Research Data Needed to improve our pitch

[The Digital Channel]

I am looking for companies/business owners to answer 5 questions for me:

Currently what percentage of your company’s turnover is generated online?

What percentage of your turnover is spent on sales and marketing?

What percentage of your sales and marketing budget is spent online?

Are you able to identify the source of your sales either online or offline?

Does your company have an experienced specialist directing your online strategy?

Please note this is not directed at standalone online companies ))

I am just looking for some facts which we can use to improve our pitch, for example 65% of businesses have an experienced online specialist in-house, or 65% of companies allocate 15% or more of their marketing budget to online.

The reason is my company is classed as a digital agency, but due to the influx of "digital agencies" over the last few years and it has become a crowded market, to say the least!!!
Added to this are the PR companies, Marketing companies, Print/Design companies which now offer digital services, or sell them selves as being digital specialists. ( Please note there are digital specialists in the above areas, but alot are just jumping on the band wagon......)
So to try to stand out from the crowd we began to offer a different slant on our industry, although we have proven with a few clients we need to improve the pitch and presentation.
The 5 questions are key to our pitch and We hope that by asking for % rather than amounts we would get honest answers from our clients, we believe we need as much info about a company as possible to understand strengths and weaknesses of what we are working with!!! )
How can we market a product or company without really knowing about the company or product, also due to our external involvement we can bring a fresh pair of impartial eyes, something all companies need including ours ))
Once we have the answers, we then review the company and their online/offline offerings and present a strategy which will improve their business across one or more of the question topics.
In the event that a company cannot answer any of the above questions we can help them answer them, ensuring their business is as effective as possible, (it is our belief all companies should know the answers to the above questions if they are too maximise their business, that’s maybe another post)))
So if anyone could answer the questions, no company details are required, unless you wish to discuss a free strategy outline that is
Regards

[Brian Turner]

Oh well, as my company is online only, I'm disqualified.

Curious point - are you saying that you are seeking to use those 5 questions as a sales approach? Simply that wouldn't it be easier to offer 5 answers to questions which are integral to most operations?

[The Digital Channel]

thanks for the reply, The sales approach, i.e providing solutions to the answers we already have sorted, I was just looking for some facts which we could use in our sales info.

Such as

"8 out of 10 companies do not have a digital online specialist inhouse"

or

"On average 15% of company revenue is generated from online"

or

" 6 out of 10 companies cannot identify where there sales come from"

Also there is no right or wrong answer to the 5 questions, our approach is if online generates 10% of your company turnover, great maybe that could be increased to 15% or 20%.

If only 5% of marketing budget is alloacated to online, maybe by increasing that percentage more effective sales could be generated

If you cant "track" the source of your sales, how can you truely know your marketing works.

[Brian Turner]

Originally Posted by The Digital Channel

"8 out of 10 companies do not have a digital online specialist inhouse"

or

"On average 15% of company revenue is generated from online"

or

" 6 out of 10 companies cannot identify where there sales come from"

I personally think you can turn this around to state a solution directly, a problem, as above.

ie:

"We can provide you with a digital online specialist inhouse, to help reduce your costs yet increase sales conversions"

or

"Proven record of increasing revenues through online marketing, without raising budgets"

or

"Unrivalled sales tracking to provide ROI on all major marketing channels"

Compare the two sets of statements, and hopefully that helps illustrate where I'm coming from - working on the old marketing adage of present the solution to a problem.

2c.

[The Digital Channel]

you are correct, and great examples so cheers))

Maybe my post was confusing, I have that problem as I type away.....

Most companies out there worth their salt should be able to make statements as you indicated, but I am keen to find out the answers to my 5 questions without pitching the service.

I read loads of artitles about the value of online and how ad spend online is overtaking other media, but most are around multinational brands, rather then SME's.

I read an artitle which said that online now effects around 67% of all consumer purchases in the UK, and 30% of purchases are now conducted online.

From the artitle, it highlighted to me that if you send out a brouchure, or mail shot or some one passes your shop window, 2 out of 3 people will still go back to their PC and conduct searches online, to either compare prices, read product reveiws etc before making a purchase forget those people that buy online by default.

That said it is my experience that companies do not allocate the required budgets to online, bearing in mind that around 60% of their turnover is effected by online.

Hence the questions, I am keen to find out where SME's really are rather than pitching my services.

[Brian Turner]

I think you'll find a lot of companies are actually using online channels, but where take up is muted it is because of fear of the unknown, and the inability to set up a properly orchestrated and intelligent internet market campaign - basic mistakes are made instead, resulting in little cost-effectiveness.

And larger companies who are using internet marketing are throwing money at it without really thinking about improving campaign performance. As Dave Ashton (Bizal) has pointed out to me before, if you can offer to improve their sales performance without increasing their budgets, you might get more attention - especially if backed up with clear metrics.

2c.

[targetedtraffic]

Brian Has a very good point, Making the most of the budget available is the best way. If you have a new site its very unlikly to rank for the major search terms within 12 months, but targted a campaign down to the long tail searches will start to deliver converting traffic without chucking all the money at the headline phrase