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

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

 

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