About
Having led the marketing function for multiple market research agencies over my 20+ year career, I know it can be challenging to stand out. To achieve growth, you need a strong, differentiated brand and consistent, effective communication with the market. Your marketing objectives need to support your commercial goals and your sales and marketing activity need to be properly aligned.
Let me help you. I craft bold strategies and execute creative campaigns that deliver impact. With a talent for storytelling, I can turn complex information about your insight services into captivating brand narratives that engage audiences, convert leads, delight clients and drive commercial success.
My pets, Charlie the cat and Lola the dog, are here to add a touch of brand appeal!
Build the brand
Whether you're just starting out or aiming to revitalize your brand, I can work with your senior leadership to create a compelling and unique brand proposition. I collaborate with a skilled and creative graphic designer to build you a brand identity and assets that resonate with your target audiences and set your brand on the right course.
Develop a marketing strategy
If you want to launch new services, expand into new markets or just grow your overall insights business, I can work with your senior team to help you develop an effective marketing strategy and plan.
I help you audit your current situation, market and competitors and set marketing objectives aligned to your commercial goals. Then we work together to devise an appropriate strategy to help raise awareness, generate leads and/or build client relationships. I help you identify your target audience with personas based on your ideal customer profile, then build out suitable sales and marketing activities, with suitable messages and content for each channel.
Placing your chosen tactics within a marketing calendar, I can develop a schedule of jobs to be done and required resources to execute the plan and help you put together an appropriate budget. Finally, I help you select suitable KPIs for tracking results in terms of awareness, engagement and lead generation.
Engage the market
There are many routes to market for insights agencies, depending on their specialist industry sectors. You can engage clients through social media, trade conferences, awards, speaking engagements, PR and thought leadership, webinars and other client engagement events.
The question becomes, what market engagement activity should we invest in and how can we make the most of our budget? I can help you craft your market engagement strategy, and ensure that whatever type of engagement you choose, your brand and your representatives are telling an impactful, cohesive story and that you are making the most of opportunities to engage clients and prospects.
Having worked in the industry for over 20 years, I know the major conferences and trade associations such as the MRS, ESOMAR, Quirks, Greenbook, Insights Association, EphMRA, Intellus, BHBIA, and the like as well as the market research and marketing trade press.
I’ve run over 50 webinars, set up multiple events, large and small, commissioned and written countless articles and supported on many papers and awards entries. Let me help you craft PR and communications that resonate with the market.
Run impactful multi-channel campaigns
Campaigns help you build your brand around a particular area of expertise and generate leads for your sales teams.
Once you have a strategy and know the areas you want to promote, I can help you implement an effective multi-channel campaign around a compelling message or theme, incorporating required channels such as social media, web landing pages, search engine optimisation, paid online advertising, email, content, PR and events.
I will liaise with you to understand what existing customer databases, technology and people you have in place and can work with your current systems or in the case where you don’t have an existing marketing team or resource, can propose means and methods, or work within my partner network to provide resources based on your requirement.
Account-based marketing and relationship-marketing
The most impactful marketing campaigns are ones customised to appeal to your key accounts, nurturing the prospective clients within companies you really want to attract, grow and retain.
I work with your commercial team to ensure we take an account-based marketing approach. We ensure key accounts and new prospects are identified and included in any outreach / inbound marketing activities and nurture them through the funnel, until they are ready to be converted by your sales team.
Existing clients in your key accounts can be cared for with a relationship-building strategy that ensures their customer experience is not just a positive one, but one that delights, inspires loyalty, motivates them to recommend you to others, and makes them want to work with you again and again.
Thought leadership content creation
Your prospective clients need to be convinced you are experts in your field, but they don’t want to be sold to all the time.
Your thought leadership content draws them in and gives them the reassurance that you know what you are talking about. It helps build brand awareness and promotes positive feeling with prospects who might not be ready to buy yet, but do want to know what you have to offer. It can also educate clients about the benefits and impact your services can provide. For those who are in the market, it motivates them to take action, so that with some nurturing your sales team can work to convert them.
I love to tell a story, and I especially love the challenge of being creative with topics that may be considered technical or dry. I write impactful copy for blogs, articles, white papers, case studies and email. I can also write scripts for talking head videos, record and have them edited for distribution.
For more sophisticated content such as infographics, animations, brand or recruitment video campaigns, I will pull in expert partners from my network.
Sales enablement
Unfortunately, amongst many insights businesses, there seems to be a disconnect between sales and marketing functions. Each seems to be speaking a different language and neither understands what the other is saying!
I learned that if I wanted Marketing to be heard and to perform more effectively, it is essential to align Sales and Marketing, which requires fostering a culture of collaboration and trust.
Planned marketing campaigns should be shared internally with the sales team, and if possible, given an internal launch before they go to market so that Sales are clear on the objectives and activity. Sales need to be supported with ready-prepared sales enablement materials, such as cheatsheets, case studies and credentials decks that sing, so that when your brilliant marketing activity does deliver leads, Sales are in a strong position to convert them into RFPs and sales.
Marketing operations consulting and coaching
If you have the bones of a marketing operation in place but believe there's room for improvement, I can assist in identifying areas for enhanced performance, whether through team development, choosing an efficient marketing technology stack, serving as an extra resource, or hiring new talent.
With extensive experience in managing diverse individuals and teams, I understand how to maximize people's potential. I can provide your current marketing staff with constructive and practical coaching and guidance that inspires them and enhances their contribution to your company.
Success Stories
Building a differentiated brand
Successfully launching a syndicated product to market
Demonstrating expertise in emerging markets with high-quality thought leadership content
Winning a new T10 client with inbound and account-based marketing
Deploying a “Make the switch” campaign to win new tracking business
Undertaking a recruitment campaign to attract new talent
“Julie was Marketing Director at Research Partnership for over 15 years and played a vital part in the growth and ultimately the sale of our business. She developed and ran a large team but always remained hands on which is impressive for a company turning over £50m and with multiple offices. She is a clear and independent thinker who understood the issues of the business well and always contributed in a positive, informed and strategic manner. I would have no hesitation in recommending her work.”
Mark Jeffery, Co-Founder Research Partnership
Get in touch
Please feel free to reach out for an exploratory, no-obligation chat about your business challenges, or marketing needs.