Marketing consulting
Implementing new technology across a company’s ecosystem is often traumatic in some way. First you have to decide on the supplier you are going to use; then, as in the case of Cloud Marketing, Pardot and the other Salesforce technologies, you need to choose a specialist consultant to carry out the implementation so that, once it is up and running, you can take over at the helm and fully leverage its possibilities. In many of the marketing consulting projects led by S4G we have found that this time of taking up the baton and continuing the journey without our help causes a feeling of panic and we realised that this is where we can help our customers succeed in their digital marketing strategy.
Marketing consulting: Presales
In the presales phase, when the tool to be acquired is still being discovered, setting some of the budget aside for post-implementation marketing consulting is often considered an unnecessary expense. Why spend money on something that can theoretically be done inhouse? What ‘value’ can marketing consulting services bring to the table?
To that I say, ’There’s not just one value, there are many’. These types of services are, in our experience, the ones that enrich the customer’s life on a daily basis most and cannot be reduced to any single thing. We’ve never had a case where putting all our knowledge at the service of the customer has not proven to be a major benefit – and that is mainly due to the three core marketing consulting values:
Expertise
The S4G team puts all of its resources into working the Salesforce marketing tools and has in-depth knowledge of the different mechanisms that can be harnessed to implement a given strategy. Plus, as a Salesforce partner, we have a level of access to Salesforce content and personnel that allows us to stay on top of advances made and a first-rate level of contact in the different channels where contact is possible.
Such was the case with a solution the team recently implemented in Pardot, involving a logical and simple QR code-generation and -reading system for event attendance control. Thanks to knowledge of the tool and other external resources, we could control (and automate) complete event management, from the advertising campaign and registration through to communication before, during and after the event.
Commitment
The consulting work done by S4G entails constant alignment with the customer. Planning different meetings points to monitor marketing activity forces both S4G and the customer to keep to a very intense pace of attention to detail. This work pace will later facilitate short/medium-term strategic review and provide very high tactical manoeuvrability.
Working together with the customer has often made it possible to develop complex segmentation, correction and action modification strategies based on external events or advanced testing plans.
Benchmarking
The third major value contribution of marketing consulting is the knowledge acquired by the S4G consultants on the ‘battlefield’. Working with customers across virtually all industries has given us unique market insight and allowed our hands-on knowledge to be extended to accounts in other fields.
To give a practical example, as in other cases, some of the S4G marketing consulting team has worked for many years with the most cutting-edge customers in the retail sector. A number of the practices and tactics developed by this type of customer, at the forefront of digital marketing, are now being rolled out at B2B customers who are in the midst of a very successful digital transformation.
“…Working with customers across virtually all industries has given us unique market insight and allowed our hands-on knowledge to be extended to accounts in other fields…”
In conclusion, the value of marketing consulting is based on the fact that the team of consultants achieves a high level of engagement with the customer’s team and becomes part of their ‘family’. Long-term relationships are built in which the goal is clear: always evolve, always improve.
