Well… that went fast.
We’re rounding off the end of another yeah, capping off what’s been a pretty stellar decade for Six & Flow.
Professionally, I’ve never been more proud of what we’ve achieved as a team and as individuals within Six & Flow. More importantly though, I’m excited about what’s to come.
This blog is to say thanks to you for reading our content, engaging with us or perhaps working with us over the past 12-months. It’s been a lot of fun and it’s been great to have you as part of our growth story.
As a snap shot, this year, our team has grown to 20, we’re working with some amazing clients in the UK, North America and main land Europe. We’ve also notched up some incredible accolades (last week Drift named us one of their top 12 agencies… globally!) and we opened up a new office in London.
Rather than just spout a bunch of aspirational goals we’ve set our selves for next year, I thought I’d pick out some plans and areas of focus we’ve got as an agency that will [hopefully] affect your growth in 2020:
1. Our partner agency network is growing
We believe in a global market - something that digital is very affective at accessing. While we can reach those markets, localised knowledge and language are essential to success. Our clients have very real needs to grow into regions where English isn’t the main language.
With that in mind, we’ve spent the last year building out a network of partner agencies that we know we can work alongside and we know will deliver work to the same level of standards we hold ourselves accountable.
The countries we have sister agency relationships in now includes:
Over the next 12-months, the languages and regions we can help clients with will only grow.
2. Video is now more important than ever
Every. Single. Year… someone somewhere writes an end of year round up blog about next year being “the year of video”… And it’s true. Video has been here for a while but its prevalence in areas outside of marketing (sales and support) has rocketed to the forefront of growth.
When we speak to prospects about areas we can help them, there are two that I get genuinely excited about because of the impact I know they’ll have: Conversational Marketing and Video in the Sales Process.
In 2020, we’ll be doubling down on video - be that with sales coaching or production.
3. Community should be the focus
We finished off 2019 running a lot of events for both Six & Flow and for our clients. What’s it taught me? Think beyond contacts and leads. Focus on the community and how you nurture that community between events. The value you add will return 10 times over.
Getting prospects, customers and suppliers in one room discussing joint challenges - it’s a powerful way to show you can help.
When we couple events into an ABM strategy - the engagement is huge. It’s a level of nurturing difficult to achieve in other mediums. It also helps foster a community and we’ve seen it consistently amplify growth again and again.
In 2020 you’ll see even more events, both digital and physical, hosted by us or our clients.
4. Marketing is being overtaken by sales
One of the trends we’re starting to see as an agency is an increased need for support on the sales side. Sales & marketing alignment, sales enablement, CRM implementations and coaching - it’s easily the fastest growing part of our business.
There’s a few thing I think that are driving that shift:
Marketing automation - it’s becoming easier and easier to deliver the day-to-day of a marketing campaign (the value in an agency is the strategy and direction).
More willingness - Sales teams have historically been resistant to new directions, tools and processes - but we’ve started to see more and more sales-team-lead innovation with the clients and prospects we work with. There’s new toys to be playing with and each of them may have the potential to 2x, 4x, 10x your return. Why wouldn’t you be interested in them?
More need - When we started the agency, the challenges we can help solve normally fell into one of three camps - not enough leads, poor quality leads or too many leads - it now seems like there is more realisation around the need to be converting what you do have more reliably. Marketing and sales aligning is great way to facilitate that.
There’s a blurring - One of my favourite questions to ask in a workshop meeting with senior execs is “tell me where sales starts and marketing stops”. That line has (and should be) blurred, if you look at it in a traditional funnel capacity.
It’s exciting to see because of the impact we know it can have.
And that's it, pass me the mince pies, time to down tools and spend time with my family.
Thanks again for being part of a great year and I hope you have an amazing festive break. I think the whole world deserves one.
See you in 2020.
Rich