What are your biggest opportunities & challenges in marketing tech for next 12-24 months?
In the last 18 months we’ve gone from zero to helping some of the most interesting and diverse clients in our industry communicate more effectively with their customers. We’ve been head down, working hard to establish ourselves and show our clients what we can do. Our biggest opportunity now is to really develop our own brand, and let the wider world know we exist. We’ve started this process, we are attending the biggest trade show in our market in a few months as an exhibitor, and have some very exciting partnerships lined up that will amplify our voice. But there is much more to do.
Our biggest challenge is a cliché, but like most clichés it is true. As we grow we need to maintain the quality of what we do.
What keeps your clients up at night?
They would say leads; I would say telling the right story. All of our clients exist because their customers love what they do, the service they offer, or products they sell. I always tell clients that they are doing the hard bit already – they have a business offering something someone else wants. Now they just need to be able to tell their own unique story in the right way. That is where we can help.
What’s the hardest thing to educate clients about?
That telling a story takes time. Finding and nurturing new leads, and developing existing accounts, takes time. Clients, understandably, want customers and sales right now, yesterday ideally. But telling the right kind of story, in the right kind of way, across multiple channels is no mean feat.
Great clients understand that they need a plan, they need to execute that plan, and they need to judge it when it has had time enough to deliver results.
What are some unmet needs in marketing technology landscape?
I think there has been an over dependence on big marketing automation tools, or rather an assumption that they are right for everyone. We work with clients large and small, sophisticated and just starting out, and whilst the big name automated tools can be great for some of these they certainly aren’t a magic bullet.
Some marketing problems are much better solved by linking together a smaller set of tools, a simpler suite of products, into a lighter weight solution. The answer in these sorts of situations is a workflow of sorts. But that workflow could be addressed by a single ‘all in one’ tool or a much simpler option. So a greater focus on easy ways to link these tools together, for the non-technical, would be super helpful.
What social network do you anticipate accelerating growth in the next year?
I’d love to see Twitter come out of its current doldrums and revitalise itself. At its core it is such a fantastic concept, and those who criticise are almost blind to just how successful it has been, and just how far it has penetrated into the world around us. You only need to look at news programs, billboards, magazines, websites to see hashtags and tweets everywhere. Yes it has lost its way a little in the last few years, but I’d love to see it get back to basics and really soar again.
–Chris Wright is the Founder of Fifty Five and Five.
