CHAPTER 4

Marketing

Overview

In a book on sales, one may be given for thinking Marketing is a different subject. In business, these two often sit as distinctly different teams with different management and, it may feel, with different objectives.

Whenever Marketing is combined with Sales, it is almost always referred to as “Sales and Marketing” yet for almost every part the process and handoff between Marketing to Sales is the other way around. Sales and Marketing are also often viewed, rightly, as squabbling siblings. Saying the other was to blame for failure and claiming the credit for when things go well.

While Marketing and Sales very often work as a well-oiled machine of two parts, the rivalry can lead to problems between the two. Managed well, Marketing and Sales combine to achieve greatness. Left unattended it can lead to conflict of objectives and, therefore, less than fully productive.

For anyone in Sales, it matters to understand what Marketing can do to help the sales pursuit. What tools and techniques Marketing use to better understand the field of play and help the salesperson understand rules of the game and just how far to bend them. It may be that Sébastien Ogier won the World Rally Championship in 2021 but it was not him that built or maintained the car or that read the pace notes. In fact, it was a French driver and co-driver, with a Japanese car, built and maintained by a team from Finland.

The 7 Ps of the Marketing Mix have been around for 30 years but I would argue that now needs updating to add Partnership and Planet. That the Marketing Mix is studied by business students around the globe demonstrates its importance. That it is called the Marketing Mix and not the Sales & Marketing Mix shows who is really in the driving seat or determining how any salesperson with their products and services toolkit should enter the fray.

Today, customers are much more self-serving. Relying on salespeople to educate the client on what options are available and the product or service for sale has been replaced extensively by the client researching online, reading reviews, and asking other customers for their thoughts. The ability to have more input from more people has now tipped the balance away from the influence of the salesperson to the influence of the masses.

As the balance has shifted so too has the importance of getting the message out to the potential client earlier and in a more informed way through a more varied content. And now, rather than educating the customer at the start, Marketing is educating the customer further into the process and also making sure they stay loyal after the sale is won and use postsale as an opportunity to build greater loyalty and also win more new business.

Marketing is a critical partner to Sales of that there is no doubt and has become more so in recent years. Sales not only needs Marketing but it needs Marketing to do more and be better than at any time before now.

The Marketing Mix

To understand the Marketing Mix, we first need to know what is meant by Marketing. For this we should turn to Dr. Philip Kotler; often referred to as the father of modern marketing. His book Marketing Management was first printed in 1967 and has had multiple reprints. He has written more than 55 books on the subject printed in more than 20 languages. According to Kotler:

That is quite a lot to take in from such a short paragraph.

For me, the key elements of this statement are that it identifies unfulfilled needs or desires and then matches that to what the company could achieve once it understands the size of the opportunity. Needs and desires are quite different things, we may all need a car to get to work but it would be difficult to justify it has to be a Ferrari, when perhaps a Toyota will do perfectly well.

For marketing, the most used template is the Marketing Mix or 7 Ps. The Marketing Mix goes back to 1949 and was then the 4 Ps: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place (Figure 4.1).

Product is not just what you make, what services and products you provide, but how the product is perceived by the customer. A simple example, perhaps, the Apple iPhone. It competes against a range of alternatives but has a very loyal following with customers who would not have anything else. People are deeply passionate about the Apple iPhone, and that is because the product is not just a phone as bought by the customer; it makes a statement, it is a lifestyle choice.

Figure 4.1 The Marketing Mix (4 Ps)

If you only ever compete on price, there is only one way and that is a race to the bottom. While you may want to offer a no-frills service, or an entry-level model price is about understanding what the customer is willing to pay for that service, not simply offering the product or service at rock-bottom price. Price has an upper level also and understanding how much the customer is willing to pay is also important for any pricing strategy.

Promoting products or services is a far more complex consideration than just advertising. During the global pandemic that started in 2020, many companies turned to promoting their products and services online. That it took a pandemic to start what should have already been in place should be worrying.

Beyond purely online promotion was the desire by many companies to offer free or heavily discounted products and services. For some services, this offered a “try before you buy” option but the balance of what was free and what had to be paid for slipped firmly in the direction of the buyer. Desperation set in for some companies and the drive was all about revenues to keep the company on life support. For some, this was still not enough.

Promotion is not only to generate interest and to find new clients but also to make sure you stay current with your existing customers and build stronger relationships with them.

Effectively promoting a company and its products or services requires a series of regular and ongoing engagements across potentially multiple platforms using different types of content based on the relationship with the client and the stage at which you/they are in the buying or customer life cycle. This is known as the Content Marketing Matrix.

When we think of Place, our thoughts perhaps turn to a shop or an office, a physical place to trade from. But Place is more than that it is the countries and territories in which you operate, it is our physical as well as virtual place or presence also.

Understanding your customer base and how best to serve them and, indeed, whether you want to serve them. The richest retailer in the world, until recently, had no shops. The world’s most brand loyal technology company sells mainly through its own brand dedicated shops. But that does not mean change cannot happen or you get it right the first time, indeed often change can occur many years later.

Harrods, arguably the world’s most famous shop, has stood alone in a part of West London since 1849. In recent times, it has opened stores at some UK airports. Now it is expanding with outlet stores, international airports, and other shops as well as working hard on its online presence. It was not that it took 150+ years to realize it had to change, more that it took until then for the owners to want to do that and the market conditions for it to work.

Place is, as we have shown, where you trade from. It is also where you trade to. Deciding to go into a market is as much about market opportunity as it is cost of entry and competitive situation.

In 2020, after 10 years of trying, Harley Davidson finally pulled out of the Indian market. The world’s largest motorcycle market did not offer enough of a return for the iconic brand. It closed its factory and laid off all its staff. Ten years was perhaps long enough to give it a go. Whether the brand was right for that market is questionable based on the competition and the average alternative cost but at least they tried. For Harley Davidson, the product was great, the market potential was huge but it just was not the right marketplace for them to be.

Figure 4.2 The Marketing Mix (7 Ps)

In the 1980s, the 4 Ps, the Marketing Mix, became the 7 Ps. We added People, Process, and Physical evidence, see Figure 4.2.

Let us be clear. It is the People who make the product, it is the People who deliver the product, it is the People who sell the product, and it is other People who supply the parts, support your business and other People that buy your product. People are, therefore, more than a little important to your business.

In an organization, there are productive and less productive people and, in complex assembly or manufacturing companies’ productivity is only achieved at the rate of the lowest performing team/division/department. In absolute terms, therefore, productivity is often seen as relatively fixed but must be included in the People element, or perhaps we should add another “P.”

The People and Processes influence how productive you can be in times of change. The ability to adapt and change, the ability to increase the quality or quantity of output, the ability to adapt to new trends, new markets, changing demand. These are all measures of the productivity of a company. In short, how much you can take an input, such as a change in market conditions, and adapt to it.

Good salespeople, good managers, indeed anyone in a business who is good at their job is usually an asset to the company. For those facing the customer and those responsible for making sure the right message is well delivered then indeed People form a vital part of the Marketing Mix.

People deliver the entire customer experience. Companies that pride themselves on high Net Promoter Scores (NPS) often see their success because of their wider team, not just those dealing directly with the customer.

NPS is a tool to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction. According to Satmetrix “NPS^®, measures customer experience and predicts business growth. This proven metric, based on years of research, transformed the business world. Today, it provides the core measurement for leading customer experience management programs.”

NPS is the difference between the percentage of Promoters (people who will positively promote your product or company) and Detractors (people who will promote you in a negative way). For example, if 25 percent of your customers would positively promote your product or service or company, 55 percent of people are neither avidly for or against (“Passive”), and 20 percent are Detractors, the NPS will be +5. With a maximum of 10, any high value positive number is particularly good.

For any company to thrive, particularly one that is growing or one that has scale, good, efficient processes are vital. They enable the company to operate efficiently. They remove some of the cost. And they also enable you to respond quickly to changes within the customer demand, or potentially what the competition is doing.

Processes allow the company to better respond to changing customer demands or needs, to react where there are challenges and opportunities and to ensure greater efficiency and, therefore, better serve the customer.

In marketing, Processes allow us to stay more in tune with the customer and allow the customer to work with us, the supplier in a way that is familiar to them. Perhaps more a hygiene factor than a true marketing element in that regard but, nevertheless, very important in our customer relationship.

The last of the 7 Ps is Physical evidence. The Physical element of the 7 Ps represents the environment where the customer experiences the supplier. This could be a shop or restaurant, perhaps even the delivery truck and way the parcel is left by your door.

Physical evidence is also about the brochures you leave behind, the business cards, staff uniforms and everything that has your brand, your image, or a physical representation of your company. Ironically for many companies nowadays Physical evidence is online and hardly physical at all. Not so much the online shop rather how you feel when you interact online.

The Physical side of the Marketing Mix explains why companies spend significantly to reduce the number of clicks for a checkout, look at layout and color palettes and, for the shop, hotel, restaurant, and so on why huge sums are spent on décor and why consistency of branding matter for multiple outlets, for marketing and sales material and why the best delivery companies pride themselves in clean vehicles and smart uniforms.

Today the 7 Ps may no longer be enough. This century has seen a seismic shift in our collective values. As the workforce changes and evolves this will only continue to evolve. For example, in Africa the number of people below 18 years of age is now greater than the entire rest of the population.

I would like to add two more to the Marketing Mix: Partnership and Planet and have demonstrated this in Figure 4.3.

In a world that is facing the challenges we have today we absolutely must consider Planet as an element of the Marketing Mix.

For most of us today we are acutely aware of the environmental impact we have on the planet and the impact of globalization. But it is not just complex and long supply chains that we need to consider. Packaging, for example, should be considered as should, potentially, the environmental impact of the company’s suppliers and even its resellers and distributors.

Factoring in the environmental cost could impact quality and price. However, it also stimulates innovation, as we have seen most recently in the automotive industry. Where there is an additional cost, this may be passed onto consumers who are willing to pay more for products that are sourced in what they consider more ethical or less environmentally impactful ways.

Figure 4.3 The Marketing Mix (9 Ps)

Taking this message to the consumer can add value to the company and could increase margins if done well.

Many companies are becoming more “eco-friendly” but doing so quietly as part of their social responsibility programs. While they may not directly use this for their marketing, it does have an impact overall and may form part of a more subtle and wider message about the company.

Often referred to as Green Marketing, products with sustainable attributes have been taking a larger share of sales. In the United States, this went from 19.7 percent in 2014 to 22.3 percent in 2017 and is still growing. Even though less than 20 percent of U.S. citizens consider themselves committed to environmental change.

That the environment is now recognized as a part of the Marketing Mix was first demonstrated in an article by environmentalist Jay Westerveld, back in 1986. At the time he was staying in a hotel where a sign in the bathroom encouraged him to reuse towels, to reduce the environmental impact of repeated washing. Westerveld considered the hotel’s motives to be more about reducing cost (there was no discount for recycling towels in this way) and less about caring for the environment.

While consumers are becoming more environmentally aware, the drive for Green Marketing will continue. Greenwashing may not go away but perhaps becomes more difficult to hide.

Companies do not sit in a vacuum. Traditionally they would rely on suppliers and perhaps distributors. Today’s modern companies will typically have an array of suppliers, multiple outlets, direct or otherwise and other partners deeply involved in their supply chain.

Partnerships should be added to the Marketing Mix not just because they have a direct influence on other elements of your company performance and sales/marketing capability but because they also directly reflect on the quality of your product and, very often, the values and standards of your company. Sourcing the best raw materials has an impact on the finished product and may even be something you want to promote, for example where you source your coffee beans and under what type of contract, for example, Fairtrade.

Partnerships are also reflected in your supply chain, perhaps the final leg delivery or even indirect sales agents and companies. If your delivery agent is underperforming or you have a rogue indirect sales channel, this will all directly impact on the company regardless that it is not the company itself. Similarly, being associated with the right Partners can have significant benefits in terms of your brand value or the overall performance of the business operations.

The Marketing Mix has evolved since it was first proposed and will, no doubt, continue to evolve, as all good models should (see Figure 4.4). Whether your preference is for 4 Ps, 7 Ps, or now 9 Ps perhaps reflects on the organization, your products, and markets as much as it does your own preference. However, in whatever form you choose, the Marketing Mix is a vital part of understanding any company’s marketing strategy.

Figure 4.4 Evolution of the Marketing Mix

Content Marketing

Content Marketing aims to entertain, inspire, educate, and convince people to buy your product or service. In the pandemic that started in 2020, there was an upsurge in Content Marketing as companies went online to promote their goods and services as they had never done before, and social media and online marketing became a very noisy place. To stand out companies moved away from, or added to, their direct marketing messages with a range of new and original content.

The Content Marketing Matrix (see Figures 4.5 and 4.6) is an effective way to explain the various elements that make up Content Marketing. Not all the individual elements you may want to consider and for the simplest of products and sales providing rich content may be difficult anyway.

In terms of the buying cycle of customers typically the journey would start on the left-hand side of the matrix, where we Entertain them and educate them. We may do these at different times and, of course, in different ways, but we can also sometimes combine the two. A simple podcast or video interview with a subject matter expert can be both informative and entertaining.

Sponsoring a sports team is a great way to engage potential customers of the future. It can also underpin company values and engage the customer in ways more than entertainment alone. M&M’s sponsorship of Nascar certainly creates interest with, not just the branding, but the livery itself. It gets potential customers interested in its product. Some industries and customer types work better for this type of advertising. Visa’s involvement with the International Paralympic Committee, by comparison, is much less visible but says more about their company values than M&M’s sponsorship package.

We want to entertain the potential customer so they like us and so we can build a rapport with them, usually through social media or advertising. The Coca Cola Christmas truck for example is, to many children entertaining as it signals Christmas is not far away. It is of course brand promotion in its most basic form too.

If we simply entertain our potential clients but do not educate them the journey to a successful sale becomes harder. In complex sales, there is usually a process where, as we progress through the sales pursuit, the amount of detail and the format or style of the content changes also. For example, a simple infographic is useful at the start of the education process, but later customers may need fact sheets or product sheets and white papers.

Figure 4.5 The Content Marketing Matrix

Once we have entertained our potential client, it can become difficult to keep them entertained. New and original content is often needed. We may also want to help them make the right buying decision by entertaining them with knowledge about other buyers, celebrities, reviews, and endorsements.

Not every element of the Content Marketing Matrix needs to be covered. Game-playing for a funeral company or care home might not be the right approach and for both these Entertainment may be low on the list of priorities. Similarly, interactive demos and webinars may not be required if you are selling domestic bathroom furniture.

Figure 4.6 The Content Marketing Matrix key

Having a strategy for effective Content Marketing is important as the entire estate of all these elements need to work together, and support each other in their messaging, brand identity, and style. They do not all need to look the same but there must be a logical progression from one to another, particularly where they are close neighbors on the chart as shown previously.

According to the Content Marketing Institute: Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Some of the best products have failed because they were beaten by good marketing.

A great restaurant does not just need good food and a great chef, it needs good marketing and promotion, good customer reviews and referrals, and needs to provide the right atmosphere for their clientele. Even the menu style can affect what people think of the restaurant. Too busy and too much detail and it can be off-putting, not enough choice and the same result. A simple booking process or application, celebrity endorsements and interviews in the press of the chef or owner will all help. Photos of all the staff fundraising or promoting seasonal specials. All of these are elements of Content Marketing. A restaurant serving better food locally, by not doing any of the above will most likely fail by comparison.

Content Marketing must be targeted directly at the buyer. A brochure showing a house for sale must promote the house in the best way and promote the best features, whether that is the house itself, location, or local amenities. In such an example, a small starter home will have a different focus to an apartment in a retirement block.

This is not merely understanding what your customer wants but, how your customer thinks. What problem they are trying to solve, even if they do not yet know they have a problem! Using the same tone and language that your customer would use and presenting the content in a way they expect to see. A brochure for a law firm is going to be different to that for a skateboard manufacturer.

Having identified our typical customer or customers we should next focus on the type and level of information they need. How-to videos for completing a kickflip or rail-slide may be better suited to a skateboard purchaser than 20 pages of closely worded text with no graphics.

Once we know what type of content then it is a matter of matching the style to the method. If we do want to produce a podcast, then what should it be like. If we want to do live streaming then audio only or video as well? The message and the delivery mechanism are one thing but also the content and style another.

In Content Marketing, the right level of quality content matters more than everything else. It needs to be at a level that works for where the customer is in the buying journey and at a level where they want to read, not feel they must slog through to the end. A glossy brochure at the start of the buying journey will give way to something more detailed later perhaps. An endorsement video at the beginning may lead through to customer reviews and independent reports. Product sheets may lead on to white papers, and so-on.

Amidst all this we need to consider how podcasts and livestream audio works as well. While YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine it does not mean that people get all their information from your website, glossy brochures, phone calls, and videos. Business content podcasts before 2020 were experiencing a 20 percent annual growth rate and from 2020 that accelerated again.

Podcasts are not just the mainstay of smartphones or computers. The increasing use of smart speakers in the home and, as we work more from home, as a business tool more than just a Q&A and music device, has changed how they are used. Because of its simple hands free voice activated search, it becomes easier for researchers and potential customers to ask smart speakers for a list of reviews or to listen to a podcast on a particular subject or product. The move to voice-activated search has already begun and will only accelerate and therefore, it needs to be incorporated into your Content Marketing strategy.

The most powerful part of Content Marketing is to add value. The average television viewer today often prefers to watch something later than originally broadcast. That allows the viewer to skip through adverts. Advertising slots on television or radio add little value to the viewer. Adverts may be useful as a direct promotional blunt instrument but the fact most of us skip past them demonstrates how little real value they may now actually add.

In 2014, the Lego Movie was released and grossed $468 million. At the same time Lego introduced 20 new Lego sets from the film. Lego was already a fast-growing company but, in 2014 became the world’s largest toy manufacturer. How much of the sales were down to the movie and how much due to the continued growth of the company is not possible to know. However, the Lego Movie certainly helped, and people even paid for the privilege of watching a 1-hour 41-minute advertisement of Lego’s products.

Some websites are fun to watch with plenty of videos, whether it is sports, or cooking, travel, or automotive. All of them have a purpose to sell products and services and many have huge followings of people who come for the content and do not mind they are being sold to.

Adding value is not just about watching videos, or films. Giving information away for free to entice people to want to know more. Educating them and making them better informed in their buying decision, hopefully to your advantage. Providing rich content so the buyer does not need to find it elsewhere. Regular updates and newsletters so the buyers have not just the best information but also the most up to date.

Content is the foundation of almost every online customer interaction. Whether it is the initial search where they are looking for basic information, or a more detailed search. Whether the customer is searching for reviews or looking for some simple graphics to explain.

Content marketing helps a company maximize every customer interaction opportunity, at every stage in the buying process and in whatever format the buyer wants. Each element of content needs to work to get your message across as consistently and completely as the buyer would wish to consume it at that time.

Content Marketing needs to be developed strategically as a single coherent set of elements. Not an ad-hoc series of individual elements branded together to look and feel the same.

Social Selling

Leads can come at you from websites and through social media in the main. You may receive telephone calls as well as a first inquiry.

In social media, the line between leads and opportunities have been intentionally blurred. The line between what goes before—Followers and Likes—has also been blurred. Not by the social media providers but by those wishing to sell you a service to help you grow your business.

A range of companies and solo workers will promote themselves as having a lead generation system or methodology and will help you get more leads. What they are providing is a paid for service to get more followers. A follower whether a “Like” or a new connection is not a lead. A lead is a company or individual who will buy from you.

Simple product selling is a shorter process than a complex solution sale as we know, so moving from follower or connection to purchase is easier but it still needs to happen. Qualifying these connections into leads is also easier.

If you have a social media shop window or a social media site linked to a website selling something as simple as scented candles, then getting more followers or connections may indeed make them a lead. Whether they become a customer is down to what happens once you have captured their interest.

For more complex sales and in B2B, generating new followers is not a lead but gives you the opportunity to qualify them as a lead and, later potentially sell them something. For example, a sports enthusiast may “Like” Mercedes-Benz F1 but may be far less likely to buy a Formula 1 car. In fact, they may not own a Mercedes-Benz Road car or even plan to purchase one. In fact, buying a team T-shirt may also be off their list. Because those clever people in Brackley have got someone to show interest in their race team does not make me a lead to buy their products or any associated products.

For a company, being present on social media today is highly important. Being consistent in your messaging and providing a showcase to your products and services should matter on both your website and social media. However, getting more followers and connections on social media does not automatically make them a lead. No number of followers has generated a single penny of income. The only people making money from growing social media interest are those who provide the service in growing the following of others.

The more followers you do have on social media, and the more interest shown in your product and service it naturally follows that some will buy. The wider you spread your net and the more noise you make the more likely you are for some success. It also has a compounding effect. As you gather a stronger following, the dialogue between followers generates even greater visibility for your site.

You may need to moderate some of the comments, and in public forums, it can be a full-time job. However, it is important not to sanitize the conversation so much it becomes bland. Differences of opinion and opposing points of view lead to a more engaged audience and done well, allowing the positives of your product or service to rise to the top. Sometimes, allowing controversial views can win you customers but it does need careful management.

Social media can be a good source of leads and customers. It can be a great way to promote your brand and your values, and it can promote and publicize what you do. Leads can be generated from social media campaigns but not every new connection is a lead, they still need to be nurtured to buy and some will never be true sales prospects regardless of how hard you try.

To generate interest in your company or your product or service requires three things in the main, good quality and consistent content, data capture and social media visibility.

Consistency across platforms too. Accepting the restrictions of Twitter versus the content detail on LinkedIn is important to understand as too is the content style on TikTok versus YouTube. You may not want to use all of them, or they are appealing to different demographic groups. Also, you may want to experiment with one platform and not another. While the style of the message may vary, there still needs to be a coherent plan to keep them all together.

Once you have a good website and a consistent social media profile, creating clickable content on social media that generates leads or pulls people to your website should be your next objective. In terms of getting attention, social media is an incredibly busy place and getting busier all the time. You need to stand out.

Your website landing page matters. Too often companies invest in good social media content, have a well-detailed product section but the first impressions on the website lack the effort put into the other parts of marketing. The website needs to be clear, crisp, load quickly, and excite the potential buyer to want to know more.

A website landing page must be easy to read and provide users with a clear way to navigate to sign-up, or more information, or additional social content.

If a landing page involves a form, keep it simple. Each question reduces the chances of someone finishing it. The more sensitive the details, the less likely you are to get them to complete, and do you really need all that information at this stage? Pull down options or pre-filled content also helps speed up the process and improve your chance of a completed form.

According to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team, their Dynamic Ad format pulls a user’s name, picture, and job title across from an advert. Other tools, particularly in the job application process, pull across an entire employment history and other relevant details. According to LinkedIn, adverts that pull across just the name and job title alone gives a 19 percent higher click-through rate and 53 percent higher conversion rate than advertisements without this feature.

If the person visiting your website and form filling cannot see the reason for providing the information, they are less likely to complete it. Make sure the questions have relevance to the customers’ needs.

Other techniques such as discount codes, social media contests, or exclusive content can support the process of data capture. Exclusive content can be in the form of VIP access to an event, online or otherwise, or to more detailed information, or to a more exclusive “club.”

Exclusive content can be paid or free and is referred to as Gated Content. As you complete the data capture to give your potential customer access to gated content, you can also offer customers the chance to opt-in to receiving more news from your company, and immediately add them to your e-mail campaign list.

Various reports exist of the success gated content. Which works best is a mix of the type of customer you are targeting and the nature of the content you want to provide. White papers and webinars may serve business leaders better than front row seats and a chance to meet the band. Or maybe not!

Having Influencers on your side may also benefit your brand or product. However, it needs to be the right influencer in terms of their own values and their market demographic. It is not enough just to go after the one with the biggest following, especially as they are likely also to be more expensive.

Until relatively recently influencers would be seen using a product and mentioning the benefits it gave them without having to explain it was, in effect, an advertisement. Paid for content by the manufacturer to an influencer was difficult to separate from the influencer’s general attitude.

In 2020, despite the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing (CAP Code) and Consumer Protection Regulations (CPRs) as well as the Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, the Advertising Standards Agency and Competitions and Markets Authority felt it necessary to make it clear what were the rules for influencers and product promotion. The law did not change but the increasing presence and impact of influencers meant the regulators felt it sufficiently necessary to make clear the rules.

In some markets and for some products, influencer marketing can reach a bigger audience of targeted prospects quicker than many other methods. It allows you to “borrow” an influencer’s audience and get them to promote your brand. It is also highly targeted.

One thing to remember, not all influencers are A-list celebrities. Having Roger Federer, Thierry Henry, and Tiger Woods promote Gillette razor blades or a George Clooney promoting a Nespresso coffee maker may not be for everyone. Influencers may have local or regional influence or specific demographics.

Choosing the right influencer can have a significant impact on your brand, for good or for bad, it may lead to increased sales but nothing is a guarantee. In 2016, Ariana Renee, an Instagram influencer, with over two million followers created her own T-shirt brand. She had to sell a small number of T-shirts from the first run for the printer to produce more. She failed to hit her first target and sold less than the 36 required. Not all “influencers” actually wield influence.

All leads generated through social media need to be analyzed. Various tools, many free, exist to capture data, so you can see what is working through various channels and what types of campaigns and adverts work best. Known as Social Analytics, these tools also allow you to identify the type of creative and messaging that performs best. Taking that data and producing from it the insight that allows you to tune and improve is critical in the success of social media campaign development.

Having the best written and most informative content may not generate significant interest. Having the best product might, but there are many examples of products that are less than ideal becoming incredibly successful, mainly down to how they achieved social media visibility. Similarly, some great products failed because they did not win over the customers, or the businesses required to make them a success.

Online Reviews were originally the mainstay of social spending, holidays, restaurants, places to visit, and so on. It is now much more common for the reviews to be for all products and services and, very often, the review is more about the customer service, the promptness and simplicity rather than the product at all. However, in large B2B deals online reviews do not always readily apply.

Reviewing comments others have made on their experiences tends to happen early in the buying process. Customers are hardly likely to read a restaurant review when they are already seated at a table. That poses a challenge for the supplier. If a small batch of recent reviews are negative, it becomes a challenge to entice people in to demonstrate the improvements made and return to more favorable reviews.

The other challenge for companies with reviews in the public domain is readers will often look for the lowest ratings rather than the best.

Resetting the bias in favor is possible. Fake reviews and influencer reviews can all help but the companies that provide reviewed data have tools and systems to monitor both the reviewers and the reviewed to spot anomalies or sudden changes in patterns and trends.

For some industries, online reviews are far more important than advertising. When looking at a retirement home for example.

Keeping track of reviews on specialist online review sites and other social media sites can be a large task. However, solutions exist to capture all the relevant review data into a database and analyze it. Some tools even provide an interface to allow the supplier to respond to comments through the information capture application rather than visiting each different website.

Tools used to track multiple review sites can capture all these data and give even greater insight into the type of customer. Identifying the demographics of the biggest complainers versus the biggest supporters or what products have a better score in certain outlets or geographies can all provide useful insight to a company.

It is worth mentioning here that even chatbots can influence your potential customer. A simple inquiry can be dealt with easily and efficiently or can be made difficult depending on how much resource you commit to chatbots. There are Fintechs that have no call centers, that have instead invested heavily in chatbots backed up by real people. What makes their chatbot effective is that it has multiple answers for the same question, just a slight variation on the wording. It also has shorthand, text-speak, and spelling mistakes. The perception for the user is they are messaging with a real person. Despite all the technological advancements and the fact that we accept chatbots, we still like to believe we are exchanging messages with a real person.

Buying Leads

Temptation is often to buy a list as it fills the top of the funnel quickly. Despite the fact lists can be bought that are highly defined based on many parameters, it still poses a challenge in finding the real opportunities among all that initial data.

Buying leads is often a lot less expensive than generating leads through campaigns but there are hurdles from the start. Even if the lead has opted in to receive information from third parties, and we sincerely hope you would not use any other type. They still require nurturing, they require educating, and we still do not know if they are at the right stage in the buying cycle or even have a genuine need.

Whether you are using a list to e-mail companies, or perhaps text message them, or whether the approach is to cold call them, they are still not expecting you to contact them and are likely unaware of who you are, certainly not to any great depth.

Sending e-mails that will get read is challenging. Calling someone unannounced is likely to interrupt their day. However, the two combined with the right e-mail title and some advanced information pre-empting a call is perhaps the best approach for larger opportunities. For large volume, sales perhaps pick both but run them as separate campaigns to see what is most effective.

Buying lists may count against you and turn your e-mail into Spam. That is even if the recipient accepted, they wanted to add their details to a list. Once you are on one spam list, it is likely Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will share that with each other and you soon join a growing list of identified spammers.

Old and redundant e-mail addresses are likely to hit your ratings. Hard-bounces of about 5 percent or more of your e-mails will flag you to the ISPs and will affect your e-mail-sending reputation. It is important, therefore, to keep your e-mail list current and clean and make sure all opt-outs and those not opted in are removed from your lists.

ISPs also look for key words and phrases in the subject line of e-mails, to alert that you may be a potential spammer. Anything that sounds overtly like a promotion or a trigger to action is likely to cause an issue. Avoid “free” or “guarantee” or “just for you” and similar phrases in the e-mail title wherever you can. Tools exist for you to input the body of your e-mail and the titles and for it to be scored or validated for how likely it is to get picked up by spam filters.

Spam filters exist not only at the ISP but also on company servers and can block files with some types of attachments. Though that may not always be the case it may be better to refer the prospective client to a part of your website that has the information or to a research document that reinforces your point.

You must include a simple and easy to use unsubscribe button or link and a physical address in your e-mail footer.

Allowing people the option to unsubscribe is not only important in terms of keeping a clean sheet with ISPs, it is also a legal requirement. Although most recipients’ preference is to keep it simple, often we see companies redirecting the reader to a webpage where a series of questions are asked, or the recipient is asked to opt out of different types of e-mail. One of the worst examples of this is, ironically enough, a well-known e-mail marketing platform!

It is easy to get on a list of identified spammers and much harder to get off it. Over time, a concerted effort to clean up your act will help but it does take time. However, there are tools to help, you can get a score of your online performance as regards spam and take corrective action to improve it.

In the same way that you can be marked out as a Spammer, cold calling people without permission and generating complaints as a result, can also impact your ability to connect with prospective clients. Often referred to as Nuisance Calls or Nuisance Messages.

Fixed line and mobile phone companies keep a list of complaints and nuisance callers. Once a call center or agency or an individual has been identified, by recipients registering a complaint, nuisance calls are flagged to a mobile or barred from a landline, if the recipient has opted into fixed line call barring. Different countries have different approaches for managing fixed line nuisance calls.

Competitive Analysis

Sales pursuits do not sit in isolation. They need to be considered against other pursuits and which ones you should, therefore, commit to doing. They should also be assessed against the competitive offerings such that pursuits where the competition is much stronger than you or has a much better fit, are quickly dismissed.

No player or team in the professional era of any sport goes out not knowing what the opponent(s) have in their arsenal and what their game plan will be. In 1974, George Foreman fought Muhammed Ali in a world heavyweight boxing match. Foreman was the current champion; Ali previously being stripped of all his titles. Foreman was getting odds of 4 to 1 to win. Leading up to the fight, Ali went out of his way to rile Foreman, the latter generally regarded as being the stronger hitter. The fight was known for Ali’s rope-a-dope approach where he spent the entire opening rounds leaning on the ropes and letting Foreman work him over. Brutal though it was Foreman could not break Ali down who soaked up the onslaught. From the fourth round, Foreman was tiring and the strategy Ali had adopted seemed to be working. The fight ended in the eighth round but was won months before when Ali changed his training program, got the right team around him, developed the tactics to win and started to position his competition where he wanted them.

To understand the competitive landscape several tools are available. The most widely known and perhaps easiest to use tool is SWOT—Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.

Not every company needs to undertake a competitive analysis and you do not need to analyze all your competitors or review this at every pursuit. However, competitive analysis does not need to be an ongoing and consistent process but, if you do undertake competitive analysis, it makes sense to periodically check and update, especially when major events happen in the industry, the marketplace or with one of your competitors, or indeed your own company.

Some salespeople are keen to dismiss competitive analysis crib-sheets either because they believed they knew everything about their competitor already or because they felt it not relevant to their role, it was seen more as a marketing function to know the competitors. There is some truth in that, salespeople should be focused on selling their solution, not on the competitors. But, to play to your strengths means also know the competitors’ weaknesses.

Competitor crib-sheets are good tools to use. Often, we see coaches on the side-lines with sheets of paper. We naturally think it is notes for their team, but often it contains notes about the competitor team.

As well as directing your sales message, competitor crib-sheets help salespeople understand what they will promote as their best suit. It allows you to channel your efforts in directing your client to the areas where your biggest competitor is weakest. Sometimes it is not just about playing to your strengths, it is about playing up against their weaknesses.

Not all competitors sell directly, some may have resellers and partner channels. A reseller may have several competing products they are selling so understanding which one they will go with may be difficult and, in the early stages it may not be apparent even to them. Understanding also who they partner with versus who you partner with matters if it is a complex sale involving critical third parties.

There is a significant amount to understand about competitive analysis, not least of which is that it begins with understanding the customer. Developing customer personas, or avatars, is the first stage. However, as we are concerned with sales in this book, let us focus on what competitive analysis offers the sales pursuit.

When in the sales pursuit, it matters that we know the competition, who they are, what is their approach, how well they are progressing. Often this is hard to ascertain but simply asking the potential customer can provide surprising results. If that does not work, try business social media, such as LinkedIn and see who from your target client and your competitors are now connected. Check the visitors log at reception when visiting your client.

If you know your contact is conducting a series of meetings back-to-back, turn up 20 minutes early, apologies that your earlier meeting finished on time and there was no traffic. Work from reception on your laptop. See who leaves while you are waiting. Remember, on the way out, you may get the same treatment so make sure you have a fantastic sign-off and good rapport as you do, standing in reception, your competitor may be watching.

Check out the cars in the car park. Not everyone drives a sign-written panel van and, perhaps, taking photographs of vehicle registration plates may be a little extreme. There may be clues from the cars parked in the visitors’ bays such as brochures or a car that looks familiar from a previous opportunity. Having left the building, get in the car, and spend the next 10 minutes making calls and see who arrives to park their car or walks across to the building entrance.

No professional sports team would ever enter the arena without coaches advising them, having spent hours watching videos and reading endless amounts of statistical analysis. In many respects, this has spoiled professional sport. The opportunity for individuality and instant creative brilliance is gone. Now, there are no surprises, and you already know what the opposition will do and how they will play, long before you start getting changed.

Marketing Is the First Stage in Sales

Marketing is set as a separate department from Sales and very often has a different head of department, certainly in larger companies. But, with the advent of role titles such as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), the two are beginning to share a common form in some organizations. Sometimes seen as competitive rather than complimentary, Marketing and Sales should work together to form what is the first part of the Sales Funnel.

Figure 4.7 The changing influence between Marketing and Sales

Depending on how your organization is structured and the complexity of the solution marketing may reach farther into and further down the Sales Funnel.

Traditionally, marketing used to be focused on raising awareness and stimulating interest for the sales teams to engage with unqualified leads and turn them into prospects. This is now just as likely to be done within the marketing team in some organizations.

The Sales Funnel is an oversimplification of the entire process and takes no account for any of the complex processes the buyer may go through or that the seller is required to perform. It is also linear and does not allow for upsell, cross-sell, or change of plans. However, it does offer both sides—customer and seller—a simple process to follow.

In some organizations, it is now for marketing to consider if it wants to continue with a sales opportunity at the early stages. Taking the decision away from the sales team that hold the target are more directly compensated as a result could offer a more pragmatic view or, as mathematical statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb states: “When I don’t have skin in the game, I am usually dumb.”

In some organizations, marketing goes even beyond that, offering the prospective customer more than the qualification stages and engaging in open dialogue about their needs, their intent to buy, and the process the client is to follow. This has the advantage that the sales team get hard-qualified leads to close but, as a customer, it does take a little getting used to.

The marketing team, potentially with telesales now included, has spent time building a good rapport with the prospect and worked hard at qualifying them and getting a good understanding of their needs. Now that must be handed over to a salesperson to close out the remainder of the process and win the deal. Aside from the fact, the prospect may feel he has a good relationship—people buy from people—and now that changes late in the process, no matter how efficient the process, there will always be something missed in the handover.

For an almost exclusively online process where the last stage is perhaps a video call or a meeting then this process can be effective and does offer an efficient way to win business. However, for other solution sales or for building a lasting client relationship, it may not offer the best approach.

There are no rules on where you draw the line between Marketing and Sales, indeed perhaps there is no line as such, more a blurring in the middle. However, that these two integral parts work together efficiently to deliver the best results is vital to the success of sales. Salespeople should be actively interested in what Marketing is doing.

Key Takeaways

The Marketing Mix is where all Marketing begins. It provides an effective structure to all the elements related to the product or service. It allows the supplier to evaluate their product against the competition and against what the market needs. It also helps the company more broadly understand what efforts and changes it needs to make in order to be more successful.

I would argue Plant and Partnership are now sufficiently important that they deserve a seat at the table and the 9 Ps should be the norm for any Marketing Mix.

How the Marketing Mix elements are perceived by the company selling and how they are seen by the client may vary and the resulting gap analysis provide useful insight into product development, staff training, pricing, and much more besides.

Simply understanding the Marketing Mix and being able to compare is not an output. Having better understanding is not, of itself, something to win more business. To do that requires a lot more.

Digital Marketing is a term that goes back to the 1990s. In 1993, the first clickable banner went live online. Today we take for granted the amount of online content. However, not all online marketing appeals to all buyers and not all online marketing serves the same requirements for the reader/viewer/listener or for the marketing department.

Online marketing needs to provide a range from simple soundbites and images through to detailed content and facts. It needs to educate and entertain, and it needs to excite and win over the hearts and the minds of the buyer. The Marketing department in any large business needs to field players with a range of skills to move the ball from one end to the other and score the winning goal. The Content Marketing Matrix is the field of play and each element is one of the team of players. They may not all be on the field at the same time, but they need to be there when needed.

The Content used and deployed by Marketing needs to reflect the customer needs and the competitive landscape. It needs to drive the start of the sales pursuit and stimulate the first shoots of interest. But Marketing is no longer a one department task. As with Sales, Marketing too is now a team sport. Social selling means everyone in a business can have a social media account and promote their company’s products. Similarly, their personal profile can be used to underpin or undermine the values of the very company that employs them.

Social selling can be a huge undertaking for some companies, particularly in the business to consumer world of high demand products and services. As a result of this high profile, it requires close management and not just in-house. Employees, past–employees, and disgruntled customers can all be an issue on social media. However, done well social media can become a sales tool and have a major impact too.

Keeping customers happy and engaged is now so important to companies that the task of looking after customers postsale and during or post implementation is no longer left just to the implementation team of the Account Manager. Marketing is now required to directly engage and work with happy and disgruntled customers alike. To turn challenges into opportunities and to turn positive feedback into marketing messages.