Marketing Archives - Page 53 of 53 - Creative Agency Secrets

How to make inbound enquiries work for you

4 September, 2009/0 Comments/in B2B, Lead Generation /by Rebecca Caroe

One of the nicest things about getting your biz dev working well is when inbound enquiries start to come to the business.

I am working with Websters , a niche chartered accountancy practice specialising in service charge accounting. They have worked hard on a new website and blog as well as some collateral and internal management structures to support business development.

Websters aren't yet ready for the big formal launch event for the site and while it's broadly complete, we are continuing to use it and improve some of the features.

And so I am surprised and delighted to find that people are signing up to receive their newsletter, the RSS feed and printed brochureware about the business.

Setting up the fields

When I set up the fields for the enquiry form I originally thought that a simple Name, Email, Company name and country would suffice.

But I was surprised by the number of folk who want to receive information about the Websters company.

This leaves them with a choice – send electronic information or print. But for print we need a postal address. This gave me an idea….

Rather than change the form to include postal address information, why not just research them online and phone them up. This is good becausse

you can find out if they are a real person
you can ask them if they prefer print or emailed information (customer chooses)
you can do a bit of"digging research" into their organisation for your database
you can ask them straight out if they want to have a credentials presentation or chemistry meeting
you can make a fair assessment of whether they are a prospect and at what stage of the pipeline.

Hooray – i know what we'll do – a targeted phone calling session.

Tone of voice in newsletter writing

2 September, 2009/1 Comment/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

This week I got a couple of newsletters from organisations – both happen to be agencies one is in PR and the other is an integrated retail specialist.

HAve a read of these opening statements

Well here we are, more than halfway through the year that was sent to challenge the retail, travel and leisure sectors to their limits. And, you know what? Despite all the economic hurdles we continue to deliver great results for our clients.
In addition, we bring you news of a few new clients, expansion of our digital offering and a couple of weddings. Read on, it'll put a smile on your face!

compared to

Rebecca, tell me how you feel about this scenario.

You take, say, 3 or 4 months to thoroughly research a topic. You become a ninja, the world's foremost authority.

You lock yourself in your basement for another 4 months to write a comprehensive ebook. A thing of beauty. The definitive guide. A masterpiece.

And then something unexpected happens when you launch…

*Nothing.*

Will this happen to you? Click below and let me know:

and this one

Priority check-in for First Class Web Design, Fast Track SEO, Web video lounge, self service CMS. click here
For all other websites please join the back of the Very Very Long Queue.

I bet you can guess which one I chose to read and which ones hit my delete bin.

If you are interested in tone of voice advice, check out Ben Afia of Afia.tv who is a former client.

Social media learning curve

8 June, 2009/1 Comment/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

From Jock McNeish over at Thinking Pharma. Made me smile

Shout! With Johnny Vulkan, MD Anomaly

24 February, 2009/3 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

What are your most recent pitch wins? [wrong first question!]
We don't tend to put ourselves onto pitches
The reason is that we are a different sort of agency. We formed around a group of nomads from the creative industries – ad, design, tech media. The agency is 4.5 years old
We set up because we became aware that the traditional agency model conspires not to help clients. Ad men always see advertising as the solution; PR men see PR. Anomaly brings the focus of creative minds on the real business issues not just a 30 second ad spot.
We prototyped the business model within TBWA\Chiat\Day before I left but realised that to make it happen we needed to be independent.

So what IS different about the Anomaly model?
We found the creative thinkers and set out to provide the right answer. When that's your approach you have a very different conversation with clients – it's their business that you are focusing on. We sometimes send them away or refer onto other agencies, or tell them where we can do stuff well and collaborate with others who can do stuff better than us.
We assemble the focus of the team around what is needed. if it's nebulous it's whoever ‘gets it’ or ‘feels it’ the most. This makes work enjoyable, anarchic and labour intensive.

Another difference is that unlike an agency model there is a process which builds a solution – the answer can be anything and so you have to build the process. It may be different every time.
We are big fans of starting when it's hard. It makes you work harder and think smarter.

So, an obvious question – how are you going to grow?
Scale isn't what we want to do. We don't want to create a command and control network.

Is your charging model different as well?
Our version of fees is % equity as well as cash and so we own parts of client companies. Every deal is different. We never charge for time – it rewards the wrong behaviours. And so we don’t keep timesheets.
Read more

7 tips for biz dev using Social Media

6 January, 2009/14 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

Image by vincos via Flickr

Suw , a client [full disclosure] has posted this question on LinkedIn. Have social tools helped your career? I answered it.

You may find some of the other answers useful / insightful.

I’m writing a piece on how social tools can help people develop their career and would like to talk to anyone in the internet industries, especially graphic designers, web designers, developers, programmers, system admins, user experience people, etc., about which tools they have used to help get a new job or client. I’m interested in both employed people looking for new jobs, or self-employed people searching for new clients.What social tools do you use?Which ones have been most effective?
Can you tell me a story about a time when you got a new/job client directly from using social tools?

Here’s what I found interesting

There is a perceived hierarchy of social media tools for business
Different sites function differently. e.g. FB is social or more casual than Linked In.
Pre-Web 2.0 contacts are different from web 2.0 contacts and need to be treated differently
Face to Face remains a strong tool for business closing

And so for your own business development

Get a profile on the key social media sites.
Signpost them from your contacts page on your website.
Be prepared to invest in spending time on each to learn and then use each within the context of your biz dev plan.
Set metrics and targets for each site. Review quarterly.
Transfer contacts you meet in each onto your conventional business database when you have offline / email / phone data revealed via actual dialogue.
Be open to new contacts getting in touch but be judicious in filtering them to the ones likely to be useful.
Use search tools to monitor conversations that use your name / brand so that you pick up on people talking about you who you do not yet follow /connect with.

Golden Questions

5 December, 2007/13 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

A “Golden Question” is one in which the answer tells you more than the question itself would imply.

Useful for research, discovery and us biz dev types who need to quickly assess new prospects and whether they will buy from us.

I learnt about it from Don Peppers who integrated it into his CRM method (Identify:Differentiate:Interact and learn: Customise). His classic was to find out whether a customer had a high propensity to buy premium brand pet food. The question was “Do you buy your pet a christmas present?”. Neat, isn’t it? Those who do, are more likely to lavish spend on their animals than those who don’t. Simple.
And so how have I used it with my clients? They are mainly working in B2B areas and so the question set needs revising depending on your particular positioning and needs.

#1 Digital Agency selling high end technology back-end services

Julian wanted to be able to find out whether a prospect wanted a simple web site or one with higher functionality. Working with him, I developed two questions to help him quickly filter people:

Question 1: What was the date of your first website?

Question 2: How many times since then have you re-launched or substantially revised it?

Why does this work? With the first quesiton, he can tell if your company is an early adopter or late arrival for the new web technologies. And with the second, he can assess your likely sophistication as a web user for marketing. Each time you re-launch a website the functionality is improved. Relaunching every 2 years means you are more likley to be interested in moving to leading edge features.

So, how does your company stack up against his questions?

#2 Agency working with start-up web businesses

These lads want to be able to find out how far down the road you are to getting your website functional. THey also need to find out the degree of technological sophistication of the person they are talking to. Pitching yourself too “techy” and you’ll quickly lose the interest of a punter but being too simplistic has the same effect. Similarly their services vary depending on the stage of the business and how close to launch the start-up business is.

Question 1: Have you got your requirements document written?

Question 2: Are you happy with your user numbers?

The first establishes business stage and sophistication and the second devines the success of the marketing support put into an already functioning site.

Now what golden questions are right for your business? Can you use them to shorten your prospecting time frame and more quickly find prospects who have the potential to become customers?

About

26 September, 2007/by Rebecca Caroe

Business to business marketing and demand generation using Customer Relationship Management, Copywriting, Direct Response and Search Engine Optimisation.

Successful, not different

Rebecca is a freelance B2B demand generation specialist working with engineering, manufacturing and technology clients.

She is known for her practical approach to making B2B marketing work effectively in diverse client situations. She upskills in-house marketers by advocating for them with the C-suite and collaborating to deliver measurable outcomes which help to get them noticed for promotion.

Three times in her career, she’s been at the forefront of leading edge marketing innovation. Professional Services marketing in the 1990s, the rise of customer relationship management in the 2000s and social media since 2005. Rebecca is an entrepreneur whose side-hustle is a sport education business for rowing. She happily uses this as the experimental sand-box for new marketing techniques. Rebecca also mentors marketers seeking career advancement through the OneUp OneDown programme.

Rebecca Caroe, portrait 2019 — Rebecca Caroe

rebecca@creativeagencysecrets.com
+64 (0) 22 647 3993