy with the latest industry data, or to discuss your creative marketing requirements, get in touch with us today at [email protected].
Although almost a third of the creative industries workforce is self-employed, the role and contribution of creative freelancers in the economy is poorly understood by policymakers and they should be better supported.
That’s the claim of a new report by support organisation Creative United which said that the lack of knowledge around creative freelancers “has been laid bare by the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on creative employment and freelancing, and the patchy support that freelancers have been able to access in response”.
Although government schemes have provided funding for millions of people during the pandemic, ministers were criticised for excluded a large section of self-employed people.
Creative freelancers contribute economic, cultural and social value, the study concluded, and much more needs to be done to support them in a way that better reflects their contribution to the UK economy and society.
The research, commissioned by Nesta’s Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), makes 10 recommendations including:
Eliza Easton, head of policy at the PEC, said:
“This report is important for our understanding of freelancers in the creative industries, who, along with the self-employed, make up 32% of the sector, a much higher proportion compared to other areas of the economy. Before the pandemic, the creative industries were one the fastest growing parts of the economy, contributing over £100bn a year to the country and employing over 2 million people. However, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the inadequacy of support for freelancers and self-employed workers. If we want a post-pandemic recovery that benefits everyone in the economy, we need to ensure that policies for freelancers are designed using evidence and research, rather than trying to apply a ‘one size fits all’ approach.”
Researchers also interviewed 87 creative freelancers based in the Coventry City Region, London Borough of Waltham Forest and the County of Northumberland and compiled six groups to illustrate the range of creative freelancers, the characteristics that define their business motivations, and their modes of working.
A summary is below with full definitions in the report.
“I’d like to be expanding… I suppose I’d like to be ‘small to medium’ one day. I’m not sure I ever wanna be a ‘large’ business, you know, I think that probably takes a lot of the fun out of it.”
“I wasn’t interested in running a business, I just wanted to be an illustrator! I was quite happy having somebody pay me to be an illustrator.”
“I can be here when kids come back from school and can arrange meetings around that. I’m in charge of my own time, I don’t need anybody’s permission to do the things I want to do. It’s great.”
“This is the only way I can do the job I want to do, there is no alternative.”
“I would find it very hard to get out of bed to do something I didn’t care about. I’ve been obsessed with the arts and cultural industries all my life. I believe this makes a proper contribution to the community, to the world.”
“I work with a group of stroke survivors and to be able to see them return every week and to enjoy what they do and to really feel part of that group… Letting groups have their own identity – I never call myself a teacher, I am part of the mix. Learning from each other. Not about earning – the earning bit is not realistic in the arts world.”
Bristol Creative Industries has a membership level to support creative freelancers. Read what some of our members have to say about the many benefits of freelance membership.
In the first blog of this two-part series, we break down the findings of LinkedIn and the B2B Institute’s joint report, ‘5 principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’, and explore why it takes a balance of brand building and sales activation marketing to effectively grow their businesses.
People are emotional creatures. That’s why brand building works so well on consumers. People become invested in – and attached to – their favourite brands, from cereal, to phone networks, to operating systems.
But business buyers are rational. Right?
Wrong.
OK – maybe not completely wrong. Purchasing decisions are made rationally in any successful business. But you’re missing a trick if you think building a B2B brand doesn’t matter.
But sales activation or performance marketing is the most effective way to measurably grow a B2B business. Right?
Wrong again.
In fact, a jointly commissioned report by LinkedIn and the B2B Institute – ‘5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ – has the data to prove it. (And, by the way, so does our client’s data.)
So where do these entrenched views come from?
B2B companies tend to be driven by either product leaders, service leaders or sales leaders.
Product/service-led companies tend to view marketing as ‘the price you pay for an inferior product or service’. Sales-led companies are driven by short-term sales targets, and they want leads. Now.
So, whilst many B2B marketers recognise the commercial potential of longer-term brand building, they face an uphill internal struggle to make their case.
But the ‘5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing’ report empirically proves the business case for longer-term B2B brand building and its impact on growth, by demonstrating:
· B2B brand building increases ‘mental availability’ and ensures your brand is easily remembered in a buying situation
· Effective brand campaigns reach every buyer in your category
· Creative brand campaigns that capture attention at an emotional level are delivered consistently over time, growing significant sales in the future, not just in the short-term
· Increasing loyalty does not significantly add to growth, but customer acquisition does
B2B brands follow the same ‘share of voice’ rule as their B2C cousins. The report defines the rule as follows:
“There is a well-known relationship between a brand’s “share of voice” (typically defined as its share of all category advertising expenditure) and its rate of growth.
Brands that set their share of voice (SOV) above their share of market (SOM) tend to grow (all other factors being equal), and those that set SOV below SOM tend to shrink. The rate at which a brand grows or shrinks tends to be proportional to its “extra” share of voice (ESOV), defined as the difference between SOV and SOM.”
The research data shows a significant correlation between market share growth and ESOV for B2B brands, specifically, demonstrating that in B2B, 10% extra advertising share of voice causes 0.7% market share growth per annum.
The report shows that the best performing B2B brands have an optimal balance between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation/performance marketing.
In B2B, the optimal budget allocation is 46% for brand and 54% for sales activation.
Sales activation focuses on an immediate response, and is generally a rational sell, featuring a piece of informational content, an offeror a product/service feature capable of generating a cost-efficient response.
It’s tightly targeted at hot prospects who are in-market with an intent to purchase, and designed for simple, quick response. Sales activation is great for short-term lead generation and delivering directly measurable ROI, but, it’s unlikely to be memorable, so the effects are short-term and won’t contribute to long-term growth.
In contrast, brand building drives long-term growth, with its effects lasting longer and accumulating over time.
It uses creative impact at an emotional level to create a lasting memory that influences buying decisions long after the adverts run, with a reach that’s much broader than sales activation campaigns, targeting the whole of market, and its effectiveness relying on repeated exposure.
The time frame for any brand building to take significant effect and pass the sales activation peaks shown in this graph is typically 5-6 months.
Not convinced? We recently we decided to test this theory out for ourselves, using the website data of one of our clients. And the results were pretty impressive.
Not only did we find that brand traffic – both direct and brand search – built consistently over time in line with their brand building activity, but we also found that the conversion rates from website visit to meeting requests and paying clients was 50% higher than any other traffic source.
If that wasn’t enough, we also discovered that in territories where there is low brand awareness the conversion rates from lead generation campaigns increased over time as the effects of our brand building efforts kicked in.
Stay tuned for part two, where we’ll explore the case for making your brand famous.
In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss your brand strategy armed with the latest industry data, or to discuss your creative marketing requirements, get in touch with us today at [email protected].
Cookie acceptance pop ups might be driving us around the bend, but since the requirement to ask permission was introduced a couple of years ago, businesses and marketers have built their marketing strategies and systems around them.
Now things are all about to change again. It might have been predictable, but with Google telling us that 48% of consumers actually stop a purchase if they don’t trust the company to collect and manage data on them, it’s no surprise that Google are following the likes of Apple and Mozilla, and have announced that they were stopping third-party tracking in 2023.
This leaves businesses having to reset their marketing strategies, relying solely on any first-party data they hold, with many businesses, particularly in e-commerce, having to go back to more traditional marketing and brand building, but in a more digital world than before.
Any that fail to do so will find themselves simply giving their marketing keys to the tech providers with no real insight on their client base.
The option of doing nothing is a dangerous one, yet whilst Pimento research tells us that most marketing professionals intend to ‘do something about it’, 19 out of 20 acknowledge that they won’t be prepared for the great switch off.
Marketing will no longer be about stalking people across the web. We now have the opportunity where digital marketing can mature to become a real weapon to help brand building in a more meaningful way.
So, what’s the action plan? And what should all businesses, large or small, be lining up to do right now?
Action 1.
Do the gap analysis now. Work out what you currently use and need to achieve marketing penetration, and what will you have post the demise of third-party cookies. That’s the gap that needs filling.
Action 2.
Focus on the business infrastructure and get back to basics.
If you need support in doing the analysis, and in building the strategy going forward, make the move now to find it. Closer to the time, resources will be limited and remedial time scales will be longer.
Action 3.
Cement the data you have and get your consent strategy robust for the future, building the new approach around it. Undertake a cookie audit now.
Action 4.
Take a relook at customer experience and contextual for scale, so that you stay completely in touch with your customers’ buying triggers in the post cookie era.
This isn’t just a marketing challenge. It impacts the whole business spectrum, from SMEs to multinational corporates. Mid and large corporates will use their in-house resources to reposition, but small businesses will struggle in the absence of teams they can fall back on, and budget.
Pimento is well placed to be the surrogate team to look to though. With over 200 independent marketing agencies, covering most marketing disciplines, bespoke solutions are close at hand irrespective of size and sector.
This is not an issue for selective blindness. Businesses who fail to act will see their markets slowly dwindle away.
Press releases are an essential part of any digital marketing campaign, whether you’re making a general business announcement about a new product, service or crisis communication management, you need to think about why this news really matters and quickly demonstrate that you have a NEWS story. This is at the heart of all digital PR campaigns.
In light of recent discussions disputing the relevance of press releases, our stance at OggaDoon, Bristol, remains the same. The hunger for compelling stories, from publications, journalists and our industries as a whole, is stronger than ever. This has created a relationship, an essential yet, albeit, conditional one between journalists and PR – they need our help to deliver the stories their publications need and our industries want to hear about. For this reason, the competition among communicators is fierce and in turn, they have a wealth of different approaches on how to write the perfect press release – one they think will satisfy the needs of the journalist and secure them that vital collaboration. Here at OggaDoon PR, digital marketing and social media agency Bristol, we would like to share our formula gathering the key newsworthy facts to craft your perfect release. Here’s introducing the 5Ws, the 3Ps and the vital 1C. Intrigued, then please read on!
One common mistake is trying to write like a journalist – when what you should be trying to do is think like a journalist. Imagine you are on the receiving end; you have tens, perhaps hundreds of press releases along with other emails sent to you every day. What are you going to want to read and what is going to make your eyes roll? It’s fair to say that you’d click on the headlines that you are drawn to because they stick out, perhaps because they’re funny, perhaps because they’re succinct, maybe because it was unexpected. It’s also fair to say that you would be put off by big chunks of writing, you’ve got 101 things to do and think about and only 1% of that energy is reserved for reading emails. You would want to recognise newsworthy value, the angle and outcome within the first few lines, otherwise, the tidiness of your inbox would quickly supersede in value and just like that, the email that you spent an hour fashioning now resides in the trash.
If you want to make your press release stand out in a crammed inbox you must find a healthy balance between being original and trying too hard. The best way to do this is to think outside the box with your subject line and title, this is the only place you are granted to be creative and witty – the actual bulk of the release is purely pragmatic. Keep it to the point and make sure you hit the ‘Five Ws’. Don’t try and zhuzh it up with unnecessary jargon and clichés – journalists already know the jargon, they won’t be impressed that you do too. Lastly, don’t say your story is newsworthy, show that it is – if a press release looks like an advertisement, it will be ignored.
One way you can do this is by maintaining a sense of objectivity but also having an overarching sentiment throughout. This could be a sentiment of excitement, regarding a new launch or change in the marketplace, or it could have a theme, like nationalism or nostalgia. Part of identifying these themes is refining your angle and identifying the societal implications of your story.
Whilst people often stress the 5Ws when it comes to writing the perfect press release, the angle that you need to convey from these is often lost – so really, there should be three Ps, a C and an I threw in: alternative perspective, progress, public eye, conflict, and local impact. The angle of your story answers the questions journalists really want to know; Have you got another side to the status quo? What solution is it to what problem? What will the public response be? Who and what does it challenge? What impact does this have on the community? Remember that you have good reason to be invested in your story, but you need to look for the bigger, engaging storyline to give everyone else a reason to be.
Once you have got all these juicy bits in, it is time to offer a bit of context. Your second paragraph should contain an impactful quote from one or two persons that have authority in the industry. Here it is easy to fall into the trap so many are partial to – the temptation of adding fluff. Every sentence in a press release needs to have value, if you are adding one for the sake of it, maybe to balance out the sizing of your paragraphs, you have fallen headfirst into the trap. The key objective should be to select a quote that brings the story to life and helps paint a picture of how influential the announcement is. Quotes are not for information, but for insight – so make sure to use a quote that reflects a unique perspective on the subject.
The further you get down a press release, the less vital the information. Thus, there should definitely be nothing crucial to the story in the last paragraph. This section serves to strengthen and round off your narrative – this could mean offering background into ways the company developed the project or insights into future implications of the news (if this is a core theme of the release, then it belongs in the first paragraph, but if there are other stronger angles, it may be more appropriate at the bottom as additional content).
Empathy may not be the first emotion you would associate with journalists yet employing it will make not only make writing the perfect press release a far more streamline process but also far more successful in terms of responses. We can all think of ways to make our own jobs easier, so try and think of how you can make theirs so, and in the time you save doing so, invest more energy on constructing an irresistible title that will surely make them look twice.