As a strategic marketing consultancy one of the most common challenges that we are presented with is how businesses can begin to market themselves. The leaders of these companies will tell us that the other elements of their business are defined: they have product, place, pricing and so on. They have a business plan. What they are missing is a marketing function and they need help starting from the ground up.

We help our clients to figure this out by using a three-stage format that considers:

1.     Company aims

2.     Marketing skills required to meet these aims

3.     Roles that can provide these skills

Read on to find out how you can apply this 3-stage format to build your company’s marketing structure.

1.     Company Aims

Our first question is this: what are you trying to achieve?

It may sound like a straightforward question but many of the SMEs that we work with have trouble finding a conclusive answer. Naturally, as a business you will want to grow and turn a profit, but how do you sum that up in a way that ties in your unique requirements?

We believe that every business should be able to come up with one sentence that defines clearly, specifically and succinctly the aims of their business.

This could look like:

·       We want to be a household name that sells ranges in at least 2 major supermarkets by the end of this year.

 

·       We want to digitise our retail offering with the result that 30% of our sales come from our website, enabling a reduction in cost-per-sale of at least 15% in the first year.

 

·       We want to replicate the success we’ve seen in our native country here in the UK through the establishment of a strong brand presence.

2.     Identify the marketing skills that will meet your company’s aims

Once you are clear on what it is you want your business to achieve, you can begin the work of identifying the skills that will form the foundation of your marketing function. Your stated aims will help you to identify the specific skills that are required to meet your objectives.

 Below are some marketing skills that you may be looking for.

·       Analytics

·       Web and user experience (UX)

·       Content planning and creation

·       Social media and community management

·       Paid search and advertising

·       Agency management

·       Web development and coding

·       Copywriting

·       Design and visual branding

3.     Scope out the roles that will bring these skills

If you’re not familiar with marketing, identifying marketing skills and matching them up to roles is no mean feat. We often help our clients to scope out a team structure that will help them to meet the aims and objectives they have shared with us (you can see more details on this in a previous blog [link back to my first blog]. As a starter for ten, we’ve included some typical marketing roles and their associated skills below. If you would like a tailored structure for your business, get in touch today.

Typical marketing roles

Website and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) Manager

This person will deliver a functional, user-friendly website and project manage a website development roadmap that is linked to a specific conversion rate uplift.

Core skills

·       Web and user experience (UX)

·       Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)

·       Website management, including use of Content Management Systems (CMS)

 Web Designer 

This role delivers a fantastic looking website that presents your brand as it should be presented. They may use a template like Shopify but will adapt it to make it look unique.

Core skills

·       Web design

·       Web experience

Web Developer

 A developer will deliver the technical fixes and capabilities required by the website development roadmap.

Core skills

·      Coding

·      Identification and resolution of website errors

·      Website functionality

 Digital Marketing Manager

 This role will deliver a marketing strategy, based on budgets and backed up by weekly and monthly reports. They will have ownership of digital marketing activities across different channels, either managing agency or in-house expertise for the likes of SEO and PPC.

 Core skills

·       Budget management

·       Omni-channel marketing

·       Agency management

Social Media & Copywriting Manager

 This person will deliver a social content calendar that interweaves other content channels and supports wider company objectives. They will manage the community, responding appropriately to comments, increasing engagement and expanding brand awareness.

 Core skills

·       Social media management

·       Community management

·       Copywriting and comms

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Manager

This person delivers the email marketing strategy, stratified by customer groups and aligned with the wider marketing calendar. They will be key to building and maintaining client relationships.

 Core skills

·       Automation programme building

·       Customer loyalty and retention schemes

·       Campaign planning

Brand Creative Manager

This person will own the brand, ensuring consistency and effective execution. They will deliver design toolkits and brand guidelines to internal and external stakeholders.

 Core skills

·       Brand management

·       Design execution

·       Stakeholder management

This list is by no means extensive, but it should give you a solid start. Follow the three stages outlined above (and again below) and you’ll have the beginning of a marketing structure.

3 stages to start establishing a marketing function:

1.     Outline company aims

2.     Identify required marketing skills

3.     Scope out the roles needed to bring these skills

To find out more about how we could help you, head to our How we Work page or contact us today.

Describe your job working at The SME Partners

I am a marketing executive at The SME Partners where I currently manage some of our clients’ accounts. My main role is to create and execute social media and CRM campaigns, and analyse their performance. I also get involved in developing strategies for the brands that I manage.

What is the best thing you’ve learnt in your job at The SME Partners?

 

The best thing I have learnt in my job has to be creating my own photoshoot for one of our clients’ Christmas campaigns. This involved developing the clients’ Christmas strategy and proposing an accompanying photoshoot to reflect this. I created the brief and executed the shoot myself, making sure this would be within our clients’ budget. The final images have been used throughout our clients’ website, social media channels and via CRM. It’s been extremely interesting to bring my own concept and ideas to life and seeing how well the images have helped boost Christmas sales. This has been a huge achievement for me as it has demonstrated my creativity, confidence in my work, and the trust between the client and myself when dealing with their budgets.

What is the most challenging part of starting a new job as a graduate? 

 

The most challenging part of starting a new job for me as a graduate has been working from home. Settling into a career and a first job is tricky enough but doing it whilst being unable to work in an office due to the pandemic has definitely had its challenges. It took me a little while to familiarise myself with it, but I’ve found that scheduling weekly calls with my colleagues and making the most of being in the office when we can has been very helpful for me. And now I do enjoy the extra time in the mornings when I don’t have to commute to work…

Has there been any funny moments? If so, give us the dirt!

 

There’s been a lot of funny moments when we all meet up in the office, and a couple that stand out to me has got to be teaching one of our team that there’s more to food than just chicken nuggets and chips! And our fixation with Love Island over the Summer… There’s never a dull moment when we’re together, that’s for sure!

Meet Fin, the SME Partners first digital marketing apprentice. Here he gives the lowdown on the highs and lows of being an apprentice, digital marketing and working for the SME Partners. He’s nothing but honest. Promise.

Describe your job working at the SME Partners

I am a digital marketing apprentice and I work within the digital side of the business for our clients which is helping with website design and the back end of the websites using Shopify and Elementor mainly. I also get involved within the social media side which entails creating and scheduling posts for our client’s social media accounts and running campaigns for them.

 

What is the best thing you’ve learned in your job at the SME Partners?

The most valuable and best thing I have learnt that I feel has benefitted me the most is helping out with the back end of the website design process. I have created the actual design of websites before but I have never inputted all of the meta data and the SEO before so that was very eye opening and has helped me for the future too.

 

What has been the most challenging part of starting a new job as a graduate / apprentice?

The most challenging part of being an apprentice is balancing my workload for my qualifications with my job at SME. I feel as though I am good at timekeeping and hitting deadlines however sometimes it can get a bit stressful when I need to finish an essay off!

 

Have there been any funny moments? If so give us the dirt.

 I can’t pick out one in particular but there has been plenty of laughs when we meet up and are all in the office together after not seeing each other for a little while!

In a world that is slowly finding its balance from Covid 19, for business owners and marketeers the last few years has seen much change. No longer is it cheap as chips to advertise on Facebook. No longer is the high street the go to destination for launching a B2C brand. Instead, brands have to fight for attention at the top of Google or in busy social media feeds. And it is an expensive business. So, how do small businesses stand out in an increasingly competitive digital landscape. Here’s 7 simple marketing tactics to get you back on track…

1.     Engage and Grow Your Customer Database
If you’ve grown a strong customer email database during Covid, look to reengage with your existing customers. Segment or automate your existing email database to make it work harder. For example: target frequent purchasers with a loyalty discount or introduce abandoned cart emails.

2.     Drive more sign ups to your email database: That annoying welcome email you see on websites – sign up and save 10%. Well, it really works and that’s why most websites use it. Don’t be afraid to use a pop up. Most people are used to them and won’t leave your site because of it. You can also use this as an upsell mechanism by restricting the discount to higher margin products.

3.     Competitions are a great way to drive engagement both via email and social media. Be sure to follow Instagram / Facebook’s guidelines on competitions. Make sure your competition encourages people to tag a friend in the comments. The more people you can get to comment and like your social media posts, the higher they will go up the social media news feeds and the more engagement you will get.

4.     Utilise cost effective technology like Tidio which allows you to automate customer journeys through bot technology e.g., welcome discount, abandoned basked discount. Once you set up the bot it does all the hard work for you. It can even check order tracking for customers on certain website platforms like shopify, eliminating customer enquiries instantly.

5.     Join an Affiliate Network like AWIN. Affiliates drive traffic and conversions to your website for % fee on each transaction. Sounds expensive? Get it right and it can soon become your cheapest digital marketing channel and can drive huge volumes of traffic quickly with minimal upfront costs. You pay only when the affiliate drives the sale. AWIN gives you access to a huge network of ready to go affiliates all in an easily manageable platform. They have a small business scheme that starts at £99 per month.

6.     Ensure Your Products Are Still Relevant. Sell water bottles? It’s Love Island time. Constantly reviewing your product set in line with consumer trends will naturally drive more sales. Twitter is a great place to start for trending topics that could be turned into products.

7.     Engage with Social Influencers. Many social influencers will feature your product on their feed or blog in exchange for a free gift. If you can make it worth it for them even better but this doesn’t have to be an upfront fee. It could be something as offering an exclusive discount that they can offer to their followers.

When you’re a small fish in a big pond, the key to success is disruption. Taking an established product, concept or market and creating a twist that helps you stand out from the crowd is key – whether that’s through clever tech, process innovation or next-level marketing.

We’ve pulled together some of the brands who started small but hit the big time thanks to their disruptive approach to well-established products, services and markets. What ties them all together? Always putting customer need first.

#1. Beauty Pie

Buying big brand beauty products is an expensive business, with the latest wonder ingredients, wrapped in elaborate packaging reinforcing the myth that money = youth and beauty. When industry disruptor Beauty Pie came on the scene it set out to smash this elitist culture, creating a beauty buyers’ club sourcing quality beauty products from top labs, offered to its members at discount prices in exchange for a small monthly subscription. With monthly subs from £5, and products that cost up to 80 per cent less than they would in high end retailers, Beauty Pie appeals to the quality-focused, brand agnostic beauty buyer. Wrapped in simple but sophisticated packaging, Beauty Pie’s business model allows them to give shoppers the luxury product they want, more sustainably packaged, and without the elitist price tag.

#2. Starling Bank

When you’ve worked in an industry for years, it’s easy to get bogged down in doing things the way they’ve always been done. But banker Anne Boden took her industry’s challenges and turned them into opportunities back in 2014, when her disillusionment with the banking industry – and an emerging consumer need for more smart phone based services – inspired her to create financial services disruptor Starling. Starling introduced features like real-time transaction history, blocking transactions made at a different location to your mobile phone and tracking spending habits and available cash in easy-to-read dashboards has seen Starling grow its customer base to more than half a million in just seven years.

#3. Made.com

Owning your own manufacturing operations can have its advantages, but when Made.com launched in 2010, it spotted an opportunity to offer the latest designer furniture to customers without having to have its own factories or warehouses. Made operates entirely online, with showrooms to showcase but not sell furniture commissioned from different designers. It groups customer orders before putting them into production, so every piece is made to order. It topped £1bn in sales in 2020, and continues to expand into new products and territories as customer loyalty and demand continues to grow.

#4. Seedlip

There was a time when, if you weren’t drinking, your options at the bar were limited. So, at a time when gin was having a bit of a resurgence, Seedlip founder Ben Branson spotted an opportunity to tap into a growing need for interesting drinks that weren’t packed with sugar or artificial flavours. Using a 300-year old recipe, he create Seedlip – a distilled non-alcohol drink with all the flavour of an artisan gin but none of the ABV. His first thousand bottles sold online within three weeks, the second thousand in three days, and the third in 30 minutes. Seedlip now sell three varieties of their non-alcoholic drinks, in bars and retailers across the world, with big name brands now jumping to get on the booze-free bandwagon.

#5. ASOS

Online retailer ASOS may have joined the mainstream fashion giants when it bought Topshop and Miss Selfridge for £330m at the start of 2021, but when it launched in 2000 as ‘As Seen On Screen’, it was in a league of its own. Using an efficient purchasing model and partnering with tech innovators to streamline and speed up its systems, it took the celebrity trends of the day and replicated them online, allowing customers to order and wear the hottest looks within days of spotting them in their favourite glossy magazine. One of the first big online only UK fashion retailers, ASOS has evolved with its customer base over the last two decades, introducing more than 850 big name brands, genderless fashion ranges, bespoke customer look boards and shopper-generated photography and social media marketing to really connect with its fans.

Need help getting your big idea off the ground or want to take your existing business to the next level? Get in touch at hello@thesmepartners.co.uk.

Covid-19 changed the world almost overnight, and we’re still seeing the impact. While some things are slowly getting back to normal, it’s likely that life will never be completely as we knew it before, and nowhere is that seismic shift more obvious than in brand and marketing. As lockdowns increased demand for e-commerce and reduced consumers’ opportunities to physically engage with brands in their day to day lives, something needed to change, and change fast.

At The SME Partners we’ve been helping brands to sharpen and realign their focus throughout the pandemic, whether that be moving a B2B brand to B2C channel, relaunching a product proposition or finding new marketing opportunities for a B2B business.

Here’s what we’ve learned from the Covid-19 crisis, and how we’ll be using those learnings to steer our clients through a post-lockdown world.

#1. Brand is more important than ever

We’ve got more customer data at our fingertips than ever before and tech innovation is moving at pace, but are facts and functionality enough to differentiate you from the competition? Especially at a time when consumers are spending less time in store, and are less likely to discover your product or service by proximity alone. As more and more shoppers embrace e-commerce, brands need to consider how they can build a clear understanding of customer need to be able to set themselves apart and capture their target customers’ attention and affection. Convenience and a slick customer experience are great, but brands still need to hit customers in the heart as well as the head if they want to build long-term advocacy. And marketers need to be constantly surveying the horizon, ready to respond to tech, marketing and cultural trends in a way that feels authentic for their brand.

#2. The cost of digital marketing is rising

Before March 2020, a marketer’s tool box – and budget – needed to cover multiple touchpoints. But when the world went into lockdown, digital became THE way to engage with consumers, who had little else to do but shop and consume content from the comfort of their couch. Great for brands that already have their e-commerce and digital marketing game sorted, but there is a downside. For example, more people browsing social media means cost per engagement increases, so you get less bang for your buck. Pay per click costs get more competitive. And there’s also a cost in terms of resource – customers spending more time consuming content means more content needs to be produced, which can stretch capacity and outsourcing costs to their limit.

#3. Time to move from defence to offence

The pandemic forced many brands to pivot or accelerate their e-commerce strategies to meet consumer demand quicker. After all, there’s nothing like a crisis to light a fire under you. But unlike most crises, Covid-19 doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, and the effect it’s already had on consumer demands and behaviour is clear to see. So, if your brand was lucky enough to survive the pandemic, holding on to loyal customers and adding some new ones, it’s time to use that spirit of innovation to drive growth. Acquisition is a key objective for many brands, and being smart about your marketing to maximise ROI is key to turning your Covid survival strategy into a way to thrive.

#4. New tech is enabling innovation and shifting consumer expectations

While many brands flexed to survive in peak pandemic, others used the opportunity to test the limits of new technologies. From chat bots to manage unprecedented customer demand to augmented and virtual reality content that brought brands to life like never before, tech innovation has given brands new ways to engage with their customers and raised their expectations. And while we may be getting back to bricks and mortar, consumers are likely to expect a more blended approach than ever before, because why would they go back?

#5. Tech + content = connection

The best brands make their customers feel seen and add more to their lives than the immediate benefits their products and services bring. And while much of that added value once came from the in-store experience and seeing a product with your own eyes, that instant appraisal and validation has – in many cases – been removed by Covid-19. So, brands need to work harder to make sure they can find, speak to and serve their customers in a way that works for them. Clever, relevant tech and content that’s well planned, targeted and perfectly delivered hold the key, but brands need to be clear on their objectives to deliver a strategy that gives customers the experience they’re looking for. There’s no ‘one size fits all approach’ – every business and brand needs to carve its own path.

Need expert advice to shape your approach to brand and marketing in a post-lockdown world? Get in touch at hello@thesmepartners.co.uk. We offer a free consultation for brands big and small!

Marketing drives growth. Like calories. You put money in, and it drives leads. It’s a simple equation but one which, just like losing weight, can be a hard-fought win.

So, what happens when your marketing stops working? How can you fix it? And why has it become ineffective in the first place?

Like diet’s you need to start at the beginning. The triggers that drive you to eat something are the same triggers that customers use to buy your product. The very first thing you your Slimming World coach will tell you is to recognise the trigger that leads you to eat two chocolate biscuits instead of one. The second step is to learn how to fix it. Marketing is just the same – identify the customer triggers and make them more effective. So, whilst the slimmer tries to stop eating biscuits, you’re trying to make them eat more. It’s a cruel world out there. It really is.

At the SME Partners, the very first thing we do is take a step back and look at where your triggers might be leading your marketing astray. We’re the slimming world of marketing. The weight watchers of your marketing budget. So here’s where we start…

You don’t understand who your customers are,
Who is your ideal customer? This really is the exam question. If you don’t know it, don’t worry. There are tonnes of ways to find it out – from analytics, to surveys, to Mintel reports. When you know where they are, where do you find them? Are they in Costco stocking up on bulk buys, or browsing the aisles of Waitrose? Are they frequent buyers or once in a blue moon? The more you can find out about your customers, the more effective your marketing will become. Take a bag of skittles, you know like the red ones best, but you have to go and buy the whole damn packet. Effective marketing means you’re not buying the whole bag of skittles, you’re just finding the red ones.

Your product doesn’t make your customers life better,
Sometimes, business owners get way too close to their product. You know and we know it. We’ve been there too. This is particularly true of the tech world where endless features will be added to an app or platform to fulfil a supposed customer need. If we’d had a pound for every time a CEO has come up to us and said we need an app. But why, CEO, does the customer need the app? The key to a successful product proposition is to ask how does your product make life better for your customers?

Your brand identity doesn’t look trustworthy,
Brand marketing. Ah that old gem. If we had a pound for every CEO that said they didn’t need brand marketing and then ended up getting royally shot down by some disgruntled customer on twitter. Perception matters. More so than at any time in history. Because your brand is everywhere, and your customer is everywhere, and everyone has more of a voice than ever. If your brand doesn’t look trustworthy they are not going to buy from you. It’s that simple. To fix it you need to be everywhere talking to that customer, and look like your marketing hasn’t been knocked up in Microsoft Paint.

You favour one marketing channel over another,
But I do PPC? What more do I need to do? Well, the simple answer is you need to do more. A lot more. There’s a reason multichannel marketing is so trendy. It works. You can’t just invest in a PPC & SEO agency and then not deal with content outreach and PR. Or neglect your customer database in favour of Google. The customer journey is fragmented. Customers leap between channels, eventually converting to a sale. Your marketing needs to touch all points of the customer journey and be front of mind, so just when they’ve forgotten about you, up you pop with the perfect product at the perfect time. A clear multi-channel marketing strategy where you spread your marketing budget between channels, and pull different levers at different times, is key.

You’re chasing short term profit vs long term revenue,
Marketing spend should account for 10 / 15% of your turnover. No ifs, no buts. Having a marketing budget and targets set into your profit and loss, will allow more accountability to yourself and your investors. Marketing can be all about short-term profits but it doesn’t give a sustainable growth or build a long term brand. For that you need long term consistency and budget. Most importantly ask yourself what your long-term goal is for the business? Is it to grow to sell? Is it to be a world-renowned brand? Is it to change the world with your product? Is it a lifestyle business to earn a living? It could be one or all of these things, but if you have an idea of where you are headed your short and long term decisions become much easier.

The SME Partners is led by Sonia & Claire. Hello. We have 40 years experience in marketing between us. For a friendly, no obligation chat, to see how we can help your business launch, optimise and grow, leave your details here and we’ll be in touch.

You can read a few of our case studies here

Invest in a CRM software

Developing a CRM strategy is important but alone, it won’t get you very far. To be successful your CRM strategy needs to go hand in hand with a CRM software or system. The CRM strategy will outline and guide your approach but the CRM system is where the action happens. If you don’t already use a CRM software, don’t worry they’re fairly simple to set up. Mailchimp is perfect for SMEs who are just starting up but as your CRM demands grow you may want to look at something with broader capabilities like Hubspot.

Be relevant

If your emails aren’t relevant, you might get people unsubscribing or worse, marking them as spam which will reduce your accounts deliverability. You want to be talking to the right person, about the right thing, at the right time.

There’s a number of easy ways to do this within CRM.

1. Personalise your emails. Customers are far more likely to open and engage with an email that uses their name. This can be done really easily by inserting ‘tags’ in your emails. For example, where you insert the tag [firstname] in your email, each recipient will see their own name. Clever!

2. Segment your customers. Your CRM software should allow you to segment customers by their activity. Using this information you can then tailor the communications for each group. For example, we have been able to target customers who have only bought a sample kit and offer them an exclusive discount as an incentive to repurchase.

3. Automate your CRM. As your business grows it will become more difficult to keep on top of your communications with each customer. Make use of automation to make sure you’re sending relevant messages to people at the right time. A great example of this is setting up an automated welcome email with a discount code that goes to anyone who joins your mailing list, these emails often drive high revenue.

Be mobile compatible

Make sure to preview your emails in both desktop and mobile format before you send them. Today around 81% of emails are read on mobile!

Cover all grounds

As well as anything you send out via CRM, customers receive a number of transactional emails and these often have the highest open rates by a long way. Don’t forget about them! You can turn them into beautiful customer communications and new opportunities to engage customers and drive revenue.

Review and reassess

Keep a close eye on your clicks and open rates to get an idea of what’s working well and what isn’t and then use this to get better!