Category: Business

The expertise of an in-house marketing team minus the premium salary

 

So your company is ready to take your marketing efforts to the next level. What do you do? Either you hire a full-time, in-house marketing director or chief marketing officer (CMO), but these positions require a $70-$200K salary that is way out of budget. You really need an expert with the experience and ability to lead all marketing aspects to reach your overall marketing goals while getting your money’s worth. But, can one person really execute all your marketing efforts alone?

The answer is not likely. A CMO will have to outsource most of your marketing divisions like a videographer, copywriter, designer, programmer, etc. The list of invoices goes on and on. So what is the best solution for your business?

Partnering with a Virtual CMO (vCMO) who in contrast to the traditional CMO, can provide dynamic expertise across multiple disciplines- digital marketing, social media, analytics, tracking, and programming, just to name a few. It positions your company to collaborate with a dedicated team of marketing experts who deliver strategic marketing to reach your marketing goals, minus the premium salary. Think of it as your all-in-one staffing solution.

What is a vCMO?

A virtual chief marketing officer (vCMO) is a service that gives clients access to the skills, experience and strategic insight of our proven marketing professionals at a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house Marketing Director.

 

Why should you hire a Virtual CMO?

 

Cost Efficiency

The biggest benefit of hiring a cVMO is that your business can save an estimated savings of 20-70%, instead of hiring an in-house CMO. This is because a CMO’s average salary is $170,000, not including the additional costs of the outsourced divisions. With a vCMO, an effective, outsourced team could cost less than a third of that expense. This means you get all your marketing needs, for less. 

Jack of most trades

A vCMO provides expertise and experience across many disciplines. If your business launches a new product or service or ventures into a new marketing medium (digital media, public relations, or social media), your in-house marketing director may not have the experience to be able to lead the effort effectively. When you hire an outsourced team, you will have access to a broader range of expertise for less money.

Consistency

Effective marketing requires consistency to establish brand recognition and positive customer experience. While business owners have every intention of driving their marketing efforts, something more pressing is bound to hit their desk becoming the new priority. An outside team’s priority will always be to provide marketing that delivers proven and measurable results while ensuring you make the right marketing decisions for your business. 

High-quality results

With a higher focus and consistency comes a higher quality output. An outsourced vCMO will provide a network of marketing resources to provide their honest opinion on your company and ideas so they identify your strengths to meet your business goals. They will analyze what works, what needs improvement and clearly prioritize the problems needed to be solved. This includes implementing game-changing strategies, execution, and monitoring market trends. They will also be able to provide reports based on valuable tracking tools for your business. Having a dedicated vCMO to report on marketing efforts means better business decisions and accountability.

 

Watch Spectruss New Office Tour

 

CHATTANOOGA, TN – July 18th, 2018– Spectruss, a creative agency based out to Chattanooga, TN, is pleased to announce its new office location to a larger, more convenient space to accommodate continued business growth.

View the new office tour below.

The 3800 Saint Elmo Ave location, will continue to provide dedicated marketing services for its continually growing client-base and flourishing team of employees.

“We have distinguished ourselves by remaining committed to better serve our clients needs and producing a guaranteed return for their marketing investments. This is an exciting time for Spectruss and we are eager to utilize this easily-accessible location,” said Sam Silvey, President of Spectruss.

Spectruss has spent many years working with complex B2B markets, collecting, analyzing and executing based on real-time data. Its experience in the B2B realm has put their clients as #1 subscription box featured on the Today Show, #1 in Wired Magazine, and on some of the top brand influencers in the world.

Check out https://spectruss.com to see what the agency has done, what they are currently doing, and where they are heading.

###

About Spectruss

Spectruss is a creative agency based out of Chattanooga, TN that specializes in Marketing Solutions utilizing custom website development, graphic design, photography, online and print advertising, social media management, review management and data analysis. Its mission is to exert passion through every project, design, or website development they touch.

 

Spectruss, a creative agency, continues to grow 

 

Chattanooga, TN – May 22nd, 2018– Spectruss, a creative agency based out to Chattanooga, TN, is excited to announce its recent hiring of Erin Taylor as the Client Relations and Content Manager while promoting Annie Tarver to Marketing Strategist.  

 

Erin Taylor comes to Spectruss with more than four years of creative writing and client relationship-building experience. After graduating from The University of South Carolina in 2017 with a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations, Taylor transitioned into the agency environment to enhance her client’s brand image and reputation through her communication skills. Taylor will provide content for Spectruss and its clients, including articles, social media posts, press releases, and any other copy associated with the agency. Other tasks include in-depth market research, review analytical data, collaboration with the creative team, and building and maintaining positive relationships with Spectruss clients.

 

Annie Tarver, who was recently the social media coordinator, attained Hubspot certifications for Spectruss, as well as a Google Partnership. Tarver researches data and trends within the marketplace to coordinate a precise marketing plan while specializing in Google Adwords and Analytics for Spectruss Clients. Tarver is an experienced social media coordinator with a demonstrated history of working in the internet industry. She is skilled in Google Adwords, SEO, Online Advertising, Microsoft Excel, and Customer Service. Tarver has a strong media and communications professional presence with a Bachelor’s degree focused in Business Marketing from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

 

For more information about Spectruss, its clients, and services, visit https://spectruss.com.

###

About Spectruss

Spectruss is a creative agency based out of Chattanooga, TN that specializes in Marketing Solutions utilizing custom website development, graphic design, photography, online and print advertising, social media management, review management and data analysis. Its mission is to exert passion through every project, design, or website development they touch.

 

First, let’s do a brief history lesson on the findings of SMART goals. In the 60’s, researchers began examining the power of goal setting and the first published paper appeared in 1968 by Dr. Edwin Locke. “Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives” confirmed that set goals do in fact result in superior organizational performance. Later in 1981, George T. Doran furthered Dr. Locke’s findings and laid out the main principles of SMART goals in, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T way to write management’ goals and objective.” His simple, yet mighty formulation consist of:                                                              

 

Choosing goals for marketers can sometimes be a hit or miss because you have to play the guessing game at picking the right goal. Incorporating these five areas into your marketing goal will allow your team to hit realistic achievable numbers. Here is how you set it:

 

Specific: Set each particular metric you seek to improve. This includes specifying real numbers, deadlines, and team members assigned. Focused metrics can be coverage, visitors, news flow, number of social media posts, Facebook likes, etc. For example, one of my previous campaigns included, “Increase attendance of University of South Carolina students at the April 27th event by five percent.” Which leads to the next target…

 

Measurable: As shown in my example above, you need to state a measurable objective outcome. Like achieving an X percentage increase or gain at least X positive news stories. Objectives should always be clearly defined and concrete instead of vague like “I want to improve my social media channels.” This is crucial in your planning because not only will it show you where to spend your time and money, but also is the only way to prove it was worth doing. The more specific, and quantifiable they are, the easier they will be to evaluate.

 

Attainable: Well thought-out objectives are realistic. It should be attainable, yet challenging. Your goal objectives should not seem unreasonably high because this might result in failure. Start with your own analytics and based on that starting point, set your objective(s) in small increments towards reaching your overarching goal.

 

Relevant: Each goal and objective placed should move you towards your company’s general marketing plan goal. As well as, remaining consistent with current industry trends. When drafting your goals seek input from management, refrain from lengthy time frames and get a second professional opinion.

 

Time-bound: Creating tangible deadlines will help you and your team defeat procrastination. This builds consistency and enhances productivity.

 

Over time, as you monitor and track your SMART goals, you will start to see your company or organization rise to the top internally and externally. Good luck!

 

CISTECH’s Passion leads to Innovation

Our client CISTECH, INC., an XA service company, is excited to join the next generation of business technology leaders at Infor Partner Network (IPN). The company’s dedication to excellence within this industry directed them towards Infor’s XA and Birst solutions to gain a competitive edge in today’s manufacturing environment.

IPN’s mission is to provide partners, like CISTECH, with world-class solutions to sell, the highest level of individual service, and a rich enablement program that serves as a foundation for building a profitable, predictable, and growing business. With Infor XA, CISTECH will access its discrete manufacturing system that covers every type of manufacturing, including engineer to order, configure to order, and high volume repetitive manufacturing.

With the partnership investment and the company’s well-established reputation of experts and quality service, CISTECH has a promising future. As well as, positioning the company to surpass its goal of providing their customers significant benefits and success across the manufacturing industry in North America.

For more information, click the link below to read the full press release from CISTECH:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cistech-inc-joins-infor-partner-network-300618236.html

When company’s want to increase sales, the vast majority just start blindly spending money on advertising.  The irony is that advertising has one of the worst returns on investment for marketing dollars spent.

MarketingProfs.com did an extensive study on marketing spending returns on investment.

The design team at Spectruss took the data and made the image below.

 

As you can see, email marketing dominates with SEO being a distant second.  Banner Ads are literally in last place for a return on investment.

Most people get intimidated with email marketing – however it’s exceptionally easy to get started.

Here are some places to collect email addresses to quickly build your list.

 

Facebook Messages

Recently a friend sent me a message asking for my email address.

I instantly gave it to him.

It turns out he is opening up a restaurant and wanted to invite me to the launch party.

Twitter

Twitter has a very low response rate with just getting customers from this platform.  However, they let you set-up “cards” where someone can opt-in to your email list with just one click.

If you are already active on twitter I recommend this strategy.  You can create a twitter card and use it for free.  We will post an in-depth guide to this in the future.

Checkout Receipt

This should be very easy to do with your check-out system especially if you are online.

What’s more important however is that actual customer’s email is exponentially more valuable than an email from a non-customer.  Ramit Sethi from iwillteachyoutoberich.com provided the following statistics:

You can see that it’s extremely valuable to get the email from people who have already trusted you with their money.

Giveaway

Giveaways are a great strategy to build a large email list in a short amount of time.  The key here is to make your giveaway relevant to your core customer.  For instance, if you owned a children’s boutique you don’t want to have a giveaway for a set-of tools.

Landing Page

This is an obvious one that Groupon.com made extremely popular.  The key with a landing page is enticing someone with something VERY valuable.  A limited-time discount code is a great giveaway as well as a free report or checklist.

Don’t overthink what you need to giveaway as an email opt-in.  A lot of people prefer short resource guides compared to large eBooks.

 

All Spectruss sites are fully integrated with the email service provider Mailchimp.

Do you use email in your business? The CAN-SPAM Act establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

Source: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

 

After the recession of 2008, sales have continued to increase for both brick-and-mortar stores and online stores.  Most retailers discount online sales and think of it as an activity that is “not worth my time.”

However, online sales are accelerating at a significant pace.  Before, people were hesitant to shop online due to privacy reasons. many people were afraid to use credit cards and reveal personal information.

However, online stores have introduced better return policies, faster delivery and some of them offer free shipping. This has attracted a lot of consumer traffic toward online stores. Moreover, online stores have started operating in different niches and they offer a variety of styles within one category of consumer goods nowadays.

Online Sales in the USA

According to a Forrester report, online sales in the US are expected reach $370 billion by 2017. One of the most famous online retailers in the USA is Amazon. Apple and Wal-Mart are big names as well in other online shopping stores of USA. Online sales were even increasing and doing well during the years of recession.

Moreover, the US population has taken more and more to work from home which has decreased commuters on the road and added positively to the green movement. As more working people stay home, they are making major purchases from online stores.  Online sales hit a boom during the holiday season as well. you can find great deals from the online retailers that attract huge consumer traffic.

Online Sales Around the World

The rest of the world has also seen an increasing trend of online shopping. Countries around the world that have seen a boom in online shopping include United Kingdom, India, Germany and Brazil. The biggest example of a worldwide retailer is Amazon. Amazon started as an online book retailer from Seattle. 

Amazon spread its wings from books to other large variety of consumer goods including electronics. The success was so huge that now, Amazon is leading online retailer around the world and is counted as number one on a global basis.

A huge boom in online sales has also been witnessed in the Asia region. China leads the Asia region in regard of online retailing due to the economic boom experienced by the country. It is estimated that China will have produced an eightfold increase in online sales by 2018.

Online sales have also increased as the stores have come up with mobile applications for the ease of online shoppers. With this convenience, people can shop on the go now. The most popular products that sell online include clothing, electronics and home appliances. However, regional differences are expected.

Summary

If you are a brick and mortar retailer, now is a great time to add e-commerce capabilities.  This will increase revenue and profit for a relatively minor investment.