The harmful effects of COVID-19 have become much more than physical. Everything is changing for businesses because of lockdowns, event cancellations, and the prescribed social distancing to prevent any further spread of the virus. While this is an unprecedented turn of events, it’s not the end of everything for small to medium-sized businesses. It’s more important than ever for companies to put their best foot forward. But with all of the obstacles and challenges that businesses are facing now, what can they do to stay afloat? The best way to keep your business alive in times like this is a strong and comprehensive content marketing strategy.

Working remotely is one of the greatest challenges that a company can face, but it can also be a great opportunity for the company and the employees. As the traditional office space becomes a thing of the past, aided by the recent spread of COVID-19, more businesses are trying to adjust to remote work than ever before. Depending on what industry your company is in, this will either be a seamless transition or a very difficult one. How does a remote team operate? Below, we go into detail on what to expect as your team begins to work from home.

Digitally savvy customers are expecting more from the companies that are trying to sell to them. It isn’t enough to offer a product they need – today’s customer is looking for a simple, intuitive solution to their complex problems. They know that while you may offer the product they need, there are at least 10 other companies who can provide that product as well. So how can marketers implement an advanced lead generation strategy to attract new leads? Below, we have 4 ways that businesses can improve their lead generation strategies to attract more leads.

Everyone in the professional world has email. For many companies, it’s their primary avenue of communication. Marketers have been using email marketing campaigns for years, pushing products, events, and anything else they want their audience to engage with. If the majority of people are checking their email every day (most are checking multiple times a day), why aren’t your campaigns working? While it might seem that email marketing as a whole just doesn’t work, but it might just be that your processes are out of date. Engaging with your audience is like a game of chess: it requires a lot of strategy and planning, as well as the flexibility to adapt your approach when things don’t work. Below, we have 5 email marketing practices that don’t work anymore.

Implementing a live video experience for your brand is an incredible opportunity to bring your audience together. Whether you are filming product demonstrations or a roundtable interview, your audience can use your live broadcast as an opportunity to stay informed on what your business is doing. There are plenty of platforms available to produce your live broadcast, so it’s easier than ever for companies to do this. Below, we have a few pointers for businesses to consider before implementing a live video experience.

Marketing consultants vary from one to another, just like any other profession, however there is a cadence that all marketing consultants should follow.

Formally, I’ve been a marketing consultant for 21 years working in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, New York and Atlanta. During that time, I have had the opportunity to not only consult to hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses but also Fortune 100 companies, and surprisingly there is a lot of similarities.

What can you expect from a competent marketing consultant:

Ability to create a marketing strategy aligned to your business goals

If a marketing consultant is coming into your business and their only discussion is one or two areas of marketing, you must consider that perhaps they don’t have enough experience in marketing to understand that an omnichannel approach is the only way to build a sustainable marketing strategy.

A strong marketing consultant would have at least 10 years’ experience in marketing with successes and failures under their belt.

Whether they do marketing strategies the old fashion way or they use Robotic Marketer, it is important that they understand all the different facets of the marketing mix, and how they relate to connecting your brand with your audience.

Branding is a strength

Many marketing consultants fail to truly understand the value of brand leaving this side of the “business” to their advertising counterparts. To do marketing, you really need to understand the company’s brand; personality, values, voice, attributes, benefits and so on.

Branding is very important to differentiating your company from your competitors. At Marketing Eye, we focus on being an outsourced marketing department. Our brand personality is professional, inquisitive, forward thinking and reliable. Our voice is authoritive, knowledgeable, visionary and global.

To understand your brand is important to how you communicate your value proposition and connect with your audience.

A marketing consultant needs to know how to strengthen your brand in the market and ensure that you are consistent with all brand messaging and placement.

Technology-savvy

Reaching your customers and prospects is hard when you are doing it manually. By automating this process you will be able to reach more customers, more often with less effort in a way that they want to be communicated with. Having the right technology suite is imperative and ensuring that it is integrated, providing you with the right data to feed your sales team, will change your outcomes.

Always start with:

CRM: We use Salesforce but there are many CRM tools that are effective. Salesforce is the most commonly utilised CRM tool in the world, but not necessarily the best. It’s a bit old fashion in many ways and clunky, so find one that is easy for you to use. Other suggested CRM technologies include Insightly, ZohoCRM, SAP CRM, Oracle Sales Cloud (SMB), Netsuite CRM, Base CRM, Hubspot.

Email marketing platform: We use Mailchimp, Constant Contact and FutureMail, however there may be email marketing platforms that are integrated into your CRM or Marketing Automation software that is more effective for your business.

Scheduling Tools: We schedule all social media through Hootsuite and Buffer. Most scheduling tools do the same thing and are usually free to use.

Google Analytics: Key to understanding the traffic on your website and how to improve your search engine optimisation, Google Analytics is very important to any company with a website. If your marketing consultant cannot read Google Analytics, then fire them fast!

SEO Tools: There are so many to use with our preferred SEO Tool deriving from Robotic Marketer technology, but others that are awesome include SEMrush, SpyFu, Screaming Frog, MOZ, Yoast and Alexa.

For the past 16 years, Christina Kortesis has been a marketing consultant with Marketing Eye Melbourne. She epitomizes the way marketing consultants should interact with their clients.

Regular communications

Each week Christina contacts or meets with her clients and talks through the marketing activities for that week, analytics and deliverables. It gives the marketing consultant an opportunity to discuss freely all marketing activities and how they align to the company’s business plan. It also gives the client an ability to update the marketing consultant on the business and how the marketing efforts are affecting sales.

Weekly reporting

Reporting on marketing activities with analytics is essential to any marketing campaign. Marketing Eye’s marketing consultants use our own in-house data analytics program as well as Google Analytics and Alexa.

Sharing of ideas and campaigns

Just because someone else did it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it too! Part of Marketing Eye’s process is to constantly encourage marketers to keep up-to-date with the latest marketing campaigns. Sharing successful campaigns undertaken by other agencies inspires ideas.

Feedback

Clients are everything. Without them, marketing consultants don’t have a job. Ensuring that the door is always open for feedback is essential to creating great relationships but also better marketing results.

Being a marketing consultant means that you have accomplished enough to be able to provide expert advice to your clients. You also know what tools you have access to that enables a better outcome.

Every company needs a marketing strategy to plan for the future. A strategy works as a sort of road map for all of your marketing activations throughout time. But what exactly goes into these strategies? For a lot of companies 2020, automation and personalization of content is going to be the next big step in marketing tactics. Trends change every year, and companies need to understand the next big step. We reached out to a few friends to weigh in on what every marketing strategy needs in 2020.

If you own a business in 2020, you know all about having to stay relevant to your customer base. Whether you want to continue to be innovative or not, the simple truth is that inaction will do far greater harm than pushing your business out of its comfort zone. The best way to transform your business and change with the times is by implementing a digital marketing strategy. Digital marketing is the tool to take your business to the next level and keep up with your audience's expectations.

Outsourcing your marketing department might be the best decision that you can make for your business. Not only does it dramatically reduce your expenses, but it frees up your time to focus on the day-to-day details of your business. But how do you find a marketing agency that’s the right fit for your company? Before you decide on your marketing agency, take the time to do some work on the front-end of things. When you’re looking for the perfect fit, it’s important to know exactly what you want to accomplish, what services the agency offers, and their track record with other companies.