just a trickle coming through because of a blocked pipeline

What’s blocking your growth?

By Nigel DaveyMarketing Performance, Measure

And where is it in your pipeline?

As the owner of a small business, you want to see your “baby” grow. You’re investing time, money, blood sweat and tears into this business and growth is the ROI you need.

Your growth is determined by performance in three areas of your business: marketing, sales and operations.

You cannot add clients if your marketing isn’t generating leads
Leads need to be converted into sales if your business is to grow
Operations needs to deliver, or you will lose clients

If your growth stalls, you need to quickly identify where the issue is, so you can resolve it and restore growth. Here is what we recommend you do:

Is Operations blocking growth?

Problems here will most likely show up as either lower sale values or client churn. You’ve invested time and money in acquiring clients, so losing them through operational issues is going to be painful. As this isn’t our area of expertise, we’ll leave this here!

Is Sales blocking growth?

If the issue is in your Sales function, there are two reasons for this:

Poor quality leads that are never likely to be converted.
An inability to sell

Review your conversion rate.

If historically you have converted 20% of all leads, but now you’re only converting 10%, what has changed? Have you changed parts of your Sales function? A new salesperson may take some time to get up to speed, do this may be a blip. If an individual’s conversion rate has dropped, you need to talk to them and find out why. Do they need more training? Has something happened in their personal life? If you don’t find out, you cannot do anything about it.

Review your leads

Has the quality of your leads changed? Has Sales spoken to Marketing to let them know? If they haven’t and Marketing hasn’t spotted the issue, the conversation needs to happen quickly if you are to unblock your growth.

Is Marketing blocking growth?

The first step in identifying if Marketing is the issue is knowing your numbers. Unfortunately, we see too many small businesses that do not know them. The numbers will tell you what action is needed to turn things around.

Marketing platform reports

Every digital marketing tool you use has a reporting function. They will tell you what has changed:

Are you not getting the engagement you used to on your social media channels?
Have your email marketing open and click rates dropped?
Are you slipping down the search rankings
Are fewer people seeing and clicking on your PPC campaigns?

With much of your marketing aimed at driving the right traffic to your website, have you checked Google Analytics to see what is happening with your website traffic? Looking here first will give you a good steer on where you need to look.

Budgets

In times of uncertainty, marketing budgets are often cut first. As the business owner, you’ll know if you’ve cut the budget, but have you checked whether the budget is being used? If Marketing has changed something, they may not have told you.

Is the market changing?

Over time markets change. Fashions, technology and other factors may mean less demand for your products/services. Ask the people who were at Kodak or BlackBerry. Keeping your finger on the pulse if vital for the success of your business.

Finding where your growth is blocked is critical in growing any small business. That’s why the first thing we do with any new client is Measure. We make sure that our clients know what is and isn’t working within their business, not just within their marketing so that we can then start planning how to generate the growth they are looking for.

If you need some help in growing your business, get in touch. Let’s talk about your business goals and how to unblock your growth.

April 14, 2025

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A Virtual Marketing Director can make a massive improvement in your small business marketing performance. Get in touch with SME Needs to find out how

Why Knowing your Churn Rate Is Crucial for B2B Marketing

By Nigel DaveyMarketing Plan, Measure, Small Business Marketing, Strategic Planning

When a new client says they want to grow their small business by 20% per annum over the next three years, there one key statistic we first look at first: churn rate. If that new client is losing lots of clients, the task of growing by 20% suddenly becomes much harder. Here’s why churn rate is so important and what can be done about it.

1. Churn Rate Directly Impacts Revenue

The relationship between churn and revenue is straightforward: when your clients leave, revenue is lost. For subscription-based models or businesses with recurring contracts, this can have an especially detrimental effect on your cash flow and financial forecasting.

To achieve the growth target, the churn has to be replaced and then new clients added to achieve the goal.

2. Retention Is More Cost-Effective Than Acquisition

It’s widely accepted that retaining an existing client is far more cost-effective for you than acquiring a new one. B2B marketing must focus on churn rate because:

Acquisition Costs: new client acquisition involves higher expenses, including advertising, lead nurturing, and onboarding.
Retention ROI: loyal clients typically spend more over time and require less marketing effort to maintain.
Referral Potential: satisfied clients are more likely to recommend your business, reducing the cost of new leads.

3. Churn Reflects Client Satisfaction

If your clients are leaving, there’s a problem with product fit, service quality or your value proposition. Whilst service quality is not a Marketing deliverable, the other two can be heavily influenced by your marketing.

Is your marketing over-promising for your product or service?
Are your clients expecting far more for their money than they receive?
Are your competitors marketing and delivering something better?

4. Churn Data Drives Strategic Decision-Making

Tracking churn rates gives you valuable insights that can inform business strategy. Identifying exactly where the churn is happening is key to making the right strategic decisions.

Analysing churn by client segment helps identify which groups are most at risk, enabling targeted retention campaigns.
Feedback from churned clients can highlight areas for improvement in your product or service offering.
A declining churn rate often signals that client engagement strategies and campaigns are working effectively.

5. Churn Rate Affects Brand Reputation

In the B2B space, word-of-mouth and reputation play a significant role in winning new business. A high churn rate can damage your standing in the market.

Are you watching your reviews?

Whether you use Google or something like Trustpilot, identifying when people start to share their dissatisfaction is vital.
A hit on your brand’s reputation can cause a lot of damage and take a long time to repair.

6. Predictable Growth Relies on Low Churn

Sustainable growth in B2B markets depends on predictable revenue streams. A high churn rate makes it harder to:

Forecast Revenue: fluctuations in client retention rates create uncertainty in financial planning.
Scale Efficiently: high churn can offset gains from new client acquisition, making growth less predictable and less impactful.
Impact budgets: high churn impacts Client Lifetime Value (CLV) and what the business can afford to invest in marketing.

How Marketing Can Address Churn

To mitigate churn and enhance retention, B2B marketing directors can adopt the following strategies:

1. Understand Your Clients

Use surveys, interviews, and analytics to identify client pain points and unmet needs. You need to know both what is causing churn and within what parts of your client base.

Identifying issues before they become termination issues will help manage your churn rates. If you realise a client has an issue in time to make necessary changes, you have a chance to retain them. If you’re too late to stop the churn, at least understand why they are leaving or stopping buying from you.

2. Review your marketing messages

If product fit is the issue, it is likely that your marketing is attracting the wrong audience with inaccurate messages. A review of who exactly your target audiences are and how you help them will give you the opportunity to edit your messaging to attract the right people.

3. Improve Onboarding

Ensure new clients receive a seamless onboarding experience to maximise satisfaction early on. The more engaged they are with your brand, products and services early on, the better.

4. Deliver Value Continuously

Regularly communicate how your product or service solves their problems and delivers ROI. This needs to start from the first engagement, through the first purchase and onwards.

5. Engage Regularly

Build relationships through personalised email campaigns, thought leadership content, and proactive account management. Be careful that you are segmenting your communication so that what people are sent is relevant to them.

6. Monitor and Act

Regularly track churn metrics, identify trends, and take immediate action to retain at-risk clients.

Conclusion

Churn rate is a key performance indicator that no B2B small business can afford to ignore. It provides critical insights into revenue health, client satisfaction, and overall business performance. By prioritising retention and understanding the causes of churn, you can secure long-term growth, strengthen client relationships, and enhance your brand’s reputation in the competitive B2B marketplace.

February 22, 2025

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What is a Fractional CMO?

By Nigel DaveyMarketing Performance, Measure, Strategic Planning

& How do you work with one?

A Fractional CMO will provide you with the strategic marketing support you need for your small business, without the need to invest in senior management roles. But what is it actually like working with a Fractional CMO. This is what it is like working with us.

Talking

In the beginning, there will always be lots of talking. Whether you’re working with SME Needs or any other Fractional CMO, they will want, and need, to know a lot about your business:

Your history
Why you started, and continue doing what you do
What makes you different from your competition
Your immediate and long-term business goals
The marketing skills you have in the business, and what marketing you’ve done before

And a whole lot more…

Why? Because it gives us a real understanding of you and your business. Talking helps us appreciate the culture you’re building and what you want people to think and say about your business, and your team. The more we understand, the more the marketing can help you.

Measuring

Talking will give us some understanding of what you’re achieved up to this point. Measuring will ensure both parties know exactly how your business, and your marketing, are performing and how that has changed over time.

This phase oftens uncovers surprises for our clients:

Marketing channels that are losing money, or are really delivering a great ROI
Marketing that is grabbing the attention of the wrong people – definitely not your target audience
Frequently a lot of FOMO marketing activity

However, it also:

Shows where your marketing is really performing
What your conversion rates are at all stages of the pipeline (identifying where improvements can be made)
Provides benchmarks for future performance measurement.
Identifies the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.

Focusing your marketing

Its very easy to let your marketing, and your messaging, wander. After all, surely the more target audiences you have, the more clients you’re going to acquire. The opposite is actually true!

Focused marketing is far more effective and your Fractional CMO will work with you to identify who your Ideal Clients are and what your marketing should be saying to them. We believe that few people care what you do. What they do care about is how you can help them, how you make their issues and problems go away. By putting our heads together we can identify the marketing messages most likely to deliver results. Testing and measuring will determine whether they really resonate.

By focusing on your Ideal Clients, you are far more likely to get the clients you want. However, that doesn’t mean you turn everyone else away. If the opportunity works for you, and for them, there’s no reason you cannot work with them.

Planning

Once you know what has worked for you in the past, who you’re targeting and what you need to achieve, planning your marketing strategy is next.

Your Fractional CMO will bring years of experience to bear here. Having tried virtually every marketing option there is, you can be confident that the consultancy and guidance is going to deliver a marketing strategy aimed at delivering on your growth targets and your business goals.

Budgets will be a key part of these conversations. Don’t be surprised if the recommended budget is more than you were expecting. The more saturated your market and the more competition there is, the more noise you need to make to be heard. This is a major reason why you need to identify what makes you different. Different is easier to spot for your target audiences!

Specialists

With years of experience in planning and delivering marketing programmes, your Fractional CMO will have developed a network of tried and trusted specialists. Website developers, PR specialists, SEO experts and many more. You can benefit from this network. Far better to use absolute specialists that try to do something yourself. Whilst you will pay for the service, the ROI will be worth it.

As time goes by and your business grows, it may make sense to start bringing some marketing talent in-house. There may come a point where specific specialist services are being used so much that it equates to a salaried role. Your Fractional CMO will advise you if and when this becomes something to discuss.

Managing your marketing

Once a marketing strategy is in place, the role of your Fractional CMO changes somewhat. It changes from a strategic role to an operational management role (at least with SME Needs it does).

Whilst continuing to work closely with you, the role is one of delivering on the marketing strategy. That means project managing everyone involved in delivering – some of your team, some SME Needs staff and the third-party specialists that are involved.

Two key tasks here:

Ensuring the marketing happens consistently, according to the agreed schedule
That it is delivering on the agreed targets/KPIs

As needed, changes to the plan will be discussed and made. The aim is to deliver the maximum ROI possible for your marketing budget.

Letting you focus on your business

Running a small business requires you to wear many hats/spin many plates (delete as you prefer). Adding a Fractional CMO to your team takes a hat/plate from you, giving you more time to focus ON the business and your clients. This addition also brings more knowledge, expertise and experience to bear on your business

Performance management

Throughout everything, your Fractional CMO will be measuring performance against your benchmarks and your targets. Improving your numbers is THE GOAL of any CMO, helping you grow your business.

Why use a Fractional CMO?

As any small business grows, there comes a point where the owner runs out of time and knowledge. Are you at that point?

You have three choices:

Recruit a marketing manager, but giving them complete responsibility for your marketing when they’re not ready is highly likely to lead to poor results.
Recruit your own CMO. Average salaries for a CMO are £97,000 a year, plus expected bonuses on £19K. Even without adding software licenses, desk space and other costs, this recruit adds £132K a year to your salary costs.
Use a Fractional CMO and get the marketing support you need, building the time used as your small business grows

A Fractional CMO provides the knowledge, experience and flexibility you need as the owner of a growing small business.

To talk more, call us on 020 8634 5911 or click here to book a meeting.

February 7, 2025

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one red tulip amongst lots of yellow to support an article about the power of different

Does your business stand out?

By Nigel DaveyCustomer Understanding, Marketing Performance, Marketing Plan, Measure, Strategic Planning

Why It’s Important for Your Small Business to Stand Out from the Competition

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, your ability to differentiate your small business from your competitors is more crucial than ever. With thousands of businesses offering similar products or services, standing out is not just an option but a necessity for growth and long-term success. Whether you’re running a membership organisation, an e-commerce business or a tech startup, creating a unique identity and offering something distinct can make all the difference in attracting and retaining clients. Here, we explore why it’s important for your small business to stand out from the competition and how it can lead to increased brand recognition, client loyalty, and profitability.

1. Attracting Attention in a Crowded Market

One of the primary reasons for standing out is to capture the attention of potential clients. With the rise of online shopping, social media, and digital advertising, your target audiences are bombarded with marketing messages every day. If your small business doesn’t offer something unique or memorable, it risks being overlooked.

A distinctive offering, whether it’s a unique product feature, an innovative service, or an eye-catching brand aesthetic, helps you grab attention in a crowded space.

In industries where multiple businesses are vying for the same target audience, standing out can be the factor that causes clients to choose your brand over the competition.

2. Building a Strong Brand Identity

A well-defined and memorable brand identity is key to making your business stand out. This identity isn’t just about a logo or colour scheme. It’s about how your brand is perceived by your target audience. This perception is shaped by your company’s mission, values, client service, and the overall experience you provide.

When your business stands out with a strong, consistent brand:

it creates a sense of trust and reliability.
Clients are more likely to remember and return to a brand they resonate with.

Whether through a compelling story, a distinct personality, or a clear value proposition, having a standout brand identity ensures you don’t fade into the background of a sea of competitors.

3. Creating Client Loyalty

In a competitive market, it’s not enough to simply attract clients – you need to retain them. Offering something unique that aligns with your clients’ needs or values can turn one-time buyers into loyal, repeat clients. Brand loyalty is crucial, especially for small businesses that rely on a steady client base for sustainable growth.

When clients feel a connection to your business, whether because of the personalised service you offer, your unique product offerings, or your commitment to social causes, they are more likely to return and recommend your business to others.

Differentiation helps create this bond. This can be more difficult to establish if you simply follow the crowd and offer the same products and services as everyone else.

4. Commanding a Premium Price

One of the most significant benefits of standing out from the competition is the ability to command a higher price for your products or services. When you offer something distinctive that your competitors don’t, you create perceived value in the eyes of your clients. This perceived value allows you to justify a higher price point without fear of losing business to cheaper alternatives.

For instance, small businesses that offer high-quality craftsmanship, eco-friendly products, or exceptional client service can often charge more because clients are willing to pay a premium for these unique qualities. Differentiation allows you to move beyond competing solely on price, positioning your business as a top choice for clients who value quality or uniqueness.

5. Better Marketing and Word-of-Mouth Promotion

When your business stands out, it’s easier to create a buzz and attract attention through word-of-mouth marketing. Clients are more likely to talk about your business and recommend it to others if they have a positive and memorable experience. This kind of organic marketing is invaluable for small businesses, as it’s both cost-effective and highly credible.

Differentiation makes it easier for clients to be advocates for your business. If your brand or product resonates with them in a unique way, they’ll be excited to share it with their network. Whether it’s through social media, client reviews, or personal recommendations, word-of-mouth marketing is often the most powerful tool in attracting new clients.

6. Attracting the Right Clients

Standing out also helps ensure that you attract the right clients who align with your business’s values, products, and services. When you differentiate yourself, you clarify exactly what your business is about and who it serves. This helps to weed out clients who may not be a good fit and attract those who are more likely to become loyal patrons.

For example, a small business that focuses on sustainability or eco-friendly products may attract clients who prioritise these values. By standing out and clearly communicating your unique selling points, you can attract clients who share your values and are more likely to stay with your business for the long haul.

7. Enhancing Client Experience

To stand out from the competition, many businesses focus not only on their products or services but also on the overall client experience they offer. From the first point of contact to post-purchase support, every touchpoint is an opportunity to differentiate your business.

Providing an exceptional client experience that goes above and beyond the norm can set your business apart in a meaningful way. Whether it’s through personalised service, fast response times, or going the extra mile to solve problems, clients remember businesses that treat them well. A remarkable client experience can be a significant differentiator and a reason why clients choose your business over others.

8. Long-Term Business Success

In the long run, standing out from the competition is essential for business growth and sustainability. Without differentiation, your business may struggle to adapt to changing market conditions or consumer preferences. Having a unique identity and value proposition provides a solid foundation for growth and helps ensure your business doesn’t become obsolete or irrelevant over time.

By continuously innovating and reinforcing what makes your business unique, you can build a lasting brand that stands the test of time. This is regardless of the competitive pressures you face.

Conclusion

In a crowded and competitive market, standing out is vital for the success of any small business. It allows you to attract attention, build brand loyalty, command higher prices, and ensure long-term success. By offering something unique, creating an exceptional client experience, and focusing on what differentiates your business, you increase your chances of thriving in an increasingly competitive environment. In the end, differentiation is not just about being different. It’s about being memorable, valuable, and relevant to your target audience.

Our Focus Workshops are all about identifying who you want as Ideal Clients, about why you and what makes you stand out. For more information about this phase of our strategic marketing support, click here.

January 22, 2025

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It’s not always Tuesday or Thursday!

By Nigel DaveyA Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Measure

Email marketing is a highly powerful marketing tool for small businesses, when done well. One of the biggest questions people ask is “when is the best time to send an email marketing campaign?” If you type this question into Google (other search engines are available), you’ll get millions of responses.

What the email engines say

To start answering this question, we looked at what the big players in this market said. Here goes…

Mailchimp

“It’s somewhat established that the best days to send email blasts are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday across different industries and audiences. When we look at the typical distribution of optimal send times across Mailchimp’s whole system, the best time to send email newsletters is at 10AM in the recipients’ own time zones. Note that no single day wins hands-down. This is what we should expect when studying the data of billions of humans’ inbox activity.”

Mailerlite

Which day of the week is everyone sending their campaigns? Email marketers favour Tuesday (closely followed by Wednesday) for sending out their campaigns. Which day of the week generates the most opens? Thursday is the weekday with the highest open rate, closely followed by Monday. What time of the day generates the most opens? Most email opens occur between 11AM-12PM, with another peak between 6-7PM and an interesting late-night bump at 2AM (in the sender’s time zone)

Hubspot (based on US subscribers)

The best time to send emails on Tuesday is 9 AM – 12 PM EST, then 12:01 PM – 3 PM EST. I’d stay away from sending your emails anytime after 6 PM EST. On Mondays, aim to send your emails between 6 AM and 9 AM EST, then 9 AM – 12 PM EST. You’ll get the least engagement between 6 PM and 9 PM EST

Mailmunch

Tuesday: According to various email tool statistics, emails sent on Tuesday have the highest open rate of over 18%, increasing site traffic. Wednesday: The mid-week day consistently meets the open and click-through rate goals. Thursday: Is considered the best day to send marketing emails. You can choose between Tuesday and Thursday to start your email campaign. You’d be surprised to learn that Fridays and Mondays are not preferred for email sending, but they are still a better option than weekends. Friday’s open and click-through rates (CTR) are higher than Monday.

What else do they all say?

You will see a trend in these responses saying that Tuesday – Thursday are good days, with mornings being the better time. But what they all say in addition to this is that this is not to be taken as written. For you it may be different. To truly find the best time and best day for your email marketing campaigns, you have to test.

What are you testing?

When running email marketing campaigns, there are many different measures that you can compare and test:

Open rates – how many people opened the email campaign?
Click rates (sometimes referred to as Clickthrough rates) – the number of times people clicked on a link in your campaign.
Website traffic – how much traffic did you send to your website?
Desired outcomes – how many people did what you wanted them to do?

Depending on your reasons for sending the campaigns, the measure that is important to you will vary. However, they are all connected.

Open rates

Open rates are impacted by the name of the sender and by the subject line. If the recipient recognises the sender and has a positive relationship with them, they are more likely to open the email. If the subject line grabs their attention, they are more likely to click to open.

But they have to open it to do anything else. The higher the open rate, the more likely they are to do the other things.

Click rates

Assuming you’re not adding lots of different links to various places, most of the links in your emails (whether in the text or specific buttons) will go to one, or two, places. The decision to click is based on the content of the email. If it is obviously trying to sell something, click rates are likely to be low. If the content is tantalising and offers to help, click rates will be higher.

Again, they have to click for any further action to be counted as the result of the email marketing campaign.

Website traffic

This should be a similar number to the one above, assuming you’re behaving with your Calls to Action (CTAs), but you should also keep an eye on how long people spend on your site. If they are clicking onto it, but then leaving quickly (shame Google no longer has a Bounce Rate stat), you landing page is not of interest to them.

Desired outcome

Ultimately this is the real payback from your email marketing campaigns. If you run an ecommerce business, this measure is likely to be revenue. If you’re a B2B service provider, perhaps it is meetings booked – and so on.

How to test your email marketing campaigns

Testing can take some time, particularly if you’re not sending large volumes, but the sooner you start, the sooner you will have results you can use. We find a spreadsheet and pivot tables to be the best way to analyse the results, but that may not work for everyone. Here are the steps we recommend:

Look back at previous campaigns and record your performance
- Date, day and time sent
- Open rate
- Click rate
- Desired outcome rate
Analyse those results to see how you’ve done so far
Schedule upcoming campaigns on days and at times you’ve not sent campaigns before
Analyse regularly

The good and not so good times should start to show after the first 6-10 campaigns.

Kindling n Things

We’ve been running the email marketing for this company since early 2023 and we’ve been tracking the email marketing performance during that time. For them, Monday lunchtime is one of the best times to send campaigns, followed by Saturday lunchtime and Thursday lunchtime (these are average campaign figures – the big spike on Wednesday is a one-off campaign so will need to be tested again). Evenings are surprisingly poor considering this is a consumer product. You can see a full case study on our work for them here.

If your email marketing isn’t working as well as you’d like, experimenting with when you send them is a good way to identify ways to get better results. If you’d like a free review of your email marketing, click here.

May 21, 2024

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Person using a laptop image to support article about getting potential clients back to your website

7 ways to get potential clients back to your website

By Troy EmmersonA Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Measure

Because getting them back increases the likelihood of them buying from you

Whatever way people move from simply knowing who you are to becoming potential clients, they will be spending time on your website. Much of the time, they are checking you out; making themselves comfortable that you will be able to help them. Getting potential clients to return to your website will help them to become comfortable and start talking with you. Here’s 7 ways to get potential clients. back to your website…

How many people are returning to your website?

Before you start work on this, you need to know how many potential clients are actually returning to your site. After all, it may not be an issue for you. If you don’t know, Google Analytics is your friend. To find your stats:

Go to Google Analytics – click here
Go to Reports
Click on Retention (highlighted blue in the image here)

1. Retargeting ads

You will have regularly seen adverts for something you’ve been looking at online. Those adverts are designed to get you back to their site and to buy the product. You can do the same to people who visit your site.

Google Ads and Facebook Ads are two key players in this area. You will need to set up the account(s) and you do pay a small amount per returning visit. Depending on how competitive your industry sector is, this cost per click (CPC) can be pennies, up to £1 or more. But it will be much less than Google Ads to get them to your site for the first time.

2. Email marketing

Email marketing is a highly effective way to get people back to your website. If they have given you their email address, make sure you are emailing to share latest content regularly.

Depending on what information you have collected, email campaigns can be:

New case studies, particularly for people in their industry sector.
New products or services that you now provide.
New articles that continue to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge.

The wonderful thing about email marketing is that everything is trackable:

You can see who is opening and clicking on what campaigns
You can see the contacts who are highly engaged, and those who never open your emails
Associated applications can even show you what individual contacts do after they’ve clicked from your email campaign.

If you have a telesales function within the business, assigned to follow up your marketing campaigns, this information helps them to call the right people. Those who have engaged should be the first people called.

Sending links to special offers or exclusive content is a fantastic way to really encourage people back to your website.

3. Consistent engaging content

Regularly adding high-quality content to your website can quickly get people coming back to your website. Once people have visited a few times, they get used to expecting useful information and content, so they return regularly to consume that content.

That content can be in the form of blogs, white papers, or videos – whichever format your target audience prefers. By posting useful content, you establish yourself as an authority, increasing your Domain Authority score and your search engine rankings.

4. Social media promotion

Your choice of social media platforms is determined by your target audiences. Whichever platform you use, social media is a great place to share new, and evergreen, content. New articles, case studies and promotions are all great outbound content. But don’t forget that a good chunk of your website visits can come from when you have responded. That can either be to people who have replied to your original post, or when you have commented on someone else’s original post. Social media is not somewhere to shout ‘Buy Me!’ – but that is another article…

5. Guest Blogs

High quality content that you post on other websites generates both quality inbound links (good for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)) and more traffic. The fact that the other site has agreed to post the content is a good sign for readers. For people who have seen your site before, it is a further reminder that they can get valuable information (and good services) from your business.

6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Optimising your website for search engines will raise you up the search engine results, maximising the chances of people seeing your site again, getting them back to you and buying. Tools such as Yoast will help you get the on-site SEO right, ensuring you have:

Good meta descriptions that tell people what they will find on your page.
Catchy SEO titles to grab peoples’ attention as they scroll looking for answers to their search query.
Internal and outbound links that guide people around your site and to places they can find good supporting information.
That word counts are sufficient to give readers a good idea of what your business is about.
And much more.

There are plenty of other tools on the market for SEO. We use SEMrush to further improve SEO performance for our clients’ websites because most of them are WordPress sites.

7. Make a great first impression

Perhaps this should have been the first way, but hey ho… A great first impression will get people coming back for more. If they like what they see and read first time, chances are they will come back again, particularly if they ‘bump’ into your brand in other ways.

To get people back to your website, your marketing needs to be consistent, and your brand needs to be seen regularly in separate locations online, and off.

Of course, if you need some help with this, get in touch. You can call us on 020 8634 5911 or complete the form here and we’ll call you back.

July 20, 2023

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Is your marketing working?

By lorna@3mil.co.ukA Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Measure

Marketing is a complex art at the best of times, and sometimes the means of measuring your marketing can end up muddying the water. There are a whole lot of calculations, metrics and analytics out there. In a department full of jargon, what’s the best way to see if your marketing is working? In this blog, we’ll walk you through the process of effectively gauging your marketing performance.

How can you measure your marketing?

Some of the most common ways of breaking down your marketing statistics into something more manageable is with simple figures, such as bounce rate, click-through rate, engagement, etc. No metric on its own can tell you all you need to know about your marketing performance, it depends on your goal. Let’s unpick some of these terms and what they can tell you about how well your marketing is working.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave your website after viewing the first page, rather than moving on to others. This might look like a useful barometer for how well your marketing is working. However, it’s not as simple as that. The bounce rate only represents movement, not time spent on each page. For example, if a suspect spends ten minutes on your homepage, reads your mission statement and calls you from the phone number provided, that would still count as a bounce. Despite the fact that your marketing has worked in that case. It’s useful in conjunction with other metrics, but be wary of using this figure alone to measure how well your marketing’s working.

Engagement

Google Analytics, one of the best free tools for measuring your marketing, let’s you see visitor engagement. This tells us how long visitors have spent on your website and how many pages deep they went. This complements the bounce rate metric well and together they can give a rather good impression of how usable and engaging your website is. However, an engaging website alone won’t bring the clients in. You need to know that your website is attracting the right sort of visitors (those that have a need you can solve and the cash to pay for it), and that’s persuading these visitors to make contact.

Contact

The number of emails and phone calls you receive is another metric used to assess how well your marketing’s working. This is arguably better than the bounce rate or engagement, since it actually delivers potential clients to your inbox. But, once again, be careful what conclusions you draw from this metric. Your marketing may be very effective at drawing interest, but if that interest isn’t from people with the inclination and means to buy from you, it’s not the optimal use of your time. Ideally your marketing will attract genuine leads and prompt unsuitable clients to qualify themselves out. This way you can save time building relationships and writing offers for people with no intent to buy, leaving you free to spend more time developing your real prospects.

Conversion rate

Take a second and ask yourself; what’s the purpose of my marketing? Getting new clients, increasing revenue or any form of growing your business is probably the answer you have in mind. If there’s one metric you do need to remember, it would be the conversion rate. That is, the number of individuals that are converted from prospects into clients. The other metrics are useful at indicating how many prospects might turn into clients, but don’t forget that conversion rate is the real king of the KPIs. Don’t get lost in metrics when the proof is in the pudding. If your conversion rate isn’t what you want it to be, diagnose the problem and fix it fast!

Shoring up your sales pipeline

Marketing is an investment intended to get results. You can make sure your marketing is working to increase your conversion rate by breaking it down into a sales pipeline. Every business should have a sales pipeline, but how many steps it includes is up to you. The way we usually look at it is like this:

Suspects → Prospects
Prospects → Qualifieds
Qualifieds → Clients

You want a good conversion rate between each of these stages to be sure that you’re marketing is working effectively. Take the time to work out your conversion rate as a percentage and see which stage of the pipeline could be letting you down.

Where are you losing prospects?

If your business isn’t growing, it’s time to see where the leak is. Look at the conversion rate from one stage to the next to work out where your marketing could be letting you down and how to correct it.

Before the pipeline

First off, you need a good stream of visitors coming to your website and social media profiles. If your enquiries, engagement and website traffic are low, it might be worth checking your SEO and branding. Make sure your website scores highly and that your branding is eye-catching enough to draw interest from potential clients. It might also be worth considering paid-SEO or advertising to boost your visibility amongst the your target audience.

Suspects into prospects

So, your website, socials and advertising are performing well. But are getting enough enquiries? If the conversion rate from suspect (potential client) and prospect (first contact) is lower than you would like, there are ways to change that. What on your website is stopping people from following up? Is contact information easy to find? Do you have multiple ways of being contacted? Is the call yo action convincing enough? If you’ve answered yes to these questions and the phone isn’t ringing, it might be time to take the initiative and approach your suspects first. Software like CANDDi can help you track visitor behaviour and see who’s likely to buy.

Prospects into qualified

This conversion, from the initial enquiry to a firm offer, is one of the most important in the pipeline. If you’re only qualifying a small percentage of prospects, it’s likely that your marketing needs to be tailored more towards your ideal client. You may be attracting a lot of attention, but if it’s not from people with the means and intent to buy, frankly, they’re not worth your time if it could be better spent developing relationships with real prospects.

Qualified into sales

Once a lead has been qualified, the responsibility for making the sale falls to your sales team. If your conversion rates between all the stages up to conversion are good, then your marketing is functioning as it should. If your business still isn’t growing, then maybe the problem lies elsewhere.

How can sales find out how they failed to sell?

The best solution is often the simplest: just ask. Prospects that don’t buy tend to fall into three categories:

Those that were won by the competition.
The ones that didn’t buy from anyone.
Those that shouldn’t have been qualified through your sales pipeline.

If you find that most of the clients you failed to win fall into the latter category, it might be worth reassessing your ideal client, or adjusting your marketing to appeal to the right kind of buyer, whilst simultaneously filtering out unsuitable leads.

The main thing to remember is that marketing’s purpose is to grow your business. So don’t bother improving engagement, bounce rate, or other metrics if your revenue isn’t rising. Follow the steps above, look into your pipeline and diagnose the problem. There are a number of different fixes available any weak points in your marketing plan.

If you would like help with the diagnostics, treatment and cure of your marketing ailments, why not contact us? Call us on 020 8634 5911 or click here.

January 11, 2021

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