Situation Assessment and Recommendations

Our clients recognize that they have substantial revenue opportunity in their ‘solution space’ going forward, and they want that revenue growth. With this in mind, companies engage Frantz Group to identify gaps that inhibit growth.

Frantz Group leads clients through our Integrated Direct Marketing Assessment Process. We compare their marketing status to accepted standards, Frantz Group best practices, and to a limited degree, we look at our client’s marketplace. The purpose of the assessment process and resulting document is to ensure that we maximize our clients’ return on marketing investment. The first step of the process is to make sure we consider all relevant information before we build campaign plans.

The resulting assessment document is a centralized and standardized master marketing repository and checklist. It contains a review of the complete task list with gaps identified, the go-forward action plan and the library source for all relevant documents, and is intended to be a central communication resource for all stakeholders in the endeavor.

Value Proposition Development

We battle in the marketplace to gain competitive advantage for our clients with the words we write, the images we create and the messages we deliver; today, the ‘room is so noisy’ that if we don’t get a compelling value proposition on the table in the first few seconds, we fail to connect.

The process of value proposition development and market confirmation is central to our service. We make the most efficient use of our clients’ marketing dollar by developing and validating their value proposition before we get in-market.

Marketing Strategy / Planning

Frantz Group has planned and executed thousands of campaigns across a wide variety of industries and technologies. These programs have incorporated myriad marketing tactics, messages and offers, and Frantz Group has studied the outcomes of each campaign with an eye toward tweaks and improvements. With this expertise to support our efforts, FG plans and develops custom marketing strategies in concert with our clients and helps them determine feasibility and projected ROI.

This being said, many of our customers come to us with marketing plans already in place, or at least in development. Based on real data about average conversion rates (for specific tactics/campaign structures, in certain industries, for certain technologies, and for specific target audiences), we can help our customers rationalize their marketing plans in terms of volume of responders, qualified leads, pipeline, and closed revenue they are likely to yield. The purpose of this exercise is to validate whether a current marketing plan is likely to achieve stated objectives.

Quarterly / Annual Marketing Planning

Technology marketers today are faced with a wide array of choices. Optimizing marketing spending to achieve desired quarterly lead, pipeline, and sales targets is always a challenge. The right messages must reach the right contacts through the right channels with the right frequency. Not every prospect or customer should be treated equally; more-strategic prospects should receive more attention. Leveraging best practices we’ve developed in our nearly 20 years of marketing campaign development, Frantz Group is practiced at building compelling and effective annual and quarterly marketing plans, combining a wide range of media and marketing tactics.

Integrated Campaign Plan Development

Actual client campaign performance at Frantz Group is significantly better when we utilize multiple tactics integrated together – the definition of ‘integrated marketing’ – and Frantz Group, early to market in this field, is expert at maximizing its value.

Today’s typical integrated marketing campaign might include email, video, outbound and inbound phone, SEM, social media, events, and maybe even print advertising. The mix, of course, depends upon the product and its targets / marketing goals. Integrated marketing, at this point, is not a new concept, but it certainly is an effective one, and has come to be vastly more populated with tactics than in the recent past. Frantz Group helps our clients effectively combine marketing tactics to achieve desired results for their product and to net a positive return on their marketing investment.

To illustrate, FG might start with a customer by helping them with lead generation, where we begin with an assessment of the client’s situation, goals and resources. Then, we look at Frantz Group and client historical campaigns and outcomes to identify a best practice campaign plan to match client resources and goals. We build a document that outlines our recommended approach, integrating campaign tactics and content suggestions into a highly synchronized, cohesive plan, which is followed with a budget and a timeline.

Normally, there is collaborative discussion of this plan, with tweaks and alterations made for various reasons until agreement is reached, resulting in a signed SOW (Statement of Work).

Channel Plans / Programs / Recruitment

FG has created and executed over one thousand channel programs since 1993. We have performed programs for hardware companies like IBM as well as software companies like Dassault Systemes. We have executed partner recruitment (recruiting new partners as well as current partners to participate in marketing campaigns), go-to-market programs, data acquisition, strategic services, lead passing, lead management and follow-up. Frantz Group’s integrated marketing for channel helps to assess current integrated marketing fundamentals and provide recommendations to align with goals and objectives. We help our client/channel establish measurable and repeatable marketing processes and metrics to better understand their business and channel to grow them profitably, we provide, where appropriate, ongoing strategic consulting to monitor progress and make corrective or directional recommendations, and allow for an experienced “one stop shop” marketing resource to act as an extension of our client/channel which helps bridge any gaps or limitations due to lack of bandwidth, experiences, or resources.

Frantz Group provides go-to-market channel solutions that help technology companies meet their channel revenue goals and capitalize on the large revenue opportunity potential of the SME segment.

Marketing Staff Augmentation

Operating under marketing headcount can be an unfortunate reality for our customers, which can compromise goals and deadlines, and can be a distraction for remaining staff. Waiting for permission to hire a ‘best fit’ replacement candidate can sometimes take time.

Frantz Group consulting personnel have experience filling key roles either short or long term for our customers (remotely or on-site) – from strategic roles such as Director of Marketing and Sales Management or campaign managers to more tactical positions like copywriters or designers. We can work on a project basis or a headcount basis.

Internal Team Consulting

Some of our customers have decided to do marketing internally rather than outsource the work to a third party marketing services firm like Frantz Group. For these customers, Frantz Group offers consulting services to help them achieve optimal efficiency and effectiveness. This can include hiring, management training, metrics, overcoming performance problems, best practices consulting, lead qualification training, etc.

Content Management

In our clients’ marketplace, literally all buying research at least begins online. What once was called ‘collateral’ has evolved into ‘content,’ and every company must produce enough of it to feed hungry searchers or face obscurity. If a company’s information is not accessible, easily understood and showing a clear value proposition, that company will find itself at a serious disadvantage among its competitors.

The internet has caused a reversal in roles: the buying process was once controlled by sellers who disseminated information to buyers upon request, but now, buyers expect to find information themselves. If they can’t or don’t find what they’re looking for, that product or company is simply not a part of the buying process. For this reason, in today’s marketplace, every vendor must become a publisher.

The term ‘content’ encompasses both the information meant to be communicated to clients’ prospects, as well as the numerous tactical communication elements used to package this information. These tactics include: websites and web content, brochures, annual reports, sell sheets, press releases, feature articles, PowerPoint presentations, FG Nurture 1 video, promotional and instructional videos, researched materials such as whitepapers, testimonials, case studies, and many more.

Companies must not only produce ample and appropriate content, but also need to ensure that their messages are heard and understood by using appropriate delivery tactics and through their strategic combination, often overlaying and augmenting marketing campaigns.

Frantz Group offers programs which research competitor content and provide direction for client content. We can recommend approaches for content, and later provide writers and designers to create it.

Please visit our Communications section for in-depth information on this topic.