3 Reasons Why You Lost 43 billion and 6 Ways to Get it Back in 2016

Transcription

1 3 Reasons Why You Lost 43 billion and 6 Ways to Get it Back in 2016

2 According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, UK businesses with a turnover between 5m and 50m lost 43bn in Gross Profit in This happened for three reasons: Reason 1 Insufficient Marketing Investment The CEBR report makes it clear that the number one reason why UK companies lost this Gross Profit was because they did not make sufficient investment in marketing. This was a result of doubts over the efficacy of marketing, bad experiences with marketing agencies and a general lack of understanding of the marketing options at their disposal. Reason 2 Poorly Integrated Marketing Strategies Those companies that did invest in marketing often lacked the knowledge or expertise to integrate the different elements of the marketing mix and were often confused by the complexity of digital marketing. Reason 3 Cognitive Bias When faced with difficult decisions that involve processing new or complex information, the human brain is biased to take shortcuts. This means that much of our behaviour will be habit driven and past experiences will determine future choices. It is no surprise, therefore, that past failures and rapidly evolving marketing platforms should lead to underinvestment in marketing. 2

3 Here are 6 marketing trends that high growth companies will be utilising in 2016: Trend 1 Have a Defined Route to Growth Over the last 17 years Cognition has enabled many UK businesses to increase sales and grow revenue in excess of any forecasts that could be made on the basis of past performance or aggregated sector growth. We have achieved this through our evidence-based Route to Growth, which creates integrated, evidence-based marketing strategies. Trend 2 Fish With a Harpoon One of the major trends in B2B marketing over the past few years has been the rise of Account Based Marketing (ABM). ABM is a highly targeted approach where highly relevant and personalised content is marketed to a single customer or prospect. It s like fishing with a harpoon, whereas traditional demand generation can be described as trawling. The RoI is staggering. According to the ITSMA, ABM delivers the highest Return on Investment of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic. Period. Trend 3 Automate Your Marketing 80% of sales come from between the 5th and 11th contact. Automating activities such as eshots, CRM, Search Engine Optimisation, social media, content management, lead scoring and analytics, makes this journey from prospect to customer possible. The commercial effectiveness of marketing automation is dramatic. Research from the Aberdeen Group shows that companies using marketing automation increase their conversion rates by 50%. 3

4 Trend 4 Create Quality Content Content has quality because your customers tell you. Modern Marketing drives engagement on the basis of the ever-increasing demand for content that is timely and relevant to your customers. Again, the statistics are very powerful with content-created leads costing 62% less and business that create quality content being 13 times more likely to get a good RoI. Trend 5 Become a Member of the Digirati Digitally mature companies, known collectively as the Digirati, are able to navigate their way through the myriad digital platforms and utilise them to great commercial effect. For instance, research from TNS shows a strong correlation between social media spend and YoY growth with 82% of businesses saying it is effective for generating high quality leads. By 2020, according to research done by Forrester, 1 in 5 sales will come from smartphones, a fact which explains the resurgence of marketing wit Experian finding that B2B eshots had increased 40% in Trend 6 Trust Evidence Above all, trust evidence over gut feel. In psychology, the brain is divided into two systems, known rather unimaginatively as System 1 and System 2. System 1 is about making fast decisions driven by learned habits that we call intuition. System 2 is rational, methodical and uses evidence to evaluate and process information. The secret to recovering your share of the missing 43bn is learning to use System 2 to evaluate the decisions you make. This is the Cognition Route to Growth based on integrated marketing that is accountable, sustainable, effective and proven. 4

5 About Cognition For 17 years, we ve enabled businesses to generate positive, quantifiable change in sales volumes and profit margins across multiple sectors. The marketing we deliver is integrated across all areas including Digital, Social, PR, Content and Creative. We re one of the only UK agencies to have a dedicated Research, Data and Analytics Department, which acts as the foundation of everything we do. It allows us to gather and utilise marketing data for our clients, which makes every element of their marketing as commercially effective as the world s biggest companies, but at a fraction of the cost. Last year, our clients grew by three times the average (source: Grant Thornton) Our Route to Growth process is evidencebased, effective and has a proven track record over the last 17 years of enabling our clients to outperform their competitors. Our methods work and they can work for you. Contact Paul Houston, Director, on or paul.h@cognitionagency.co.uk 5