It’s surprising how often different clients raise the same challenges. That’s what’s great about agency life: we see the same problems, with different context, and can build a toolbox to resolve them.
Here’s our list of the top 10 issues we help clients resolve:
- Content Creation
- Ensuring and Demonstrating Value
- Making Best Use of Marketing Technology
- Marketing Automation
- Lead Generation
- Awareness
- Data Management
- Video Creation
- Marketing Strategy
- Training Your Team
1. Content Creation
When we talk to clients about marketing today, we discuss content creation and content distribution. This approach is so much better than starting with tactics, for example media relations, as it ensures we consider all options and create the best possible campaign each time.
It’s also useful because content distribution and content creation are very different. Typically, marketers are dealing with many channels for content distribution, making channel selection and management a big challenge. Content creation is completely different: marketers struggle to get subject matter experts to create content and need external resources to work writing, graphics, video and online content creation.
We’ve built an agency that is built on our in-house and freelance engineers and technical journalists, as well as marketeers who have chosen to specialise in B2B technology. In fact, more than half the agency once was a journalist or engineer.
This means that we are able to help create content, whether our clients need copywriting, content for inbound marketing or video. Our focus is on generating the most compelling content that engages customers and prospects, driving increased revenue and profit.
2. Ensuring and Demonstrating Value
One of the biggest challenges today is the need to show that marketing activities really generate value for the organisation. We have been offering payment by results for around 20 years, and this experience means we really understand how to measure value for clients. Forget about meaningless metrics such as clicks and followers: from strategy & planning to measurement & results, we build campaigns around business goals that measure the impact on our clients’ bottom lines.
Everyone at Napier also understands that any audience isn’t a homogenous group of people: some are much more valuable than others. Our ability to focus, targeting budgets towards the most valuable audience members with tactics such as ABM means we ensure that your budget works as hard as possible to deliver return on marketing investment.
3. Making Best Use of Marketing Technology
It’s hard to understand the rapidly changing world of marketing technology. In 2019, Madhive found that the average number of Martech vendors used by brands, agencies and publishers was 28, and one average 8.,5 vendors would be added in the next year. To make things even more challenging, marketers must select from a total of more than 7000 Martech vendors.
At Napier we have people who are continually monitoring developments in Martech, understanding the pros and cons of each vendor and analysing the market to determine trends. Our approach to partnerships with vendors is what Americans like to call “agnostic” although it would be more accurate to say that the choice of vendor is inconsequential to us, but really important to our clients. We work with the system that is best for our client, ensuring that we have expertise across all the major Martech vendors in the B2B technology space, from marketing automation and social media tools to sales enablement and ABM.
4. Marketing Automation
The potential offered by modern marketing automation tools is incredible: a system that can gently nudge contacts through the customer journey, delivering enthusiastic customers with little or no human intervention. The vision is so compelling it sets marketing automation apart from other Martech tools.
The reality of marketing automation in many companies, however, is very different. It’s sadly too common to hear companies say they feel that their marketing automation is simply running as a fancy (and expensive) Mailchimp. Whether it’s lack of content, lack of creativity or the need for technical skills to get the best from the system, there are many reasons why most marketing automation deployments fail to deliver the hoped-for benefits.
We’ve worked with all the big systems: Marketo, HubSpot, SharpSpring, Act-On, Eloqua, Pardot and more. We’ve seen great campaigns, and we’ve seen companies turn around their marketing automation efforts from simply managing a mailing list to a lead-generation machine. Contact us to find out how we can make your marketing automation system fly.
5. Lead Generation
Many companies have an almost unslakable thirst for leads. In some areas of B2B technology, marketers have good systems for lead generation: for example, in IT where it’s relatively easy to identify and reach decision makers.
In other markets it can be much harder to understand who will be involved in the decision-making process. We see industries with huge decision-making units (DMUs), where clients must reach a large and diverse audience.
We don’t believe that lead generation is something that lends itself to a simple solution, so we create strategies to drive high-quality leads using a wide range of tactics, including:
- Account Based Marketing (ABM)
- Marketing Automation
- Content Marketing
- Inbound Marketing
- Email and Direct Marketing
- SEM
- Microsite Development
6. Raising Awareness
A long time ago, marketing was all about raising awareness: with a relative lack of alternative products, if you could simply make people aware of your product, then you’d sell it.
Today, the situation is much more complex. Rarely will you generate leads from an awareness-raising campaign, and few people in B2B buy a product when they first hear about it. Awareness, however, is the first step along the customers’ journey.
We understand that awareness isn’t just driven by PR and advertising. Although they are part of the picture, our campaigns also drive awareness with:
7. Data Management
Data is the lifeblood of many sales and marketing campaigns. Without good data it’s impossible to monitor and optimise marketing activities, but data also has a dark side. In addition to legislation such as GDPR, mis-using data is one of the fastest ways to destroy a relationship with a contact.
At Napier we give you clear advice on industry best practices, identifying what’s possible and what will work with your clients. For the trickiest of problems, we also have relationships with legal experts who can help you safely navigate the most complex regulations.
8. Video Creation
It’s no longer the 1980s when dial-up made video a nearly impossible dream on the web. Today video is one of the most important mediums, something that’s reflected by YouTube’s status as the second largest search engine after Google.
Our creative team work on a wide range of videos, from live-action shoots to 2D and 3D animations to explain complex concepts. Ask us for ideas of how to communicate using video and you’ll be delighted by the creative ideas, and might be surprised at how cost-effective they are too!
9. Marketing Strategy
Although finding the right strategy has always been a challenge, it’s more important than ever as marketing managers find themselves with more channels and opportunities than they could ever use.
Focus is essential. A key element of our strategic planning is determining what not to do, as well as what should be done, ensuring our clients focus on what will really impact the achievement of business objectives, rather than simply ticking boxes.
We also use data-driven planning. Whether we are measuring the outcomes of your campaigns to determine their effectiveness or conducting research to understand the market and your customers, we build the evidence that ensures your marketing strategy will deliver the results you need.
10. Training Your Team
One of the biggest concerns about using agencies is that the in-house team will become less skilled, making you more reliant on the agency. This should not be how it works: partnering with an agency should enable you to draw on their experience and expertise to up-skill the in-house team.
We love working with the in-house team to help them grow and develop, and frequently run workshops and training to help our clients build their own expertise. By helping our clients grow and learn, we believe that together we will deliver better results that will ultimately produce more opportunity for Napier.