Business Insights

Businesses with properly aligned sales and marketing teams sell far more often at a higher profit margin. When our part-time Marketing Directors arrive in a new business, they’re often asked for marketing strategies to increase sales. As they look into improving the sales process, though, they actually find that the relationship between sales and marketing isn’t as it should be.

Many B2B businesses place more emphasis on lead generation than customer retention. This is often a mistake. Not only is it cheaper to retain customers than attempt to win new ones, it also takes less time and effort. In fact, it can cost 5 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. Furthermore, as loyal customers repeatedly purchase your products and services they offer greater lifetime value, which in turn boosts revenue.

How do you measure brand awareness? Many businesses treat brand awareness as something intangible; a metric without a rubric. They know it’s important to be a recognised name, trusted by customers and respected by competitors, but establishing just how trusted and respected they are remains something of a mystery.  Digital marketing specialists don’t always help: they see success on their own terms rather than on those of the business as a whole. If they’ve made a video and it’s had a million views, a thousand shares, and half a dozen influencers have talked about it on LinkedIn, they’re happy. But you’re not just making content for the sake of putting it out there. It’s there to do some good for your business: to make some demonstrable impact on the bottom line.

Marketing innovates, tests and refines ideas that increase your business’ presence in the marketplace, making more prospective customers more aware of who you are and what you do. It also brings customers into your business, guides them to the point where they’re willing to spend money, and keeps them there and spending for as long as possible. All of these fit into our Marketing 360 framework - they’re all goals and activities which are part of one overarching function, and it’s all directed toward growth. 

When you launch, you grow quickly. You’re going to outgrow your initial market, you'll look around for other opportunities to grow, and you’ll find yourself wondering “where do I go next?” For businesses that start out in the UK, the answer is likely to be “abroad”. British businesses are twice as likely to expand into international markets as similar firms elsewhere. “Similar”, here, means “growing in size or turnover by 20% per year over the last three years, and started out with more than ten people" - that’s the definition of “Scale-up” as the Scaleup Institute sees it. If that's where your business is, this guide is for you.