The 2018 Marketing Optimism Survey has revealed that those responsible for marketing within Dorset companies are heavily focused on embracing and achieving growth in 2018.
Growth of their audiences, active customers and size of businesses, as the county looks to strengthen its position in many markets and industries.
Scott Fitzgibbon of SF Marketing Consultancy commented, “The approach is unified that major targets will be achieved by looking at new areas of growth outside of their traditional areas of focus. Looking to find alternative markets and contacts to extend the reach of existing products and services, with less of focus on innovation or new methods of working.
However this will be undertaken by ‘picking battles’ and increasing an ‘individual by individual’ focus to capture new customers and target audiences. The challenges lie in exploring methods of accessing these new areas amongst a rise in competition across the region.”
“In line with ambitious targets for sales, companies are looking to expand and grow. However, with budgets tight and time to recruit becoming harder, this growth may not be in a ‘standard’ way of new hires or short-term contracts. As Dorset’s strong agency presence and rapidly growing freelance community can vouch for. Companies are exploring all methods of getting results through the use of hired experts potentially over the option of new hires.”
Sarah Lay, Founder of TriBe Solutions, added “The future is human-centric! Collaboration and co-working is already key to companies and individuals to enable them to grow with a more effective and satisfied workforce in a sustainable working environment. Relevant tech is now easily available and co-working spaces are on the rise. Reports publicised show that people are more effective in a role with the flexibility of remote working and so naturally a freelancer provides more value to the job with the independence to self-managing and self-satisfying their emotional and financial needs.
Two Quick Facts – 1. Between 2008 and 2016 the UK freelance workforce grew by 43% and now we have over two million freelancers in the UK, satisfying their work-life balance and ‘freelance’ being their main job. 2. Aside from London, the South East has the highest population of freelancers, identifying that skills are available and the good ones are there to be found.”
Scott continued, “However the overall positivity is balanced off by the understanding that the road ahead for growth can be tough. With a strong focus on understanding new methods of reporting and a focus on ROI, especially when time and managing a tight budget remain the biggest challenges for marketers and senior managers.
The excitement levels might be rated at a lower than UK average level, however the region is driven by the potential of “what if” and a passion to see what opportunities can arise during 2018.
All survey respondents were united in their feeling that this would be a good year that they would look back on 2018 with a strong sense of accomplishment and the hard work paid off.”
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SF Marketing consultancy is a Poole based Consultancy focused on supporting sports related and ambitious local businesses.
Find out more about the Marketing Optimism 2018 survey at https://www.sfconsult.co.uk/latestnews
