Get Smarketing!...Got Smarketing! this week.

What do businesses need to do to keep moving forward in the 'New Normal' of post apocali-pandemica life as we prepare to welcome springs starting to ease on restrictions in the UK?

This is a letter about the birth and success of our "Get Smarketing" Events.   

Businesses have all been forced to adapt, evolve and change in the past 12 months. I myself have seen companies completely change their production lines from foodstuffs to PPE in order to keep afloat. Other people dismantle their business and relaunch using the bricks they were left with into something completely new, just to keep going in the face of adversity. 

What has become clear is that people have had to learn new skills in order to keep their business going. Some were bold and changed immediately, others need time to take the next step...but the important thing is that the next step is taken before it's too late. 

In February Chroma Marketing who is one of the most recent additions to the new YorkShare platform joined with the SME Skills Academy in bringing: "Get Smarketing!" a free webinar to life. We asked the market before Christmas 2020 what would you like to know more about and they responded with a combination of Marketing and Sales skills or Smarketing. A concept derived from an article on Hubspot which illustrated that businesses that aligned their sales and marketing strategies saw the following statistics:

B2B businesses implementing Smarketing enjoy:

1. 36% higher customer retention;
2. 32% more yearly revenue growth
3. 27% faster growth over 3 years

Put simply, by making the internal structure of these two departments aligned...the whole business benefits...What a result!!

Laura at Chroma Marketing and SME SKills Academies Master Franchise Partner Nigel answered the call and put on our first Smarketing event in February which saw over 70 businesses register to learn how they could develop the strategies for identifying their Ideal Client Avatar and then building a strategy to attract MORE of the RIGHT prospects to increase their revenue. 

Originally we had only planned it to be a single event, but the feedback from the market was:

"Personally I thought the webinar was very well structured, nicely paced and easy to follow, it attended to the majority not the minority and lots of great valuable information to take away with you"

"Great info and very well presented...very useful to be reminded that we all need a kick up the butt now and then. Thank you."

"Loving this session guys, would be useful once a month"

"I absolutely loved the intro. What is your win of the week. A great positive vibe instead of how are you and we all know how we all feel at the moment. Thank you so much."

• How could we refuse to turn down the requests to include networking sessions and host the event more regularly? So this week Nigel and Laura set out again with 80 businesses registering again from all over the world tuning in to find the tips they need to align their sales and marketing to generate the revenue they need to accelerate out of the hardships last 12 months and make their business a dominating force in the marketplace. 

The events are listed now on Cumbriashare and May's event is already filling up as business owners the world over realise that there is another level that they can take things to, and maybe they need to learn to hone their skills to do it. The SME Skills Academy is proud to be supporting business owners do what they need to do by sharing this value to get them to where they want and need to be.