How to grow your business in a slow recovering economy

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published the latest figures for UK economic growth, confirming a growth rate of just 0.5% during the Q3 period, July to September.

According to BBC Business News online, a Treasury spokesman said the UK economy was “not immune to the turbulence in the Eurozone and its impact on British businesses”, which has become clear from the slow economic recovery that we are experiencing.

With such an uninspiring financial forecast, businesses must now focus more effort on what they can do to drive their business through these difficult financial times, and understand what they should be doing in order to accomplish this. Many companies will already be using marketing and other promotional activities to support their business, but they may not be as efficient, or effective, as they would hope.

Profunnel looks within these activities and focuses on the smaller details, to help businesses tailor their approaches in order to see effective results for their efforts. Online marketing for example, is fast becoming the preferred approach for companies due to the advanced functionality and clearer ROI delivered by activities such as personalised email marketing, social media tracking and online lead generation. However, this can be time consuming and costly when using multiple software applications.

Profunnel offers all of these services and more from just one platform, allowing companies to economically optimise targeted email marketing solutions and online marketing activity through the latest demand generation technology.

For more information on marketing for business growth, contact Profunnel.

Have you got the balance right?

Companies. Customers. There is a fine line between delivering what suits the company and what customers actually want from a product or service.

After speaking with various marketers, editor of Marketing Week, Mark Choueke, reports on how to ensure customers remain loyal in a competitive market. He concludes that businesses need to re-think what they say to customers and what they can provide to make life easier for them; the more effort asked of customers, the less likely they are to remain loyal. Marketing needs to feel beneficial to the customer without appearing too promotional.

To create the balance between getting your message across while offering worthy information to current customers and prospects, a subtle approach with the help of marketing automation software could be the answer.

The latest solution from Profunnel can assist marketers with their entire marketing activity from a single platform. By capturing data from website visitors and feeding this back to your team in real-time, marketers can approach prospects with information suited to their interests. This can be conducted by way of targeted email marketing created by the various email templates offered by the solution. Therefore news on your company is being delivered while customers receive personalised, relevant messages – keeping the balance just right.

Visit Profunnel for more information on marketing automation.

Tension Over Customer Data Reclaim

The new government scheme to be introduced at the beginning of 2012 will allow customers to access their personal information held by companies.

Midata is proposing to generate new services and to help customers make informed decisions, creating a two-way trust for businesses and their customers, with the hope of leading to growth in the economy.

As reported in Marketing Week, there could be doubt in this scheme from businesses as many companies find that data is a fundamental aspect in making their business successful and gives them an advantage over their competitors. Many businesses use the information as a marketing strategy – targeting products and services relevantly to customer interest. This is a useful and successful way to build trust with customers.

Profunnel’s B2B lead generation solution allows marketers to identify customer interest by monitoring their website activity. The technology will track which pages known and anonymous customers visit, how long for and how often. As real-time alerts are fed to sales and marketing, online lead generation is increased as the warmest leads are being highlighted. With email marketing solutions, sales people can send targeted messages containing information relevant to the prospects’ interests. The personalisation can increase engagement and trust with the recipient, leading to more sales and a clearer ROI.

Visit Profunnel for more information on lead generation

Growing Concerns Over Personal Data Security

UK consumers are increasingly worried about data protection, according to new research.

A survey conducted by OnePoll reveals 80 per cent of respondents have reservations over organisations protecting their information. When compared to a similar survey produced last year, there has been a 17% increase in consumer worries in 2011.

Data security is a major issue for organisations and their sales and marketing teams. If they are to retain customer loyalty, while building trust with prospects, businesses must be certain that the data they use to target customers is from a bonafide source while also ensuring they are contacting people who would be interested in their services.

Profunnel’s marketing solutions provide businesses with a means to engage with customers and to build that all-important trust needed to ultimately secure a sale. The demand generation platform assists sales and marketing people with their online and email marketing. Through intelligent web forensics visitors to your site can be monitored and tracked while the lead scoring system alerts sales and marketing of warm leads, improving B2B lead generation. Having such information means companies can be confident they are focussing on relevant customers and in turn these customers are more willing to engage with the brand.

Visit Profunnel for more information on demand generation