Do you need a fresh approach to marketing that will really make a difference in the next 100 days? Yes? then agile marketing might be the right answer for you. Shane Redding joins us to talk about agile marketing and using data to drive your marketing success, and she gives us some really practical tips on what to do in the next 100 days.
About Shane Redding
Shane Redding is a consultant, trainer and non-executive director. Shane has been in the industry over 30 years. She joined as a graduate at IBIS Information Services, an innovative data business. Shane had ideas about what she might enjoy, a company car, working in New York too! She entered the interest in direct marketing.
Agile marketing expert Shane Redding
IBIS had a very large database. Shane started to learn about data targeting very early in her career. This early training forged an important approach she takes today – a data-led perspective.
MarTech Tracker – Shane’s latest non-exec role
MarTech Tracker, http://www.martechtracker.com based in Nottingham, is her latest Non-Exec Director role. A very exciting business, founded by Jordan Adams. It combines the best of traditional direct marketing approaches, including outbound to qualify leads. They use new tech to understand what tech a prospect uses. They use machine learning to gather publicly available data. There is so much data they can use legitimately.
MarTech has patents on their processes. Shane helps businesses where they come from. They understood good lead generation for events. Jordan saw how difficult it was to get I touch with people. He found out when someone would want to talk to you.
Best time to contact (alternative) – contact Graham at Finely Fettled.
The trick is to understand WHEN it is right to use the phone. Shane advises that companies should spend more time closing deals rather than wasting huge amounts of their time hunting down new prospects on the telephone.
This joins up with marketing automation work Shane has been doing, so the sales leads are handed off to sales at a much later stage in the engagement process. MarTech Tracker fits in the space that some organisations are calling “an inside sales function”.
If you don’t have that, what do you do?
Without a human touch, your conversion rate is not as string. Marketing qualified leads, has come to mean something definite in the sales funnel.
Shane mentioned – Sirius Decisions – https://www.siriusdecisions.com taking someone from being a cold prospect to a sale. Most purchases nowadays start with Google, the enquire, they become identifiable or not. You can use IP tracking to identify companies. If you fill out a lead form, that is score 1 on the qualification of lead process.
Corpographic – our new favourite word
Shane mentioned “Corpographic” – when we classify businesses this is a great phrase! It’s like demographic.
Shane’s experience has been in B2B. She helped Royal Mail to launch Business Movers, to track when a business moves address. By date, by geography and postcode. She’s worked with ITV on new lead generation processes. She works for Gumtree for Business. This is an innovative platform for businesses the ‘Gig’ economy. What if you want to target specific non-traditional businesses, like Uber drivers – which is where many of them are hired.
Business Movers – Royal Mail’s people were really interesting and innovative, Shane recalls. She was impressed that they moved quickly. Surprising for a large business.
Agile Marketing
Marketers are starting to talk about Agile Marketing – Test, Learn, Do, Review.
Do you still time-box in Marketing? You can. It takes the principles and applying them. There are differences as marketing needs to work cross-functionally. With a new product. Shane works with Sika https://www.sika.com a world leader in their field, she used an agile approach to bring in marketing automation, to test whether they could get a ROI. She achieved roll-out in 3 months. So agile marketing is a really practical approach to use in the next 100 days.
What are key features? Why Agile Marketing? We are all really busy. Long hours. WE NEED TIME TO THINK. Using Agile, you look at how success looks like, this is our focus, we will work through the project in a very controlled way. Very quickly unblock things.
Applying Agile Marketing to The Next 100 Days
Agile marketing teams are normally 5-7 people. Smaller companies may need to reach out to suppliers.
- Step back, stop, get time to think, where should you spend your effort. (What’s the problem & where do I need to focus?). Marketers jobs are pretty simple – getting or keeping customers!
- Shane askes marketers these 3 questions:
- Do you have enough good quality leads?
- Do you have too many leads?
- Are you keeping your clients?
Focus your thoughts around what is your BIGGEST problem helps you to implement. If you answered NO to each of those questions, what next?
Shane answered: The mantra in marketing, that it is much easier to keep customers than it is to acquire customers.
- Are you measuring your churn rate?
- Are there any triggers that explain where you lose customers at points in their buying cycle?
- Delve down to ask the question WHY.
Look for quick wins.
Some simple things:
- A quarter ahead, have you given your sales team a list of customers who bought this time last year?
- Are you giving your sales team the data to make it easier for them to make the right calls?
Understand why people aren’t buying. You may not be doing ‘nudge marketing’.
Agile marketing – companies that do it well, they look for improvements in customer experience. E.g. test a win-back campaign. Competitors don’t always do a great job of on-boarding. We really care and we are just checking in to see how things are going.
How powerful are win-back campaigns?
Shane has worked with clients who have earned an uplift of 20% through win back campaigns. That is significant.
The importance of data that has changed.
Don’t ignore hard bounces in email campaigns, they tell you something. They may have changed, which often means it is a buying opportunity. A good technique to check whether someone has moved company. Where have they moved to? Find out who has taken over their role.
Value of a reconnect campaign?
Some businesses have a finite universe, so you may never give up. Keep past customers engaged. It is important.
Be careful about how you reward your sales team. Are you solely focused on getting new customers rather than keeping existing customers? Do you have a KPI that encourages dysfunctional behaviour?
If your KPIs are being set in silos BEWARE!
Now, because we can measure different parts of the sales engagement process, these broken chains are spottable.
Shane was inspired by Mark Baldry, Infoline Conferences http://www.infoline.org.uk/page/contact-us whose mantra was:
“It’s easy to fixate on the wrong things. I like to keep things simple. Chase the winners. If something is working, I want to do more of it, if something is broken, then let’s just fix it and move on”
What companies don’t do – is MORE OF WHATS WORKING.
So, ask yourself, what’s great in my business, how can you use tech to scale up?
It is also SUPER EASY to find the stuff that’s broken. Is this a mind-set thing? Although, in a global environment, US companies, they are brilliant at not seeing the problems and just putting the foot on the accelerator on what’s working well.
What can you do more of, and how do you do it more easily?
In the Next 100 Days, what should we be doing as B2B marketers?
- Take an agile marketing approach
- Winback
- Get more high quality leads? Do you understand what high quality leads look like? Value, Volume? Have you defined it? Is your market in decline? Growing? It’s easier to grow in a growth market.
- Adapt social selling where you can.
Shane has adapted the new media to help her own business. Test new ways of doing things.
Shane recommends a book: Social Selling, Tim Hughes https://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Selling-Techniques-Influence-Changemakers/dp/0749478012
Easy read, and she changed her LinkedIn profile as a result. Just the change of profile. Take a look: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaneredding/?ppe=1
In the summary, she has used hashtags. All about being found.
Another Shane question for listeners (she asked to a large organisation) What can you do with NO MONEY?
Want to know more about linkedIn profiles, take a listen to our last episode with Hannah Martin or sign up for one of Hannah’s linkedIn courses
How to Contact Shane Redding:
LinkedIn: Shane Redding
The Next 100 Days Podcast is brought to you by Graham Arrowsmith and Kevin Appleby
