February is a great month to take stock of where your company is heading. Closing in on the "pointy' end of the financial year in Australia, companies are taking stock of whether or not they will make their sales targets.

Marketing Eye is safely on-track, but instead of sitting back and watching the new clients come in, we are firmly placing our feet on the accelerator and going full steam ahead. Our Melbourne and Sydney offices are looking for 50 new clients before the end of the financial year. 

So, like any good manager, I have put aside a marketing budget of $150,000 to be spent on sales and marketing activities. Our internship program ensured that we had a heap of new ideas, and alongside our exposure to the US-market and the way they use technology to power marketing campaigns, I have to say, I am fairly confident that this goal is achievable.

We have never had a sales team in Australia, so the first port of call is to hire a business development manager, capable of communicating what we do, how we do it and why a company should choose us over our competitors.

We have developed:

• An on-boarding program designed to give a new business development manager the right knowledge and information on Marketing Eye and our clients to be able to understand what we do, why we do it and what makes us different.
• A culture book that identifies all aspects of our company culture: happiness first, success second, and complacency - non-existent.
• Key messaging guide for sales and marketing professionals at Marketing Eye
• Two-week training with our in-house sales 'guru' flying straight in from our US headquarters. She will educate, coach and push our new business development manager to a level that he did not know existed. She is super bright, dynamic and knows everything there is to know about how to communicate Marketing Eye to small to medium sized businesses.
• Induction program that incorporates understanding our company and all of its people.

Today, we put our best marketing brains together to talk about our sales and marketing strategy for Sydney and Melbourne. 50 new clients on top of what we have in 4 months is achievable, but it still requires quite a lot of work. The first question is "where will they come from?"

• Direct mail campaign to our database
• Website
• e-marketing campaign
• Social media

There is nothing new here but what will help our company get further traction is the dedication of key individuals to doing these things on a daily basis. Working closely with our business development person, a dedicated 'marketing eye' backed by our graphic design, web, online and communications departments will work in synergy to achieve this goal.

The last years' marketing strategy is still being implemented, but we want a game-changing push in sales, higher than our previous marketing goals and to do that, we have to develop a secondary sales and marketing strategy and dedicate a team to achieving it.

What technology will we utilise?

To make this happen, Marketing Eye will utilise marketing automation software, customer relationship management, itpronline (our proprietary software), e-marketing software and of course project management software. There is a lot that goes into sales and marketing campaigns and not many small to medium sized businesses realise the investment that marketers like ourselves have in technology.