Abraham Lincoln once said, “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”.
Wise words. Lincoln would have made a great marketeer.
Why’s that? Because preparation is the key to all marketing. Well, all successful marketing, anyway. Did you know that within the tech buying cycle, that 70% of the customer journey is already completed before the sales team is even enabled? That’s a staggering level of interaction with your product or service before the buyer actively gets in touch, so the marketing and messaging they receive has to be right.
As a specialist tech marketing agency, we have over 20 years’ experience in dealing with Vendors, Distributors and VARs and understand that time is money and the focus is primarily on results. However, optimum results cannot simply be achieved by having a good product or service, demand generation is attributed to exhaustive planning and the implementation of an end-to-end marketing strategy. This last point is key. If you only take one thing from my ramblings, let it be the term ’end-to-end’.
End-to-end marketing is centric to everything we do at Sherpa. It encompasses the entire content workflow, from strategic planning, research and validating specifically targeted data to campaign delivery, lead capture, and proof of execution. It involves stringently mapping out a campaign before even thinking about launching – getting to know the audience to ensure the right activity, right platform and right message is delivered at the right time…and then constantly monitoring it and optimising it, allowing your campaign to evolve within the marketing and sales cycle.
Optimisation is key, campaigns that are launched and left will naturally stagnate and not provide the optimum results – they are not given the chance! The campaign launch often marks the ‘tools down’ stage for many businesses…it is just the start of the next phase for us. We will be monitoring and adjusting the paid search and social elements of each campaign, dependent on performance and budget, whilst using our experience in retargeting and remarketing to ensure our message extends across the right platforms for maximum reach and impact. All of this, whilst providing intricate real-time reporting on what is working and what is not…
So, where could end-to-end marketing be better utilised? In last week’s blog, I discussed the rapidly changing world of marketing and how certain business models and programmes were at risk of being left behind. I focused on MDF (Market Development Fund); a model which we believe is fundamentally broken. But what do we think is the main issue with MDF? That’s right…the lack of end-to-end marketing.
The majority of MDF programmes are still operating on systems and practices from the 90s, so the related marketing activities are not properly planned, executed or measured to any meaningful level. Subsequently they are often ineffective and ultimately ROI is impossible to gauge. The MDF model could be transformed by introducing specialist marketing expertise to ensure a managed, planned, end-to-end campaign which would guarantee ROI.
We would like to revive this broken system, so have come up with some golden rules for optimising MDF campaigns. I’m not going to lie, there is an entire section on the importance of sharpening your axe…Abraham Lincoln would be proud.
See our blueprint for MDF optimisation here or get in touch to discuss how our end-to-end marketing solutions can increase conversions by up to 40%.
#GoHigher #Sherpa #MDF #endtoend
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