The Outsource Blog

Surprise events – a recipe for disaster

One of the things fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies can teach B2B marketers to do better is research.

Why events-based marketing is still one of the best sales programs you can run

What other marketing activities do you know of that gives you an opportunity to bring prospects into your world for an hour or two (or longer) and be completely engaged with you at the exclusion of all else?

Why case studies are an ideal marketing tool

Case studies – they’ve been around for years and are still an obvious option for inclusion in sales and marketing packs. They tick all the ‘look how great we are’ boxes in a neat and tidy package that can be in market for years before the contents become stale. They look great when you hand one over to a prospect, a media outlet, as a third party endorsement, or even as a quick training manual internally on how your products can, and have been applied.

Working your data

I’m going to say this straight out – managing contact databases is hard, tedious work. Personally I’d rather paint my house with a toothbrush. However, like most things that are hard work, the pay off is worth it.

How to write email invitations that get results

If you’ve written an invitation to an event you know that, while it seems simple at first, you are very quickly faced with decisions about what information to include and what to leave on the cutting room floor.  It should be easy right? The trouble is, many invitations I receive seem to forget what they’re [...]

Time to walk the walk, not talk the talk

January is a great time to look at things with fresh eyes. I know I have been doing this not only for clients but also in my own business.

Keep your sales pipeline full into the New Year

We all enjoy slowing down towards the end of the year. And why not, we work hard the rest of the time and in Australia we’re blessed with a summer festive season and there’s nothing like kicking back in the sun.

The problem is that by February everyone is worrying about re-filling and re-invigorating their sales pipeline – and has to work twice as hard to get the wheels turning again.

The power of direct mail

I was working offsite at a client office recently and had a huge reminder about the power of the right kind of direct mail – that is, marketing items or content that is relevant and interesting for your contacts.

Websites – the forgotten sales hurdle

It’s not a big surprise that you’re supposed to have a website these days. In fact, there’s probably not a business in Australia that doesn’t have some kind of web page. However, having an ordinary site (and no-one is saying ours is a work of art) can really kill a sale when you sell high involvement products and services.

Three things every business can do today to get on top of bad data quality

Managing marketing data is a nightmare scenario for most firms. Somehow a once-clean, valid database of names, job titles and company names becomes an unusable mess.