EMAIL MARKETING

There are typically 3 phases to our partnership as follows.

1. Discovery & Strategy

• Discovery is the phase in which we will learn about your business, research your sector and offer, and assess your current marketing materials. Using a structured framework, we will learn how your marketing function is currently operating, what results are being achieved, and how effective the current activities are in achieving your business goals.

• Marketing Strategy is a comprehensive plan of how we will market your business. It includes target audience segmentation and buyer behaviour based profiling, to understand the purchase triggers and barriers of each segment. Research is done to establish the industry specific channels suited to each audience, and the advertising opportunities with each. A plan is created of which channels, and tactics to use for the year. Additionally, we’ll create a simple marketing plan for your main wholesaler.

• Marketing Activity Calendar development provides an annual calendar showing all planned activities over 12 months. The actual emails, socials, ads will be developed month on month based on the calendar.

2. Marketing Infrastructure Projects (as required)

• Branding & Brand Style Guide will be developed based on the desired company name. This includes logo concepts, final logo versions and to provide consistency of logo use, fonts and colours for your brand across all Implementation Partners.

• New/Reno’d Website to bring your website up to date, bring your new branding to life, and to improve the overall customer journey (UX/UI) and ensure the website it optimised for Google and content distribution.

• Content Shoot/Creation as required, we may conduct a photo/video shoot, or other form of content creation in the initial stages. This is then utilised at the implementation stage and provides evergreen assets that can be used time and time again.

• Templates will be designed, copywritten, and set up for social media, email marketing, and any other channels that require this.

• Account Set Ups for social media advertising, email marketing and other technology e.g. Linktree will be set up as needed for the marketing team to use through implementation.

• Media Bookings are negotiated and confirmed with media partners such as trade or industry publications.
  

3. Monthly Marketing Implementation

Dependent on the approved strategy, we will implement a mix of marketing channels for your business. For each channel, everything is included from background research, briefs, team and budget management, development of all creative (copy and design), implementation, campaign iteration, media spend, and re-marketing as required.

Results Tracking & Analytics Reporting will be provided via a customised reporting dashboard that live feeds your marketing results with a monthly analysis to explain what channels are working well and what we need to do more/less of.

Here are some typical channels that your implementation package may include:

• Content Strategy, Content Writing & Publishing to help your target audience find you when they are researching online (Google).

• Blogger Outreach and Backlinking to increase your ranking with Google.

• Trade Publications to build brand presence within your sector or direct to your target audience.

• PR to increase the credibility and perceived endorsement of your brand with targeted publications.

• Email Campaigns to your database to elicit direct contact with your target audience.

• Social Media Management for Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn as required.

• Social Media Ad Campaigns on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn as required.

• Google Ads Campaigns to target specified keywords and drive leads direct to your website.

• Technical SEO, Website Optimisation & Maintenance to ensure your website is operational, searchable, and maintains a good structure for Google.

Whichever channels form part of the strategy, rest assured we will bring together a team of qualified and experienced marketing professionals who are specialists in each of their respective fields.

Marketing is the activity of creating, distributing, and communicating the value of what you do to the right people, in the right place, at the right time to meet the needs of customers, clients, partners and society at large.

Importantly, the marketing strategy is the work that determines who the right people are, and where they will be most receptive to the message. Whilst most marketing activities can address these first two requirements, there are very few channels and tactics that can address the third requirements of the "right time". That's why it can take up to 20 touchpoints for a person who has never previously heard of your business to become an interested lead. Unless you just happen to put your message in front of the at exactly the right moment, and mostly that's' just luck (or search engine marketing!).

Yes! We understand this so well because it's often the first thing our clients say when they engage us. You've done certain things towards your marketing and you've got to a point where you've said, ‘yep, we've got this far, but it's really taking me away from other things, and I'm not sure how to make it any better.’

If you're feeling this way, then we would ask you to consider; what's the impact of you not having someone to do your marketing? What's happening as a result of that? How's that affecting the business do you think?

If you already know that not having a qualified, professional team of marketers working on your business every day is affecting your ability to further your growth, then you've come to the right place. It's time to stop DIY marketing, and start professional marketing, so that you can stop being a marketing manager and start being a CEO.

We’re not hiding our ideas from you, but we do value them. Our strategic and creative thinking is an important part of what we sell, and we prefer to do a thorough, well-considered job for our clients. To immerse ourselves in your business, to truly assess your current marketing with a helicopter view, and to form a professional opinion that is relevant, useful, and actionable takes hours of work. Quality matters, and ‘quick looks’ and random thinking just aren’t our style.

We’re also a small business ourselves, and the reason our model works so hard for your budget and our efficiency is that we don’t have people sitting around in offices waiting for a job. We only start work, once we can pay people for their expertise.

No. Agencies charge a retainer fee and wait for individual project briefs to come from you. TCS assembles your bespoke dream team, who actions your marketing calendar within the budget that we manage. Agencies spend time tracking and reconciling hours billed, we don’t. And because we don’t employ staff and all our Implementation Partners work remotely; they pay for their own equipment and we don't have to pass on running costs, office leases, software subscriptions, or insurance premiums to our clients.

The reason we don’t charge a solus strategy fee as an upfront project is because we know from experience that this doesn’t work for you. For a strategy to have value, it has to be useable. Most agencies and consultants will send you a presentation with lots of slides and images, which gets you excited about the possibilities. Reality check – how actionable is that?

We can’t count the number of times we’ve had prospective clients tells us; “we hired a consultant and got a report, but now we don’t know what to do with it”.

What’s missing is cohesion. Ideas are great, we love them too, but a list of random ideas that don’t fit together into a cohesive plan from which a team can implement is useless to you. You are left thousands of dollars down, and you still don’t have a solution. That’s why we do things differently.

Our strategies are not only a plan of the recommended marketing channels and tactics, they include a thoroughly scoped budget and calendar where every detail of how we will execute on the plan is worked through, and where the numbers in the budget actually correlate to the cost of the partners who will action the plan because no one enjoys surprise costs (least of all ourselves, who ultimately pay for any costs that we didn’t think to include!). We also think about the long-term journey for the business and set the marketing function up with scalability in mind.

Without this aspect to your plan, it’s just a bunch of ideas that are never going to go anywhere. We’re building you a marketing function, not a task list of tactics. To build the strategy, we rely on being able to engage the relevant partners into an ongoing retainer for their services. By doing this, we can get audits, competitive reviews, ideas, technical expertise and everything else we need to complete the strategy. Without that commitment, we would only be able to access generic proposal documents and quotes from prospective suppliers who aren’t particularly invested in the outcome.

Bottom line, if you’re not happy with the strategy, we’ll work on it until you are.

Yes! We work in marketing every single day. One of the key skills of a professional, qualified marketer is the ability to intuitively understand buyer behaviour and customer needs in any sector. As marketers, we work with a diverse range of business types, models, customers, products, services, and industries across our careers, and one of the things professional marketers love is being able to onboard themselves very quickly to understanding a new client's business and customer. We thrive on learning about our clients' businesses, and we do not need to be experts in your industry in order to create a strong, strategic plan.

The truth is that every business owner thinks their business is totally unique and different from every other business, and they are often blocked by this limiting belief. They tell themselves, well, we can't have anyone work on our marketing because our business is too hard to understand, or so unique that they won't know about our industry. This is just a way of you holding yourself back from progress. Creating a strong block that limits your ability to engage marketing professionals. If you're at this stage of your thinking, you're probably not ready to work with us.

Fundamentally, the principles and contexts in marketing are very similar across multiple business types and sectors. When you engage us, the first stage of working together is for us to learn about your business. You're going to have plenty of opportunity to teach us what you want us to know, give us access to resources and assets, and see that we have thoroughly researched your industry, competitors and customers when we deliver your strategy back to you.

We truly build a bespoke strategy for every client. We are not going to give you a templated document where we just change the name at the top. We're going to use our thorough and proprietary strategy development system to develop your unique strategy and deliver recommendations that are tailored to the specific needs and behaviors of your prospects, and your budget.

If you're like most of our clients when they first come onboard, you don't have a formal marketing strategy in place. This means that whilst you might be engaging some external marketing providers to implement various activities, there's nothing to tie it all together.

It's likely these providers will be working in silos, and not know what the other providers are doing. They are also not working to a plan, just doing everything ad hoc.

So, whilst you've got some nuts and bolts in place, it's not that polished, and it doesn't come together with any sort of real cohesion. That's where we come in. The Change Starter will create a bespoke marketing strategy for your business and bring it together into a cohesive system and a marketing calendar from which all implementation partners can work as a team to deliver your marketing.

There are many benefits to this with two main benefits being consistency of your message, and the ability to take a helicopter view of progress and results. Without The Change Starter at the 'hub' of your marketing wheel, you likely have no idea which activities are working for you, or whether you are getting a good return on your investment.

If you're asking that question, then sorry but you're most likely not going to be a good fit to work with us because we're all about strategy and planning!

A plan makes everything:

• More efficient

• Faster to execute

• More consistent

• Cohesive

• Scalable

• Aligned to the business goals

• Less stressful than an ad hoc approach

And that's just the reasons off the top of our head!

If you really want to align your marketing function to your business goals, so that you can grow your business, then you need a marketing strategy. Our research shows that businesses who had a comprehensive marketing strategy found marketing 'easy when they had marketers to help them'; whereas businesses with no strategy found marketing hard, even when they engaged marketers to help them. Why make life difficult for yourself?

The answer to this one is maybe. We are happy to meet and work with professional, qualified marketers who get results. We have strict criteria for assessing the suitability of Implementation Partners, and we are happy to meet with your existing providers to determine whether they would be a good fit.

In some cases, where a provider is already in place and achieving measurable results, we will take over the relationship and integrate them with the strategy, budget and team. We then take over the invoicing and payment to that provider on your behalf.

In other cases, we have kept providers on for a period of time whilst we complete the initial discovery and strategy stages, then we have terminated the engagement and moved the implementation of that channel to our trusted network. Whether we handle that conversation, or you do, is entirely up to you.

No. We do not provide a 'one size fits all' approach to marketing strategies, or to implementation. We build a 'from scratch;' bespoke marketing strategy specifically for your business. Yes, we use a template to present the strategy (although we mostly end up tailoring this anyway!), and yes, we have a set of steps we go through to produce the strategy, but the output is unique to your business.

Our approach is our secret sauce, but broadly, it includes audience profiling, competitive and industry research, consideration of your brand positioning and messaging, channel planning, budgeting, and detailed strategies and tactics to make the most of your business, and your time.

Congratulations! That's fantastic, we wish you continued success.

Engaging an outsourced marketing function is about a long-term vision for your business, it's about minmising any risks you might have, such as the opportunity to bring more products or services into your range so that you can grow further, and then to have a team that's already set up to market those new products or services so that you can grow even further. It's about retaining your relevance in the market.

Going to the next level of professionalism is like an upgrade of your marketing function. Just like you might engage a different accountant because your business has reached a different stage, so you need someone with a different skill set.

In terms of long-term growth, if you're looking ahead to the far future, at some point you may want to turn your business into a saleable asset, so having a proven marketing function already in place is one factor that an investor or buyer would be looking at for the business.

We are looking for clients who are open to a long-term partnership because marketing isn't something a business does for a couple of months and then if they don't get immediate sales, they give it up (marketing isn't sales!!). It's something that we have to commit to together. As we work together, your business will change, and your priorities might change depending on market conditions. So, we might need to adjust what we're doing. Plans don't last forever; they have to evolve. And that's why we like to go on a growth journey with our clients.

Absolutely! A business with a sound, consistent and scalable marketing function is much more attractive and lower risk to a potential buyer than a business who has relied on referrals and word of mouth for 20 years but not done any real work to build their brand, or put a lead generation system, or database in place.

One of the key reasons many of our clients work with us is because they want their business set up and organised for the future, and to help them build towards an eventual sale.

We’re glad you asked, and happy to answer. Your live results dashboard can be viewed at any moment, so if something is not performing as well as we need it to, we work with that implementation partner to make changes and optimise the system for improved results. It’s never too late to change or improve areas of your marketing - one of the benefits of working with an outsourced team who doesn’t wait to be told what to do, they take the initiative to make change as soon as they see they can do better.

Yes. We work very well with clients whose business requires both B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) marketing. Depending on your available budget, we can develop strategies and tactics to target both aspects of your business, or we can determine which aspect to focus on during the strategy phase.

Can we ask for how long you expect your business needs marketing? If you answer is anything other than 'always', you've been misinformed.

There are a lot of 'agencies' who offer 'no lock-in contracts' as if this is a benefit. It's not. You won't get results in 1 month. If you expect that, then we're probably not going to be a good fit. Our clients know that it takes time to craft a comprehensive marketing strategy and get all the foundations in place. Following this, it takes a consistent effort to market your business. Turning marketing on and off when you feel like it is not a good strategy.

There are also a lot of 'agencies' who will give you a "strategy" for free, or they'll deliver the 'strategy' as part of the sales process. The truth is these 'strategies' are often not very good. Why would they be good when the work is being done for free? The fact is that they put together a cookie cutter approach in order to win your business, and they do it quickly, so the end result is superficial and not well thought through. Additionally, these 'strategies' are not usually aligned to a resourcing and budget plan. In order to implement a strategy, you need to have a plan of how it will be resourced, and the associated costs.

This work is usually conducted at the beginning of a partnership. As such, costs for senior level expertise - such as Strategists - are incurred. Most businesses aren't comfortable to pay the cost of a strategy upfront, so we help with that by spreading the full cost of your marketing across 12 months.

With a 12-month contract in place, we can go ahead and undertake the upfront work to learn about your business, develop the strategy, engage the team, organise the budget and individual partner scopes of work, onboard the allocated team, and get all the set up and housekeeping jobs underway. This can be done in the first 1-3 months without you incurring a large bill upfront. Then once this is all done, we can start promoting your business and continue implementing ongoing for you. Instead of incurring that upfront cost, you'll pay 1/12th of your annual budget each month for the whole year.

This means that we incur costs that we do not receive revenue for until later in the contract. We're ok with this as long as that contract is in place to give us all peace of mind.

You will need to be committed to a thorough and transparent onboarding process so that we can give you the high quality service you deserve (2-5hrs of your time). You will need to spend time with us during the strategy phase for us to discuss the proposed strategy and activities, and gain your agreement on the plan, so that we can implement it (2-4hrs). You will need to be available for monthly Business & Marketing updates (1hr per month).

If you have a 'complex' business, or work in a specialised industry, more input is usually needed from you on your subject matter. We are experts in marketing, but not necessarily in your particular area of expertise. You will need to help with educating us on your topic, and providing ongoing availability to check the clinical/legal/regulatory accuracy of content and messaging, as it relates to your industry.

Right now, you've probably got multiple marketing providers managing different aspects of your marketing. The problem is that none of these providers know each other, the only common denominator is you! So, you're managing the daily 'back and forth' of answering their questions, providing them with assets and information, teaching them about your business; and worrying about what they're editing or publishing to the world.

The problem is that none of the are taking charge of the marketing strategy, or the leadership - they are just doing what you tell them to. As such, you're doing the leg work. You are the marketing manager, and don't take this the wrong way, but you're not actually a qualified marketing manager, so you're likely getting the same poor result as if you were doing your own tax return.

That's where The Change Starter comes in. We take over the role you've been playing as 'marketing manager' and build and coordinate a team of people who will all know the roles they each play in your marketing function. They will work together to deliver your marketing and get results.

You'll finally have your time back!

Of course, we'll need some of your time - you'll need to engage with us if you want great results. However, we actively try to minimise the time involvement of our clients to enable them to get on with running their business, so that we can operate as an extension of your team, not as an external agency.

Yes! That's exactly why The Change Starter is here, to help you start the changes you want in your marketing function, so that you can get on with the business of running your business! There are so many avenues and aspects to marketing, which is why it is a profession just like law or accounting. You're the business owner, not the marketing manager, so you shouldn't be spending your time researching marketing channels, building a marketing strategy or trying to work out how to login to Meta!

We'll let you into a secret. We don't know every single thing about marketing either because it is a specialism that requires knowledge and unique skills. To make it even more challenging, it changes all the time too, so you have to keep on top of it constantly. That's why we engage teams of specialists in each different area of marketing. These professionals are working in their area of specialism every day, so they CAN keep on top of things!

You tell us!

Our fees are directly aligned to your allocated annual marketing budget. We take your total annual budget under management and determine a detailed allocation of budget across the different marketing projects and channels at the strategy stage. Once the strategy and budget breakdown are presented to you, you can provide feedback on the proposed approach. You can adjust the strategy and how the budget is utilised at this stage, if you wish to do so.

It is up to you to commit to an annual budget spend, and we will work within that budget. We recommend a spend of 7-10% of your annual turnover. We cannot guarantee strong results if you decide to spend less than this percentage. If you decide to invest more than 10% of your turnover, you must do so knowing that you can comfortably afford to pay for the contract you enter into with us. Commit the budget that works for your monthly cashflow, and with a signed 12 month commitment, we can move forward confidently knowing the funds we pay out to implementation partners in the up front stages, will be paid for throughout the year ahead.

If you want to know what different budget parameters could mean in terms of the marketing roll out, we can propose different options as part of the strategy. In this case, you can commit to the lower budget to get started, then upgrade when you see the strategy.

Our budget guide is not financial advice, only a general benchmark, and is not based on your individual circumstances. Please seek independent financial advice from a qualified financial advisor or accountant when deciding your budget allocation for the year.

No. You tell us your annual marketing budget, then we present an overarching strategy and calendar of activity for the year. While we manage the total budget and marketing, you pay exactly the same pre-agreed invoice each month. The only thing we need to charge for is an ad-hoc or extra project you have that is outside the original scope. Please read our list of what's included.

We get asked about this a lot.

There is a perception these days that all marketing is 'ad spend'. This is a total myth! There are many marketing options (channels), not all of them require 'ad spend' or 'media spend'. We love using channels that drive organic reach of our clients' brands too, and we try to make this part of our strategies as much as possible as they are usually more cost effective and often bring a higher return in the long run.

If we do deem that advertising is a key part of your strategy, then we would allocate an 'ad spend' as part of the budget. There is a common misconception that the more you spend, then more conversions you'll get, which is another myth! There are so many nuances to running successful SEM (Google ads) or Meta (Facebook and Instagram ads) or LinkedIn campaigns, and they come down to the perfect balance between the ad copy, the imagery and the technical set up and optimisation of the campaign. The actual ad spend can be minimised for a better result if you have the right combination of these factors. So, from our perspective the amount of the ad spend is irrelevant to some extent - it needs to be enough to reach the volume of target prospects, but the more targeted the creative, the higher the potential conversion anyway.

Part of what makes or breaks an ad campaign is the digital marketing expertise of the person who runs your campaigns. The cost of this human resource is usually referred to as a 'management fee', but it's really just the cost of running the campaign, just like the ad spend.

Additionally, we need skillsets in creative thinking, copywriting (the words) and design (the imagery/video) to create the ad. This is also part of the cost of running an ad campaign.

As such, the cost of running ads is a mix of multiple types of expertise and the 'pay to play' amount we need to give to the various tech giants - it's not a management fee, it's the cost of creating, running and optimising an effective campaign.

We've even had prospective clients tell us that they are currently running google ads and they don't pay a management fee. They are using an external resource who they pay the 'ad spend' to, but this resource doesn't charge them a management fee. Sorry, but they do. They are charging you for the 'ad spend' that they pass through to Google or Meta plus their fee for setting up and running the ads. Why would they be doing the work for free? It doesn't make any sense!

It depends on what your current providers are doing for you, and whether they are getting the desired results. If they are, then great, but generally a 'really low cost' provider isn't going to be of particularly high quality and may not meet our Implementation Partner quality criteria. We're happy to meet them online and assess their suitability once we start working with you.

No, absolutely not. Our Implementation Partners are qualified, professional and experienced marketers who live and work all around the world. We do not use "VAs" to implement marketing. We do use VAs to help us run our business, and these people are doing administrative work, not marketing work.

A VA can do any administrative work you ask them to, but they are not a qualified marketer. For example, a VA can make a social post and post it to your social media platforms. If you see social media as a 'chore' and something you just want to tick off your list, then you'll find that a VA will fulfil that role for you effectively. However, ask yourself what results you're getting from this?

Just because someone (including yourself) knows how to use Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn to make a post, does not mean they know how to use these platforms for marketing. It's a different skillset, one with which our team are qualified and experienced.

No, please don't do that!

If you hire a part time marketing person, they are going to spend many hours of their time doing nothing other than replying to your internal company emails. We know this because we've had experience of it, we've seen it in action.

The other problem with hiring a 'part-time' employee is that marketing is not a 'part-time' function. It's full-time, 24/7. With an outsourced marketing team, you will have access to a large global team of remote workers who will work on your marketing when it needs to be done, not only 9-5pm on a Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, like a part time worker.

A part-time employee is unlikely to have all the skills and knowledge required to run all of your marketing channels - our CEO has worked in marketing for over 20 years and has a Master of Digital Marketing, and she still asks the team for help with specialised areas of marketing. Qualified marketing managers don't know everything because there's just so much to know, and they will expect to utilise external providers to help them implement the marketing. Additionally, a marketing manager or marketing coordinator is not going to have the skills of a copywriter, content writer, or designer, so they won't be able to create the marketing materials without outside help.

For this, they will ask you for a budget. So now you're paying a salary, payroll costs, insurance, holiday and sick pay, equipment, and superannuation, and you also need to give them a marketing budget to work with.

With The Change Starter, we will work within your total marketing budget, providing the same role as a marketing manager, but also bringing in the required skillsets to do the writing, design and technical work required to implement your strategy. So, it's only costing you your total marketing budget, as allocated under the 'marketing ' line item in your company budget.

You're an expert in what you do, so bring in an expert in marketing to help you get your marketing right. The Change Starter is led by Stevie V Brown who is a qualified marketing professional with a Master Digital Marketing and a BA (Hons) in Business & Advertising. She holds additional marketing qualifications and has worked as a business advisor, marketing coach and educator for small business for nearly a decade.

Additionally, Stevie has over 20 years real world marketing experience having worked for advertising agencies and marketing companies including Saatchi & Saatchi, McCann Erickson and The Marketing Store Worldwide, amongst others.

Having held multiple agency leadership roles before establishing The Change Starter, Stevie knows how to recruit the right people for the right roles based on their expertise, experience, qualifications and other capabilities. The Change Starter has a strong values-based culture and we seek marketing professionals who align to our values and strict qualification criteria.

Pull it all together into a cohesive system that seamlessly delivers ongoing marketing activities without you having to think about it.

Manage multiple types of marketing professionals from creative brains to technical brains, and know how to brief them to get the best outcomes.

Professional marketers, and in particular, Marketing Managers, know how to make sense of the logistics of bringing all your marketing activities together, and collaborating with other marketing professionals to get your marketing done in the right order, and at the right time. No more scrambling around for what to put in your email campaign an hour before it's due to send!

One of the major benefits of working with a professional marketing strategist is that they know how to create a cohesive approach so that your marketing is not 'ad hoc' and random. They can also determine which channels to utilise and the kind of messaging for each channel.

A professional marketing function for your business means that the marketing is planned, expected and in line with the seasonality or events that are upcoming in your business.

Professional marketers provide clarity of which activities are targeting which segments of your target customer and with which objectives. This makes it easier to determine the metrics that will be used to measure results. That way you'll know which parts of your marketing are working, and which parts aren't.

Especially when you have more than one target audience, a professional marketer can ensure that the journey through your website makes sense for everyone who visits, and the messages and call to actions are relevant and segmented for different audience types.

These are just a few examples of what a professional marketer can do that you most likely don't have time or expertise to do yourself.