Xander Marketing yearly review (part 1)

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on June 2, 2010 @ 10:33 am

As we come to the end of Xander Marketing’s financial year, we’re busy reviewing the year, business planning for the next and creating budget and cash flow forecasts.

As we only work with SMEs we feel we have a pretty good knowledge of this business size in the UK and what they want when it comes to marketing. Here are some things we’ve learnt from the past 12 months:

• The start of the financial year the country was still deep in a recession. The majority of businesses had struggled in one way or another and were cautious; however the bolder businesses saw marketing as a way to pull their company out of the recession
• September and late January/early February were key times for making marketing decisions. As the summer ended and there were signs of things picking up September brought a time when people were fresh for new ideas. The new year always brings new vigour and although the snow slowed some decisions down, by the end of January/early February the year was in full swing
• What people want has changed. 2009 was very much about social media, this buzz has died down a bit now and search engine marketing is key. Businesses are keen to have a marketing strategy to get started. Websites are also moving from a ‘brochure’ to a lead conversion tool or content hub
• We’re industry neutral however we have seen certain industries want more marketing than others. SaaS and cloud based services have been strong this year. Professional services have struggled more than others in a recession which has resulted in limited or no marketing budgets. E-commerce retail has been more interested in marketing than bricks and mortar retail
• Location doesn’t matter. We’re based in Wokingham, Berkshire; a year ago we assumed all our business would come from within a 20 mile or so radius around us. Not true, in fact most of our customers are not local. Location doesn’t matter anymore…with technologies such as email, VOIP and video conferencing we can provide the same level of service to a business in Sandhurst as we can to a business in Sydney. The same goes with associates, by tapping into a pool of local (and international) freelancers we can really find the very best for our customers

Read the second part of our yearly review next week.

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