Sarah Bentley, Managing Director, FLUME Marketing and Amy Poole, Director, FLUME Marketing provide insight into FLUME, the importance of a marketing strategy and the latest trends.
It’s important to have an integrated approach to a marketing strategy, combining and interweaving digital marketing with events, advertising, and pipeline generation. In most instances, clients are interested in attaining direct dialogue with their target audience which we do through this integrated approach under the Account-Based Marketing Umbrella.
When we first sit down with clients, we always work backwards from their targets because that is the main thing that is always on the line with the budget sizes. We need to make sure that we understand exactly what they need to deliver, where the audiences they need to reach are located and which activities are going to be most suitable for them. No company is the same as the next.
One of the main trends over the last 12 months is the regeneration of sales teams. A lot of the pipeline has been either exhausted or not nurtured properly because there haven’t been the means to build up the consistency of the conversion rates for the sales team. So, you need to build awareness but also build on top of the funnel pipeline to trickle down and have more nurture to come through to sales teams.
Since the pandemic, we have seen that persona-based marketing is key, if not more relevant now than ever before. Companies want to be able to speak directly to their audience in a very personalised way. A lot of the ABM marketing that we now do is more human-to-human so you’re aiming to reach the individual to understand how they are communicating with the marketing material.
The world has changed and what worked pre-COVID will not necessarily work now. Look at the audience that you are aiming to reach and make sure that when you are designing your marketing strategy that it is personalised.
It isn’t a one size fits all anymore. You need to make sure that you’re always working backwards from those targets, to make them more achievable, but also work closely with the sales teams to make sure that their targets are met at the same time and you’re generating the leads that they’re looking for.
Whilst these days marketing departments are targeted on the number of leads generated, it is important for companies to see your brand in the market. Stand-alone lead generation campaigns will result in a poorer ROI unless they are supported by other marketing activities in an integrated approach, such as brand awareness campaigns, events and other forms of marketing activity.