Chris Bunniss has nearly three decades of global and local marketing experience under his belt; eighteen years with Boots and seventeen with SSL International, where he was global and UK marketing director for Durex and Scholl.

Marketing is eating up more of the sales funnel than ever before. Before they even speak to your sales team, customers will have progressed more than 70% of the way toward their purchase decision. How? They will have checked out your website, read some blog posts, looked at sales videos, checked your ‘About us’ page, perhaps downloaded an eBook. They will have checked out your social media channels or subscribed to your newsletter. Simply put, they will have interacted with your content.

Brand is essentially the perception someone holds in their head about a product, a service, or an organisation; a person, a cause, or an idea. It acts as a mental shortcut for consumers so that when they need what you’re selling, they think of you first.

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” – Richard Branson Anyone who’s ever caught a Virgin train might baulk at the suggestion, but there’s a lot of truth in Branson’s statement. Employees’ determine the success of a business day to day. They also contribute hugely to the value of a business when it comes to selling it.

Chatbots - artificial intelligence systems that interact with people via text, speech or instant messaging apps - have been on the up for a while now. Today, the global chatbot market takes in marketing, payments, processing and technical support, and according to a report by Grand View Research, approximately 45% of customers prefer chatbots as a mode of communication for customer services. According to LivePerson, only 19% of customers actually dislike chatbots; most are indifferent, as long as their issues are resolved. In a recent Oracle survey, 80% of C-level marketing, sales and strategy execs said they already used chatbots or planned to use them by 2020.