Questions B2B media/events business leaders should be asking about AI to win in 2024 by Anna Stone, on 23/05/2023 The hype around AI is ramping up, and most leaders and senior marketers in B2B media/events companies are still trying to work out how to react. There is a palpable fear in some businesses that competitors and future disruptors will ‘eat the lunch’ of those who don’t adapt quickly, as well as great excitement in those who see embracing emerging tech fast as a means of gaining a competitive advantage. Some of the most progressive businesses are seriously considering how they should disrupt themselves before someone else does. From MPG’s perspective, we see the following as some of the most important questions B2B media/events businesses and those responsible for their marketing should be asking themselves: What tools should our team start using straight away to increase efficiency and productivity? How should AI tools be added to our existing tech stack to enhance what we already have in place? Do the tools in our current tech stack offer AI functionality we’re not yet using? And for all tools in our tech stack, what is their roadmap to introduce more useful AI? How should we manage the risk around ‘betting on’ AI tools? How do we mitigate this risk? How can we get all our staff on board the AI journey, especially the most skeptical, and those who fear they will be replaced with AI? How fast do we need to move to adopt AI? How much time do we have to figure out our AI strategy? How quickly will today’s best AI tools be replaced by the next generation of best AI tools? How much is ‘getting AI’ going to cost us? How do we build an investment plan to pay for this, and build a strong business case for each investment to gain board approval? And probably the most important question of all based on personal interest of senior executives, and how they can put themselves in a strong position to answer all the questions above: Where do I find the most relevant information about what AI means for me and my business? And how can I stay plugged into this valuable source of relevant information to help me stay up to date with AI developments? It’s the last two questions that B2B media/events business leaders should be considering more laterally… Your B2B media/events brand puts you in a great position to be the conduit of AI learning and information sharing for your community. You have probably already published reports and articles on AI for your audience, sold AI focused webinars to your clients, and incorporated AI into your event programmes. But…have we considered yet how incredibly important live events are going to be in a world where AI becomes mainstream? In-person business meetings will be where professionals can be confident they will connect authentically with real, highly relevant people with whom they can build real relationships, and from whom they can learn in a trusted, ‘safe space’. AI will certainly help enhance the in-person event experience, and smart event organisers are already using AI to engage and serve their event audiences more efficiently and ‘personally’, i.e. based on what each audience member finds most valuable – en masse (e.g. matchmaking tools). AI will also deliver even more valuable marketing solutions for sponsors and exhibitors as data and analytics can be used to deliver a better and more visible ROI for clients’ marketing spend. But, as the early aftermath of the pandemic has shown us, people will always love attending a gathering of their ‘professional tribe’ – in real life. AI will not replace live events. If anything, AI will make live events even more important for the B2B media/events businesses who want to ‘build a moat’ around the communities they serve. This will be especially important for brands that have built membership offerings where events are a key part of a membership package. As generative AI tools such as ChatGPT reduce the need for search engines, businesses that rely on search traffic to drive visitors to content-heavy sites may find digital engagement from web traffic falling off a cliff. Engagement with events will probably need to fill the gap. Therefore, information brands with ‘flagship’ annual events they rely on to engage and serve their community members should recognise that the accelerated adoption of AI will make it more important than ever for their flagship events to take, and hold, a market leading position. A strong, content-led, annual flagship event will always successfully drive community engagement, membership growth and overall revenue – as long as the marketing of the event is planned and executed well. As we approach the halfway point of 2023, here are the two things event organisers should be putting in place now (if they have not done so already) to ensure their flagship events in 2024 will hold or take the market leading spot: #1 A strong event product development strategy and team: Your subject matter experts (i.e. editors, analysts, etc.) and event programming experts (i.e. conference producers) should already be doing the work needed to create a valuable programme for your 2024 flagship event. The earlier a strong product is created (with strong speakers confirmed), the better chance you have of capturing the 2024 budget your customers will be putting towards sponsoring, exhibiting or attending events. #2 A strong go-to-market strategy and marcomms plan: Analyse your target market Define your total addressable market, as well as the size and profile of key segments. Consider both your event audience buying tickets, as well as vendors who will buy your exhibition stands and sponsorships – both markets need to be defined and well understood. Evaluate your current database in terms of data contained and how it is structured in relation to the size and shape of your overall target market and key market segments. Will your database give you the targeted reach you require to attract all the visitors/delegates and exhibitors/sponsors you need for commercial success and a market leading position? Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you audit, structure, grow and maintain your database to create business value and ensure your database gives you a competitive advantage. Define your value proposition i.e. unique selling points (USPs) and benefits. How will your event be differentiated from competitors in a way that makes customers choose yours? Determine what key messages will resonate with different market segments. What tone, words and phrases need to be used in all your marcomms to attract, engage and convert customers so they not only register for your event, but also turn up on the day? Get in touch to find out how Team MPG can help you develop more relevant, compelling and engaging messages than your competitors. Martech, data and analytics: evaluate your martech, salestech, database and analytics tools in terms of how well you can reach your target market in a scalable way. Where are the gaps in your data? Which tools need to be better set up and optimised to work as they need to? What integrations are needed for real-time, efficient data flow and compliance are missing? What tools are missing in your tech stack? If your data, tech and analytics tools are not set up in the right way, you won’t have an efficient and scalable business so that your flagship event can get and keep the ‘top spot’. It is also worth bearing in mind that to use marketing automation and other AI tools you need a good tech and data setup. Get in touch to ask for case studies on how Team MPG have helped many B2B media/events businesses improve their martech and data to enable scalable growth (MPG are official partners to HubSpot, Marketo and various other leading martech platforms) Create a better event marcomms plan than your competitors… The detail on how to do this will be in our next blog post! Sign up here to get an email notification every time MPG publishes a new Insights piece like this on. Team MPG can help you accelerate the growth of your B2B events AI can only revolutionise your business if you have a clear marketing strategy, strong value proposition, growing database, integrated tech stack, and well-optimised website. Get in touch with Team MPG today to see how we can help you build a resilient marketing function that is well set up for future success. “MPG did a great job assessing our digital marketing and marketing operations requirements – considering our business goals. They developed a robust strategy, followed by a practical operational roadmap to help us further improve how we use technology to support marketing and sales performance. It has been a pleasure working with the MPG team!” Jonathan Perry, Global Marketing Director, PEI – Alternative Insight Take a look at this short video by MPG’s own Dominic Bird at a recent Gleanin event that explains how AI is being used to gather insights, understand customer behaviour, and personalize marketing strategies. Watch the full video here. Continue Reading Topics: Analytics and intelligenceArtificial Intelligence (AI)Event marketingMarketing strategyMarketing technology
Unleashing the power of AI in B2B event marketing – a practical guide by Adelia Gabriel Le, on 11/05/2023 Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising digital marketing by providing insights, automating processes, and personalising customer experiences, leading to increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and better ROI. Analysing customer data: AI algorithms can analyse large amounts of customer data, including their preferences, behaviour, and interaction history, to identify patterns and insights. These insights can help marketers understand their customers’ needs and preferences better and develop targeted strategies to engage with them more effectively. Automating customer interactions: AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistants, and other interactive tools can automate customer interactions through various channels, such as social media, email, or messaging apps. These tools can handle basic queries, provide personalised recommendations, and offer real-time assistance, freeing your marketers to focus on more strategic or critical tasks that only humans can do. Personalising customer experiences: AI can help marketers personalise customer experiences by using customer data to offer relevant product recommendations, content, and promotions, creating a more personalised and engaging experience. But as AI becomes more accessible, many B2B media and events marketing leaders are still unsure about how to utilise the power of AI in a practical way. Below are just some examples of how AI can be leveraged for high-performance marketing. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising: AI can optimise ad campaigns by analysing user behaviour, search queries, and other relevant data to target ideal consumers with personalised ads. AI can also automate bidding strategies, reducing the workload for advertisers and ensuring that ads get the most clicks and conversions. AI-powered tools can also use natural language processing and machine learning to generate ad copy for PPC ads that is more likely to be clicked on, taking into account factors like audience demographics and campaign objectives. AI can be used to generate long-tail keywords that are more likely to convert. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than short-tail keywords, which means that they are more likely to result in clicks and conversions. Email Marketing: AI can analyse audience behaviour and preferences, which means you can create personalised email content that resonates with your audience and increases click-through rates. AI copy tools can be used to help marketers create impactful subject line ideas that feel more personal and are likely to increase open rates. AI newsletter automation tools can be used to create personalised newsletters with a custom curation of articles and adverts that are aggregated from multiple sources which will help you grow your relationships with your audience while executing mass personalisation. AI can also be used for generating html code for emails, which can save marketers time and effort, and it can help to ensure that their emails are always professional and effective. Social Media Marketing: AI can recognise different social media platforms, enabling marketers to create channel-specific draft posts. These will be highly generalised though as AI will never fully understand your target audience in the meaningful way your marketers do, so you’ll still need some human intervention for increasing engagement and growth. AI can also analyse social media conversations, providing insights into customer sentiment and engagement rates, enabling marketers to refine their campaigns and improve their social media presence. Content Marketing: AI can be used to repurpose existing content into new and engaging formats. This can help you to extend the reach of your content and to reach a wider audience. For example, you could use AI to create infographics, video scripts, or use transcription tools to transcribe video and webinar content making it much easier for marketers to repurpose the content for social posts, blogs etc. AI can be used to track the performance of your content and to identify what is resonating with your target audience. This information can then be used to improve your future content marketing efforts so you can create more of that content to keep them engaged. It can also be used to personalise content for each individual user for example, to recommend articles to users based on their past reading history. AI can be used to generate high-quality, relevant copy on a consistent basis. AI can also be used for proofing copy by placing your already written copy into the tool, it can be quickly scanned for errors, repetitive words and phrases and alternative copy can be recommended. It is important to remember however that AI is just a tool and cannot replace the human touch. A human copywriter will still need to review the AI-generated copy to ensure that it is on-brand and resonates with the target audience. Websites: AI chatbots can improve customer engagement and satisfaction by providing 24/7 support, answering common questions, and helping customers navigate your website’s content or products. AI can analyse your audience’s web behaviour (pages viewed, content searches, forms completed) and purchase history to create personalised product, content and promotion recommendations. AI can also help optimise website content and structure for search engines, by analysing keywords and other factors affecting SEO and make recommendations on how to improve rankings and visibility. Marketing and sales automation: AI can be used to automate tasks such as qualifying leads, and scheduling appointments. This can free up time for your salespeople to focus on more strategic and commercial tasks, such as building relationships with customers and closing deals. AI can be used to personalise the sales and marketing process. For example, AI can be used to send personalised emails to leads or to create personalised landing pages. This can help to improve the customer experience and to increase conversion rates. AI can be used to track and analyse data. This data can be used to identify trends, improve targeting, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This information can then be used to improve future marketing efforts. AI is evolving fast, with new tools being released daily which can make it difficult for marketers to stay up to date with the latest technologies and their practical applications. We recommend appointing a dedicated AI Champion (or even multiple champions), who can help your business stay on top of the latest tech, analysing the practical implications for your business and feeding this intelligence back into the team. Copy and text solutions – for creating copy for ads, emails, blog frameworks, keyword generation etc: ChatGPT Copy.ai Writesonic Google Bard Audio to text solutions – many video conferencing tools now have this as native functionality but if you do need additional tools for generating transcripts of webinars or podcast content for easy repurposing you could try: Otter.ai Descript Trint Text to image solutions – e.g. for generating images to be used in blogs, social media, ad graphics etc. Dall-E2 Midjourney Stable Diffusion Canva Other solutions: rasa.io – for personalised email newsletters with curated content AdCreative.ai – for generating ad and social media creatives including images and AI generated copy But remember, while AI has the power to revolutionise your marketing and your business, if you don’t have a clear marketing strategy that is aligned with your business objectives, a strong value proposition, a well-maintained and growing database, an integrated sales and marketing tech stack and a website that is well-optimised for lead generation and conversions, then you’re unlikely to realise the true benefits of AI. Team MPG can help you develop a marketing strategy inline with your event and business growth strategy and then deliver best-in-class marketing execution. Get in touch today to have a chat about how we can help you grow your revenues faster. Continue Reading Topics: Analytics and intelligenceArtificial Intelligence (AI)Content marketingMarketing strategyMarketing technologyWebsite optimisation
MPG Newsletter | Spring 2023 by Lucy Peppercorn, on 25/04/2023 Spring has finally sprung! And just as nature is experiencing a season of renewal and growth, we reflect on how B2B media and events businesses are taking advantage of new opportunities and accelerating growth with a focus on commercial revenues. Commercial marketing is a vital component of any B2B media and events business looking to expand its reach and acquire new clients. With the right strategies in place, commercial marketing can lead to significant growth and flourishing revenues for businesses of all sizes. Consider the following questions when contemplating how to invest in this area: Is there a consistent flow of well-qualified, warm leads to support your sales team adequately? Do you possess the necessary marketing skills and resources for effective commercial marketing? Are your commercial marketing and sales functions seamlessly integrated with appropriate systems and processes? Are your sales pipelines optimised with lead nurturing to boost conversion rates and sales? How much visibility do you have regarding marketing and sales performance, including lead generation, lead conversations, average order value, and length of the sales cycle? In this newsletter, we will explore how integrated marketing and sales, a good martech stack, paid media, web analytics (including GA4), and email marketing can help businesses maximise their potential. By incorporating these elements and consistently refining strategies based on data and insights, businesses can generate leads, increase conversions, and ultimately drive revenue growth. #1 Why is commercial marketing the ‘goldmine’ for spex revenue growth? Spex clients will drive revenue growth in most events businesses in the next couple of years but you need to ensure the value proposition for sponsors and exhibitors is positioned and communicated well to positively influence both returning and new spex clients. In this article, we share MPG’s recommended step-by-step process to achieve a well-integrated spex sales and commercial marketing setup. READ THE FULL ARTICLE #2 Integrated marketing and sales is essential for revenue growth By aligning marketing and sales strategies, businesses can ensure that they are targeting the right audience with the right message, leading to increased conversions and revenue. In this article, we provide you with a comprehensive guide that emphasises the importance of integrating marketing and sales in order to achieve sustainable growth for a business. The article highlights the three stages of the sales and marketing funnel, which are awareness, engagement, and conversion, and explains how marketing and sales can work together to optimise each stage. The article also discusses the challenges that businesses face when trying to integrate marketing and sales and provides practical solutions to overcome those challenges. READ THE FULL ARTICLE GET MPG’S GUIDE TO SALES AND MARKETING INTEGRATION #3 Investing in martech for sustainable growth In today’s business landscape, investing in martech is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Cutting corners in your approach to martech can lead to technical debt that holds your business back. A good martech stack is essential for effective commercial marketing. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, track customer interactions, and gain valuable insights into customer behaviour. This can help businesses optimise their marketing efforts and improve overall performance. User-friendly platforms, like HubSpot, allow businesses to have a single view of their customer and include marketing and sales automations without the need for internal technical teams. For larger businesses that have internal technical teams to support martech integrations and optimisations, enterprise-level platforms like Adobe/Marketo and Salesforce or MS Dynamics are potentially a good investment to enable integrated sales and marketing. In this article, we discuss the top 5 investments business leaders should be making for long-term, sustainable growth. READ THE FULL ARTICLE #4 Why you should use paid media to acquire new sponsors Paid media (PPC) can be an effective way to support commercial marketing efforts. By targeting specific audiences with strategic messaging, businesses can increase brand awareness and generate leads. Paid Media, alongside other channels can help you: Reach beyond your existing database to new, relevant leads; expanding your dataset and pushing more, brand-new sponsor opportunities into your sales pipeline. Support other marketing efforts such as email and social media, pushing your conference to ‘top of mind’ and making it more likely sponsorship leads will be driven towards you. Via automation, reach, nurture, and convert more relevant contacts faster to become qualified sponsorship leads. Paid media allows you to quickly increase the volume of relevant contacts you can engage with to convert to warm leads – without needing to add much more in terms of a marketer’s time (you just need to put more money in your campaigns once you’ve got them well-targeted). In this article, we share with you the dos and don’ts of paid media for attracting, nurturing, and converting leads. READ THE FULL ARTICLE #5 Email marketing’s role in supporting the commercial marketing funnel By nurturing leads with targeted messaging and personalised content, businesses can move potential customers closer to making a purchase. Email marketing can also be a great way to stay top-of-mind with current customers and encourage repeat business. If your brand has both memberships and events, and you are sending lots of emails to the same data sets as the event product develops (e.g. new speakers are announced and new agenda sessions are added), you need sophisticated tools and a smart strategy that is well integrated with your membership product marketing. In this recent article, we shared email marketing dos and don’ts for conference marketing. We focused on delegate acquisition, which is important to satisfy your sponsors, but these principles can also apply to your commercial marketing emails. READ THE FULL ARTICLE #6 Measuring the results of the joined-up marketing and sales effort Success is driven by strong visibility of campaign effectiveness, and also core KPIs supported by commercial marketing activity – i.e. # of marketing qualified leads (MQLs); # of sales made from these MQLs; conversion rate from MQL to sale; revenue from MQLs; average order value of sales from MQLs; and ideally also the length of the sales cycle. Web analytics, including GA4, is crucial for understanding how users interact with a website. By tracking user behavior, businesses can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, leading to more effective marketing strategies. GA4 in particular offers more advanced tracking options and can help businesses better understand the customer journey and conversion funnels. The needs of sponsors are also becoming more sophisticated and sponsors are demanding much deeper audience engagement. Without a well-optimised website, and robust measurement in place, you won’t be able to provide your sponsors with critical information to support them in investing with you in the future. In this article, we share with you the 3 things you won’t be able to do without having GA4 implemented. READ THE FULL ARTICLE Commercial marketing is the key to great riches! However, it’s essential to get it right. By implementing these strategies, you can unlock your business’s potential and drive revenue growth. We hope that the insights we’ve shared in this newsletter will help you achieve success in your commercial marketing efforts! Continue Reading Topics: Analytics and intelligenceLead generationMarketing strategyPaid advertisingSponsor acquisition
Commercial marketing: the ‘goldmine’ for spex revenue growth by Sharise Wilkinson, on 13/04/2023 In-person events are back with a bang and with them the promise of rapidly growing sponsorship and exhibitions (spex) revenues – especially when the event organiser can also offer a strong digital audience linked to their events. So, how can a business with a portfolio of strong events and associated digital audiences make the most of this opportunity? The answer is commercial marketing – in other words, the marketing that drives awareness, interest, engagement, leads and commitment from companies that would benefit from spex opportunities available. Based on what was traditionally called ‘exprom’ by the large trade show organisers, commercial marketing is emerging as a ‘next generation’ area of marketing in events businesses – specifically to support spex sales teams attract, retain and upsell clients on high-value packages. The ROI on a commercial marketing programme should be significant (600%+), but only if money is well spent on the right kind of marketing. And therein lies the challenge…which is this: the knowledge, tools and skills to do ‘the right kind of marketing’ to support spex sales teams to deliver strongly growing commercial revenues typically don’t sit within today’s events businesses. Event marketers typically know how to deploy marketing approaches that are specifically suited to attracting delegates and show visitors – which, to keep things simple, we will call ‘event audience marketing’. Commercial marketing requires a very DIFFERENT methodology and set of performance metrics (KPIs) compared to event audience marketing. This also requires a different knowledge base, skillset and mindset in marketers. Commercial marketers should be focused on ensuring the value proposition for sponsors and exhibitors is positioned and communicated well to positively influence both returning and new spex clients. This spex value proposition is very different for spex clients than it is for the audience – even though it is essentially focused on the same product. Two value propositions from one product; two sides of the same coin. Although this is what makes events a wonderful model – especially if you can directly monetise both ‘buyside’ (attendees) and ‘sell side’ (spex clients) – it also means you’re effectively marketing two different products to two different target markets, in two different ways. Securing revenue from event audiences is more difficult than ever. This is not to say that a valuable event experience shouldn’t be paid for by a delegate. But it does mean growing delegate revenue fast is very challenging, especially if a key goal is to ensure the quality of the audience is ‘top notch’ and attractive to potential spex clients. In the next couple of years, our prediction is that spex clients will drive revenue growth in most events businesses. This will require very good event audience marketing as the right audience is what spex clients are effectively paying for. And it means commercial marketing is also needed to attract new spex clients while also supporting the retention of existing clients (who now have far more choice about where to spend their marketing budgets, and who may have therefore become a lot more price sensitive. Never underestimate the importance of a steady stream of new spex clients. They can be retained and upsold in future years, and also provide helpful ‘competition’ for existing spex clients – giving your salespeople a stronger negotiating position. Also, don’t underestimate how helpful it can be to your sales team to have a strong commercial marketing programme running all year round to deliver a steady stream of new leads into their pipelines. Recently, 12-month programmes run by Team MPG have delivered full payback within 3 months (i.e. money committed to the full 12-month programme has been covered by resulting sales within 3 months), with the campaigns typically delivering an ROI of over 600%. This means for every £1 spent on commercial marketing, £6 is generated from spex clients who would not otherwise have heard of the event, let alone paid attention to the spex opportunities on offer and raised their hands via a web form to indicate their interest. And that’s just the direct revenue generated for that period – not counting leads converted in future years or the lifetime value of new clients retained and upsold. Commercial marketing won’t work without sales and marketing integration An integrated sales and marketing approach is essential for success! And it is important to automate as much of this process as you can – which with tools available like HubSpot*, is relatively straightforward. (*MPG are HubSpot Partners – have a look here to see how we can help you get the best tech stack). Here is MPG’s recommended step-by-step process to achieve a well-integrated spex sales and commercial marketing setup: STEP #1 Build a market map – identifying key people in your target market as a starting point for building your customer personas. Typically your market map would include information for each customer segment such as company type, job function/title/seniority and relevant geographical information e.g. countries or region. Develop personas that explore goals, pain points and motivators of your target spex customer. STEP #2 Determine the size of your market. How many potential spex clients are out there? You may be surprised how large the potential pool of clients really is! And you may find you only have a very small percentage of these in your database, so commercial marketing activity will be needed to grow this list (see next point…) STEP #3 Grow your database – from both inbound marketing efforts (e.g. PPC & social media) and targeted data research, ensure the list of potential spex clients on your database is both large enough and easily identified and targeted with relevant email comms. STEP #4 Optimise your website so that potential new spex clients who hit your website are motivated to fill in forms so they become spex sales leads. You will need analytics well set up on your site for this to work (GA4 is almost upon us!) STEP #5 Deploy well-optimised inbound marketing tactics e.g. content marketing, social media, advocacy marketing, SEO and PPC. All of these efforts are needed to give you a steady stream of well-qualified spex leads, and can work wonders in re-engaging lapsed spex clients and convincing annually returning clients to spend again, and ideally spend more! STEP #6 Qualify and nurture leads, by using marketing and sales automations such as lead scoring and automated messages. Well-set-up automations can ensure spex leads are kept warm until a conversation is possible, and can also ensure they’re contacted at exactly the right time to have the best kind of sales conversation – most likely to lead to a sale. STEP #7 Measure, measure, measure. If you’re not measuring the results of the joined-up marketing and sales effort you won’t know what is and is not working. Success is driven by strong visibility of campaign effectiveness, and also core KPIs supported by commercial marketing activity – i.e. # of marketing qualified leads (MQLs); # of sales made from these MQLs; conversion rate from MQL to sale; revenue from MQLs; average order value of sales from MQLs; and ideally also the length of the sales cycle. You need an evidence-based, data-led approach to get an ROI of 600%+. Ask MPG about our Commercial Marketing Dashboards – as below: Don’t miss the boat on this one! Commercial marketing really is the key to great riches – when you get it right. Hopefully the knowledge we have shared in this piece will help you achieve this! Did you know that Team MPG delivers Commercial Marketing programmes for a number of leading events and membership brands. Get in touch to find out how we deliver a 600%+ ROI, again and again. Continue Reading Topics: Event marketingLead generationMarketing strategySponsor acquisition
Paid media: how to attract more sponsors to your conferences by Lucy Peppercorn, on 30/03/2023 If you want to attract more sponsors for your conferences, paid media (PPC) should be in your marketing mix. Sometimes referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) or digital advertising, paid media is a conference marketing tool that has seen increasing interest and investment. Its popularity stems from its ability to cost-effectively drive more awareness, leads and revenue for B2B conferences. As a form of online advertising, it also affords marketers a high degree of control and visibility over performance, making it a safe investment when marketing ROI is under scrutiny. How does paid media work? The most popular paid media platforms for B2B events are Google Ads, LinkedIn Advertising and Facebook Ads. In essence, paid media covers any online ad where advertisers pay for every click. Marketers need to define how ads are targeted, using criteria such as job titles, industries, interests, behaviour (e.g. people who have visited your website before), and intent. The latter is how the popular Google Ads Paid Search functions – targeting users based on the relevant queries they are searching in Google, allowing them to be targeted at the time when they are researching solutions that conference sponsorship can provide. Why should you use paid media (with other channels) to acquire new sponsors? Reaches beyond your existing database to new, relevant leads; expanding your dataset and pushing more, brand new sponsor opportunities into your sales pipeline. Supports other marketing efforts such as email and social media, pushing your conference to ‘top of mind’ and making it more likely sponsorship leads will be driven towards you. Via automation, reach, nurture and convert more relevant contacts faster to become qualified sponsorship leads. Paid media allows you to quickly increase the volume of relevant contacts you can engage with to convert to warm leads – without needing to add much more in terms of a marketers’ time (you just need to put more money in your campaigns once you’ve got them well-targeted). 3 things you must get right when using paid media to generate new sponsor leads Create a solid plan before spending a penny Be clear on what you’re trying to achieve – define goals and success in specific terms Create objectives for each channel and each type of campaign/ad based on the stage in the funnel you’re aiming to influence Decide on a budget, and how that budget should be split across paid media channels and campaign types Ensure messaging in paid media ads is consistent with other channels and ties well into the full customer journey Get visibility of paid media performance and results Set up conversion tracking properly, using tracked links Focus on the metrics that matter – based on your objectives Use a data visualisation tool like Looker Studio (by Google) to pull together performance data and present it clearly and simply so it is easy to understand and act on Use specific and refined targeting Assuming you’re trying to reach a specific kind of person in a specific kind of company – most likely to be a lead for sponsorship – make sure your targeting is as narrow as possible. Then keep monitoring performance metrics and leads coming through so you know this targeting is hitting the right people. To stay on target, use the options given in paid media platforms like exact match keywords, uploaded data lists, job title and industry 3 things to avoid – or you will be wasting your money and not getting the leads you need! Don’t start investing – until you’ve worked out your ‘funnel’ Paid media will drive traffic to your website, nurture existing contacts and generate more leads i.e. all the way down the funnel. Make sure you know how you are influencing each stage of the funnel Make sure your marketing and sales is fully integrated, or you won’t get good results! See MPG’s resource on how to integrate your marketing and sales well, and the relevant KPIs around this Don’t leave your paid media campaigns unattended Have a disciplined and robust process in place to regularly review campaign performance (minimum weekly) Keep optimising your paid media campaigns by adjusting your approach based on the performance data you see coming through in the reports you’ve set up. Keep tweaking your targeting options based on what is working best Don’t neglect your website ‘Cold’ leads coming from paid media will have low awareness and understanding of your event, so make sure the web pages you drive them to from your paid media (i.e. your landing pages) are well set up to explain what the event is all about and the benefits of becoming a sponsor. Also make sure this landing page has some clear calls-to-action (CTAs) so that your website visitor fills in a form to become a lead for your sponsorship sales funnel Paid media is a great way to grow your database, so use lead forms to identify leads and capture all their data Using paid media well can make all the difference to how many good quality and well-qualified leads you can drive into your sponsorship sales funnel. When your strategy and execution here are solid, you have a great chance of attracting lots of great new sponsors to your event and growing your sponsorship revenue faster! Want to find out more about how Team MPG can help you attract more sponsors to your event with best-in-class lead-gen marketing? Get in touch today to have a chat about how we can help you grow your sponsorship revenue faster. Continue Reading Topics: Digital marketingeventEvent marketingMarketing strategyPaid advertisingSponsor acquisition
Marketing Leaders in B2B Events: it’s time to do things differently! by Sharise Wilkinson, on 09/03/2023 In early 2023, I hosted a Marketing Leaders Roundtable on behalf of MPG, bringing together heads of marketing from B2B events businesses to share insights about their current challenges and opportunities. Participants found the discussion very valuable as they could share their experiences and brainstorm ideas to drive their marketing functions, and businesses, forward. The key discussion points were: 1. Common challenges facing leaders in B2B Media/Events 2. B2B marketing resources/skills: building a resilient marketing function From the in-depth round-table discussion, it was clear that event marketing leaders are facing many of the same challenges, outlined below. Attracting and retaining experienced event marketers has become even more costly and time-consuming Marketers with conference and exhibition marketing experience have always been difficult to find. And the pandemic has made that even harder as so many marketers left the events industry. Retaining experienced event marketers and replacing those who leave has become a much more costly and time-consuming exercise. Salary expectations have risen (for marketers with and without event marketing experience), it is taking a long time to hire new marketers at all levels, and all staff now need and expect more ongoing training than previously. Marketing leaders are having to think differently, finding new ways to ensure they have all the resources and skills they need for a strong and resilient marketing function. What needs to change? Many businesses are now giving more consideration to how they use external partners to inject all the skills and resources into their event marketing as needed to achieve their commercial goals. This smart use of external partners also helps to motivate and retain valued internal marketers. The best marketing talent demands ongoing learning and development As marketing changes so fast, smart marketers know they need to be learning constantly in order to maintain a skill set that is valuable for any employer. Marketing leaders are recognising the importance of building learning and development programmes for their teams, and delivering these carefully and consistently in order to attract and retain good people. It is, however, not always possible or sensible to have in-house marketers trained on all aspects of marketing – especially the more advanced technical areas of marketing such as martech, data, and analytics where ‘special projects’ are often better delivered by external partners. What needs to change? The most progressive marketing leaders are always thinking about how they can enhance the knowledge of their marketers while providing the inspiration and support to enable and motivate them to deliver the best commercial results – and stay with the business. This requires marketing leaders to step out of the ‘hamster wheel’ of spending all their time scrambling to find stop-gap resources, while also hiring and training new marketers. To break this vicious cycle, they need to apply some ‘out of the box’ thinking and solutions, asking themselves the following important questions: 1. How can I strategically bring in external help as a long-term solution to my ongoing event marketing skills and resource problem? 2. How can I build the business case to gain senior stakeholder support to do this? Can external partners help build this business case? Event marketers are facing unrealistic expectations and unreasonable demands No single marketer can have the full set of strategic, tactical, creative, and technical skills now needed to promote a leading conference or exhibition. Event marketers are often expected to do the impossible and are spread very thinly across multiple products and channels. This is especially damaging when it comes to flagship or high-growth events which then don’t get the attention they need. Marketers who are not enabled to do their jobs well are never going to be able to deliver the best results for these events. Leaders in B2B events businesses need to recognise how complex and demanding marketing campaigns have become, and the negative impact that a poorly resourced marketing function can have on business performance. The marketing skill and resourcing levels of previous years are no longer sufficient to succeed as a leading events business. What needs to change? The most successful, fast-growing conferences and exhibitions have strong marketing functions driving great results. These are resourced with all the required marketing skills and manpower needed – usually a combination of internal and external experts – organised well strategically and tactically into high-performance event marketing teams. Relying only on internal resources is not the smart way to grow an events business. Having the ‘best of both’: generalist and specialist marketers More marketing specialists with focused skill sets are now needed – so one event would need at least three different marketers with different areas of expertise to work together to deliver good results. Typically, a marketing generalist is needed to bring together a multi-skilled event marketing team – organising, managing, supporting and focusing all team members on clear goals. Some marketing leaders are keeping generalist marketing skillsets inhouse and outsourcing for specialist and technical skills. This gives them the scope to be flexible and dial-up and dial down their investment as required by the business or as dictated by the event life cycle. What needs to change? The most progressive event business leaders are looking at how they can bring in additional, external marketing resources to deliver the marketing for a specific event that has high growth potential, sometimes an important launch within a high growth portfolio. This kind of focused project and investment means these ‘star products’ are given a boost in terms of their marketing leadership position. When this process is managed well, with the right external partners and internal organisation, the ‘extra’ investment should more than pay for itself – becoming a ‘no brainer’ for any growth focused organisation. MPG helps Marketing Leaders achieve best results. If you would like to join one of our future round-tables, or find out about the services MPG offers to help Marketing Leaders drive the best results for their businesses, please get in touch. Continue Reading Topics: Event marketingMarketing SkillsMarketing strategy
5 areas of strategic importance for your marketing in 2023 by Team MPG, on 12/01/2023 Newsletter • Winter 2023 2022 was a year of recovery and return to growth for many B2B media and events businesses, achieved with a laser focus on future-proofing through building resilient marketing functions. As we reflect on 2022, and optimistically look ahead to another year of growth and scale, we wanted to share the most popular MPG Insights from 2022 on the topics that we believe will continue to be important in 2023. #1 GA4 – a new frontier in tracking and analytics Enhanced analytics is coming! 10 years after the launch of Universal Analytics (UA), Google is retiring it for GA4 (Google Analytics 4). GA4 will provide marketers with better user journey mapping, engagement insights and enhanced data visualisations… but this will mean you can no longer track any new data via UA. Now is the time to be transitioning to GA4 to avoid gaps in data and insights! READ THE FULL ARTICLE #2 1st party data – the gold standard in B2B data More data means more opportunities, but this needs to be the right kind of data! A targeted and growing customer data set, that is compliant, well structured and well maintained, while being enriched by every engagement with an audience member, and fed into well-designed intelligence reports, is one of the most valuable assets a B2B media or events brand could own. READ THE FULL ARTICLEFurther reading: A practical guide to database optimisation #3 Integrated outbound marketing – an essential tool for event marketing Event marketing relies on getting the right messages, to the right people, at the right time – with events taking place on a fixed date, this time sensitivity is a fairly unique challenge. Any successful event marketing strategy uses outbound marketing as a key area for driving these messages to potential delegates. Email marketing needs to be used all the way down the marketing funnel and email communications need to be fully integrated with delegate sales campaigns. READ THE FULL ARTICLE #4 Investing in spex marketing – hyper focus on your most important revenue stream For many B2B events businesses, growth in revenue from sponsors and exhibitors has been vital to their total growth strategy. However, specific marketing to drive well-qualified, new business leads for the sales team to convert into clients has been neglected. Business leaders who want a strong performance in 2023 need to invest in spex marketing to generate and nurture new business leads for shortened sales cycles and increased spex revenue. READ THE FULL ARTICLE #5 Advocacy marketing – attracting and converting more of the right customers Having an amplification strategy that enables you to accelerate growth by tapping into your strongest brand advocates and most loyal customers is a cost-effective and relatively easy way to attract more of the right kinds of customers. These brand loyalists could be customers that purchase from you time and time again, key contributors to your product such as speakers of advisory board members, and your own employees. In 2022, we saw some significant developments and good results from some tech tools that automate the advocacy process. READ THE FULL ARTICLEFurther reading: Activating employee advocacy Get in touch with Team MPG to find out how you can add more science to your marketing – so your campaigns always hit their mark! Continue Reading Topics: Analytics and intelligenceDatabase developmentEvent marketingMarketing strategy
The importance of investing in spex marketing by Team MPG, on 12/12/2022 As sponsors and exhibitors come back to live events, growing spex (sponsorship & exhibitions) revenue has become an important focus for many B2B event organisers. Without strong growth of this important revenue stream, events businesses may find they don’t have the funds to invest well in the customer experience for event attendees. This in turn will compromise an event’s ability to maintain or gain a market leading position – something that will be very important as we move forward in to 2023 and beyond. So, how should B2B event organisers go about proactively growing their spex revenue? Consideration needs to be given to the following two realities: Spex sales people generally (and understandably!) prefer to focus on retaining and upselling returning clients, rather than trying to find new ones. And when it comes to targeting ‘new business’, spex sales people will often leave approaching potential new spex clients until it’s too late to bring them on board.. In a challenging economic environment, it may not be viable for event companies to hire more spex sales people so that ‘new business’ gets more sales focus. Therefore, the smart way to grow spex revenue may well be to do more spex marketing. Why is it important to invest in a dedicated SPEX marketing campaign – separate from your delegate marketing campaign? It is important to attract new sponsors so that an event can have a strong year-on year performance, and ideally grow in revenue and attendance. And to attract the new sponsors, spex marketing needs to: #1 Start earlier than delegate marketing, due to: A longer sales cycle, due to the significant investment that sponsors will be making in the event of both time and money. It is important to consider all of the stakeholders typically involved in a sponsor company, the preparation needed, and the cost – not only of the sponsorship fee but also all the other related costs of travel and accommodation of multiple attendees and shipping exhibition stands, materials etc. This longer sales cycle is especially important for new sponsors who will take longer to convince and get to commit.. The need for sponsors to commit early to get a good ROI from their sponsorship – so their branding, thought leadership and lead generation activities can be activated across a longer time period leading up to the event. This increases the value of the sponsorship and therefore should enable a higher average order value. A higher conversion rate needed and expected for ‘lead to sale’ for sponsors, due to the effort that needs to go into a more consultative sales process compared to delegate sales. #2 Focus messaging about a different value proposition than what is put forward for delegate marketing. #3 Focus on lead generation – rather than closing a sale online. #4 Include some lead nurturing activities specifically focused on further warming up and qualifying – before a spex sales person can call or speak to the lead. During the early phases of generating spex leads, marketing activity such as PPC, advocacy marketing and content marketing help to engage potential leads and “warm them up” to be ready to speak to a sales person. #5 Be measured differently – with KPIs focused on number of leads, conversion rates, average order values, and length of sales cycle. It will be difficult to grow event revenue and profit without attracting new sponsors and exhibitors. But, at the same time, it is important sales teams are very focused on retention and upsell of spex customers who are already familiar with the event and are already established clients. So investing in spex marketing, by using inhouse resources or an external agency, should be a high priority for any ambitious events business! Do you need help with growing your spex revenue? Team MPG can help you attract new sponsors and exhibitors with targeted lead generation marketing campaigns. We can also help you nurture existing opportunities to increase conversion rates, increase average order values, and shorten sales cycles. Please get in touch with Team MPG to see how we could help you. Continue Reading Topics: Content marketingEvent marketingLead generationMarketing strategyPaid advertisingSponsor acquisition
Marketing lead time: a key success factor for every conference by Team MPG, on 08/11/2022 A basic principle of marketing is getting the right message to the person at the right time. This is especially important when the product you’re promoting is an event, as events are so time-sensitive. They have a fixed timeline and ‘sell-by date’. If you don’t get enough marketing out early enough, you’ll miss your chance to capture the audience you’re aiming to attract to the event. People are busy – especially the professionals and senior executives who typically form the audience for most conferences. Their diaries fill up very fast, and far in advance. So, you need to get early awareness, engagement and interest from your target delegates – otherwise you’ll miss your window of opportunity to get your event into their diaries as a firm commitment. Ideally you want your targeted delegates to register early, i.e. weeks, if not months ahead of your event. Not only does this make it easier to plan your event in terms of logistics – it also significantly reduces your financial risk. Another upside of bringing in bookings early is your ability to leverage early registrations to sell even more delegate places (using FOMO), and being able to leverage a strong delegate list to sell more sponsorship and exhibition spaces ahead of the event – assuming this is an important revenue stream for your business. To commit early to your event, at the very least your target audience should know when and where your conference will take place. Early on, they should also understand why attending the event would be a valuable enough experience or a good enough use of their time, compared to other ways they could be spending their time. If it is worthy of commitment, they will diarise your event dates early on – as well as required travel time to and from the event if it’s far from where they live. Potential delegates may also need to pitch for some budget to cover the cost, but from MPG’s experience – cost is very seldom a barrier if an event is worth attending. For senior executives in particular, their reputation, profile, network and time are the most precious currencies. Any money a senior executive has to spend on attending an event – even if several thousand £/$/Euro – is generally a much less important consideration than the time it will take and what it will do for their reputation, profile or network. When evaluating whether or not it’s worth attending your conference, they will look for value-for-time before they look for value-for-money. And generally speaking, a senior executive will have enough room in their budget for the events worth attending. Having said that, all of MPG’s experience tells us that everyone loves a bargain! So, even where you’re marketing to the most senior executives, early-bird discounts are a good way of getting early bookings – as long as the early-bird deadlines are well timed, the discounts are big enough, and the marketing campaigns are organised in the right way to make the most of this pricing tactic. Coming back to the concept of ‘lead time’, all of our experience also tells us that if your conference marketing campaigns don’t reach the right people early enough, with the right messages based on where you are in the event production cycle, your attendee numbers will suffer. Here is a simple how to guide on all things ‘lead time’ – the term we use in conference marketing to refer to one of the most important elements of timing of marketing campaigns: #1 What is lead time? Lead time refers to the number of weeks between the launch of the full marketing campaign, and the date of the event. By ‘launch of full marketing campaign’ we mean releasing the following information: Dates and venue of the event Event theme, key speakers and overall ‘shape’ and format of content programme Who else is likely to be attending The benefits of attending, arising from all of the above How to register to attend an event, sometimes requiring a purchase of a delegate ticket (typically this would be a self-serve online process, and/or via a sales person). #2 What should your lead time be? When determining the best lead time for your event, it is important to ask these questions: Is your event an in-person, hybrid, or virtual event? How senior is your target audience? Do a large number of your delegates need to travel far to attend the event? Is your event a small, quite frequent event, or does it only take place once a year, or every two years? Generally speaking: When you’re asking delegates to pay to attend events, a longer lead time is needed than when promoting free to attend events. If your event is fully in-person or hybrid with an important in-person element, you will need a longer lead time than when promoting a virtual event, especially if delegates need to travel a significant distance to attend your event. The more senior your audience, the longer the lead time you will need. Here are some guidelines based on event type: In-person/hybrid conference where the majority of your delegates are paying to attend – approx. 35 to 28 weeks lead time. In-person/hybrid events where the majority of attendees are free (exhibitions) – approx. 20 to 16 weeks lead time. Virtual event (paid delegate tickets) – approx. 28 to 20 weeks lead time. Virtual event (free to attend) – approx. 12 to 8 weeks lead time. It is important to bear in mind that it is essential to keep promoting the event with regular communications via multiple channels in the weeks between launch and the event taking place, with marketing activity needing to ramp up in the last few weeks before the event takes place to maximise attendance. #3 What are the other milestones within a timeline that a B2B event marketer should be mindful of? To get the best results from an event marketing campaign, especially for a paid-for conference style event, here is what we recommend (having seen a lot of evidence over the years that this is what works best – across events in all industries, globally): Bookings should open and ‘save the date’ email campaigns should start at least 6 months before the event. A draft agenda including at least 50% of the speakers and content should be published on the event website no later than 16 weeks leading up to the event. A final agenda containing at least 90% of speakers and content should be published on the event website no later than 12 weeks before the event. If you plan to use early-bird pricing for your event – which we always recommend for paid-for events to create a sense of urgency and bring revenue in early, here is what we recommend (dependent on number of early-birds planned): For 3 early-bird price breaks, it is best for them to fall within the following intervals before the event: 8 to 10 weeks 4 to 6 weeks 2 to 3 weeks For 2 early-bird price breaks, it is best for them to fall within the following intervals before the event: 4 to 6 weeks 2 to 3 weeks #4 What are the additional benefits of a good lead time and well structured timeline? Having sufficient lead time for an event allows you to invest in key strategic priorities and channels at the beginning of the campaign e.g. conducting more research into media partners, and inviting them on early, or time to improve the user experience for your website. Not having enough time to plan ahead and optimise your all your channels throughout the campaign will mean you’re missing out on delegates you could have attracted to your event. Furthermore, a ‘good’ lead time allows you to develop your database: by drawing people to your event website over a longer time period across multiple channels, especially inbound channels, you can convert more to known prospects and leads as they enter your database via form completions on your website. In a post-COVID world, amidst an uneasy economic climate, MPG has found that most successful events are those that lead their market. You cannot be a market leader if you take your event to market later than you should. . So make sure you get your lead time right if you want to win the events race ahead! Do you have the required experienced and skilled marketing resources to give you a good lead time on your events? Team MPG can provide the resources and know-how you need to be a market leader. To turbo-boost event growth, our clients outsource event marketing to us – often for their highest growth, flagship events. Get in touch today to find out how Team MPG can help you. Continue Reading Topics: Attendee acquisitionDatabase developmentEvent marketingLead generationMarketing strategyMessaging
Employee advocacy: unlock this powerful marketing channel by Team MPG, on 22/09/2022 Advocacy drives earned media, and as growing earned media coverage should be part of every content marketing strategy, how to drive advocacy should also be top of mind for every marketer. Earned media builds awareness and establishes brand trust, so the sharing of content via earned media (beyond your owned and paid media) is what opens up exponential growth in awareness, engagement, and customers. What is advocacy, and how does it enable earned media? Advocates are customers, prospects or stakeholders who willingly share their personal endorsement of a product or service, often by recommending it to their network. This kind of public endorsement is earned based on an advocate’s good experience and level of satisfaction. By successfully identifying and engaging with potential advocates, and then activating them successfully, it is possible to attract and engage more of the right kinds of customers, prospects and stakeholders very efficiently, and at scale via earned media. Advocacy extends your brand reach, builds more brand awareness, strengthens a brand’s positioning, and can also increase loyalty of existing customers. Employees are your organisation’s most important stakeholders. Being able to successfully activate employees as advocates should deliver great reach and outcomes from earned media via employees’ networks. Advocacy from employees in particular should build strong levels of trust in your organisation, brand and products – relatively rapidly. People trust people they know more than they trust ‘faceless’ businesses, so your employees’ public endorsements of your organisation or brand (e.g. via social media) will help you activate earned media in a way that other marketing techniques won’t be able to. Make advocating easy for your employees Employees have the audience and trust of their peers. Harnessing that power of social media for your company means that your employees need to get involved. Here’s how you can help them: Provide ready-made banners for employees to add to their social media profiles. Tag employees in social posts so they see the posts and can easily like or share. When you have posted something on social media that you would like your employees to share, send them the specific link to the post via email or your internal messaging app. Provide software for your employees that makes advocating quick and easy. Examples include: Oktopost Post Beyond Smarp DSMN8 Consider starting a dedicated employee advocacy programme We recommend trialling your employee advocacy programme with your most highly engaged employees initially before pushing it out company-wide. This allows you to test the process and iron out any issues. Here are the steps to start an advocacy programme: Set objectives for your advocacy programme. These should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely), and should support the strategic marketing goals of building brand awareness and positioning your brand in the best way. Create content that can easily be shared by your employees – whether that be social posts, blog content, podcasts, or videos, you need to be able to create and publish a steady flow of content that your employees will want to share as the content is relevant and valuable to their networks. Set sharing guidelines. Providing a short list of ‘dos and don’ts’ will give your employees confidence to share more as they will feel comfortable about what they’re sharing. You should also communicate to your employees the benefits of sharing content and practical considerations for how they get hold of the content. Provide training for employees on how to use social media and how best to advocate for your organisation and brand, should they wish to do so. Share content ideas with your employees on the kinds of things to post and share. Measure the value of your earned media – once your employees have started sharing the content, you can measure the success from your employees’ efforts. Compare them back to your initial KPIs and SMART goals. Compare how this introduction has increased your revenue or sales. Employee advocacy is generally overlooked as a great opportunity to slot something compelling and impactful into your marketing. Those who pay attention to this area and execute on employee advocacy well should find their efforts help them stand out from competitors – achieving the all important ‘cut through’ that is so precious in the attention economy of today. Continue Reading Topics: Brand strategyCommunity marketingEvent marketingMarketing strategy
Why you need a marketing audit, and how to do a good one. by Team MPG, on 24/08/2022 As with every function in your organisation right now, marketing needs future-proofing. But, in a very uncertain world, trying to prepare for ‘what’s coming next’ is really tough. How do we identify and manage our greatest risks? And how do we spot and invest in your biggest opportunities? Marketing needs particular attention in your strategising and planning because it requires significant and ongoing investment, and is (or should be!) a key driver of revenue. In a recession, marketing becomes even more important. According to a 2020 Harvard Business Review article: Companies that have bounced back most strongly from previous recessions usually did not cut their marketing spend, and in many cases actually increased it. But they did change what they were spending their marketing budget on, and when, to reflect the new context in which they operated. #1 Why should I do a marketing audit? The question you should NOT be asking yourself right now is “How can I cut my marketing spend?”. The CORRECT question is “What marketing investments should I be making – to survive and thrive?” To answer this question, you probably need a marketing audit. A marketing audit helps you ensure your marketing approach and investments fully support your business strategy. A well executed audit focuses attention on the data points and benchmarks that show you what’s working, what isn’t, and where your key opportunities are to bring more efficiencies, economies of scale and effectiveness into your marketing function. #2 How should I approach a marketing audit? To have impact, a marketing audit needs to be rigorous, and based on an analytical, evidence-based approach. A marketing audit should consist of the following distinct stages: Stage 1: Definition of objectives and scope Stage 2: Information and data gathering Stage 3: Analysis and benchmarking Stage 4: Delivery of findings and recommendation – including an operational plan to ensure the right investments are made in the right areas, at the right times, and with the required measures in place to ensure a good ROI. #3 What should I include in a marketing audit? The following elements of marketing should be reviewed within a marketing audit: Your overall business strategy and goals. It is essential your marketers have a thorough understanding of what you are aiming to achieve as a business, otherwise your marketing efforts won’t be well focused. Your target market, especially their profile, size (total addressable market, aka TAM), and your current penetration of TAM. Your TAM should ideally be divided into market segments that are then prioritised. The value proposition of your brand(s) and product portfolio(s). What are the ‘problems to be solved’, or ‘jobs to be done’ that mean your highest priority target market segments need and value your product? Your competitors, and your positioning against your key competitors, with a focus on your core differentiators and USP(s). These should relate directly to the ‘problems to be solved’ and ‘jobs to be done’ – as per above point. Your marketing objectives, and how success against these objectives is measured and visible at all times. Remember that these need to line up behind your business goals, with marketing metrics that should tie clearly and directly into financial results. A ‘warts and all’ SWOT analysis of your marketing function – incorporating an evaluation of: Insight on your customers i.e. what 1st party data you hold on customers, starting with the most basic information stored in your database about your TAM (see point 2 above), and also covering the most advanced useful information you have about levels of engagement and propensity to purchase. Your marketing systems and integrations for data flow i.e. martech platforms, digital marketing platforms, analytics tools, etc. Your brand assets i.e. visual branding, messaging, consistency of touchpoints, customer experience of your brand. Marketing channel and tactics deployed to date, and how these have been optimised to date and how they have performed so far. Your marketing processes i.e. manual and automated, within your marketing function, between your internal marketing function and external partners (e.g. marketing agencies) and between marketing and other business functions. This includes how marketing strategies and plans are created, and how campaigns are managed and executed. Your marketing people i.e. overall level of internal resources, skills and team structure (also considering that some ‘marketing tasks’ may be done by people not in the marketing department); external resources/expertise you rely on for marketing to work; and how your marketing function communicates/integrates/collaborates with key external parties and other functions for overall synergies, Key activities a marketing audit process should include are: 1-2-1 interviews with key stakeholders Group Q&A sessions to gather all the information (sometimes called ‘workshops’) Review of relevant documentation and reports, including org charts, job descriptions, financial data, customer survey findings, process maps, supplier agreements, samples of collateral and content, etc. Review of system set ups and relevant data within systems (via direct access into systems) #4 Who should conduct a marketing audit? There is no escaping personal and/or confirmation bias if someone ‘internal’ conducts a marketing audit. Therefore, a marketing audit should be conducted by a suitably qualified ‘3rd party’ i.e. someone not involved in the day-to-day of a business (or business unit), but with a strong background in marketing, in a similar kind of organisation, with a similar business model or product set. This 3rd party could be a central marketing resource within a large organisation, or a trusted external partner. #5 What should I expect the output to be? The party conducting the audit should present findings and recommendations within a comprehensive report, including: Executive summary For every relevant area of marketing (as above) – key findings and recommendations, with clear link between recommendations and ROI to be expected from implementing these. These pages should link to detailed appendices, examples, templates, and analysis as relevant. A recommended investment plan for filling gaps and ensuring marketing is set up for success. A high level recommended operational plan, or ‘roadmap’, on how recommendations should be executed in terms of priority, sequence and timeline. Be prepared: conducting a marketing audit will in itself require investment and time as it needs to be approached skilfully, and with a good level of rigour. A ‘half baked’ audit will probably do more harm than good, but a well conducted audit should give you incredibly valuable insights, and help you make good decisions about how to invest well in marketing – which should pay for itself many times over. If you’d like to have a chat about how best to approach your marketing audit, please drop us a note on [email protected]. Continue Reading Topics: Digital marketingMarketing operationsMarketing SkillsMarketing strategy
How to get all the marketing skills you need – when you need them by Team MPG, on 28/07/2022 At a recent Renewd virtual roundtable discussion that I was privileged to chair, we heard from our hugely impressive and inspiring guest speaker Monique Ruff-Bell of TED Conferences. The overall round-table discussion theme was “Leadership challenges and opportunities in a post-pandemic world”, and during this very dynamic session the following key points really stood out for me: How important it is for business leaders to really understand the perspectives of those ‘further down’ in the hierarchy of an organisation, especially in roles they themselves have not worked in. Only by trying to put ourselves in their shoes, can we see the value they can offer and how to help them grow and reach their full potential. How we need to embrace diversity in all its forms if we are to build better businesses, including diversity in ethnicity, religion, gender, personality, and also importantly – how people think, and therefore, communicate. This got me thinking about a key marketing problem in nearly every business I have encountered over the past 10+ years of consulting and running an agency. And this may well be the biggest thing holding your business back – especially if you are looking to scale profitably. And here it is… Many business leaders, most of whom have never held a marketing role, expect the impossible from their marketers. They have never walked in their shoes, or even tried to. One person is expected to have strong competencies in a wide range of areas that vary greatly and require completely different skill sets and natural strengths. Businesses often expect the same marketing person to be great at copywriting AND tech implementations, or database development AND design, etc. Businesses often hire junior, inexperienced people as marketers (because they’re cheap and available), and then don’t provide the support and training these people need to succeed. Sometimes they hire more senior and experienced marketers, and because they’re paying them more, expect them to deliver a depth and breadth of tasks simply impossible for one person to handle. They want strategically strong people to also be very good on all things ‘hands on’. This results in frustration (for all parties) at best, and failure of a marketing function at worst. To counteract this issue, it is important to recognise the five marketing skill sets that every business needs (see our blog from December 2020), and accept a diverse team of marketing ‘thinkers and doers’ will be needed to deliver all the skills you need. Some of these marketing skill sets can sometimes be combined into one role – if the person in the role has the experience, aptitude and interest in the relevant areas. And it is important to recognise that certain elements of marketing, particularly the very technical aspects, are often better outsourced – for three reasons: Certain types of marketing specialists are scarce to the extreme (especially in data, martech and analytics), so are difficult to hire and retain. An ‘all in-house’ marketing function that includes all resources and skill sets you need, full time, can become expensive and difficult to manage. Some specialist skill sets and flexible resources needed may best sit externally – to compliment what you have inhouse. There are some marketing specialists you may not need full time, all year-round. Often to be most effective, a marketing specialist’s work is best focused on specific projects that are time-bound, and with set deliverables. Unless they have a pretty full quota of ‘business as usual’ tasks to work on a daily basis, then project based resourcing, using consultancies, agencies and/or freelancers, may be a better option. The most successful marketing functions we have seen over the past ten years have found ways of working in a highly collaborative and integrated way with strong external partners – over a long period of time. This has enabled them to easily outsource elements of their marketing as and when needed, and thereby always have access to the best skill sets and a good amount of flex in a stable and scalable hybrid marketing team. Circling back to the Renewd discussion, it is important for business leaders and marketing leaders to take full responsibility for building diverse and fit-for-purpose marketing teams. They need to walk in their shoes, and see their perspectives when it comes to working out how best to build a strong marketing function. This includes supporting them in working out what needs to be done inhouse and what should be done by external partners, and then ensuring the right level of executive sponsorship is in place to support the marketing function to succeed. Want to know more about Renewd and the online round-tables you could join? Find out more at https://renewd.net/. Join the community with a free basic membership here. Continue Reading Topics: Community marketingEvent marketingMarketing SkillsMarketing strategy
