Author: Nick Bonnet

For many small to mid-sized businesses that are looking to accelerate and improve their marketing functions, they have a decision to make: should they hire full-time staff positions with salaries, benefits and potentially 1,880 working hours in a year to dedicate to their companies? Or do they outsource all, or parts of their marketing function to a full-service agency, a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, or a combination of multiple marketing services companies each filling different roles? Every situation is different, and we’re obviously in the business of helping companies who choose to outsource part of all of the marketing functions for their business – but here are a few tips to help you navigate this business challenge.

Where to Start, No Matter What

You have to start with a marketing plan. If you don’t have a strategic marketing plan, you can’t have any idea of what skill set you actually need, whether for an employee, or a services firm.

As a business owner, your strategic marketing plan can come from 1 of 3 places:

1. If you’re a marketer, you can build it yourself, and hire the people necessary to execute it with you being responsible for day-to-day management;
2. You can hire a full-time CMO or VP of Marketing, and then a staff;
3. Or – You can hire a Fractional CMO or an agency that offers Fractional CMO services for a short period of time with the assignment of studying your business, and creating a workable marketing plan for the year ahead.

Without a strategic marketing plan complete with a budget, goals, and expected results, you will have no idea what skills you’ll need to execute that plan. So before you worry about hiring that designer, or social media expert, or marketing coordinator – you need a marketing plan complete with business goals, marketing goals, messaging, tactics, roles, and expected outcomes, and a clear plan and budget for how to get things done.

January 14th is always a day of reflection for me because it’s the day I filed the paperwork to form Ainsley & Co. at the SDAT office on Preston Street in Baltimore. 

Over the past 13 years I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing people, whether it was as an employee or vendor at our agency, or as one of the clients that have placed their trust in us to help them tackle some of their most important marketing priorities. 

Instead of going down memory lane, which I would LOVE to do, I’ll keep this short and sweet and just say – thank you. 

Thank you to every employee that has ever worked as a part of our team and contributed to a client’s success. 

Thank you to every contractor/partner/vendor/freelancer that has lent us their expertise and talents. 

Thank you to all of the vendors/partners who help us – our bankers, lawyers, IT and Insurance pros, real estate brokers, software providers, recruiters. 

Thank you to the family members of our employees, and MY family, for helping us continue to grow and evolve over the years and still be here to serve our customers. 

And a final THANK YOU to anyone who has helped expand our network by making an introduction, referring us to a friend or colleague, invited us into their business, shared some of our content, or given us a glowing review. We appreciate it more than you know. 

-Tom Ainsley

While the turn of the year can lead to some conversations about how marketing is going to change, with technologies like Augmented/Virtual Reality being adopted somewhat more rapidly each year – for most companies, the best way to kickstart your marketing, and do better than you did last year, means just going back to basics. 

Before you get overly ambitious with your 2023 marketing resolutions that you’re probably not going to stick to (but good luck!), here’s some helpful hints that have stood the test of time, and have a bigger chance of actually having an impact on your bottom line.

1. Speak (market) clearly, plainly, and directly. Tell people exactly what they need to hear, why it’s important, and what to do. If you can’t say something clearly and quickly, you’re probably not clear on what it is you’re trying to say. Make your emails shorter. Reduce the amount of copy on your website. Get rid of the filler content in your proposals. Be clear, concise, persuasive, and respect the time you’re taking from your customers and prospects.
2. Show up! You can’t just sit back and wait for people to find you, and come to you. You have to be in their email inbox, on their LinkedIn feed, at trade shows, in their mailbox, on a billboard as they’re driving down the road, in their Google search results, in their Instagram/Facebook/TikTok feeds, on their favorite podcast. Know your audience – figure out where they spend their time – and show up.
3. Provide Value. This is so simple, but so often overlooked. Don’t just list your services. Don’t brag about your awards, your accomplishments. If you just take the slightest step back, and look at your customers – what is it that you do, that they really value? How do you make their lives better? Focus on that, and conveythatto your prospects.
4. Remove obstacles to engagement. If you’ve been successful in getting your prospect’s attention – if you’ve told your story clearly, in a way that is about the customer, not about you – don’t shoot yourself in the foot by making it hard for them to learn more, start a conversation, or buy from you. Pretend you are a prospect on the receiving end of that email campaign you just sent, and go through the steps of acting interested and responding – does anything hold you up? Do things like checking out your site on mobile, tablet and desktop; try responding to an email; make sure your calls-to-action and contact information are presented clearly; are your social accounts up to date, and are responses to DM’s answered quickly; does it take you too long to generate a proposal or quote? Getting people’s attention, and generating interest can be hard – make sure you aren’t sabotaging your own marketing efforts with a broken process or some other issue on the back end of your marketing campaigns.