Spitfire Inbound | Blog

[Update] The Spitfire Inbound Interceptor Strategy

Written by Cuan Humphries | 15 Aug 2024 7:40:46 AM

 

A good relationship with an agency is a partnership where collaboration leads to shared goals, and with that, shared wins, and challenges too. This is Spitfire’s goal for every interceptor strategy we create, and why we take our client’s victories and challenges to heart.

“Their consultation process was thorough and they took the time to really understand our business,” says Lemay Rogers, of Rentokil Initial South Africa. “Spitfire helped us build and execute a powerful strategy that is measurable and produces high-quality leads that convert into sales. Because they work closely with various stakeholders in our business and ensure they are up to date with our industry, they have become an extension of our internal team and are able to add value during content and strategy sessions that other providers can't.”

Throughout the process we work together with you, our client to thoroughly comprehend your whole business, and explore  opportunities for growth in your sales, service and marketing departments. We focus on anticipating your needs proactively based on both a deep understanding of your business and a comprehensive set of consistently updated data. 

These fundamental beliefs are why we at Spitfire Inbound have a unique strategic process when we first start working with you, which we call the Interceptor strategy

The Spitfire Inbound Interceptor Strategy

Our process takes clients from the beginning to the end of their inbound journey. Step-by-step, we’re with you every step of the way.

At its core, our Interceptor Strategy hinges on understanding your audience and nurturing your relationships with your audience. This is where a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system becomes your secret weapon. By capturing lead information gleaned from interceptions, the CRM acts as a central hub, allowing you to segment leads, personalise outreach, and track engagement. This data-driven approach fuels your marketing efforts while nurturing leads within the CRM helps convert them into loyal customers. Ultimately, the CRM becomes the bridge between successful interceptions and long-lasting customer relationships.

Spitfire Inbound’s Interceptor Process

  1. Understanding your business
  2. Understanding your customers 
  3. Building a content, automation and lead generation strategy
  4. Eureka moments! (and Outcomes)

Understanding your business

We begin our journey with you by gathering data and auditing your existing marketing, sales, and service content. But we're not just number-crunching—we’re looking at it from all angles. Think of it as a full-company huddle to understand what’s working and what’s not across tactics, target audiences, markets, and content. We’ll get to know your platforms, tech stack, and digital transformation journey inside and out. 

We don't just focus on you. We also look at how your competitors are succeeding by conducting a full-blown SWOT analysis. This lets us uncover their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and use that to improve your approach. We'll also explore where your competitors overlap strategically, and dissect their content and social media presence to see how their messaging and engagement stack up against yours. Part of this is looking at your, and your competitors’, websites. We'll compare your user experience (UX) and user interface (UI), and finally, we'll conduct a SEO audit to assess your website's search engine optimisation (SEO) health and benchmark it against the competition. 

With all this information (about you and your competitors), we'll collaborate with you to craft SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). These goals will be tightly aligned with your business objectives and will guide you through the rest of your inbound marketing journey. 

Understanding your customers

Then we start to take a look at the people that each company is trying to reach: their customers and prospects. Some agencies may simply make assumptions, or jump to conclusions about who your customers might be: we don’t. We facilitate a buyer persona, journey and content workshop with key members of your sales and marketing team, and gather critical information about your customers and prospects. We develop personas and deeply understand their journeys so that they can be used by marketing, sales, and customer support, ensuring everyone has a clear picture of your ideal customer. This allows us to craft content that resonates with them at every stage of their journey. We look beyond your customer’s and prospect’s basic consumer needs, and do a deep dive into what inspires and motivates them. What gets them up in the morning? Remember, a buyer persona is more than just demographics. 

Simultaneous to understanding who your ideal persona is, is understanding their journey both as a buyer and as a customer. This extends our inbound strategy past marketing and sales into services, where delighting existing customers is pivotal. This is the HubSpot Flywheel approach where we place the customer at the heart of every strategic move, ultimately leading to customers who do your selling for you. 

Using the full flywheel allows us to produce in-depth buyer personas and their journeys, which we feed back to you – just to check we’re all in alignment. This collaborative process ensures the customer’s experience is at the centre of every decision.

Building a content, automation and lead generation strategy

This is where it all comes together! We work with you to create a powerful, integrated strategy that blends content creation with lead generation. This is about weaving content into the fabric of your entire business.

Why the unified approach? Think of it this way: your personas aren't just marketing personas, they're living, breathing people who interact with your sales team, customer support, and every other department. By understanding their needs across all touchpoints, we can craft a holistic strategy that speaks to them at every stage.

When it comes to content, we’re talking way more than blog posts. Sure, articles and website content are crucial, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. We'll create pillar pages that act as foundational resources, and leverage powerful distributive elements like social media, email marketing, and marketing automation to ensure your content reaches the right people at the right time.  Remember, great content is only half the battle—getting it seen is just as important!

This is where we tie in lead nurturing. Gone are the days of static email sequences. We use live chats, chatbots, social media, and even PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns to engage with your audience in real time. Every element plays a role in moving prospects from curious window shoppers to loyal customers.

The key takeaway? We don't just create amazing content—we ensure it drives results throughout the entire buyer's journey. By integrating content and lead generation, we turn website visitors into qualified leads and, ultimately, happy customers who become your biggest brand advocates.

And, of course, we'll get your feedback every step of the way. Collaboration is key, so we'll present our strategies for your review and work together to refine them until we have a roadmap to inbound marketing success

How do we put this into action? We make sure we use the data we’re collecting to constantly improve on the strategy we’re setting up in the HubSpot portal. With your dedicated and passionate inbound success strategists and their teams we’ll be with you every step of the way – and focus on increasing the quality of your sales-qualified leads.

Eureka Moments and Outcomes

A Eureka moment is a realisation or insight that often comes after a period of intense thought or research to answer a question or to solve a problem. It's the moment when everything seems to click into place, and you suddenly see the solution or the answer that you've been searching for.

Our interceptor strategy takes you on a journey towards ongoing Eureka moments. We analyse your data, craft a unified inbound strategy, and transform those data points into a powerful customer flywheel. Imagine the  "Aha!" experience of seeing your marketing and sales efforts integrated, driving an engaged customer base. That's the power of the Interceptor Strategy—turning insights into action and propelling your business forward.

Now, our interceptor strategy isn't just about a single campaign or a fleeting marketing tactic. It's a transformational approach that integrates marketing, sales, and customer success into a unified engine for growth. Here's what you can expect:

  1. Deeper Customer Understanding
    Imagine knowing your customers better than you ever thought possible. We work with you to get a 360-degree view of your audience, uncovering their motivations, challenges, and desires. This goes beyond demographics – it's about understanding what truly makes them tick.

  2. Marketing Collateral that Resonates
    With this newfound customer knowledge, we craft highly targeted marketing collateral that connects with your audience on a deeper level. Generic messaging isn’t how we do things. We'll create content that truly resonates, sparking meaningful conversations and driving engagement.

  3. Measurable Results
    The beauty of the Interceptor Strategy is its data-driven approach. We track and measure the results of every campaign, providing you with clear insights into what's working and what can be improved. This allows you to refine your strategy continuously, maximising your return on investment (ROI).

  4. Continuous Optimisation Opportunities
    This isn't a "one-and-done" solution. It’s a continuous opportunity for optimisation. Every three months, we revisit your personas, realign your brand pillars, and refine your content strategy. This lets us target what isn’t working and improve it while also further optimising what is working.

In a nutshell, you gain a powerful starting point for measurement and optimisation. This allows you to constantly refine your approach, ensuring your marketing efforts always deliver the best possible results. With our Interceptor Strategy, you'll be well on your way to achieving consistent, sustainable growth.

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. But don’t believe us, believe our customer – this is what Mitchell Dickinson, Marketing Specialist at DGC Africa had to say about us:

“Spitfire has been very helpful in assisting us in formulating an inbound marketing strategy. Their guidance has be invaluable and the weekly sessions have been very insightful”