Like many other businesses, when we engage with a new client the first step we take is to review and audit all the assets they have. Including website, platforms, integrations, social media, content, Google console, and analytics. From this we independently speak to all employees to gain an understanding of the company goals at every level.
This provides a baseline for us to measure their performance and success against. We can then evaluate the actions and behaviours of the team and see if they increase the probability of success and achievement of their goals.
The modern business landscape has created an imperative that every company be, in some way, a technology company.
The shift has been dramatic in the last 18 months, however in past years we have seen an increase in traditional companies going digital. In this cautionary tale, James Ker-Reid of Sales for Startups and marketing partner Richard Lucas, Founder of Eleven, share insights on the importance of aligning sales and marketing and highlight moments when this goes wrong for a joint venture with a Fintech company.
In the case of this startup, they had just undergone a large website revamp [switching from WordPress to Webflow] and ultimately spent in excess of £15,000 for something that was not performing. Here are our main observations to help you avoid the same mistakes when it comes to technical SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), single source of data, martech integration and content production to support sales.
Align your vision
We see it happen so often when companies outline their vision for a new initiative and then pull in a third party web partner to build the end product. This can create a lot of problems, as the company doesn’t have the technical expertise to know whether what they are trying to achieve is practical or how to execute the project. The best way to avoid issues is to work on the initial plan with the necessary experts from each angle, internal team, sales, marketing, web designer and web developer.
Having paid thousands for a website with some text and imagery in place but without being advised on the right copy and imagery, the client discovered that the basics were never in place [no sitemap] and that they have no established SEO equity.
In other words, having done the normal keyword research on search trends and competitor sites that initial research wasn’t carried through to the website’s structure and content. One could say that they prioritised design over substance.
This means that the website has not worked hard enough for them and actually hampered their desired progress on their lead generation efforts.
Having a strong online presence that can be organically found online can be make or break for generating more revenue.
Single source of data
As with most scaling businesses, this company had numerous sources for data, including social media platforms, individual email accounts, legacy platforms and the dreaded employee notepads. With no ability to analyse and interpret the data many opportunities were not being maximised and in some cases entirely missed.
A single source of data is one of the most important aspects for your business to be able to make justified decisions, particularly when it comes to sales and marketing. You have to make your business processes more convenient, easy to access, accurate, and more secure by storing your business data in one multifunctional place.
Martech integration
You might be familiar with Scott Brinker’s famous marketing technology (martech) landscape slide, known as the Martech 5000. The pandemic has shifted the focus on functionality from ‘nice-to-have’ to ‘must-have’ for companies as they grapple with rapidly shifting consumer behaviours and the need for regular online communication.
Martech is all about devising the strategy that is right for your business, and only then identifying the technology that will help you execute that strategy. Thinking about it the other way around, trying to improvise a strategy that fits the technology you want to use, simply won’t work.
A successful martech stack is used to streamline internal collaboration, analyse the performance of marketing campaigns, conduct personalised and proactive communication with customers and provide a detailed overview of sales and customer buyer journey status.
Content production to support sales
Creating content without understanding your buyer personas or clarifying your brand’s perspective is not going to achieve your company goals and could be a waste of time. Whether it’s a high-quality infographic, long or short form blog, gated download or an explainer video, quality content is crucial to engage your audience, develop meaningful relationships with quality prospects and convert sales.
When a marketing and sales team are aligned in the types of content created for sales enablement versus that created for content marketing purposes, a sales team can utilise the content across various touchpoints to make the final conversion from prospect to loyal customer.
Publishing good content increases the number of visitors to the website through search engines. The simple function of search engines is: to exist, discover, understand and organise the internet’s content in order to offer the most relevant results to searcher’s questions.
If you don’t have any content, or worse you have bad content, your site cannot be found by the search engines. And if it cannot be found, you won’t get any traffic to your website. We find that consistently publishing great keyword rich content when conducting a website revamp often falls down the priority list.
This can be fatal with it sometimes taking between six to nine months to re-establish your original levels of organic search traffic after dropping the ball on a website revamp project, which ultimately will be evidenced in your number of leads, number of sales and revenue.
Working together Sales for Startups and Eleven have jointly built roadmaps for startup growth projects. Creating the sales and marketing strategies to achieve client goals and help to prioritise those needs based on the requirements of the technical infrastructure and content gaps is a must for those wanting predictable revenue at their tech startup.