For two decades, Cognition has enabled businesses to generate positive, quantifiable change in sales volumes and profit margins across multiple sectors. We are one of the only marketing agencies in the UK to have a dedicated Research, Data and Analytics Department. This allows us to gather and utilise marketing data for our clients, making them as effective as the world’s biggest companies but at a fraction of the cost.
Most marketing plans fail
There are many reasons for this. Here are just a few:
Our brains are biased to be optimistic about outcomes and we tend to overestimate sales, leads and profits
We prefer stories to statistics, which means we end up believing our own hype. We underestimate the importance of luck and overestimate our ability to control events
We don’t integrate our marketing plans or build sufficient flexibility to deal with unforeseen events and sudden setbacks. Given these problems, is it worth having a plan at all? Why not just make it up as we go along?
Our answer is: do both.
The most effective marketing plans are those that give your business a strong direction, but have sufficient flexibility to adapt as events unfold. In order for your marketing plan to deliver strong, sustainable growth, it needs to ensure:
1. Every element of the marketing mix has a role to play in the planning process.
2. Tactical marketing decisions are always made on the basis of evidence alone.
3. You’re Automating as much of your marketing as you can. This means using platforms like HubSpot that can generate at least a 10% increase in revenue over a six to nine months (Gartner).
4. Continue to create as much compelling content as you can. You’ll know the content is compelling when your customers tell you it is.
5. You’re constantly creating new content for your site.
6.Whenever evidence tells you your marketing plan isn’t working, change it!
Over the last 17 years we’ve created hundreds of marketing plans and the advent of inbound and automation means there is no longer an excuse for not having a plan that works.
If you’re a medium sized business, statistically this is likely to have been your experience of marketing:
• You will have worked with a number of marketing agencies.
• You will have seen some nice creative and left meetings feeling optimistic about the future of your business
• You will have spent money on marketing initiatives with promise of more leads than you know what to do with
• After some moderate successes along the way, you count the money you have spent and realise you haven’t got much, if any, value from
• your investment
• So you decide to do it all yourself
• And when that doesn’t work you come to the reasonable conclusion that marketing is a waste of money
Sadly, we know from the history of our own clients before they worked with us that this is the typical experience of a medium sized business. You may recognise part or all of it yourself. Perhaps that is why you are reading this page.
The reason for your suspicion of marketing is well founded: it is likely that the marketing you have been doing is, in fact, dead!
“Dead?”
Yes, dead.
Traditional marketing is finished and over the last 19 years we have been at the forefront of developing its successor. If you are a medium sized business, this is how marketing can work for you:
• Begin with a story you want to tell about your business
• On the basis of that story, develop an integrated plan, including all elements of the marketing mix
• Automate as much as you can
• Don’t spend any money without a projected return
• Evaluate whether you are, in fact, getting that return
• Proceed only on the basis of evidence and change direction when necessary
Above all, don’t let your past experiences of marketing cloud your judgement about the future. By all means proceed with caution but in the knowledge that, in the past, you have in all probability been investing in a corpse!
The bad news is: there isn’t an easy way out of this trap.
The good news is: there is a way out and this is what it looks like:
These actions form the basis of our Route to Growth, a process we have developed over the last 19 years to help businesses generate sales and protect margins. They are the foundation of every successful sales and marketing plan we have implemented.
We have experience of generating growth for businesses of all sizes across multiple sectors. While the specific tactics we use in each case may vary, the fundamentals of how we work will remain constant unless evidence tells us to change them.
“What are these fundamentals?”
Essentially they boil down to four things:
“What tactics do you recommend?”
Generally, we don’t prejudge what we will do for any client other than we will use every element of the marketing mix, including outbound methods such as advertising where evidence tells us it’s useful. However, our dominant focus is on Digital, PR and Content as these are the most cost-effective methods for generating leads.
“How much will working with Cognition cost?”
The cost of any marketing strategy depends on the size of the business. However, we don’t believe it is possible to get profitable growth on a budget of less than £4,000 a month and some of our larger clients invest as much as £15,000 a month to get the results they need. In reality, these costs are offset by the sales generated by our clients.
Working back from the value inbound delivers, the numbers are astonishing:
With delivery like this, it is little wonder that there is a growing clamour for inbound marketing from businesses in all sectors.
What, then, is inbound?
Inbound marketing is defined by the use of quality content to attract prospects rather than using advertising or other outbound methods to interrupt a prospect’s time with unwanted and often irrelevant messages.
The definition of quality content is not defined by stylistic elegance. It is defined wholly by what your customers find meaningful and commercially relevant.
“But I’ve been creating content for a long time and I’m not getting results. Why?”
Inbound is effective only if…
Inbound is an effective approach if it’s managed well.
Your website is the cornerstone of your inbound marketing.
Google ad words is an outbound marketing tactic.
If neither is working for you, they will require different approaches to fix them.
First, your website.
In modern marketing, your website is the hub of your brand and all the marketing you do. This is why:
Failure to optimise your website effectively both for search and for mobile is the best thing you can do to stunt the growth of your business. There are, however, other less obvious ways to make your website work for you:
“So what about Google ad words?”
Like all forms of advertising it can work a part in an integrated marketing plan but with an average click through rate of 2%, it’s best used as a back-up to a structured content strategy rather than as the main focus of your online marketing.
Business Owners: Marketing for ambitious businesses who are serious about realising growth
Most marketing, creative, digital and PR agencies present an attractive face to businesses of all sizes, but the hard reality is that they are geared towards large organisations with big budgets and a large in-house marketing resource. They’re small (85% of marketing agencies have fewer than 10 people) and need support from a big internal team to deliver results. Most agencies will attempt to make what works for these large corporations work for owner-managed businesses that often have much smaller budgets but much higher aspirations.
We often work in partnership with an in-house marketing manager. We have extensive experience of doing this and an outstanding track record of success. We achieve this by agreeing clear boundaries, providing support across all marketing disciplines and providing the data and insight to enable you to make the commercially correct decisions. For example, the managing director at a manufacturing client loved pictures of the components, and wanted this imagery throughout the website and collateral.
"A marketing business that is prepared to be held accountable for return on investment by their customer has a USP over it's competitors."
Mark Banton - Parry Group Ltd
9 New Street,
London
EC2M 4TP
+44 (0)203 5977300
4A Dormer Place
Leamington Spa
Warwickshire
CV32 5AE
+44 (0)1926 330800
