Enterprise marketing departments spend a large amount of time and money developing bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) brochures, product demos and consultation offers. If there’s time left, chances are it’s being used to create middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) case studies and articles that explain how a product or service helped someone who bought it. These product-oriented pieces may have worked on their own a decade ago, but not anymore. Most of that time should instead be spent creating top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) offers—content that powers online marketing automation.
Research and publish the best content.
Get Started for FREE
Sign up with Facebook Sign up with X
I don't have a Facebook or a X account
Already have an account: Login
The MarTech Digest
563.5K views |
+25 today
 Your new post is loading...
Scoop.it!
36 Percent Of US SMBs Are Planning To Use Marketing Automation; More Than Double Of Current AdoptionA detailed study conducted by Techaisle shows that marketing automation is now among the top ten relevant technology areas of investment for an SMB and that 36 percent of US SMBs are planning to use a marketing automation solution. In terms of current adoption, it is higher within mid-market businesses (100-999) at 28 percent compared to small businesses (1-99) at 10 percent. As per the survey, marketing automation vendors - Marketo, HubSpot, Genius, Eloqua and SalesFusion have the highest preference within the mid-market businesses. 
Scoop.it!
3 reasons you need marketing automation: You can “set it and forget it”. Once you do the work up front to create your content and your set of rules, your program will run with little oversight. Your programs will also be able to run outside of your companies work hours. With the expansion of mobile devices and tablets many people continue to work after they get home or into late hours. Turn your marketing into a 24/7 sales generating machine.
You can scale your processes. It’s very demanding to send a personalized “Thank you” note to every one of your customers on the same day they make a sale. This business requirement would require monitoring, notification, editing, proofing, and executing for every item. Automate processes like these and scale the number of touch points, leads generated, and sales routed.
You can eliminate human errors. How many of you have seen those “sorry, our mistake” emails from well-intended marketing teams who mixed up their data or their content? Probably everyone. This type of thing happens all the time because human touches are heavily involved. Errors and mistakes can be eliminated, or at least mitigated, by creating a rigid step-by-step program or process. Do the work up front to build, test, and approve then let the computer do the thinking.
Scoop.it!
When the sales team gets frustrated with the quality of leads passed along to them by marketing, tensions can rise. This can lead to a downward spiral in which the marketing team starts to feel underappreciated and bitter toward sales for choosing prospecting over the leads they’ve been generating.
Marketing Automation Solution: Scoring and grading can help the marketing team identify leads that are a better fit for their company, so the sales team doesn’t have to waste time reaching out to unqualified leads. Integration with a CRM platform also makes prospect data available to sales reps at all times, giving them relevant, timely, and actionable information. 2. You’re not reaching the right prospects. If there’s one thing that marketers have learned, it’s that the quality of leads or prospects is more important than the quantity. If you feel like you’re reaching tons of possible leads, but you’re not getting the response or the quality that you would like, then you’re probably using a one-size-fits-all approach that’s alienating your prospects. Limited targeting and a lack of personalization can make prospects feel like your message isn’t applicable to them.
Marketing Automation Solution: It might be time to consider a solution that can help you target and segment your prospects. With segmentation, you can reach specific prospects with a more relevant message, which means that your message is less likely to be ignored.
3. Some of your best leads are going to your competitors. Many companies let leads fall off their radar if they’re not ready to buy. The problem with this is that those leads could be sales-ready within a few months, even if they’ve given you every indication that they’re not ready to make a purchase. If you don’t have a system in place to nurture your leads, then you may end up losing them to your competitors when they reenter the market.
Marketing Automation Solution: Drip nurturing allows you to educate your leads by dripping content to them over time. This means that you can keep in touch with them up until they’re ready to buy, keeping your company top-of-mind and leaving less room for the competition.
4. You spend too much time building marketing campaigns from the ground up. Does it ever feel like you spend all of your time building out the same email campaigns, landing pages, and lists – over and over again? If this is the case, then you’re probably sacrificing valuable time that could be spent developing and executing new strategic initiatives.
Marketing Automation Solution: Marketing automation solutions are designed to simplify your marketing tasks. Email template wizards, form builders, and landing page builders can help you save time by establishing a reusable workflow. Your marketing communications can also be triggered by prospect actions, so they’ll be carried out automatically rather than requiring a manual deployment.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/marketing/4-signs-you-may-need-marketing-automation-0229856#ClqiIwXz72DYgAj6.99
Scoop.it!
Get a checkup on a regular basis. Make sure that you are using a marketing automation platform with advanced analytics capabilities. These capabilities will help you analyze flow, conversion, and velocity metrics from stage to stage. You will be able to see trends and SLA violations (sales not following up with qualified leads) over time and take appropriate action such as creating a lead stage conversion campaign. You will become more proactive rather than reactive. Additionally, you will see the right analytics and can spend more time enhancing your lead health, and less time building out more lead generation campaigns at the top of the funnel. You start working smarter, not harder. For example, if you could improve your conversion rates from your prospect stage to your sales lead stage by 10%, what impact would that have on your amount of revenue opportunities and currency (dollars, etc.)?
Feed and nurture your leads. Just like anything growing, leads need to be fed. Leads respond especially well to high-value content. Make sure that you take the time to identify the personas (executive, power user, mid-level manager) in the middle of your funnel and provide them with tailored diets of content with relevant messaging (buyers guides, RFP templates, industry information). Create specific lead nurturing campaigns for different personas. Many are hungry for information and answers. Some are looking for quantitative proof while others are looking for innovation. In either case, don’t give them empty calories just for the sake of giving them something. Give them thought-provoking content that they can digest quickly and use to move ahead in the marketing funnel. You don’t need to have a lot of content, you just need to have content that makes sense to each persona. You may have to take the core content from a document and repackage the key messages and benefits a few times to meet the needs of your personas. If you have a lot of different personas, make sure that you leverage the power of dynamic content. Let your marketing automation platform do the heavy lifting for you as you push out your content.
Get your leads out and exercising. It’s great to make sure that your leads are digesting the right content, but they also need to stay engaged. Just like going to the gym, it is often hard to get someone into the mindset to take the next step and engage. Be sure to create calls-to-action in your messaging to the MOFU that drives them to compelling events such as webinar, seminar, or product demos. Get them into an environment where they will ask questions or start thinking about your company, product, or services a little deeper. There is a sense of accomplishment and clarity for them once they have exercised their minds a bit beyond just reading. Often, they are ready to go to the next stage in the marketing funnel.
Communicate with your leads. You must play the role of personal trainer for your leads. You need to nurture them by feeding them quality content. You need to get them beyond good nutrition and into exercising their mind. However, many will have excuses why they cannot attend one event or another. It is important that your leads get the answers they need when they need them. They need to know that you are accessible to them to provide information. Sometimes, the best way to provide this personal trainer status is via a telequalification team. If you are using the advanced metrics capabilities of your marketing automation platform, you are probably identifying trends and audiences that you can address with your telequalification team. Target specific leads by persona or industry in the middle of the funnel, have the telequalification team work with them, and see if a higher percentage of those leads don’t become Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and sales opportunities. I have known companies that have improved their lead conversion rates by up to 30% by using a telequalification team.
Scoop.it!
Solutions Based on Number of Contacts If the number of contacts is most important, view pricing based on that variable here:
You can also compare the features of those solutions side-by-side here: http://ombud.com/r/fY
Solution Based on Number of Users If the number of users is most important, you’ll find this pricing chart most helpful:
Solution Based on Monthly Email Volume If you want to see the options based on monthly email volume, take a look at the pricing chart here:
Scoop.it!
PR is an important source of written content. Marketing automation needs large amounts of well-written content, and PR can feed that machine. PR departments (or firms) help to refine messages, arrange interviews with trade publications, place articles in those publications, write whitepapers, and develop web pages. These are perfect adjuncts to a drip marketing campaign because prospects on the sidelines will only pay attention to something new – not regurgitated sales talk. Customer wins, product releases and awards are a few of the types of news tidbits that work very well for such a campaign.
PR is very useful for SEO. Consultants always emphasize the need for backlinks (other sites linking to your site via a keyword in the anchor text). Content syndication (other sites that display press releases or report news) can generate more organic traffic. In turn, this could result in more form fills on your site and opt-ins for nurturing campaigns.
You can create social buzz with PR. It’s easy to create Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages, but it’s hard to engage an audience on an ongoing basis. PR can publish on those platforms and maintain interactions. Again, this can drive traffic to your website and could result in more form fills. But fundamentally it’s about having sustained conversations and relationships in places and spaces where prospects want to be.
Scoop.it!
The truth is, there are quite a few problems with it, but let's focus on the most compelling one. If you're relying only on marketing automation and have no strategy in place to grow your list with net new contacts, you'll run out of people to market to.It's as easy as that. But, here's some data to back it up.
Each year, there is a natural decay that happens to marketing email lists, which results in the reduction of email marketing's effectiveness. In B2B marketing -- on average, after 1 year -- lists only retain 75% of their members due to overturn at companies. Put quite simply, people leave and change their jobs, and thus, their email addresses. In other words, marketing lists have a tendency to expire at a rate of 25% a year. And any email tool which relies too heavily on the quality of lists is limited by this overturn.
Scoop.it!
Customers – Acquiring a new customer can be very expensive for most organizations, making it good business sense to ensure you keep the ones you have. While this can be especially true for SaaS companies that rely on recurring revenue to create success, it can also be important for all types of organizations looking to have customers utilize services, buy other products, or share information with their friends to gain referrals. Marketing automation can be used to share content to support each of these, and to score customers based on their potential risk of churn or their likelihood to buy add-ons/additional products. Moreover, marketing automation can be used to simply educate the customer on how to use your product, ensuring better overall utilization and improvement of customer satisfaction.
Partners or brokers – Many companies sell through channels or brokers instead of selling directly to the consumer. When this is the case, your company has to rely on others’ expertise to drive sales. One way to ensure partners know your product is to create a nurturing program for them. More importantly, marketing automation can be used to score these partners, allowing you to know which are most engaged or successful.
Influencers – Trying to get the attention of a blogger? Keep talking to the same influencers but feel like they aren’t retaining your message? Marketing automation can not only be used to nurture influencers for your industry, but also to score them so you know who is the most important to your company, or who’s generating the most buzz about your brand. Additionally, and potentially more important than nurturing, marketing automation can be used to identify when influencers stop talking about you, letting you know that it’s time to reach out and give them a call.
Press/Analyst – Instead of bombarding press and analysts every time you have something new to share, you can use marketing automation to ensure a steady stream of content so your company doesn’t end up forgotten. This can be especially helpful for new analysts or press contacts who are trying to get up to speed on your company.
Employees – New employees often need months of training and education to get up to speed. Why not automate the education process through employee nurturing? This ensures new hires learn about your company’s policies, procedures and tips for success over their first few weeks. Also, this type of nurturing can support established training programs and ensure retention of orientation materials. Furthermore, it can help reinforce best practices for all employees, such as reminding employees of their company’s values, mission and/or vision.
Scoop.it!
![The What, Why & How of Infographic Creation [In an Infographic] | The MarTech Digest | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/r5_JAq_aKiVoQHc7gmJzOPL6dadsvGA8m9WNoVsbzkY=)
An infographic explaining the what, why, and how of infographics and why they can benefit your marketing.
Scoop.it!
1. The CRM and marketing automation software aren’t talking to each other
2. Leads data is starkly different between the CRM and marketing automation software
3. Google Webmaster Tools has not been installed or verified
4. Post-conversion lead nurturing is nonexistent
5. The only conversion forms on the website are on the contact and newsletter signup pages 6. Every website conversion is being called by sales
7. There is no blog attached to the website
8. Social media posts are exclusively other peoples’ content or conversation
9. Landing pages consist of only bottom of the funnel content offers
10. No internal employees contribute to the blog
|
|
![B2B Marketing Automation [INFOGRAPHIC] | The MarTech Digest | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/MuIVp_-XQ_b8-GyOk1VqcvL6dadsvGA8m9WNoVsbzkY=)
![The Evolution of Business Video [Infographic] | The MarTech Digest | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/xX4UBLtHX1lDfO0tSJVnhPL6dadsvGA8m9WNoVsbzkY=)
![Four Questions B2Bs Need to Ask About Content Marketing [Infographic] | The MarTech Digest | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/K9LG9rnJY_0buSK5g4JGcPL6dadsvGA8m9WNoVsbzkY=)
