How you as a business owner can maximize your marketing team’s efforts

Discover expert advice on supporting and inspiring your marketing team to ensure success

As the importance of digital marketing has skyrocketed over the past few years, it’s not surprising to learn that marketing spend has accelerated too. The most recent numbers find that marketing expenses account for 13.8% of companies’ overall budgets, compared to 9.8% a year before. [1]

With such a significant portion of your budget spent on marketing, it’s essential that you as a business owner commit to doing what you can to maximize your marketing team’s efforts—whether they’re an in-house team or an outsourced agency. 

Join us as we detail the best practices for you to follow to support your marketing team in their efforts, and in turn, help drive sales and revenue. 

Ask for client reviews.

Client reviews are an extremely valuable form of social proof for all types of businesses because people truly trust the unbiased opinion of your current and former clients. In fact, nearly 50% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations from family and friends. [2]

Although your marketing team can ask for reviews through email campaigns and respond to ones as they’re given on Google, it’s most effective for you to ask for client reviews after a project is complete or when your clients thank you for your work or partnership.

People are more inclined to give a review when appealed to directly from you as a business owner rather than through an email marketing campaign. Asking for a review can often be quick and simple, and your marketing team can even help coach you on identifying those opportunities and what to say when the time comes. 

Consistently work on networking.

As a seasoned business owner, you understand the importance of networking in helping grow your business and ensuring you have a close network of partners to refer clients to when needed.

In addition to aiding in business growth, networking can also help with your marketing efforts. When you meet new potential clients, vendors, and referral partners and attend or sponsor conferences or events, you can ask for email addresses to help build up your contact list.

A robust email contact list with active recipients who are genuinely interested in your business can greatly help your marketing team in creating successful email marketing campaigns and keep your business top of mind.

Inspire and inform them about your business.

Especially if you work with an outsource agency, it’s essential that you commit to informing and inspiring your marketing team about your business.

Marketing isn’t about telling people what your business offers. It’s about crafting a marketing strategy that’s focused on eliciting emotions and establishing trust to grab the attention of your target audience over your competition.

If you aren’t committed to sharing your passion and excitement about your business with your marketing team, they won’t effectively be able to create the most compelling marketing strategy possible. 

When you’re meeting with your marketing team, focus on transferring your knowledge and excitement about your business, services, and clients with them. Share your business challenges, successes, and client feedback, so they can learn how your customers are benefitting from working with you as well as your goals and expectations. 

Share custom content on your personal profiles.

As part of your marketing strategy, your team is likely creating original blog content, case studies, and social media posts that they’ve put a lot of time and effort into to reach and engage your target audience.

One of the best ways you can assist in these efforts is by sharing the company blogs and social media posts on your personal profiles. You can also share them internally with employees and vendors to ask them to do the same. By tapping into the power of your personal social networks, you’ll help your marketing team gain greater visibility and overall success for your business. 

LinkedIn is a great example of the power that employee advocacy can hold with content shared by employees having double the engagement rate of content shared by companies. [3]

Take team pictures and share new ideas.

When it comes to social media strategy, sharing pictures of your real team will always get better engagement and visibility than stock images.

Although there will be certain opportunities for them to capture content, your marketing team can’t be at every photo-worthy event and in-office moment. Start making taking photos of your team a regular habit, and send those pictures to your marketing team for them to share on your company’s social profiles. 

In addition to original images, sharing new content ideas with your marketing team can be a great way to inspire them and allow them to create content that will truly engage your clients. If your client recently asked an interesting question or needed a specific resource, share that with your marketing team, so that they can create a blog or other type of content that caters to that specific need. In return, your sales team will have more resources to share with prospective clients that will help them shorten your sales cycle.

Follow through on leads and referrals.  

Marketing ends when sales begins, and as a business owner, this is important to remember when it comes to following through on leads and referrals. 

When a contact us form is submitted on your company’s website or a referral is sent to you from a trusted vendor, the follow-through with the potential client is the responsibility of your sales team, not marketing. Be sure that your sales team is equipped and ready to respond to the leads that your marketing strategy brings to the business to ensure potential clients are never lost and marketing efforts are maximized. 

Searching for a new marketing team? 

Look no further! Our team at Different Perspective offers branding, website design, ongoing agency support, and creative services that can enhance your sales efforts, reach your target audience, and help you stand out amongst a sea of competition. 

After learning about your marketing goals, we take the time to create a tailored strategy that’s right for you, and we work together to achieve those goals.

Our awesome clients are leaders in a variety of industries from aviation and technology to real estate and healthcare, but they all have one trait in common: a drive and enthusiasm that matches our own.

Ready to give your sales team the tools they need to succeed?
Schedule a meeting with our marketing strategists today.

Source:

1: The CMO Survey | Marketing in a Post-COVID Era: Highlights and Insights Report (September 2022) 

2: BrightLocal | Local Consumer Review Survey 2022

3: LinkedIn | The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn