Incisive Marketing Consultants Liverpool

Rather like the fearless assistant who changes into a magnificent tiger, we also have something of a knack for transformation. In fact, we can transform into something which is, in its own way, even more spectacular than a gigantic stripy carnivore.

We can transform into whatever you need us to be. We can call upon an abundance of strategic and creative alliances, all tried and trusted, to become precisely the marketing agency your business, or even a single specific project, requires.

In fact, we can even transform into your marketing department. Working in-house, we can gain a strategically-valuable insight into how your business works, analyse your processes to help you grow your business, and project manage multi-disciplined strategies and fully-integrated marketing campaigns. Now, that's got to be worth more than a tiger. Besides, think of the vet's bills.

Like ourselves, many businesses and business proprietors try to perform a magical transformation of their own: they try to become their own marketing services department and take on their own marketing campaign planning.

And why not? After all, who knows your business better than you? Who knows your customers better than you? Who knows your goals and long term ambitions better than you?

You might be surprised to discover we completely sympathise with this particular perspective. And many business owners are rather good at handling their own marketing services.

However.

There is something you're not only 'rather good' at, isn't there? There's something at which you are inarguably an expert: the running of your business...

...valuable minutes seemingly pulled out of thin air. Watch as those minutes gradually assemble into hours, days, weeks..."

We like to call this little trick outsourcery.

Once you've outsourced your marketing, you'll be free to focus on core business activities, and it doesn't take a magician to transform all that time into money.

Meanwhile, we'll employ our unique combination of chartered marketing and business development experience, to not only conjure up more leads but to maximise the conversion of those leads.

The advantages of turning to outsource marketing consultants are obvious. You only pay for what you receive and there are no overheads to worry about. Logistically, too, there's a distinct advantage: it's up to somebody else to get things done, freeing you up to do what you do best and what adds most value to your business.

At the risk of scaring you, however (and maybe you should sit down for this bit), we're going to talk about the disadvantages of using outsourced marketing companies.

• You can lose control of the campaign or project
• Breakdowns in communication can occur
• Briefing and approval processes can result in potentially-costly delays when conducted over two or more sites
• How do you know you're receiving the undivided attention of your outsourced marketing consultants?
• How can you introduce and nurture marketing talent within your business of it's all going on elsewhere?

We've heard of David Blaine, but who's Doug McKenzie? Well, both Maven and McKenzie are magical inventors and consultants, creating magic tricks for the likes of Copperfield and Blaine, and making their acts possible.

Strategic marketing is a lot like that: it's all the activity that goes on in the background to create a seemingly natural and effortless campaign, the planning, analysing and calculating. Put another way: if the end product is the graceful swan gliding across the lake, we're those weird and undignified orange legs thrashing away beneath the surface.

This is where all the strategic marketing planning takes place. This is where we take off our top hats, and stand revealed for what we really are: strategic marketing consultants.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?

But, if we're being completely honest, this, for us, is where the real fun takes place. The planning.

You see, we love research and analysis. We love getting to grips with what makes your business special and, more importantly, what makes your customer tick. We love sifting through mountains of data and distilling it down into a perfectly-formulated marketing strategy that will enable you to grow your business and increase your profits, a strategic marketing plan that will encourage your existing customers to spend more, attract new customers and connect you with previously untapped markets...

...oh, now you still see it. Unlike other marketing agencies, we won't necessarily give you what you want. We will, however, give you precisely what you need. So, no more seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time costly literature gathering dust.

We start at the end, by helping you ascertain exactly what it is you want to achieve. Once this is established, we will identify the most effective route to that ultimate objective. And only then will we begin to consider which marketing communication tools – brochures, advertising, newsletters, websites – are the most appropriate for your purposes.

What we don't do next, is walk away. Vanishing acts aren't our style. We will work with you to ensure your marketing communication is successfully launched, maintained and monitored.

Marketing Communication is something of a catch-all term. Effectively, anything that attempts to persuade someone to invest in your product or service is an example of marketing communication: brochures, advertising, newsletters, websites, public relations, packaging, sales promotion, sponsorship, merchandising, anything.

If any marketing communication consultants tell you, with little in the way of preamble, “What you need is a swanky new corporate brochure”, be wary. A decision regarding the best vehicle to promote your business should only be made following intensive research and exploration.

Before you decide the medium in which you wish to communicate your message, you'll need to decide precisely what your message is. And before you can formulate your message, you'll need to fully consider just who it is you're talking to; in other words, who is your customer? Remember, different people respond to different modes of language and different visual stimuli, and different people like to shop in different ways...

Modern magicians, like Derren Brown, are as much about psychology as they are showmanship. Sleight of hand and misdirection play their part, but more significant is the way these 'psychological illusionists' select, position and influence their audience.

Identifying, influencing and positioning your audience is the key to a successful business development initiative. We'll use every trick in the book to generate entirely new leads or encourage your existing customer base to increase the amount of business they do with you.

The old tricks are best: a seemingly-endless string of vibrantly-coloured silk scarves drawn from the magician's sleeve. We all know how that one's done. The scarves were there all along. A bit like customers: there all along; they just need drawing out.

Well, there are countless marketing consultants who employ a whole host of business development strategies. It is our belief that this scattergun method – throw everything at the marketplace and hope something sticks – isn't cost-effective. In fact, it isn't effective full stop.

We employ a well-tuned and tightly-focused approach.

We begin by compiling a highly-targeted list of prospects. And this really is a list of 'prospects', not simply the contact details of people who may be interested in your offer. This robust and exhaustively-researched database dramatically increases the chances of take-up for your products or services. Most business development initiatives fall at this first, often dangerously underestimated, hurdle...

This is where the close-up magic happens. An audience of thousands suddenly becomes an audience of one. You have that individual's undivided attention. For as long as you can keep it. The wrong word or an awkwardly constructed sentence and, suddenly, it all seems too much like hard work and the eye and mind drift off toward something more interesting, something more attractive.

We write copy not for ourselves, not even for you, but for your customer. Every word, every expression, is tuned to their ear, and carefully constructed to surprise, captivate and persuade.

Sometimes our surprising, captivating and persuasive writing contains secret messages, invisible to your customer, but for the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN, charged with meaning, demanding their attention and a favourable positioning in those all important search engine rankings. Abracadabra, indeed.

There was a time when a copywriter needed only a pen, a notepad and a reasonably nimble imagination in order to deliver perfectly acceptable copywriting services. Then someone (without any consultation with the copywriters of the world) went and invented 'the internet'.

And everything changed.

Because not long after the invention of the internet, somebody created the 'search engine', to help people find things on the internet. Suddenly (and, again, nobody consulted the copywriters), Search Engine Optimisation was born: SEO, the art of creating websites specifically designed to leap into the top 10 search engine results in response to a particular search phrase.   

Before you could say "Oh, so Google's a verb now, is it?" copywriters were called upon to integrate said search phrases (also known as 'keywords' or 'key phrases') into their copy and a whole new breed of copywriter bounded into existence: website copywriters, SEO copywriters...

There's something magical, a little bit Alice in Wonderland, even, about standing in the midst of a well-executed exhibition, corporate event or seminar. Branding, imagery and ideas you're used to seeing on the printed page or confined to a computer screen are suddenly exploded into life - huge, tangible, real.

Of course, there's no end of ropes and pulleys, expertly concealed, working tirelessly in the background to turn inspiration into startling reality: delegate management, venue sourcing, logistics, hospitality, follow-up communications...

But don't you worry about the secret mechanics of it all. Leave that to us. Just enjoy the show. And try not to pinch yourself too hard.

Event management is quite possibly one of the most demanding and complex areas of marketing because, in theory, anything can happen. Whether it's an exhibition, seminar, conference, corporate hospitality event, launch party, workshop or surgery, it's a live event, with real people, and we all know how unpredictable real people can be, don't we?

We say 'in theory' because a well-planned and expertly-executed live event leaves nothing to chance. However unpredictable real people may be in a 'normal' situation, the same rules don't apply when effective and experienced event management consultants are at the helm.

Unlike some event management companies, we don't use strong-arm herding tactics to control your audience. Rather, we create a comfortable, engaging and focused environment in which your audience happily chooses to listen, learn and interact. We create a larger-than-life experience which will keep your delegates hooked from start to finish...