Need to turbo-charge your
Marketing and Business Development processes?
Take five minutes to find out how...
1. Update your business plan
Turbocharging your marketing and business development processes starts with one thing - an up-to-date business plan that maps out where you're going and what you need to do for the next five years. If you don't have one we'll put it together for you. If you have one hidden away in a bottom drawer, we'll help you update. This way everyone knows where the compnay is headed and everyone has the same view of the business and the brand. Absolutely crucial to success.
2. Formulate your annual marketing and business development plans
Once your company's business plan is in place and approved, the next thing we need to do is to put together a 12-month Marketing Plan and a 12-month BD Plan. The Marketing Plan needs to cover everything that the compnay will do to deliver the business plan in year one and should cover all the modern day 7Ps - product, price, promotion, place, people, positioning and processes.
3. Implement HubSpot
If you haven't already done it, the very best thing you can do to take your flourishing B2B business to the next level is to implement the HubSpot ecosystem across all aspects of your enterprise.
Everything you need to turbocharge your B2B business and brand is included. Starting with a world-class customer relationship management hub that enables you to put every single stakeholder (and all their details) right at the centre of your business universe. Which is exactly where they belong.
Then there are six hubs that plug directly into your new CRM ecosystem - Marketing, Sales, Content, Servicing, Operations and Commerce. Once done, everything is streamlined, centralised, coordinated and shared, and everything just works like clockwork.
2. Next, let's build your company's new HubSpot CRM database
The starting point in moving your current business processes to HubSpot is the creation of a database of all your stakeholders, and populating it with as much information about them as possible. First name, last name, email address, mobile number, company, job title, city, country, birthday, contact owner, stakeholder group and lead status to start with. And then we build it from there. This database will become one of your company's most valuable assets, and HubSpot enables you to optimise it in pursuit of growth and financial success.
3. Supercharge your marketing processes and assets and empower your marketing team
Next, we conduct an audit of all of your existing marketing processes and assets its time to move all the separate parts of your marketing under a single HubSpot roof. Set up your CI manual with your fonts, colours logos and emoticons. Then create a new single-page website, with just the right amount of content, and multiple contact points spread throughout. Then add dynamic content with a blog a week and a monthly newsletter and regular posts to LinkedIn. And all your new content automatically gets added to HubSpot's CMS - content management system as and when you create it. Perfect.
4. Create a culture of content generation excellence.
You don't need to be brilliant at content generation. Your whole company does. Because brilliant content starts conversations and conversations start relationships. And all other good business things stem from here. Also, who knows your industry, your competitors and your customers better than you and your people? And these days everyone can write. Creating a culture of excellence in generating interesting, informative, relevant and engaging content is the most important thing you can do if you want to grow your business and your brand. And it's a great place to start.
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5. Pump up your BD and Sales processes
Email remains the single most effective B2B communication channel in the galaxy, and it's pretty much free. Business owners are in and out of their inboxes all day every day, and they open and glance at everything that comes their way. You get your nano-second of attention and an industry newsletter full of juicy content is a good way to capture it. As soon as you have your first four blogs you have enough to create and publish your first newsletter. So, what else is stopping you?
6. Start blogging. And keep blogging.
The next thing to do is to start sharing your outstanding content in your own backyard - on your website. Set up a blog page right now. And start posting your latest content right there. Get in the habit of posting a new B2B blog every day. Try to keep them under 250 words because everyone's in a rush these days. And each employee gets a turn. Starting with you. And appoint an internal editor - choose the busiest person in the building. Your blog listing page becomes your content warehouse and as your content grows not only do you start conversations with the right people, but your website shoots up the SEO rankings as well. So when potential customers search for your sort of widgets you come up first.
7. Start your email marketing programme with a newsletter.
Email remains the single most effective B2B communication channel in the galaxy, and it's pretty much free. Business owners are in and out of their inboxes all day every day, and they open and glance at everything that comes their way. You get your nano-second of attention and an industry newsletter full of juicy content is a good way to capture it. As soon as you have your first four blogs you have enough to create and publish your first newsletter. So, what else is stopping you?
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8. Build, maintain and polish your databases.
The next highly important skill is building and maintaining databases. You should already have one with all your existing customers in it. Get it out of the cupboard, clean it up and dust it off. Make sure it is POPI compliant. Next you need to start building a database of potential customers. You need to use every resource at your disposal to increase these numbers, but remember that quality always trumps quantity. Don't stand on protocol here. If you meet a new prospective client, influencer or competitor ask for contact details and be prepared to share straight back. Keep asking all qualified persons for their business cards. They can only say no.
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9. Make the most of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is tailor-made for B2B companies, because it's all about, and only about, the world of business. So you need to make the most of it. Optimise your LinkedIn profile and transform it from a CV into a shop window for your business. Then get conversations started with three important groups - your ideal clients, your sector influencers, and finally with your peers and competitors. You need to be in it to win it, and to leverage all the power of this industrial strength social media platform.
10. Become the go-to authority in your sector.
It is highly likely that if you get to this point in your B2B marketing efforts you'll be further down the track than most of your competitors. The more often you post interesting and knowledgeable articles that are relevant to your sector the easier it becomes to assume the authority mantle. And once this happens your audiences start actively searching for your content. Needless to say, it's a great place to be. When qualified leads start coming to you for your thoughts and opinions that's when your prospective database really starts to build.
11. Learn to be an SEO genius.
Search Engine Optimisation is even more relevant today than it was in the early days of search engines. It can still be done organically, and there is distinct recognition for the hard yards put in to get there. SEO is not an overnight fix. But there are hacks that make it easier and that make good rankings more attainable. Just like generating content and building databases SEO has become an essential modern day business skill.
12. Upgrade your website.
One of the most important things you need to do to get your qualified B2B leads flowing is to seriously upgrade your website. All of the content you are now putting out into the B2B universe is encouraging prospective clients to visit your website. And any visits to your website by potential customers who do not leave their contact details is a fail. A website is not simply a digital brochure - it's your most important marketing and sales asset and it really needs your full attention. You need to fill it up with brilliant content and provide valuable offers that entice your visitors to sample some of your digital wares. That are then sent straight to their email inbox, which you and your company now have access to. And this is where the conversations begin, and where sales tend to follow.
And that's all you have to do. To start with.
For help with any B2B marketing either outside or within the above parameters, hit the button below and we'll get back to you ASAP.
"We need to stop interrupting what people are interested inand be what people are interested in."Craig Davis