And it started again like every year! In the media it would be a good chestnut tree, like the start of the school year. The last quadrimester of the year is the key moment to define your marketing / sales budget and the investments to be made in digital . And this is the usual puzzle for most marketing and sales executives .
I admit that I was still tempted to take my article from
last year and update it, especially since the points raised are more topical
than ever. But in reality, with the yellow vests, strikes then confinement and
new purchasing habits (see the Mc Kinsey report), the digitalization process is
still accelerating (finally?) . While more than 80% of consumers inquire online
before buying (89% in B2B), and that locally nearly 600,000 Internet users do
the same, companies are nevertheless still slow to transform their organization
to face these new developments. challenges.
In addition, it remains increasingly difficult to prove the ROI of marketing campaigns and to meet the new expectations of customers and prospects who are techsupportreviews now looking for an irreproachable customer experience and a responsible sense of their consumption.
In this context, how to arbitrate your budgets and finally
invest where your customers and prospects are? How do you make the right
choices while maximizing your return on investment and continuing to grow your
business?
Finally whistle the end of the match!
How many regrets do you say to yourself ...
" If I had known I would have put more in the
'digital', and less in the radio or the display" . Or "if I had known
I would have invested more in my e-commerce site, in logistics, in click and
collect" ...
As in every crisis, "when the wind of change rises,
some build walls, others mills (Chinese proverb)".
Because despite the prevailing slump, there are companies
that have taken advantage of the situation, both last year (yellow vests) and
this year with COVID (yes we say LA Covid), and I am not necessarily talking
about Amazon.
Are you finally going to invest enough in a channel that has
become essential?
To begin with, assess without delay, internally, with your
agency and / or media, all the results of your media and non-media
communication campaigns :
• all
insertions in the daily press and magazines
• the
advertisements that you may have broadcast before the blockbuster in the cinema
• the
"sacrosanct" prospectus, flyers and other leaflets, etc.
• poster
campaigns
• TV
advertising
• radio
spots campaigns
• non-media:
street marketing, POS-type in-store actions (point-of-sale advertising) with a
facilitator and BR (discount voucher), trade marketing, and other events
(rental of the stand in the shopping arcade, the evening partners, the
inauguration, the anniversary and the last conference for the launch of your
new website)
• digital
marketing: emailings, Facebook ads, Google ads, RTB (real time bidding or Real
Time Bidding), programmatic purchasing, display (banners), “search” (sponsored
links) as well as the number of prospects generated by your website, the state
of SEO
Discover HERE the checklist of the 20 marketing actions to
be carried out
Be careful , this is not about stopping what works for your
business or squandering your budget on Google Ads and Facebook to satisfy the
ego of your boss who sees in each like, a customer.
Beyond the communication habits established for years (and
which have worked well in the past but are now obsolete), the excel N-1 table
that you will take and modify slightly, or the opinion of internal experts ”On
marketing your company, ask yourself the following questions :
• What is
it that definitely generates business and growth for my company ?
• What are
the real expectations of my prospects and customers?
• What
levers should I use to develop my turnover ?
• And above
all, which ones should you stop? On this last question, it is very simple: put
out of play what does not work and / or that you do not measure. Even if you do
it out of habit or because the salesperson is sympathetic to you.
Also try to determine your customer acquisition cost (CAC)
by adding other marketing costs (brochures, catalogs, home show reported, etc.)
and the various levers to reduce it .
With this job done, the arbitration should be much clearer.
And the tactical savings on the one hand will serve you, with a constant
budget, to invest elsewhere in the long term.
Bet on the human.
You will be able to “scratch” the additional budget for
training (HR) and with the CIO (IT).
By proposing to align the objectives of your marketing and
sales teams and by working on the same
tools, you will both gain in efficiency
and productivity and better prove the ROI of your actions .
Thus, marketers who had access to automated tools must also
pass them on to sellers, especially in so-called “strategic key account
hunting” or used -version account-based marketing (ABM) approaches .
So invest in training marketers (SEO, marketing automation,
content marketing ...) but also your salespeople (negotiation, social selling )
and in their tool (sales automation, mobile CRM, etc.).
And do not think that it is expensive and reserved for an
elite or certain large companies. It is a received idea.
There are both free quality online training and powerful
tools .
The premium now goes to agile companies, only
customer-centric (for real eh, not in the powerpoint presentations of CODIR)
and no longer to large, heavy and difficult to transform.
A “client-centric” challenger who innovates commercially ,
or even an outsider with excellent employees, an adequate digital strategy and the right
tools , can quickly take market share and break your pawn. The examples are
legion
... But also on the right tools
This so-called investment budget (and therefore
depreciation), it is also at your CFO that it is necessary to go to seek it.
To equip yourself with a sales and marketing platform
(software) (compliant with the RGDP if you are late on this point) and finally
centralize the data of your customer file scattered between the account ',
Alain's laptop and the Francis' email box, don't include it in your marketing
budget.
Try to make your CODIR understand (see below) that knowing
your customers and offering them the best possible experience is not an option,
but a major issue that goes beyond the simple considerations of the marketing
or sales department.
How will you do when GAFA, AirbnB, Netflix, Booking and
others know better than you, your own customers?
To avoid this, 4 interconnected tools ( or a platform like
the one we use and deploy with our customers ) seem essential to us:
• An
effective site and this is not an option either: your website must be your best
business contributor and the nerve
center of your strategy. Bet your budget on this and you will for sure grow
your business. Even if it is not yet e-commerce with click and collect, it is
unthinkable that you do not benefit from the generation of qualified leads for
your sales teams.
• A chatbot
on your Messenger account and your site to improve the customer experience and
respond quickly to all requests without mobilizing your precious resources.
• Marketing
automation software to sends the right message by email to the right people, at
the right time and according to a specific context, the sales cycle for
example.
• A
customer file to optimize and organize the business : a real customer
relationship management tool, also called CRM , to finally centralize your
sales and marketing data , and approach customer knowledge differently. The
more you know your customer, the more you are able to offer a “frictionless”
customer experience. The more you can sell, the better you can build loyalty.
Should I specify the time saved with a CRM compared to the
many and time- consuming extractions you have to perform each week? And what
about dashboards, KPIs, not always up-to-date reports , searches "in the
database" and the management of opt-in and opt-out, the GDPR and inherent
errors.
Some marketing departments have told me to spend between 2H
and 14H / day (ie two full-time equivalents) to do these tasks "by
hand" because current tools do not allow such research and even less to
automate it.
Finally, do not forget that your CFO has software, the DSI
also, ditto for accounting and pay. Similar to the workshop and the depot. And
you in marketing and sales, with what tools do you work? (the Microsoft Office
suite does not count!). Use the right tool for your job, don't be like Seraph.
Make your superiors aware of “customer” issues
The hardest part to free up funds according to what many
prospects and clients tell me.
In our business, we have the chance to interact with
marketing managers and sales managers from several industries and sectors of
activity, some of whom are also very concerned by changes in customer
purchasing behavior .
Like studies (half of the bosses in 2017 thought they would
not be impacted by the digital revolution within 5 years according to Les Echos
), some are far from thinking that digital transformation is a major issue for
the sustainability of their business. And more surprisingly, even after
confinement, there is still reluctance to invest! Probably less than 3 years
ago, but still, they remain.
When we think of digital, we still too often believe,
unfortunately, that it is a problem of the “computer scientists” or the communications
officer who shares posts on Facebook, sends two emails per month and buys a few
keywords on Google Ads. However, this is everyone's problem. Because it
concerns above all the customer!
Local focus
We still don't believe internally? Use these
"local" numbers to convince :
• 593,000
Internet users in Reunion, including 8 out of 10 who buy online and…
• 500,000
Facebook accounts
• 120,000
on Linkedin
• 170,000
on Instagram
Remember that interactions with your customers and prospects
have never been so numerous, moreover on completely different channels and
almost always simultaneously. You guessed it, first of all: it's on the
internet! This is where selling starts nowadays: by searching for information
80% of the time in B2C and 89% in B2B.
If there's only one reason why you need to invest in a real
digital strategy (so not just a few tactical moves), it's this: your customers
and prospects are online and that's where the journey takes place. of the
purchase . This is one of the essential reasons. And that's the one you need to
sell internally.
During the conferences that I host ( discover a video replay
of one of them here ), I also put forward this argument which could be useful
to you: ask your leaders if they feel connected. It's a safe bet that they use
whatsapp, waze, airbnb, booking, netflix, amazon, wish, leboncoin and so on….
And ask them the question: "And what does our company offer?"
Present an ambitious budget
Of course, the confinement will have left traces and
sometimes unspent budget. A word of advice, prepare an ambitious entry budget.
Present an ideal strategic plan, one that provides the foundation for your 24-
or 36-month strategy. You'll always be in time to cut a few dollars off a
tactical campaign, downsize on advertising, or stop some unprofitable actions
along the way.
On the other hand, equipping yourself, improving your sales
and marketing alignment , reviewing processes with a view to always better
serving your customers today and tomorrow are strategic actions that you must
declare non-negotiable to your CODIR.
.