SalesOnly
External marketing team – a results-driven collaboration

What do you do if you have big growth plans but lack a marketing department? SalesOnly, Sweden’s leading sales recruitment agency, got a dedicated marketing manager and free access to digital growth specialists in order to drive marketing efforts towards their business goals and position themselves as an industry leader. Today, thousands of ambassadors engage with their content, incoming leads have reached record heights, and they have a brand that everybody recognizes.

Some numbers:

40,000 visitors to the knowledge bank (+46%)
4,066 new leads (+596%)
11% increase in conversion rate on the website
2,500 new followers on LinkedIn (+24%)

About SalesOnly

SalesOnly offers recruitment expertise and consultancy for companies with a long- or short-term need for professional salespeople and sales managers. As the leading Nordic partner in research-based sales recruitment, they gather over 70,000 candidates whom they match with progressive employers. The long-term goal is to have an annual turnover of 100 million SEK (~ $9M) by 2026.

(Challenge)

Strategy and fast results

SalesOnly needed a long-term strategy to build better relationships with their customers, strengthen their brand and create a sound basis for growth. At the same time, they needed to act fast and show results on an ongoing basis. Sales recruitment is a highly competitive industry, and staying top of mind with customers is a must for success.

Passion and brand

SalesOnly is a company founded on a passion for the sales profession. Therefore, their ambition was to be the industry's thought leader and improve the reputation of sales. They wanted to increase the status of the sales profession and build long-term relationships with the best salespeople who could become future candidates or customers.

Enhanced trust

SalesOnly has a unique industry collaboration with the research institute Mercuri International which include training of all recruitment consultants. This, however, was all but unknown. Spreading the word about their evidence-based method was also an essential part of the collaboration.

The right look and feel

The old website and the graphic identity didn’t feel right anymore. SalesOnly wanted something that reflected their focus on sales of the future – serious, premium, and professional.

(Solution)

Efficient and flexible – without unnecessary meetings

To be as flexible as possible, Invise put together a core marketing team with a manager and selected specialists to work with SalesOnly in the short and long term. With that setup, SalesOnly gained access to all the niche specialists at Invise when needed while simultaneously working closely with a smaller group that had a greater understanding of the long-term goals. Having the marketing manager report directly to the CEO of SalesOnly made it possible to promote digital growth while simultaneously freeing up time for the CEO, who no longer needs to be as operational. The flexibility also made it possible to act quickly in the event of unforeseen circumstances without losing focus on long-term strategy and goals.

Thought leaders and more deals

By developing an inbound marketing strategy for SalesOnly, we identified buyers' journeys, essential target audiences, and their needs in order to set up effective processes for content production and incoming lead management in HubSpot. The team also updated and repackaged all existing content to take advantage of SalesOnly’s significant knowledge bank that was no longer driving traffic. By regularly interviewing SalesOnly employees’, we cooperated to produce content that not only made SalesOnly a thought leader for relevant target groups but also significantly increased their inflow of quality leads.

A community for professional salespeople

Everyone who comes into contact with SalesOnly quickly notices that their greatest strength is their employees. There’s a particular pride in the company culture that mirrors the candidates that SalesOnly want in their network. With that in mind, elevating employees visually and in storytelling felt obvious. By showcasing the people of SalesOnly even more and what they stand for, we managed to build a community on social media where people who identified with the same values became ambassadors and, with that, a part of SalesOnly’s growing network.

A homepage that fits like a glove

To get a seamless transition from lead generation to automated processes and contact forms, we built a new website in HubSpot’s CRM platform as there was already a lot of data in their HubSpot Marketing Hub. To mirror the target audience, the team also chose to use the employees and showcase SalesOnly’s culture. This is characterized by professionalism, humanity, commitment, and outstanding excellence, all of which makes them an exceptional partner for companies looking for salespeople of the future. The website design is tasteful, and the color palette expresses authority, loyalty, and exclusivity combined with optimism and success. The written content on the website focuses on the candidate network as well as the research-based methods – and the navigation is clear and simple to lead the visitor towards an initial contact.

(Examples of actions)

Comprehensive growth marketing strategy
Project management of the marketing team
Content strategy and content production
Content review and conversion optimization
Search engine-optimized (SEO) copywriting
Design
Marketing automation in HubSpot Marketing Hub
Social media
Performance Marketing – LinkedIn Ads
New website in HubSpot CMS (nominated for The Publishing Prize 2022)

(Results)

40,000 visitors to the knowledge bank (+46%)
625 downloads of gated content (+68%)
4,066 new leads (+596%)
11% increase in conversion rate on the website
2,500 new followers on LinkedIn (+24%)
Increased brand awareness (according to a survey by Kantar Sifo)

*The period refers to a two-year period 2020-2022

Success factors

Open dialogue

A close and honest dialogue between the marketing manager Ellen and SalesOnly’s CEO, Jenny, was crucial for a successful collaboration. Being able to challenge, question, and give continuous feedback strengthened the relationship and paved the way for even better results.

One step ahead

Accessing the market’s leading specialists in digital growth opened up a 360-perspective of the entire market and sales process. SalesOnly continuously strive to become better, which creates a climate where there’s always room for ideas and proposals on how to raise the bar.

Boldness

The collaboration was characterized by mutual trust and a willingness to test limits, which resulted in creative freedom within all projects. That contributed to innovative solutions where we could take advantage of the full potential of the external marketing team.

Availability

SalesOnly had access to leading specialists in the marketing team, which allowed us to be effective and move quickly. In turn, the external marketing team could collaborate with SalesOnly’s dedicated employees, who generously shared knowledge and relevant insights.

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