New business agency blog

Another strong month for the sales team. The two most remarkable things in January were the unprecedented number of rearrangements we had to manage due to global cooling at the beginning of the month and the significant increase in access we achieved when targeting marketing agencies for our own new business effort.

I’m happy to report that most of the meetings postponed at the beginning of the month have now gone back into the diary. Rearranging meetings is the bane of any Business Development Consultant’s life as there is always the chance that the meeting will not slot smoothly back in and occasionally such meetings can slip into a limbo-like state for months on end. We do everything we can to minimise the impact this has on delivering to clients, including;

• Regular contact with our clients to ensure we have the most up to date knowledge of their availability for meetings
• Setting high quality meetings in the first place, with a qualified decision maker and establishing a clear agenda for both prospect and client
• Ensuring the proven process for confirming meetings is carried out
• Factoring in a cancellation rate; we set more meetings than we need to because at the end of the day and despite everything we do, some meets will always drop out

The first couple of weeks in January posed an unprecedented challenge however. Some of our clients were literally snowed in and some prospects were inaccessible on the day the meeting had been set for. Fortunately the measures we took ensured no clients made a wasted journey and the majority of the meetings we had to move in the first week or so have now either happened or will do so shortly.

The increase in decision maker access we achieved when talking to marketing agencies is harder to explain. We were 50% more likely to speak to an agency owner in January than the historical average (which really doesn’t fluctuate much). One can only assume that marketing agencies are looking positively at 2010 when planning their proactive new business efforts, which is great news for people like us. This assumption is supported by the net increase in our client base we have experienced so far this year.

I’d like to report that we found it so much easer to get through to Marketing Directors in January but this was not the case. It seems there is no substitute for hard graft when it comes to winning a telephone audience with a Marketing Director. Fortunately the uplift in successful outcomes once we have got one on the phone, which began in June 2009, now seems entrenched so we enter the year optimistically, hoping to build on a very positive second half of 2009.

I’m pleased to report that the entire company has entered the Sport Relief charity run on Sunday 21st March 2010 (www.sportrelief.com.)

Most of us have entered the 3 mile race but there are a few hardy souls (or should that be competitive souls?) who have entered the 6 mile race.

Our joint aim for this event is to raise a minimum of £1000 for Sport Relief.

Alchemis has adopted a number of different charities this year including African Village Support, who help villagers in rural Uganda become self sufficient, Thames Reach, a London- based charity helping homeless and vulnerable people to find decent homes, build supportive relationships and lead fulfilling lives and Children with Cystic Fibrosis Dream Holidays, who organise holidays and breaks for children with cystic fibrosis.

We will be running a number of events ourselves this year, mainly involving sporting based competitions amongst our team of Business Development Managers.

Are there any marketing or new business agencies out there who fancy taking us on (all in the aid of charity of course)? We’re confident enough in our overall sporting prowess to allow you to name the sport and we’ll happily put our money where our mouth is!

I’ve read numerous articles in both the marketing and national press this week about how social media marketing is powering its way up the slippery ladder of “brand medium of choice” at the cost of direct marketing. Some of the stats mentioned in the articles may give great cause for concern to people working in “traditional” direct marketing – like 66% of marketers will be investing in social media marketing activity over the next year and as many as 40% said they would be using their DM budget to do so, cutting spending on DM by a fifth.

Now, if anybody read my previous blog about CRM, you may have surmised that I can be a bit picky when it comes to data integrity. So, a few things I should point out about these stats, before any traditional DM agencies start to beat their chests in self-pity whilst wailing “we’re all doomed”.

Firstly, all these articles appear to have stemmed from the same source (the Alterian 7th annual survey).

Secondly, this survey questioned 1,068 professionals worldwide, but of these only 42% were actually marketers (the rest were agencies, service providers, systems integrators and “others”).

Thirdly, only 36% of respondents were from Europe as opposed to 62% from North America and 2% from Asia.

So, I would imagine from this that the real sample size of British marketing decision makers who are actually in a budget holding position is unlikely to be more than a few hundred.

That said, there’s no denying that social media is a very attractive option for marketers. It’s relatively cheap, leaves less of a carbon footprint in these environmentally-conscious times and campaigns can be created and turned around so quickly that marketers have the ability to act almost “up to the minute” with current trends and events.

However, it’s not necessarily going to reach all demographics across the board. The weighting is far heavier at the younger end of the scale so for the foreseeable future the “older” generations (and I’m not just talking about pensioners here) will still be a very safe bet for traditional direct marketers.

On top of this, an ever-growing number of DM agencies have integrated digital and social media marketing offers as well now which, when considering the vast amounts of personal data gleaned from online campaigns, raises opportunities to tailor highly personalised specific direct marketing campaigns to potential customers with a higher degree of accuracy than ever before. Don’t forget, traditional direct marketing doesn’t just have to be in the form of a letter – I’ve heard of all manner of objects being sent in order to elicit a response (including a crowbar on one B2B campaign).

This blog is obviously focused on the reports that DM could lose revenue, but most meetings we attend across all disciplines talk about social media. Is it also the death knell for traditional PR agencies or advertising agencies? Social media is no longer the jewel in the crown of just the digital agency fraternity. It has and will become a part of all marketing be it PR, DM or even research and as such agencies need to develop their offers in that area.

It’s true that some traditional direct marketers may have to raise their game and “work smarter” to keep it an effective medium. But those who do will reap the rewards.

What are your predictions for the future of direct or social media marketing?