The Gartner CMO survey suggests that the average marketing spend should be 11% of total revenue. Commentators also suggest that the proportion of marketing budget versus revenue should be higher for newer companies or challenger brands. The problem is that companies are still trying to understand the best areas in which to invest their budgets. A lot has been written on digital spend versus more traditional marketing budget, but it is sometimes hard to compete and keep up with more well-established competition without huge marketing budgets.
Secret Source have been working in sales and marketing for over 20 years, both client and agency side. Therefore, we have worked with the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to marketing budgeting. While we are not going to tell you how to spend your marketing budget, here are a few things below to consider that might help. Read and then download our FREE Marketing Budget Templates!
Topics:
CEO,
Sales Leader,
sales strategy,
inboundmarketing,
marketingagency,
secretsource,
salesdirector,
Sales Manager,
salesleads,
Sales Director,
hubspotgrowthsuite,
hubspotautomation,
budget2020,
marketingbudget,
salesbudget,
marketingbudget2020,
salesbudget2020,
budget templates,
free marketing budget
We're an East Midlands Hubspot partner covering Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Northampton and Leicestershire. We’ve been a successful Hubspot partner for over four years now. Many of us at Secret Source have been users of CRM systems for 20+ years. During that time we have seen CRM solutions come and go, or get acquired. We’ve seen the birth of marketing automation systems and, more recently, the emergence of sales automation and service automation systems. We started off just onboarding clients using Hubspot. We were very confident that our Hubspot clients were getting most out of their system. This showed and, in many examples, our clients owed a contribution of their growth to having a clear sales and marketing pipeline, clear goals and a focus in their inbound strategy and deal process. Having this coherent strategy led to healthy sales and marketing alignment. Hubspot sales and marketing automation systems aided clients to demonstrate their sales pipeline that even led to further investment or even acquisition and mergers. Life was good!
However, when we branched out with dealing with existing Hubspot users, we found a different story!
Topics:
CEO,
Sales Leader,
sales strategy,
inboundmarketing,
marketingagency,
leadgeneration,
secretsource,
contentwriting,
salesdirector,
Sales Manager,
salesleads,
Sales Director,
due diligence,
hubspot,
hubspotcrm,
hubspotgrowthsuite,
hubspotcapabilities,
hubspotautomation,
husbpotfreecrm
No doubt you have been approached by various companies who claim that they can get you to page one of the major search engines overnight with their SEO Services?
They possibly can, but be aware that this is not a short term approach and can actually end up affecting your website ranking in the long term! Instead, go out and select the right partner. Here are a few things to consider;
Topics:
Sales Leader,
sales strategy,
marketingagency,
ukbusiness,
businessgrowth,
websiteranking,
seo,
seoservices,
searchengineoptimisation,
marketingleader,
seoranking,
seodigital,
ukbusinessgrowth,
lincolnshireseo,
cambridgeSEO,
googleranking,
peterboroughseo
Secret Source wish to salute all those who are trying to grow facial hair for a good cause!
Happy Movember!
To find out about all the good causes we support then please follow our social feeds.
Topics:
CEO,
Sales Leader,
marketingagency,
leadgeneration,
secretsource,
salesdirector,
Sales Manager,
salesleads,
Sales Director,
movember,
movember2019,
movemberfoundation,
marketingsupport,
marketingprofessional,
salesprofessional
We explore how for investors and advisors making acquisitions, using Natural Language Processing can surface some of what often lies undiscovered.
When navigating effectively, fixing your position involves using multiple points of reference, that helps you to build the most accurate picture of your location and can determine your direction of travel. In business, data and market intelligence works a lot the same. Companies with the most accurate points of reference are more likely to make a more informed decision about their direction for the business than those without.
Topics:
CEO,
Sales Leader,
sales strategy,
inboundmarketing,
marketingagency,
leadgeneration,
secretsource,
contentwriting,
salesdirector,
Sales Manager,
salesleads,
Sales Director,
mergers,
due diligence,
acquisition,
coporate intelligence,
merger,
mergers&acquisitions,
M&A Activity,
M&A process,
acquisitions,
financial director,
M&A,
mergers and acquisitions process,
M&A research,
mergers and acquisitions step process
Your organisation relies on your sales activities to help grow the business. You may be a confident person but how confident are you with the sales processes around you? We asked Sales Leaders what advice they would give to fellow Sales Professionals to help them with their confidence in the sales process. Below are four items to check. Why not download the free sales plan below?
Topics:
CEO,
Sales Leader,
sales strategy,
social media,
inboundmarketing,
marketingagency,
instagram,
leadgeneration,
secretsource,
contentwriting,
salesdirector,
Sales Manager,
salesleads,
Sales Director
The following was written and posted on Linkedin by a CEO, who successfully ran a well known nationwide brand for years. For his new venture he decided to do things differently. He wanted to use his time wisely and so decided to outsource his marketing to Secret Source Marketing. This is his advice to other Executive Teams thinking of doing the same;
Topics:
Sales Leader,
sales strategy,
marketingagency,
outsource,
outsourcedmarketing,
ukbusiness,
businessgrowth,
savingmoney
Read these
13 Tips below to help you get the most out of using Instagram for your business.
Topics:
Design,
CEO,
sales strategy,
social media,
website,
inboundmarketing,
marketingagency,
instagram
Don't let these horrors haunt your website this Halloween. Here are 6 scary things that keep Secret Source awake at night!
Topics:
Design,
Marketing,
inbound,
engagement,
growth,
website
Your website is your business. Representing your brand, products and services. You cannot afford to get it wrong.
As the first impression potential customers will have of your business, this simple guide will help you convert more viewers into leads and achieve the business you are looking for.
Topics:
Design,
Marketing,
inbound,
engagement,
growth,
website
Website attacks by hackers are on the increase and it doesn’t matter whether yours is a small start-up or a huge organisation. Whatever the size, you can be vulnerable to cybersecurity incidents involving malicious malware.
Topics:
Marketing,
inbound,
growth,
cybersecurity,
website
It sounds obvious that sales and marketing in any business should be working together as they share the same common goal, which is revenue growth. However, there is usually conflict between the two departments instead of unity. Often sales blame marketing for poor lead quality and marketing feels that sales don’t make the most of the leads they’ve supplied.
The world over CEOs are always busy people. So, it’s surprising how they ever find the time in their packed schedules for self-development. However, we’ve found that the most dynamic business leaders we’ve worked with are always looking towards improvement, reflection and finding new ways of thinking to give them the edge.
Topics:
Marketing,
inbound,
growth,
development
As a business, of course you want to succeed and grow, but these days it isn’t enough just to grow, we must grow better.
Topics:
Marketing,
frictionless,
inbound,
strategy,
growth
Harnessing the power of social media is vital for businesses wanting to engage with potential customers and to build brand awareness and grow.
Deciding which platforms to use is your starting base. Where does your target audience spend their time online and which will work for showcasing your particular product or service?
Topics:
Marketing,
inbound,
social,
social media,
strategy,
engagement,
content,
personas
You have no doubt heard the term 'growth agency' before, but do you know how these differ from a traditional marketing agency?
Now that the Christmas break is over and everyone’s back at work, hopefully you’re looking forward to a brand-new year in which to press onwards towards more growth and success.
Topics:
Marketing,
Sales Leader,
Lead Generation,
sales strategy,
sales automation,
NLP,
frictionless,
inbound
What can you give to the person who already has everything? Secret (Source) Santa think we have the answer. It is not necessarily what you may imagine (socks, wine, golf clubs etc) but things that are a lot more useful.
Topics:
Marketing,
Sales Leader,
Lead Generation,
sales strategy,
sales automation,
NLP,
frictionless,
inbound
Whack-a-mole sales strategy definition: A transactional phase. To be reactive to tasks and activities to the extent you often go to work with the mind set of not structuring your day/week but instead resigned to the fact that you will be fielding, questions, enquiries and problems all day, week or month.
Topics:
Marketing,
Sales Leader,
Lead Generation,
sales strategy,
sales automation
Is your current website looking old and tired?
Is it failing to deliver leads and your potential customers are going to your rivals instead?
It sounds like it may be time for you to get a new website. Before you embark on your project, read our top tips for getting it right:
Topics:
Websites
Your time in a working day is precious and you’ll want to maximise this and work as efficiently as possible. If you feel that your business isn’t growing quickly enough and recognise the signs below, then it’s time to take action!
A customer deciding to leave you is never nice, but it happens. They had their reasons and chose to move away from you and whatever product, service or relationship you had. Perhaps it had been coming for a while, maybe it was out of the blue, but how do you react and what should you do?
Increasingly people are using mobile phones as their go-to device for searching online. In the UK alone nearly 40% use this as their preferred option. So, if you’re not optimised, you could be losing almost half of your potential traffic!
Marketing strategy usually starts with determining what it is your customers want. But do you really know who your customers are?
For maximum return on investment, your plans need to be based on what your potential buyers are actively searching for and need help and information on. Otherwise your ideal customers will inevitably end up being attracted to one of your competitors rather than to your business.
In our recent blog Want to create a frictionless business? we shared with you some of the top insights from Inbound 2018 that we attended in Boston.
One of the key learnings from the event was that for businesses to flourish and grow, the focus has to be on delighting customers. This will deliver your biggest return on investment and ensuring you incorporate wow moments will be vital for success going forward.
You are likely to be familiar with the terms inbound and outbound marketing but may be unsure which is the best for your business and how to allocate your budget and resources proportionately.
Both forms of marketing are used to drive customers to your door, but they do it in very different ways.
Secret Source Marketing were lucky enough to attend Inbound 2018 in Boston USA, listening and meeting some of the finest brains in business. We picked up some extremely valuable insights that you might like to consider when going for growth.
Many professionals would recoil in horror at the idea of spelling mistakes being used deliberately as a marketing device but it does happen. Most people would ignore the mistake and quickly move on, but there are enough grammar perfectionists out there who will blog about it and discuss it, for it to be a worthwhile ploy for some.
It can be easy when planning content to become fixated with getting as many blogs, articles, whitepapers, ebooks etc out to market. Business owners, commercial or sales leaders often have a number in mind which usually includes high volume that warrants the resources and costs. However, this can sometimes come at the cost of quality and by bombarding the marketplace you risk turning off your audience.
So what's the answer? We have listed 4 best practice tips to follow so you can have both the volume you need without compromising quality.
