Introduction to Q1 2017/18
New Financial Year Plans
Welcome to the first quarter of this new financial year! This year is quickly progressing since welcoming in the New Year for 2017. I hope you have just finished Q4 strongly and ready for a great performance and business growth in the 2017-18 financial year.
It’s the time to kick off with new financial goals and plans, and hopefully to capitalise on last year’s performance to aim for year-on-year growth and profitability.
Our aim is to publish quarterly newsletters with updates on our latest business news and developments in the area of sales and marketing, so feel free to follow our us via LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.
Some reflective questions to consider about last financial year and plans for year moving forward:
- Where is your competitive position in the market?
- How can you increase your profitability?
- What worked and didn’t work from your business plan?
- What new strategies are needed for sales growth?
- How much marketing investment do I need to make to improve ROI?
- Do you need more sales and delivery resources?
Some market observations from last financial year 2016/2017.
The market is changing even more rapidly in this world of disruption, new technologies and innovation which is touching every industry sector. The same challenges involving the digital world are impacting traditional methods to develop leads and grow sales pipeline with every business. The need to generate a solid ROI from every investment dollar spend, and to be able to justify the spend is even more important than before. There are some many channels now competing for budget do where you spend relies on a solid direction and strategy plan before embarking on a lead generation campaign.
Within the marketing environment, creating the right partnerships can take some time and trial and error to find a suitable fit. There is a convergence of digital marketing, full service marketing agencies and niche marketing agencies which all specialise in helping to address marketing and lead generation. Direct experience in the sector your are operating in and tangible results will help choose the right help to suit your business.
This has been highlighted in the market with some larger and smaller acquisitions of digital media companies and marketing agencies by IT companies, management consultancies and some consolidation of marketing agencies through organic growth or client driven contracts and capability needs.
Marketing investments can be difficult to allocate for the greatest impact on your business. Do you spend $20,000 on Digital SEO, Website design, Google AdWords campaign or content writing? Do you run a marketing event? Or budget to hire an experienced sales person for direct field engagement? The way the marketing environment is changing and developing is only creating more pressure on and competition for marketing budgets.
The recently released HubSpot State of Inbound 2017 report on the future of sales and marketing shows many SME organisations spend less than $20,000 on marketing expense.The average small business spends at least $50,000 on their digital marketing presence, which may not be directly generating a tangible ROI and sales revenue from disparate digital marketing agencies or through time and effort delivered in-house. What we have observed is that not always a sales and marketing go to market strategy plan has been developed first.
Compounding the above marketing challenges is the average tenure in senior sales and marketing roles reducing to about 18-24 months, and good talent is hard to secure at the right market rates. In an APAC context there is movement without necessarily achieving a significant increase so retention of good sales and marketing leaders is proving more challenging pending sales quotas.
We recognise the importance of digital marketing and having a strategy to be more successful in effective lead generation, new business development and a more personalized content appeal to specific buyer’s audience.
Register for a complimentary Digital Readiness Assessment to find out how an improved digital strategy can help grow your business. 
In more detail - Market Insights and Trends 2017
For an experience-based extended commentary into market insights and trends, and the push toward digital marketing strategies, check our one of our latest blogs HERE.
Newsletter: Commentary: Market Insights and Trends 2017
Our Sales and Marketing Projects
We continue to expand our consulting services capability in line with market demands. We now have a greater focus on sales enablement services and inbound digital sales and marketing focus, working to develop better sales and marketing alignment for more consistent engagement.
We have been delivering consulting projects for new clients during the past 12 months at each stage of the sales and marketing process with a holistic approach from Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel stages to deliver higher quality leads nurturing warm prospects, delivering sales channel enablement and specific marketing campaigns.
Our speciality last year was predominately within the technology and services sector – cyber security, networking and cloud/data centre domains, specialised engineering services and financial services sectors, throughout the broader APAC region.
We acknowledge that the marketing of professional and niche services is both a science and an art but it can be challenging without the real field and industry expertise required to assist with a go to market engagement. Areas such as ICT security and finance/investment sectors demand a strategic and contextual approach with good quality content for effective marketing to enterprise, corporate, mid-market and government- or sector-based prospective clients.
Let us tailor a custom marketing demand generation campaign for you that links your business strategy, sales and marketing targets, and people, process and systems together with a suitable investment focussed on Return on Investment.
The State of Inbound Report 2017
The State of Inbound 2017 was released in May from HubSpot based on the latest data around the future of sales and marketing.
Here are some statistics from the report which may resonate with you and your current business, sales, and marketing challenges:
- Only 22% of all respondents say their organization's sales and marketing relationship is tightly aligned.
- 31% of C-level executives say there is tight alignment between their marketing and sales teams, but only 17% of managers and individual contributors agree.
- Respondents with sales and marketing SLAs in their organization are 3x more likely to say their marketing strategy is effective compared to those in misaligned organizations.
- 70% of marketers say their top priority over the next 12 months is converting contacts/leads to customers.
- 63% of marketers say their top challenge is generating traffic and leads.
- 38% of salespeople say getting a response from prospects is more difficult than two to three years ago.
- 35% of salespeople say closing deals is more difficult than two to three years ago.
- 38% of salespeople say they struggle most with prospecting.
- 45% of salespeople say they spend over an hour performing manual data entry, yet only 21% of C-level executives said this is so.
My visit to the 2016 HubSpot Inbound Event in Boston provided validation of the rapidly shifting nature and importance of digital marketing automation. Every marketing plan requires an inbound methodology to respond to the ways in which buyers make purchasing decisions today compared with a more traditional approach.
I am looking forward to returning to the HubSpot Inbound Event 2017 in September, but in the meantime:
Read more about the State of Inbound report and the increasing importance of why you need to align sales and marketing with the impact of digital HERE.
Alchemise Consulting - Digital Marketing Capabilites
For an overview of our recent news release and expansion of our digital services capabilities, please click here.
News Release: Alchemise Consulting expands digital services capabilities for APAC region
If you haven’t seen our recent published blog posts so far this year, here are some examples of some various client projects we have worked on during 2016 and how we have assisted with some common but key sales and marketing challenges from large MNC's and SME businesses.
- Vendor partner channel engagement support
- IT security digital web user experience review for lead generation campaign
- US ICT vendor sees the need for marketing automation process improvement in APAC
- New market entry feasibility to Australia saves 40% cost for a UK ICT Services provider
Stay tuned for our upcoming events or conference visits
- July 2017 - HubSpot Grow Event, Sydney
- September 2017 - Inbound 2017, Boston
- Q1/Q2 2017/2018 - Alchemise Event Briefing for Business Owners and Sales/ Marketing Managers - (TBA)
Stay tuned for further updates and information on our upcoming events for the remainder of 2017.
Thank you for your support to date and look out for our next edition of the quarterly Alchemise Consulting Newsletter.
Have a great start to Q1 2017/2018 and remember, our success is your success. We aim to maximise your profits - happy selling!
If you'd like some tips and strategies for increasing your sales, click below to register for our e-book, "How to increase your sales with 7 profit multipliers"
