Why Leaders Are Making the Change

1. Agile & On-Demand Expertise

Marketing needs can spike and fall, often seasonally, by product-launch, or due to market shifts. By engaging a fractional marketing director, you gain:

• Strategic leadership when necessary

• Scalable, on-demand team deployment across North America and the UK

2. Budget-Friendly Leadership

Full-time CMOs can cost £150K–£250K/year plus benefits, being fixed overheads. Fractional CMOs typically cost 50–75% less, delivering top-tier strategic value at a fraction of the price. You just have to share them with other businesses. This can also be a benefit, because insights gained within other sectors can help with new ideas and problem-solving. 

3. Proven ROI & Faster Growth

• Companies using fractional CMOs saw 29% revenue growth, versus 19% with no CMO (Corridor Business Journal)

• They also reached time-to-market 48% faster on new products and campaigns (Mogxp)

• Plus, 67% of organizations observed stronger strategic direction after hiring a fractional CMO

• The traditional route of hiring a marketing director can take 1-3 months to hire and onboard a senior marketing leader (secretsource). With a Fractional CMO, Secret Source can have a Fractional Marketing Leader up and running in two weeks, with a ready-made marketing team and agency at their disposal!

4. Diverse & Deep Expertise

56% of fractional CMOs support professional services and 65% serve SaaS/tech firms (Ductape) bringing seasoned insights from multiple industries. With over 20 years of marketing leadership, Secret Source’s teams in North America and the UK deliver this multi-sector wisdom straight to your business.

5. Integrated, Long-Term Impact

Unlike consultants, a fractional CMO becomes a trusted extension of your leadership team, overseeing strategy, execution, and measurement. In surveys, 82% of executives agree that fractional CMOs deliver fresh insights and meaningful change (fastdezine.com)

Benefits of Fractional Marketing Leadership Over In-House or Consultants

Secret Source Marketing: Your Fractional Leadership Partner

Secret Source Marketing offers:

• Fractional CMO / Marketing Director services 

• Agile marketing teams deployed on-demand from North America & the UK

• 20+ years of hands-on marketing leadership

• A scalable, tailor-made model built to support your next stage of growth

• Comes with highly skilled agency specialists already on their team with a track record for revenue growth.

Ready to Grow with Fractional Marketing Leadership?

1. Book a complimentary initial discovery meeting, held online and taking no more than an hour of your time.

2. A no-obligation marketing audit is conducted, reviewing your website, CRM, campaigns, and other assets.

3. You’ll receive a customized marketing package containing:

   • Strategic findings

   • Key opportunities and fast wins

   • Scalable execution plans aligned with your growth goals

Take the Next Step:

Contact Secret Source Marketing today to discuss how a Fractional CMO can deliver strategic leadership, boost ROI, and accelerate your path to sustainable growth.

Let’s transform your marketing operation, efficiently, strategically, and with measurable impact. Getting your business to grow much faster. 

If you’re exploring how to boost your marketing impact without the long-term commitment of a full-time hire, a fractional marketing director might be exactly the solution you’re searching for.

What is a Fractional CMO?

A Fractional CMO, also known as a fractional marketing director, provides part-time executive-level marketing leadership. Businesses engage them to deliver strategic direction, oversee marketing operations, manage budgets, and drive growth strategies, all without the substantial costs or long-term commitments of a permanent senior executive hire.

Fractional CMOs typically operate remotely or as part of agile, virtual teams, offering flexible yet highly experienced expertise across critical marketing areas.

Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Marketing Director Over In-House Roles or Consultants

1. Cost Efficiency

Hiring a full-time marketing director means significant salary commitments, bonuses, benefits, and recruitment expenses. A Fractional CMO significantly reduces these overheads, providing strategic marketing leadership at a fraction of the cost.

2. Access to Top Talent

Fractional CMOs are seasoned marketing professionals, often bringing decades of experience across diverse sectors. Secret Source Marketing’s teams, for example, bring more than 20 years of experience managing complex marketing operations, delivering expertise from North America and the United Kingdom directly to your business.

3. Scalability and Flexibility

With fractional marketing leadership, businesses benefit from the ability to scale resources up or down based on need. Secret Source Marketing’s agile approach ensures your company is never under- or over-resourced, adapting swiftly to changes and market demands.

4. Immediate Impact

A Fractional CMO quickly integrates into your team, identifies opportunities for growth, and begins implementing effective strategies from day one. Unlike consultants, fractional marketing directors actively engage in daily operations, overseeing execution and delivering tangible results.

5. Fresh, Strategic Perspectives

An external fractional leader brings fresh eyes and objective insights. They identify gaps, highlight growth opportunities, and drive strategic initiatives that in-house teams or consultants may overlook due to internal constraints.

Not All Fractional CMOs Are The Same?

Secret Source Marketing specializes in deploying fractional marketing directors and agile teams who deliver strategic leadership, operational excellence, and marketing agility precisely tailored to your business’s unique growth needs. With offices and teams located across North America and the United Kingdom, Secret Source Marketing delivers global expertise and local knowledge, perfectly positioned to understand and respond to your market.

Leveraging over two decades of proven experience, our fractional marketing leaders and agile teams deliver scalable, targeted, and highly effective marketing strategies to propel your business forward.

Do You Need A Fractional CMO?

Are you ready to explore the benefits of fractional marketing leadership? Secret Source Marketing offers a complimentary initial online discovery meeting, where we take the time to understand your business objectives. Following this, we’ll conduct a thorough, no-obligation audit of your marketing assets, including your website, CRM systems, and ongoing campaigns, to pinpoint opportunities and challenges.

Based on these findings, our experts will propose a customized, agile marketing strategy tailored specifically to your company’s next growth phase.

Contact Secret Source Marketing today and discover how fractional marketing leadership can help drive your business growth.

Why a Unified Sales and Marketing CRM is Essential for Business Growth

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, the pressure on CFOs to deliver growth while managing costs has never been greater. Enter Fractional Marketing—an agile, cost-effective solution that’s transforming how modern businesses approach marketing.

At Secret Source Marketing, we’ve seen a surge in demand for Fractional Marketing Teams and Leaders, and it’s easy to understand why: this model delivers blue-chip marketing talent, without the hefty overheads.

What is Fractional Marketing?

Fractional Marketing refers to hiring part-time or outsourced marketing professionals—either leaders or full teams—on a flexible basis. This can include Fractional CMOs, Marketing Directors, Managers, and Coordinators, all working together under a cohesive strategy.

It’s like having a full-service marketing department—but only paying for what you need, when you need it.

Strategic Leadership First, Then Tactical Execution

Hiring a Fractional Marketing Leader gives your business direction. They work alongside your leadership team to steer the marketing strategy, set KPIs, and define growth milestones.

But strategy alone isn’t enough. It has to be executed—and this is where a Fractional Marketing Team becomes invaluable.

Our Fractional Teams can deploy rapidly, anywhere in the world. We bring a squad of experienced marketers: Directors, Managers, Coordinators, and Secret Source Specialists who handle everything from campaigns to content creation, digital media, and analytics.

3 Key Benefits of Using a Fractional Marketing Team

1. Massive Cost Savings

Hiring full-time senior marketers, supporting staff, and agencies racks up quickly. You also absorb hidden time costs—appraisals, sick days, holidays, management overhead. With Secret Source, CFOs are saving up to 70% on their overall marketing spend.

2. Speed of Deployment

No waiting weeks for onboarding, briefing, or recruitment. Our teams are structured and ready to go. We deploy fast, meaning your marketing doesn’t stall while you’re trying to hire or brief.

3. No Pitching, Just Doing

Forget endless rounds of agency pitching or freelancer searching. With our flat annual fee, there are no hidden surprises. You’ll get consistent delivery, right-sized to your growth stage—whether that’s scaling up or trimming back.

How Much Could You Save? A Simple 3-Step Process

1. Book a Discovery Call – We’ll understand your current structure, goals, and pain points.

2. Receive a Cost Comparison Report – See your current spend versus what a fractional team would cost.

3. Try a Pilot – Engage us for six months and see the results for yourself before committing long term.

What Should My Marketing Spend Be?

According to Gartner, companies typically allocate 9.1% of their total revenue to marketing. However, most companies still struggle to get value from that investment due to inefficiencies, poor strategy, and fragmented execution.

Fractional Marketing ensures that your budget is going towards doing the right things—not just filling seats.

Common Concerns (and Why They Don’t Hold Up)

“But we’d have to share them with other businesses…”

True—but this actually keeps your marketing team sharp, engaged, and constantly learning. They’re exposed to different industries, trends, and ideas—bringing that insight back to your business.

“They won’t get our market…”

Also valid. That’s why we build your team with the right people who understand your market and rally around your brand. We’re not just assigning random freelancers—we build a fractional team who get it.

“Can they work with our current team?”

Absolutely. In fact, this model often motivates existing in-house marketers, who feel supported by a structured resource focused solely on execution. It’s a morale boost and a force multiplier.

The Alternatives? They’re Not Designed for Growth

Let’s be real—most alternatives are not growth-friendly:

• Freelance platforms like People Per Hour are fragmented and lack strategic cohesion.

• Marketing consultants give great advice, but they don’t stick around to execute the plan.

• Traditional agencies require constant management, multiple briefings, and often high costs. You may even need multiple agencies to achieve the same results one fractional team can.

The Smart Move for Smart CFOs

If you’re a CFO looking for:

• Predictable, flat-fee marketing costs

• A rapid route to results

• Strategic leadership plus tactical firepower

• Cost savings of up to 70%

Then it’s time to try Fractional Marketing with Secret Source.

Why not try it for six months and see the benefits for yourself?

You’ve got everything to gain—and 70% of your marketing spend to potentially save.

Whether you have a website already in need of a refresh, or thinking about designing and building a brand-new website, there are lots of factors to consider. The below list of high level considerations  is your guide to help you get the most out of your project. 

Summary

Your website is a powerful tool in the growth of your business, so it is important to start out on the right foot. If you would like help in answering some of these questions and more, then please get in touch with our Website Design and Website Development Teams.

Every sector, profession has its own three letter marketing acronyms (TLA’s). While acronyms have their place, they do have the ability to confuse from what is really happening. The below selection of marketing acronyms and what they all mean, are used in our video, demonstrating how ridiculous it can all get! 

If you are a Sales & Marketing Professional, then watch the ‘Too Many TLA’s’ video. Here is what they all mean…

PPC – Pay Per Click  

A business model whereby a company that has placed an advertisement on a website pays a sum of money to the host website when a user clicks on to the advertisement.

CPC – Cost Per Click 

 The amount of money that is charged to a company, that advertises on a website each time someone clicks on the advertisement on the website. Your maximum cost per click (CPC) is the highest amount you are willing to pay for a click on your ad.

ROI – Return on Investment  

The amount of profit, before tax and after depreciation, from an investment made, usually expressed as a percentage of the original total cost invested.

COP – Communication Optimisation Process – (Note: also means Close of Play) 

Methodology/framework for laying the foundation for your campaign and creating the benchmarks for your resulting actions.

CPA – Cost Per Acquisition (Cost Per Action) 

An ecommerce marketing metric that measures the aggregate cost to acquire one paying customer on a campaign or channel level.

QTRS – Quarters 

Meaning a period of three months, used especially as a period for which bills are paid or a company’s income is calculated.

CI  – Continuous Improvement 

Recurring activity to enhance performance. OK not strictly a three letter acronym (TLA), but it worked in the script. 

SLA – Service Level Agreements  

An agreement between a business providing a service and a customer, stating what is being provided, quality levels, etc.

MQL – Marketing Qualified Leads  

A lead that the marketing team has deemed more likely to become a customer compared to others. This determination is based on criteria such as which: web pages were visited, content offers were downloaded, CTAs were clicked, and social posts were interacted with.(source: Hubspot).

SQL – Sales Qualified Leads 

Lead is a prospective customer that is ready to talk to a sales team. Typically, this lead has expressed enough interest in your product or service, that they’re ready to move into your sales process. Usually, they’ve been researched and vetted by your marketing department and then handed off to your sales team.(source: HubSpot).

CTR – Click Through Rate 

A ratio showing how often people who see your ad or free product listing end up clicking it. Click-through rate (CTR) can be used to gauge how well your keywords and ads, and free listings, are performing.(Source: Google Ads).

BR – Bounce Rate 

The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. A Secret Source Specialist is tasked with reducing bounce rates and increasing conversions! 

OTC  – Off the chart! 

Outside of the normal range of measurement – beyond expectations. “Advance sales quickly went off the chart.”

B2B – Business to Business 

A form of transaction between businesses, such as one involving a manufacturer and wholesaler, or a wholesaler and a retailer. Business-to-business refers to business that is conducted between companies, rather than between a company and individual consumer.

CTO – Click to Order (Click Through Order)  

The act of clicking on an advertisement or other link on a website. If the banner advertisement relates to the searcher’s interest, it is more likely to result in a click through.

GDPR – General  

The Data Protection Act 2018 controls how your personal information is used by organisations, businesses or the government.

CTA – Call To Action (Click to Action)

A prompt to the reader/visitor regarding what they need to do next, their next action. Click to Action means the audience needs to click something, usually a button to download, visit or follow as typical actions. Calls to actions are often missed or underrated (contact us for call to action best practice).

CTA – Cost to Acquire   

This is the overall cost calculated to acquire a customer. Secret Source Specialists like to analyse this to make sales and marketing budgets go further. 

CRM – Customer Relationship Management  

A process in which a business or other organisation administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.

Co. – Company  

Is used as an abbreviation for company when it is part of the name of an organisation. “Hey guys, let’s set up a new co.?”

COS  – Content Optimisation System  

Describes software focusing on optimising content to deliver a personalised web experience to customers and prospects.

CMS – Content Management Solution  

Computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content.

CRO  – Conversion Rate Optimisation 

The practice of increasing the percentage of users who perform a desired action on a website.

PP – Per Page  

Referred to as views ‘per page’ or ‘pages per visit’.

GA – Google Analytics 

Google Analytics is a web analytics service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes.

MOT – Ministry of Transport

Nearly all motor vehicles have to take an MOT annual test for roadworthiness, the term is often used to refer to an overall health check in other areas of a business.   

DM  – Direct Mail

Can also mean Direct Marketing or Direct Message (Twitter)  

Using physical literature/post to reach a target audience.

PR – Public Relations  

Professional maintenance of a company’s brand, products or people in a marketplace.

SOP – Standard Operating Procedure 

A set of step-by-step instructions compiled by an organisation to help workers carry out routine operations.

ASAP – As Soon As Possible 

Short form used when something needs to happen as soon as possible (also see ‘need it yesterday’)

SITREP – Situation Report  

Used commonly in the military, it is requested when someone needs to understand the current situation. Adopted in everyday life to suggest someone wants to know what is going on. 

CE  – Cost Effective  

Effective or productive in relation to its cost. Why not just say cost effective, as it is a lot more effective?!

QR – Quick Response  

A quick response (QR) code is a type of barcode that stores information and can be read by a digital device, such as a mobile phone.

N/A  – Not Applicable 

Not relevant or doesn’t apply to someone or something.

KPI – Key Performance Indicator  

Quantifiable measures used to evaluate campaign performance. Often key indicators are chosen to help give a high-level view and indication on performance. They are often the most important or influential metrics needed.

CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost 

Costs related to acquiring a new customer. Also known as CoCa (Cost of Customer Acquisition). No, we did not make this one up, it is real!

ATL – Above The Line 

Denoting or relating to advertising in the mass media.

BTL – Below The Line 

Relating to advertising by means such as direct mail, email, promotional events, as examples. 

PV  – Pageviews 

A pageview (or pageview hit, page tracking hit) is an instance of a page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed (Source: Google Ads).

HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language  

Hypertext Markup Language, a standardized system for tagging text files to achieve font, colour, graphic, and hyperlink effects on World Wide Web pages.

CSS – Content/Cascading Style Sheets 

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation  

The process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. So if you don’t know your Penguins from your Pandas, then pick up the phone to one of our Secret Source specialists today. 

SAAS – Software as a Service  

A method of software delivery and licensing in which software is accessed online via a subscription, rather than bought and installed on individual computers.

RSS – Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary  

A standardised system for the distribution of content from an online publisher.

SM/ SMM - Social Media  (and Social media marketing) 

The use of social media websites and social networks to market a company’s products and services.

EOD  – End of the Day 

When everything is taken into consideration. That’s enough ‘todaying’ for today. 

RT – Retweet 

A reposted or forwarded message on Twitter. I know! We could not believe it either, when people use RT instead of Retweet? 

UV – Unique Visitors 

A term used in Web analytics to refer to a person who visits a site at least once within the reporting period. If you thought it meant ultra violet, then you were not on the same wavelength. 

MoM – Month on Month  

Used to compare financial results, sales, etc. for one month with those in previous months.

QoQ – Quarter on Quarter 

Used to compare financial results, sales, etc. for one quarter with those in previous quarters.

YoY – Year on Year 

Used to compare financial results, sales, etc. for one year with those in previous years.

UX – User Experience 

The overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.

UI – User Interface 

Describes the front-end software systems that the user will interact with. 

 CX – Customer Experience 

The process of creating, analysing, and enhancing customer interactions with your business operations or software. 

PM – Project Management 

The process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints.

WOM – Word of Mouth   

Spoken communication as a means of transmitting information. The passing on of infomation, such as a recommendation. 

10-4 – OK 

Message received. For the origination of the term, visit Dictionary.com 

BLT – Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato

A sandwich, of course…

We could have gone mad and the list be twice as long! Here are some other three and four letter acronyms that didn’t quite make it to the video!   

AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action 

BANT – Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline  

CLV or CLTV: Customer Lifetime Value (See LTV) 

B2C – Business to Consumer  

URL – Uniform Resource Locator  

MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue 

NPS – Net Promoter Score 

OoO – Out of Office  

For a plain speaking marketing agency, book your discovery meeting, call or chat online today. 

SOURCES: The above official sources for the definitions come from:
Oxford Languages
Cambridge Dictionary

Watch our other videos and subscribe for more content. 

With major conflicts happening around the world, a global pandemic, and an uncertain economic climate, then managing a brand and its reputation has just become a whole lot harder!  With so many recent examples of brands having to be reactive to political and audience pressure, a brand’s response, reaction time and communications has never been so important than over the last twelve months! 

Apple, Coca-Cola, Nestle – there is a very long list of brands all getting a hammering over not pulling out of geographic locations quick enough or not at all. While brands like P&O Ferries make 800 employees redundant over a video message. Have brands completely lost all empathy for their audience?

We discuss the pressure on brands, will they overcome the current climate and reputable damage to their brand(s)? How can brands help protect themselves and become more empathetic? 

SOURCE: Twitter

Ignore the ‘Voice of Society’ at your peril!

These days, businesses like to measure everything. However, measuring the many variables within audience emotion has always been tricky to do. These days, clever AI tools can measure the ’emotional climate’. Solutions such as Emotional Climate Reports (ECR) can effectively measure the public opinions, needs and emotions, to assist brands to be respectful of their actions, manage their tone of voice, but also to also monitor and position around their competition and macro environment. 

Our view is that by understanding the needs and emotions of an audience it is not about looking to gain the higher moral ground, but rather acting responsibly. Brands are now measured in their response to public opinion, especially in a crisis. Now with AI able to manage unstructured data and help make sense of it, brands can protect their brand reputation but importantly help to safeguard their employees, customers and partners. Indeed, entering into a supply chain partnership with a brand that doesn’t think or act in an empathetic manner will backfire on brands. Therefore, carrying out due diligence using Emotional Climate Reports (ECR) on potential or existing business partners’ empathetic responses will also become a regular part of the process. 

Traditional research, from polling to social media tracking, has proved too slow, inefficient or simply inaccurate. The real value comes from truly understanding societal voice and the emotions behind comments and actions. Conventional market research makes presumptions which can have little relevance to the target audience within the study. Digital research raises concerns such as privacy. There is also brand risk toward brands trying to understand an audience in an intrusive manner. 

What Can Brands Do To Protect Themselves In The Future?

Using AI tools can help to understand how society views an issue or brand:

• The needs and emotions associated with it

• The intensity with which they view it (how much society really cares)

• How the above points evolve over time.

How can a brand use Emotional Climate Reports (ECR) to help in the future? The process works by tracking the messaging of a brand and benchmarking it against the ‘voice of society’ using key algorithms within the ECR to help plot how close (or far away) the brand is. Remedial action can then be taken and progress tracked. ECR can be applied to compare against other brands, not necessarily the immediate competition either, but brands that are scoring highly on the empathy radar. Armed with this new market intelligence, positioning can be aligned and refined. Here are just some of the issues Brands using Emotional Climate Reports (ECR) are addressing; 

What are brands measuring with ECR?

• Does society care as much as the brand (intensity)?

• How much and on what emotional/needs basis?

• Where does the brand (and competitors) position on the grid?

• If there is a ‘delta’ how can it be bridged?

• Who are the most ‘activist’ (intense) societies?

• Who is currently setting the agenda? Are they ‘experts’ or otherwise?

• Should particular audience groups, even influencers, be leveraged?

• How can intensity levels be used to generate a particular action?

• How can the emotional/needs basis be used to generate a particular action?

• How do Web findings differ from those of media (News)?

More and more brands are using ECR to help steer everything from communications, operations, service, sales, marketing, product strategy. ECR are being used in strategic business decisions. 

Picture: Major brand trouble for P&O Ferries may affect other brands. Industry analysts and businesses alike will be using ECR to help measure next steps for brand positioning versus the ‘voice of society’. 

Summary

It is hard to see how brands like P&O Ferries can recover from the recent backlash they have received from the public and government officials. In desparate times it calls for desparate measures, however have P&O, by saving their company’s future, now lost huge amounts of brand equity? ECR can tell. Many brands currently will need to double down on understanding their audience’s voice over the coming years if they are to recover from the current climate. Forewarned is forearmed, and by truly understanding the ‘voice of society’, we hope that ECR will create more responsible brands in the future. 

From our ECR monitored topics within Agriculture, Crypto, Sustainability to major global incidents, contact the Secret Source Research Team to find out more. 

Got a brand or topic that you would like monitoring, then let us know? Want to see some live ECR reports, then book a discovery call, and we will demonstrate. 

Take the logistics sector as an example. The common and obvious way of thinking for most delivery and logistics companies is always to find the shortest route to the destination. Then, working metrics and KPI’s around this ‘value’ of the shortest route and reporting against it is easy. Subsequently, the shortest route metric, drives organisational behaviour. However, UPS looked at the metrics completely differently. They looked at some wider issues surrounding their business and one of the radical outcomes was that they decided to STOP (nearly always) turning LEFT! (or right in countries like the UK). Why?

No lefts, are right!

UPS took a step back and worked out that turning left into oncoming traffic increases the risk of an accident. It not only had the potential for increased insurance claims, potential vehicle repairs, even the risk of angering other drivers as a driver picks their moment to cross the traffic. These issues compound over time for the driver of the vehicle but times this by the many thousands of other drivers and movements globally, then it is a real problem. Furthermore, waiting to turn left takes time, burns more fuel and puts more stress on the driver. UPS worked out that while plotting the route to reach the destination by not turning left, might take slightly longer, it also proved to be more cost-effective, have less potential risk and actually avoided delays!

Turns out that not turning left is a smart move after all!

UPS have designed their vehicle routing software to eliminate as many left-hand turns as possible Typically, only 10% of the turns are left turns. As a result, the company claims it uses 10 million gallons less fuel, emits 20,000 tonnes less carbon dioxide and delivers 350,000 more packages every year. (Source: conversation.com)

This bold move by UPS enabled them to cut the number of vehicles it used by 1,100, which in turn reduced the total distance travelled by 28.5milion miles! Yet, UPS ended up delivering 350k more parcels every year.

Finding your ‘no left turn’

At first, ideas like ‘no left turn’ sound radical, but once accepted and followed through with conviction, they make perfect sense.

How can you learn from this example? Rather than repeating last financial year, why not get a working group together from different areas and ranks of your organisation to find better ways of growing your business? As a leader within your company, maybe even keep yourself out of the meetings, so that the teams feel free to discuss radical ideas that might be the next ‘no left turn’. Get your team to think about ideas that improve profits, margins, conditions for staff, delighting customers and prospects. There are many positive outcomes from thinking beyond the boundaries of your sector, so try to examine other sectors and what they do. Like the example from UPS, the next great idea is not going to be obvious, it might even appear counterintuitive. Initiatives might come from unlikely sources, so ask your teams, beyond just your senior executives, even teams from outside your sector or geography to help.

Secret Source Specialists often talk with clients about ‘zigging’ when their other competitors are ‘zagging’. Being objective, coming up with smart ideas that help companies grow in a better way is why sales, marketing and business owners choose to work with us and what gets a ‘Secret Sourcer’ springing out of bed in the morning! Why not read some of our other blogs for inspiration and ideas for ‘not turning left’. Better still, why not book in a ‘Discovery Call’ to talk further regarding growing your business in a better way? 

• 7 Sales & Marketing Trends  To Watch
• RevOps – For Companies who want to grow! 

Revenue Operations or RevOps as it is often termed, is increasingly being talked about in the world of B2B. Revenue Operations is with the intention of helping companies with currently siloed teams to form a more cohesive approach to how they view their business, ultimately leading to a healthier growth trajectory. 

RevOps Definition

The best definition of Revenue Operations is the alignment of often siloed operational areas such as; sales, marketing and customer service across an organisation. Revenue Operations helps to oversee, identify, make more efficient and strengthen the overall customer journey. Once a RevOps approach is achieved, then it has been proven to improve operational efficiency and accountability across the entire organisation. Businesses that have deployed RevOps successfully, enjoy increased revenue growth by double digits, in a consistent and sustainable manner. To truly have a Revenue Operation approach, overseeing your business is a constant process of improvement, but a model that can add equity to the overall value of the business.

Some argue that RevOps has been around for some time?! So why are business leaders and commentators all of a sudden taking such an interest in it now and setting out to realign their businesses to ensure they function with RevOps?

This article discusses some reasons why Revenue Operations might be a good idea for your business.    

Does a RevOps Model Work? 

Businesses the world over commonly operate a funnel method; Marketing get me more leads; Sales close the leads and Service/Operations implement/deploy/retain and keep customers happy. This has worked and still works for many organisations. Businesses, be it sales, product/service or marketing orientated have evolved over the decades and the ‘sales department’ have been more integral with their colleagues in other departments. This has been down to a better understanding and appreciation that everyone owns the customer, and technology has played a big part of this education. Increased competition, being more attentive to the clients’ needs and the adoption of SaaS models in software have meant that in order to stay on top, sales, marketing and service operations now all talk to one other to retain and upsell. A clearer understanding of the total customer lifetime value has helped to transition company culture to RevOps. The below helps to illustrate the model that most companies still operate today. The ‘traditional’ model has helped businesses organise their different departments nicely over the decades, however organisations operating siloed departments, even with an element of alignment and collaboration, are finding themselves up against competitors who are moving or moved to a RevOps Model. RevOps companies are at an advantage immediately, with Revenue Operations leaders able to spot bottlenecks, poor quality and duplication across the business and importantly they are empowered to take action. 

Below Revenue Operations organisational models look to align technology, data and processes and in turn create a less frictionless environment for all stakeholders internal and external;

Above illustrates an example in how RevOps streamlines a business, allowing it to pull together targets and KPI’s. In turn Revenue Operations leaders are best placed to help colleagues, clients and prospects, by providing clarity and robust process rather than passed around from department to department. A RevOps partner is then able to concentrate on helping the entire organisation with the experience they gain from multiple clients. Because RevOps is not a beginning and end journey, and more like a flywheel, then as such it needs maintaining to eliminate as much friction as possible and the ability to evolve as the many different macro and micro market variables change over time. A RevOps partner allows the RevOps Leaders to stay one (preferably more) steps ahead while the business operates. 

RevOps In Numbers!

• Gartner Predicts 75% of the Highest Growth Companies in the World will Deploy a RevOps Model by 2025 (Source:Gartner 2021)

According to a recent 2020 LeanData report:

• 80% is the year-on-year increase in the number of organisations currently building a RevOps model within their business.

• 58% of B2B organisations now have a dedicated Revenue Operations (RevOps) group in place already or are in the process of building one.

• 30% of these organisations see measurable improvements aligned with their business growth objectives using RevOps.

• B2B businesses who align their revenue engine grow 12 to 15 times faster than their peers and are 34% more profitable (Source: SiriusDecisions)

• companies that align all go-to-market functions outperform those that don’t, seeing 15% more profits and 19% faster growth.

• 38% more deals and post 208% more marketing revenue, according to HubSpot reports.

Four Tell-Tale Signs That You Need To Adopt RevOps?

1. No one pane of glass! A business is not able to confidently oversee and monitor the customer journey right through from stranger, customer to long-standing customer and promoter of your brand. Different systems and solutions across the business reporting on different elements. Possible unidentified duplication of efforts and conflicting evidence.
2. Friction between departments. No true understanding of the KPI’s and challenges other department have. Combined with no real appreciation what challenges other professionals within the business may face.
3. No real owner of the whole end-to-end process. Lots of chiefs and specialists all trying to do the right thing.
4. Feast and famine in revenues. No clarity on the long term vision and finding it hard to scale. 

You will have noticed that the above points are intertwined…this is what RevOps aims to eliminate. 

Pros To Adopting RevOps?

1. Understanding the client journey and therefore able to quickly eliminate pinch points and waste of time, money and effort. 
2. Increase in morale. Employees understand the part they play but work together in achieving the shared goals.  
3. Happier customers. Clients are looked after better and resources are available, resulting in retained clients, but also referral clients. 
4. Less peaks and troughs! More predictability in workload and revenue. 
5.  Less time, money spent on maintaining and monitoring different systems and solutions. 
6. Ownership. A RevOps Officer/Director/Leader can help identify where constant improvements can be made.
7. Continual improvement. Discovering and improving is a continual process which is easier within a RevOps model
8. Increased revenue growth! 

Where Do I Start?

Simply put, with your; People, Processes and Technology Stack

• PEOPLE – Appoint an owner of RevOps and empower them to make the transition. Partner with an agency who have specialists who understand RevOps and able to implement your TechStack without disruption to your business.  
• PROCESSES – Agree your processes that will enable you to define the improvements that need to be made
• TECHNOLOGY STACK – Sort out your technology stack and create one pane of glass to view, report and proactively monitor the end to end process. 

Secret Source specialists are currently seeing more and more technology under review as most internal IT infrastructure have undergone massive pressures as a result of the pandemic. Some companies have sped up their plans and investment, while others have had to completely pivot! 

Organisations have put their CRM data, automation and supporting systems under the spotlight to find a better way. Business leaders no longer want end of the month reporting, they require/insist  on access to real time data. 

However, the problem they face is siloed reporting, from fragmented systems causing inefficiency and incomplete insight to base those decisions. Secret Source are helping clients fundamentally align their TechStack so they can get a complete picture of their business. Using best practice and experience with successful past projects the team are working closely with clients whilst practising what they preach! 

How Long Is RevOps Around For?

A quick scan around LinkedIn and Glassdoor and you’ll find that there are already Revenue Operations job titles (why not try typing RevOps or Revenue Operations into Linkedin to see for yourself?). RevOps is not a new phenomena, but it has been growing pace over the last 18 months. Depending on the size and nature of the business, organisations might require one or multiple revenue leaders. While the term ‘Revenue Operations’ can suggest that a company is ‘only’ focussed on revenue and not the customer or technological enhancements, there are alternative job titles being used. The mission is still the same, to oversee the entire business, eliminating duplication, inconsistency and creating a better experience for the lifetime of the client. As identified, the positive of RevOps is that it is a continual process of improvement inside your business and focussed on delivering long-standing, sustainable growth.

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What Are The Biggest Challenges RevOps Will Face?

As sectors and technology evolves then so will the challenges that will face RevOps Leaders. Currently, one of the main reasons hindering an organisation achieving RevOps is culture and adoption. The vision to drive this through will determine the velocity or indeed the longevity of such an initiative. Secret Source have witnessed that using people who are objective and have an eye for detail as well as experience helps.

Sponsoring RevOps is driven from the top, and must be considered as a medium to long term vision amongst the executive team. The challenge will often come when most executive leaders cannot afford to disrupt current practices in fear of affecting existing sources of revenue. The perception of who owns ‘revenue’ inside a business is also often a grey area depending on the maturity of the organisation. Leaders often agree that ‘everyone; inside the organisation should own RevOps at every level, and an owner(s) to be strategic and objective enough to drive RevOps. Important to note, be careful not drive a ruthless revenue agenda with disregard to your marketplace needs and wants, but rather RevOps should be seen to directly benefit your target audience with resources better deployed on the right activities for growth. 

Important Next Steps: 

If you want to review with our business strategy advisors on your potential for RevOps and how to get it off the ground or indeed your own RevOps journey needs direction, then Secret Source can help. Secret Source take both a strategic, tactical review of your market, current processes and technology stack to help you manage your future RevOps. 

Together we will agree on the metrics – RevOps is ultimately about growing the business. here are a few RevOps Metrics to consider; 

• Win/Loss ratio
• Customer churn and cost of retaining customers
• Velocity of pipeline
• Cost of acquiring new customers
• Renewal, upsell and cross-sell
• ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
• Data accuracy – forecasting, renewals
• Total addressable market
• Market knowledge – competition

From An Operations Point Of View Here Are A Few Activities To Consider; 

1. Mutually respect the challenges and activities within the different areas and learn how to share the responsibility – Mutual trust with then build over time.
   
2. Tech Stack – Use your Tech Stack to help give a frictionless experience to customers and prospects, but importantly amongst each other. Define ownership at every level. 
   
3. Continual improvement – To create a virtuous circle or improvement, then inject training and review into the move to RevOps. This is often overlooked as the day-to-day takes over and the value not often visible to most, however RevOps is not a master plan to follow it is a process of constant refinement
   
4. Appoint an owner of RevOps to provide focus and encourage champions within different skill sets to help instil the transformation. 
5. Support the RevOps teams with objective specialists who can be proactivley working on the next stage(s) of improvement. 

But Why Stop There?

How can Secret Source Marketing help you with your RevOps Model? RevOps is about scaling/growing in the right way. By setting up the right infrastructure allows a sustainable, measured approach to business growth. Secret Source can not only save 70%+ on the costs of your overheads when it comes to marketing, but by assisting as your RevOps partner we can help you achieve year-on-year growth. Secret Source work with CEO’s, Sales & Marketing Leaders, Business Owners and Investors, but we also work closely with Operations, Product, Service and Finance Directors. Secret Source believe that RevOps should not start and end with just; Marketing, Sales and Services, but the whole operation understanding the part they can play. 

Finally…

We all agree that the world has changed and will continue to evolve. With different working practices, marketplace environments and emerging technologies, companies who are working towards a RevOps model/culture are seeing a notable change in growth compared to those companies who are not and we all know what happens when we all fail to pivot! 

Book your Discovery Call below and start your RevOps Journey! 

Subscribe to the Secret Source Blog for more insights, case studies and interviews regarding RevOps. 

The following article discusses:

• What elements are Sales, Marketing and Business Owners needing to consider when establishing marketing budgets. 
• In a disruptive world, can sales and marketing budgets be agile enough to cope or do they need to be disruptive in their construction and execution.
• A paradigm shift in sales and marketing budgets.

Sheer necessity in most cases has resulted in a further shift in the dynamics of Sales and Marketing! Business leaders can no longer simply talk about agility, they have to demonstrate it. Most businesses have been disrupted both nationally and globally, with Executive Leaders paying closer attention to macro and micro business environments.

Despite the current conditions, leaders still need to plan for the future and this includes establishing budgets for the new world. In a world of constant flux, how should sales and marketing leaders proportioning their budgets for the coming year?

After speaking with many Sales, Marketing and Business Leaders, the typical marketing budget would include a proportion of; Salaries, Inbound and Outbound Marketing depending on the industry/sector. Since the pandemic, not unsurprisingly budgets were either cut or reallocated to predominantly digital marketing and e-commerce. Typical marketing budgets over the past 12 months have been proportioned as follows;

• 50%-70% Salaries leaving the rest of the marketing spend at 30% spread across different marketing elements including;

• 15% Digital (website/ecommerce, search engine optimisation, paid),

• 5% Content, social and PR

• 10% Marketing tech stack (CRM, Automation, tools)

  (note: These averages are taken across a wide range of B2B companies and sectors). 

With the shift to digital and a greater need for data driven marketing, where should your marketing budget allocation be spent? The following is from conversations with sales, marketing and business leaders. 

Let’s Get Digital 

According to the latest Brand Recruitment Research, which surveyed a good cross-section of sales and marketing leaders, as high as 80% of professionals said they would be investing more into digital marketing specialisms, including;

• SEO (Search Engine Marketing)
• CRM and automation tools
• Social media and content

The ability to measure marketing and its return on investment has always been a priority to business leaders, then it is no wonder why digital marketing spend is the preferred option. However, what Secret Source have witnessed is that in the clamber to switch from traditional to more digital activities, costs have also increased. Competing for good quality people, training, infrastructure and the cost to compete in a digital marketplace with companies vying for the same territory, have pushed up paid or sponsored content costs. This is not likely to subside anytime soon, which is why sales and marketing leaders will also need to think disruptively into ways they can increase their activity, whilst keeping down their overheads. Digital marketing is taking up a large proportion of the budget estimated as high as between 15%-30%

The Costs of Content

‘Content is king’ was a term being used pre-pandemic, but even more so, content marketing has become a battleground to achieve a share of voice in the marketplace. Generating good quality or engaging content is not a short term activity. If content is to be educational, engaging, and informative, able to convert your audience into customers, then careful planning, execution and budget is required. Costs attributed to Content marketing have increased with companies undecided whether to choose in-house content writers (including social media talent) or external specialists such as freelances or agencies. Good content takes time, time is money, therefore, allocation to quality content is a better investment than quantity on the whole. 

Secret Source Marketing have witnessed a definite need for content writers to become more digitally savvy and digital marketing professionals to respect the content process. Cross pollination of the ‘two brains’ has resulted in marketing teams working closer together in a world that is promoting physical social distancing. Good quality content produced by professionals who can correctly engineer effective content, time after time, is worth investing in. Having this resource in-house can take up 30% of your overall budget compared to 15% of budget working with a team of professionals in relevant sectors. 

“In a world of social distancing, has there ever been a greater need for sales and marketing teams to work together” Secret Source Marketing

Talking and moving content!

Secret Source see an increase in investment of video and media content, rather than an ad hoc, separate, non-integrated budget line. The allocation would ideally fall in line with the content marketing budget to give video/media assets’ direction and strategy. This is widely outsourced to third parties professionals but still needs careful co-ordination from internal sales and marketing personnel. While filming has been restrictive during the pandemic, there has been increased spend in many sectors for video, animation media. 

Employee Costs/Salaries

One of the highest costs of any marketing spend is marketing salaries. With marketing salaries ranging from a junior role at £18,000 to a senior marketing leader at £100,000+ costs for people, despite the pandemic are stable according to research carried out by marketing recruitment agencies. Business commentators suggest B2B organisations are to a certain extent less fragile compared to B2C environments. With the mixture of the skills required within marketing, the pressure on a small in-house marketing team to juggle general and specialist activities, then it is no wonder internal marketing professionals become overwhelmed, jaded or simply turn into project co-ordinators, with little time for strategy or creativity. Experienced B2B marketing talent costing between £30,000-£60,000, means a team required to grow a business can cost upwards of £150,000 (excluding the total lifetime costs of an employee). Businesses will spend 2/3 of their allocated budget on resources to manage the budget and external specialisms.

Secret Source believe that more long term thinking of salary budgets is required. With the ideal objective of being able to utilise top talent, as and when you need it. As a result we have witnessed an increase in many freelance platforms to help facilitate this, with varied marketing skills available. With people located around the world, allos companies to a good choice of talent. The challenge comes from knowing who to use and co-ordinating the activity. 

The alternative is to use an agency and hiring amongst agencies during the global pandemic actually increased as a result. Agencies also come with different strengths; creative, digital and public relations as a few examples. So the need to budget for a few agencies is important. Spend on agencies can therefore get expensive, running internal resource to co-ordinate specialists. 

With overall marketing spend on internal talent as high as 70%, this weighting of budget leaves little other investment on other activities. With businesses re-shaping organisational structures, there is an opportunity to re-evaluate marketing spend. 

Marketing infrastructure 

Investment in the sales and marketing tech stack also needs to be re-addressed. Different ways of working, collaboration tools, project management, digtial reporting, research capabilities (read 7 Sales & Marketing Trends), CRM and automation. In order to stay agile, continual investment within your marketing infrastructure is advisable. Reviewing reputable sales and marketing SaaS tools, like Hubspot, SFDC as examples will help track the return on investment of the rest of your marketing spend (Read ‘8 Reasons Why Using Hubspot CRM Might Be a Good Idea For Your Business’).    

The Brand Starts at Home

Allow for Sales and Marketing budget allocations for internal marketing. The coming together, albeit virtually, of work colleagues has been an important element of high performing cultures. During the pandemic, many companies have enhanced their profile by investing and communicating their internal brand positively to the outside world. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is viewed and recognised by prospective customers and business partners, who are looking for alignment with their own culture. The result of this has been strong collaboration within vertical sectors. Budgets for internal marketing often sits beneath different departments, such as Human Resources. Some businesses are lucky to have a CSR leader or internal communication teams, but for many businesses, finding time, and budget, to invest close to home is ad hoc. Assigning a proportion of your marketing budget towards internal activities is also a good investment in the short, medium and long term. 

How Should I Proportion My Budget?

What is the answer to budget allocation in 2021? While we are not going to dictate how you spend your budget. Market conditions, competitive landscape and sales targets are all dependent variables that  would need to be understood, however, a healthy marketing spend budget would focus on Inbound Marketing, generating good quality content/media/social assets that help your prospects on a journey in becoming a customer and beyond. Content marketing should look to be between 10%-20%. Digital Marketing investment is closely linkedin to the above content allocation and involves SEO, SEM and Paid channels. Getting found is important, so this should be set between 30%-40%. Infrastructure investment should be anywhere between 20%-30% depending on where you are on the journey. Your resource budget still remains high at 50%.  

Paradigm Shift In Marketing Budgets

Client-side, agency-side, we’ve been budgeting in B2B for over 20 years! Over this period we have seen some fundamental shifts in activities, processes, allocation and reporting when it comes to budgets. However, during the recent pandemic we are seeing a new paradigm in budgeting, one without physical barriers and culturally more trust in people, processes a less draconian mentality. This is a positive shift, one focussed more on results, data, the right activities, the right skills delivering the right results. The new world has suited the Secret Source Teams very well.

The suggestions to Finance Directors and Executive Leaders is a paradigm shift, one of a high proportion of budget spent on salaries who end up managing external specialists to help them execute, or the alternative of bringing it all in-house and incurring the running costs. Instead Secret Source Marketing suggests you truncate the relationship between in-house marketing, agencies, consultants, freelance and instead having a marketing outsourced team, that evolves as you grow and deploys the neccessary skills to help grow your business. With a predictable cost each quarter and measurable for results. By exchanging salary overheads and re-investing budget spend into your marketing execution could allow you to proportion marketing budgets into a far more growth orientated model. 

SSM Paradigm Shift

35% Digital 

25% Content (PR, Social and Media)

20% Infrastructure

15% Management 

5% Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

0% Salary!

The two graphs above show the shift from a traditional marketing budget, heavily weighted on the overhead of internal resource costs, to an integrated mix of marketing activities of which proportions can change to suit the need of the business, with local and global seismic shocks. The outsource model is focussed around activity, execution and measurement, with more time spent on delivery of a clearly defined strategy. Re-deploying traditional budgets typically spent on recruiting, onboarding, nurturing and retaining talent, compared to the outsource model of combining resource with agency, has become more popular for both business leaders and indeed marketing professionals over the last 12 months. The new role of the in-house marketing professional is now sat within the agency and aligned to that of the specialists as an when they are needed to grow the business. 

This shift is not a new phenomenon. Culturally it has become more acceptable as people have not been commuting, turning up to a physical place of work every day. Large and small businesses are currently using this model behind the scenes being able to utilise a blue chip marketing department whilst wanting to remain agile in how they budget for it. Emerging out of the pandemic has given Finance, Business Leaders an opportunity to break from the traditional model to a more flexible way of working for the business.

Thinking differently about budgets, the team at Secret Source Marketing work hand in glove with business leaders to help deliver on their marketing operations. If you wanted to discuss further how you disrupt your marketplace by executing at speed whilst managing costs to the business, now is a perfect time to get in contact.    

 

• Tales from a CEO: The reasons why I decided to outsource my marketing!

Secret Source are constantly writing unique content for clients every day, so the written word is very  important to us. Our team is forever reading and researching content every day and understand the power of good writing. This is why we like to celebrate #worldbookday

Embrace the ‘Never Normal’

2020 was all about adapting to ‘the new normal.’ Peter Hinssen encourages meeting the future challenges of the ‘never normal’ — a reality where change is constantly triggered by ‘seismic shocks’ like the COVID-19 pandemic. (source: https://www.pcma.org/peter-hinssen-embrace-never-normal/)