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 | Office hours: Monday-Friday 8:30am - 5:30pm

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Jennifer Esty

Fareham Success for Sharp Ahead Client

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The Fareham Innovation Centre, operated by Sharp Ahead client Oxford Innovation has been given the green light for a £6m-plus extension.

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Read the Fareham press release to find out more about the new centre.

Lead Generation Case Study

The current £5.3m innovation centre, with 24 offices and 15 workshops, was fully occupied within 12 months of opening in April 2015. Oxford Innovation run the Centre on behalf of Fareham Borough Council.

Sharp Ahead, Oxford Innovation’s digital marketing agency, helped fill the centre two years ahead of schedule, with a 600% increase in qualified sales leads and a 90% reduction in customer acquisition costs over the traditional broker model.

Read the full case study on how the centre achieved its stunning success.

What our client says

“Sharp Ahead have transformed the way Oxford Innovation approach marketing for our innovation centres, and as a result we have seen a 90% reduction in client acquisition costs and a significant improvements in the quality of our leads.”

Jo Willett

Marketing & Business Development Director, Oxford Innovation

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    Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

    Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

    The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

    5 Inbound Call Handling Basics to Improve your Lead Generation Campaigns

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    Too many lead generation campaigns fail to achieve their full potential due to poor inbound call handling. Maximise your marketing investment by getting these five basics right.

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    Answer the phone

    Yes, I know what you’re thinking, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but many companies really do falter at the first hurtle. A successful company properly focused on inbound sales enquiries will answer every single call, no matter what time of the day or day of the week.

    Calls should never go unanswered because someone is on holiday, or at lunch, or in a meeting. And there are plenty of excellent call answering services that provide a high quality experience to prospects and customers outside of business hours. Use one.

    Answer in their language

    A similarly painful observation but equally important: B2B prospects considering high end products or services expect and deserve a local phone number answered by a native speaker who is well versed in the company’s products and services.

    Again, for B2B companies looking to expand into international markets (or from international markets into the UK) who might not yet have a local office, it’s still worth in investing in a local number and consider outsourcing to a local company specialising in inbound enquiries.

    It’s not just for rookies

    Many organisations use their inbound phone team as a training ground for new employees looking to skill up to be ‘proper’ sales people. And while it makes sense for sales rookies to cut their teeth on less qualified prospects before putting them in front of the big fish, make sure they are surrounded by skilled peers and are given the proper training to do their job well.

    Equally it’s important to remember that the skills that make a successful inbound sales operator are not necessarily the same as the ones that make for a successful sales person. Sales people are taught to keep talking and to ask the right questions. Inbound operators need to listen first and talk second.

    Take nothing for granted

    Organisations who outsource their inbound sales will no doubt have regular reviews with their agency, covering KPIs, listening to calls (live or recorded), checking up on staff training and generally ensuring high quality delivery. And if they’re not, they’re with the wrong agency.

    Organisations who use internal resource, however, are less likely to have these sorts of quality checks in place and just assume their employees are doing a good job. Nothing could be further than the truth. Our experience doing mystery shopping for clients shows that not only do calls go unanswered (see first point) but many are answered by unskilled staff who see inbound calls as a disruption to their ‘real’ job.

    Ensure your inbound team know what their KPIs are and put in place processes for monitoring quality.

    No one likes surprises

    Nothing makes an inbound operator’s job harder than not having the right information to help a prospect. Make sure your inbound team are familiar with your marketing campaigns, before they happen.

    They will need to see ad copy, landing pages, be trained on any promotions or demos that have been offered, and be aware of any qualifying (or disqualifying) criteria.

    Sharing your marketing campaigns with the inbound team before the campaign starts has the added bonus of getting feedback from the front lines before you waste time or resource on campaigns that are likely to miss the mark.

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    Subscribe

      Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

      Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

      The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

      Preparing for the Summer Holidays

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      Despite the weather outside, summer is nearly here, and you may be looking forward to a break abroad, or even taking your chances here in the UK (with umbrellas and cagoules at the ready).  But who is looking after your digital marketing while you’re away?

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      If you have an agency helping you out, you might not be too worried. However, if you’re looking after it on your own, or with a small team – some of whom are also on holiday – there are a few things you can do to make sure all the hard work of the past few months isn’t compromised by a week or two away…

      Using AdWords?

      If you have Google AdWords campaigns running, download the Google AdWords app (not AdWords Express). This handy app gives you top-line campaign information including:

      • Stats
      • Bids and budgets
      • Real-time alerts and notifications
      • Call a Google expert
      • Act on suggestions to improve your campaigns

      Schedule Your Content

      Not all of your potential customers will be on holiday, so don’t let your content go stale while you are away. You can schedule content for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

      There are loads of tools you can use, including HootSuite, Sprout Social and TweetDeck.

      Also, make sure you’re promoting an appropriate CTA—don’t offer a free trial sign up if there aren’t enough staff around to actually set up the free trials!

      Using Facebook

      With Facebook Pages Manager you can view and respond to comments and private messages from your phone (as well as see Page Insights), and Facebook Adverts Manager allows you to edit your ads and budgets, get notifications of when ads are finishing and keep an eye on your spending.

      (I’ve yet to find a good app for managing LinkedIn advertising, please get in touch if you find one!)

      Still Send Emails

      Most email platforms will allow you to send emails scheduled for a specific time. Marketing automation platforms also allow you set up automatic email sends based on user behaviour. So you don’t need to stop your lead nurturing over the holiday period whilst you’re at that barbecue or lying on the beach…

      Think About Your Website

      As with email, most content management systems (CMS) have an option to schedule content. Nothing screams ‘I’ve gone on holiday and don’t care about you right now’ like outdated seasonal content on your site.

      If your website CMS doesn’t have a schedule function, consider putting your best performing content on the homepage whilst you’re away, or at least don’t leave up information about an out-of-date event during your break.

      Budgets

      Use the budgeting functionality on your paid media platforms to ensure you don’t overspend while you’re away. If your business is seasonal, have a quick look at last year’s performance; and if it’s not, a quick look at last month’s, to determine your maximum exposure.

      The main platforms all have daily budgets as part of standard set up, but AdWords and Bing also offer decent monthly budgeting functionality for those longer holidays.

      Analytics

      Google also offers a Google Analytics app which is reasonably good for basic monitoring and will allow you to at least get a high-level view of your activity, especially useful for answering ‘quick’ questions from your MD whilst you’re away.

      Again, keep in mind seasonality and remember many sensible people like you will also be on holiday so volume (though hopefully not performance) may dip.

      Finally… Check with Your Sales Team

      Make sure there is a plan in place to deal with inbound leads. If you have a small sales team who are also on holiday, make sure someone will be monitoring the group email address and the phone won’t be going unanswered.

      If unfortunate scheduling means there will be days when no one can manage calls from prospects, or customers for that matter, consider enlisting the help of a call handling agency to get you through the holiday season.

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        Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

        Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

        The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

        What is the biggest change in CRO in 2017?

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        Conversion Elite, an organisation dedicated to CRO best practice, interviewed Sharp Ahead’s very own Dr John Woods on the changes and trends in CRO in 2017.

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        John discusses the biggest changes from 2016, looks ahead to 2017, and offers some advice to people considering a switch to a career in CRO.

        Conversion Elite – A CRO Conference

        Interested in finding out more about how CRO can help your B2B organisation?

        Join John at Conversion Elite on July 6, 2017 in London for a day dedicated to CRO best practice, delivered by the best in the business.

        Why come to the Conversion Elite Conference?

        • To learn how to be a world class CRO practitioner
        • Because you want to increase online profits for your business
        • You want to provide great CRO for your clients
        • You want to network with world class CRO practitioners
        • You want to meet Dr John Woods!

        About Conversion Elite

        Conversion Elite is a one day, one track conference delivering pure practical content with eight actionable sessions designed to equip you with the knowledge you need to strengthen your CRO skills.

        There is no nonsense and there are definitely no sales pitches. If you want to improve your skills and industry knowledge, discover the best CRO tools and become a finely tuned CRO machine, then Conversion Elite is for you.

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          Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

          Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

          The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

          Why you should read one more blog article on B2B content marketing

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          Enough I hear you say! Enough about content marketing, and thought leadership, storytelling, brandscaping, big data; and while we’re at it, enough about tailored content, content consumption and low hanging fruit.

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          I promise not to use any of those buzzwords (again).

          But there’s just one more thing we should discuss about your B2B content marketing strategy: Marketing Automation.

          No, it’s not just another piece of technology that will sit unused in your virtual cupboard like the popcorn maker of marketing appliances.

          Marketing Automation is quite possibly the one thing standing between your content marketing strategy and utter pointlessness.

          Back in 2015, SirusDecisions published research that suggested anywhere from 60-80% of B2B content was wasted- as in never read and never nurturing or generating a single lead.

          And it’s not getting better.

          How Marketing Automation can help

          The beauty of Marketing Automation is that it brings process and measurability to content marketing.

          Process to what content is created when, for whom, with what messages, for which stage of the funnel.

          Measurability to what content actual contributes to lead generation and lead nurturing—for the right kinds of leads.

          It can make sure that your content strategy is the right strategy and that it’s being implemented effectively.

          How does it do all that and make popcorn?

          Well it doesn’t really make popcorn.

          But by combining your content library, landing pages, email marketing, social marketing, SEO, website prospecting, lead scoring, testing, and analytics in a single platform, marketing automation helps you understand what content you should create and how it performs once you have.

          Most MA tools offer so much functionality that I’d need a whitepaper rather than a blog article to discuss each one, but for the purposes of convincing you that content marketing without marketing automation is a waste of time, let’s briefly discuss one.

          Lead Nurturing

          Leading Marketing Automation provider Act-On defines lead nurturing as systematically contacting prospects over a set amount of time and providing relevant content that eases them through the buyer’s journey.

          Sounds good, right? And the whole point of your content strategy is providing relevant content. Right?

          But how do you know it’s relevant? For whom? At what stage of the buying journey? And how do you know when it does and doesn’t work?

          Marketing automation provides the following functionality to answer these questions. Or test possible answers to these questions. In real time. In a single place.

          • Lead scoring: a points system to assign values based on pre-determined criteria, such as the person’s industry and job title, website visits, content downloads, event attendance, form completions, etc. This scoring helps define what content you should be creating for prospects at different points in the funnel.
          • Triggered emails: emails sent out automatically based on important or momentous events that are related to your prospects’ actions, ensuring content is relevant.
          • Automated email programmes: email programmes based on real-time behaviours, overall engagement, or a pre-set schedule to push engagement with content based on real knowledge of your prospects
          • Funnel reports: track prospects through key conversions and create models that help you better predict the buyer’s journey and evaluate which, how and when content is contributing
          • Analytics: for everything from your emails and downloads to landing pages and form submissions, helping you answer the question: does my content matter?

          So, if you plan to do any content marketing in the next 12 months, please make Marketing Automation part of your strategy.

          And if you need a popcorn maker, I have one in my cupboard for sale.

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          Subscribe

            Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

            Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

            The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

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