Date: May 2021

I’ve seen my external accountant twice in 10 years – which says a lot about how accounting firms communicate with their customers.

While ‘post COVID’ is a little premature, the current sentiment in the market really lends itself to thinking about what a career in marketing looks like today.

In the past, there was almost a sure ride from marketing intern to marketing graduate, then depending on which direction you decided to head, a slow ride through from Marketing Executive to Marketing Manager. For the lucky few (those who worked the hardest), Chief Marketing Officer or as we like to call it, CMO.

An effective marketing strategy should be the foundation of your marketing and communications activities. The right strategy will give you clear objectives, provide you with guidelines to point you to the right direction, and give you the appropriate metrics to evaluate your results and improve overall performance.

When I started out in marketing, I worried that I wasn’t extraverted enough, wasn’t fashionable and preferred a good book over a cocktail party.

Since then, marketing has changed and the ‘nerdier’ marketers are fast becoming the rock stars due to results they derive for their clients, and the ‘fashionable’ lot are seen more as events specialists or publicists. Now, that’s a stereotype, of course, but the gist of it is that things have changed over the past three decades and what was once considered to be ‘cool’ is no longer the case.

Developing an effective marketing strategy is a crucial and difficult task for any small to medium sized business. Which may leave you feeling helpless. However, the City of Melbourne council may have answered your prayers.

A few years back, we have inside sales executives with our marketing agency, and it worked like a treat. We acquired between 8 and 11 new retained clients on 12 month contracts every single month per inside sales executive.

It’s important to have a lead generation strategy more than ever to bring success to your business and capitalise fully on market opportunities. Does your business have an effective lead generation process?