Leads, sales and how to do marketing in August

•      In most markets, August is a traditionally slow month
•      Uncertainty over Brexit is draining commercial confidence
•      GDPR has curtailed many traditional methods of lead generation

What’s the best way to deal with these challenges?

While August is a difficult month for lead generation and sales meetings, it’s the perfect month for planning for September to Christmas and for creating the basis of an effective marketing and sales strategy for 2019. While there’s little you can do to influence the course of Brexit negotiations, the biggest challenge you face is managing lead generation now that GDPR has ushered in the most stringent restrictions to date on prospecting.

For example, the EU Right to be Forgotten is at the core of GDPR and it means that any prospect you have on your database can exercise their right to refuse any further communication at any point. This, combined with the obligation on businesses to ask for consent before adding any contact to a database, creates a challenging climate for marketing and sales teams.

However, there are distinct commercial advantages to GDPR as long as marketing and sales know how to use them. First, it creates a platform for clean databases where prospects really are prospects and not simply names to give your database an illusion of health.

Useless data also consumes time. At Cognition, one of our specialisms is cleansing data to ensure marketing is being utilised to maximum effect. For example, one of our clients had a database of more than 8,000 contacts. When cleansed, this number was reduced to fewer than 2,000, leading to better targeting and higher sales ratios. Nothing wastes operational resources more than bloated databases and now is your opportunity to streamline your marketing.

Using a lead nurturing platform such as HubSpot will also ensure compliance with GDPR and allow you to take a through-funnel approach to your marketing. We were one of the first UK agencies to take this approach in 1998 before any of these platforms existed and we are now one of the leading HubSpot partners in EMEA. While HubSpot won’t answer key strategic questions, it will ensure effective delivery.

August, then, is the perfect month to take stock of where you are and take control of your marketing strategy. Specifically, ask yourself these questions:

•      Do I have a real and robust database of prospects?
•      Do I have a through-funnel strategy for getting the best out of every contact?
•      Have I got a marketing strategy in place that blends PC, SEO, social media and PR with traditional marketing methods such as direct marketing, event management and advertising?
•      Do I have a platform for tracking all my marketing and sales activity that delivers actionable reports and analytics?

If the answer is no, or partially no, to any of these questions, book a free consultation meeting with us. We’ve been solving these challenges for the past 20 years. Our unique blend of marketing, psychology and technology is proven and effective and by the end of August you’ll have complete clarity about every aspect of your lead generation and conversion.