Marketing Strategy Blog - Page 57

It's that time of year again where marketing managers are frantically working out how to best spend their marketing budget for 2015/16. There is a lot of fine tuning to be done given the changes in marketing technologies, applications and an ever changing consumer behavioural pattern.

Just 2 years ago, who would have thought Instagram would take over the world of social media? That LinkedIn would become the most power recruitment platform taking significant marketshare from Seek, Monster and Indeed? 

To be comfortable in one's own skin is the beginning of strength. That's what they say, and to be honest, I believe it.

I became comfortable in my own skin a few years ago. I stopped trying to be what other people wanted; the outgoing, fun, ambitious Mellissah. Instead, I started being me; a shy introvert who loves business and spends time with people who really matter. 

On my own terms

It wasn't until I became comfortable in my own skin that I really started living life, on my own terms. I know that people prefer the outgoing persona that I use to present, but that is damn hard work. Do you really know how hard it is to be "likeable" and someone who everyone wants to invite to a party? I never had to have "missing out syndrome" because everyone wanted to invite me to everything. Why not? I came with interesting stories, always smiled and talked to everyone. But let me tell you something about that... I was performing. I wasn't the real me.

Effective marketing is understanding your customer intimately. One of Australia's leading CRM companies, Innovent has recently developed a new marketing campaign that is essentially "human". 

In a presentation at Cebit 2015 on Tuesday, I shared the value of marketing automation implemented correctly in a business. Rather than use another case study, I used my own company, Marketing Eye, as an example of how to implement marketing automation and gain immediate results.

To give perspective; Marketing Eye has a substantial amount of traffic coming to our website each month, mainly due to the popularity of this blog and the effectiveness of our SEO team.

This month has been the biggest month in Marketing Eye's history. Our sales have exceeded our forecasts by over 40%. As a professional services firm, this is great, but not as easy to manage as one might think. 

Marketing Eye is at the end of the day a consulting firm with billable hours, not too dissimilar to a law firm or accounting firm. When there has been a huge surge in sales, it means that there needs to be enough people to fulfill the work that the agency has been employed to do.

Instead of working "on" the business, I am working "in" the business doing client work. This is hard, as I am a perfectionist and everything that I do has to be "perfect". As we all know, perfection does not exist, so the pressure I place on myself is enormous.