Focus on strategy GROWTH
Driving the sales pipeline
Picking up the phone and talking to prospective clients is still fundamentally the best way to create new business opportunities. Having a reason to engage a new prospect is integral to success, and yet it is still fundamentally forgotten in the sales process. Proactively identify new targets and then create platforms to give your sales team an introduction. Recycle your PR to them, forward them thought leadership pieces and build your brand with them before you pick up the phone. Work your digital strategy with your new business strategy – not only ensuring your SEO is maximised, but aligning your social media with your new business drive by commenting in your target markets. Track market trends, and even look to develop new propositions tailored for specific sector expansion.
A strong proposition
Weathering the storms of the creative industry in the last 10 years has taught us that it is essential to ensure your brand proposition is strong and communicated clearly. Your brand needs to reflect your latest work, show why clients should choose you over your competitors, and communicate clearly what makes you different.
Your customer journey
Once you have established who you want to target and ensured your communication to those targets is in line with your brand, you need to identify your customer journey and look at where they might need your help. In our experience, there are four levels of entry to a new client or new piece of work: 1. Entry level Clients want to make a brand experience tangible – this could be for an event, an app or a leaflet. At Platform, we have found a number of long-term, highly valuable relationships have started with something as small as an application built to provide some level of interactivity on an exhibition stand. 2. Project level Knowing a client is exhibiting at an industry show might mean a foot in the door via an experiential project. Often, being able to show examples of what you can do in their market, or what you have done for a competitor, is a great way of introducing them to your brand. 3. Realisation of a brand experience Many savvy companies are now looking at ways to engage their target customers and influencers, and generate customer insight through brand experience centres. These are either temporary or fixed spaces that embody their brands, where digital, interactive and other 3D-related platforms are integrated.
Many businesses are finding that this is the future of evolving their brand and bringing invaluable customer research to their R&D. 4. Interactivity Taking an existing activity and blending it with interactive resources or integrating all the activity through an interactive platform; this is something we know about having built an interactive app for our client, Vodafone, at London Fashion Week.
Going deeper
To really show how you can make an impact on your clients’ businesses and become an extension of their brand team, you need to go even deeper. Their core values and messaging should work across all touchpoints – from their customer communication to their office décor. The brand experience should be a way of life, rather than a one-off experience. This includes everything, from staff uniforms to staff guidelines, company websites to intranets, HR notices to job adverts. The companies who do this well are the ones who really breathe their brand, rather than just paying it lip service for the sake of their marketing team.
“Keep emphasising to clients what makes you different” Talk to your clients
What it all really comes back to is communication, with your clients and with your potential clients: at every step of the way. Most agencies are brilliant at talking to their customers in the beginning but, much like an old married couple, they get caught up in the everyday and forget the very things that attracted them in the first place. Keep emphasising to clients what makes you different, what you have been doing recently, what new and exciting projects you have been involved in. And listen to them in return. What’s happening with their company? Is it different from when you first took the brief? Are the values and measures for satisfaction the same? Then think: are you still meeting the brief? Is there anything you should be doing differently? Or more you could be offering? Ten years on from our launch in 2003, Platform is still helping its customers make the transition between the old and new worlds they operate in, creating one-stop creative solutions with joined up thinking. Yet we constantly stop and challenge what we are doing as a business, and ask whether we can do it better. We believe this is the way to keep ahead of the rest, and stay at the top of our game. Contact: www.platformgroup.co.uk
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