2 Of The UK’s Best Performing Companies Don’t Have Websites
Account-based marketing, inbound, retargeting, personalisation, AI. Life is fun at the moment for marketers. Boundaries are being pushed persistently, powered by an insatiable demand for progress.
Things are moving so quickly, that even for those of us who try to operate our businesses at the forefront of new development - the pioneers of progress if you will - it’s hard to keep up. Where does that leave companies at the other end of the spectrum?
At Inflowing, we recently kickstarted a significant account-based marketing campaign: the Hot 100 Inbound Performance Report. It analyses the marketing of the top 100 privately owned UK companies (measured by growth). This is the cream of the crop, the real top dogs, and they’re all killing it in their respective markets.
It only follows that if their numbers are strong, their marketing is strong too right? Wrong. In some cases, that could be that far from the truth - it’s sitting alongside washed up political promises from the last presidential campaign.
Please be aware, the following bullet points contain distressing words that some readers may find upsetting:
- 2 of the top 100 growing companies in the UK don’t have a website.
- The top performing business in the UK are operating their online marketing at 42% effectiveness.
- 22 of the businesses did not have any social media presence at all.
- 30 organisations did not have a blog or news section on their site.
You may be thinking at this point that these are tiny companies, or aggressive growth start up companies, and they haven’t got round to it yet. Wrong again. One of the offenders (and I feel comfortable saying that) has turnover into the tens of millions of pounds. The other one is a pub chain, and a decent size too.
I think the most striking thing about the stats is that they’re telling the story of highly performing companies. If things are that bad in companies which are not only performing, but performing better than millions of other businesses in the UK, then how bad must it be in companies with an average performance - or those who are not currently performing? It’s probably horrific.
What is marketing in 2017?
When I discussed these numbers with my peers, a few of them have pointed out “well it’s possible some of those channels aren’t a good fit for them”.
I feel I would be able to make a convincing argument that those channels should be a good fit for every business in 2017 and that their performance may have been considerably better with some focus in this area. If I was feeling particularly relaxed, and off my high horse, I may concede that social media might not be a primary focus for some businesses in some markets. Heck, if you got enough wine down my neck, I may even give you the blogs with a slight twist of the arm for good measure. But in 2017, is there any reason for a business not to have a website? I can only think that these successful businesses who clearly have a compelling value proposition, a strong product or service, and a management team who know how to get a performance would only go on to achieve some kind of multiple of their existing performance if they turned just a fraction of their attention, or annual spend, to marketing.
A collective responsibility
As professional marketers, taxpayers, or indeed parents, we all have a vested interest in every business in the UK being as successful as they can be. The better they perform, the better their products and services we buy will become, the more tax they will pay to fund our hospitals, and the more jobs they will create for our children.
In our quest to keep striving for the next best thing, we need to make sure we check in on those at the other end of the scale and make sure they have the help and support they need to not only achieve great results - but achieve results that meet their full potential. And arguably, these businesses all have the potential to be the next FTSE superstars with a push in the right direction from you and me.