April Newsletter Article
Marketing Automation Must Do's
Robert J. Moreau - In the "ever-evolving" business-to-business environment, lead generation has become the number one priority for many marketers. The true 1- 1 marketing approach has been made much more powerful (and feasible) with the rapid expansion of web analytics, introduction of marketing automation solutions and the integration of those solutions with CRM and Sales Force Automation technologies like Salesforce.com. The benefits can be endless; generating more qualified sales opportunities faster, communicating the right message at the right time in your customer's buying process, maximizing your ability to get a perfectly clear measurement of BOTH your marketing and sales pipelines, improving the validity of your marketing and sales databases, and being able to execute multiple campaigns with less marketing staff, just to name a few. But, with opportunity comes risk and for many of you that had the pleasure of implementing a CRM solution in the late 90's will agree that this does not always go as planned and can end up being extremely time consuming and costly if not done right. Having experienced this first hand, below, you will find five recommendations to assist your organization in successful marketing automation integration without the headaches!
#1: Define and document your customers' buying process
Any marketing automation technology will enable you to communicate very specific messages based on where your prospects are in their buying process. To maximize your ability to get the most from this capability you must be very clear on the following:
Make sure you look at each product or service independently to get an accurate picture of what each buying process looks like. In most companies, the customer buying process is different for the enterprise solution or product than for a product or solution that serves small firms.
#2: Develop a full list of available content and evaluate and map each piece to the different stages of that buying process.
Once you've outlined and identified your customers' buying process you then need to collect each and every viable content resource available and map it to that process. This includes sales sheets, whitepapers, case studies, product demo's, archived and up-coming webinars, podcasts, online video, brochures, direct mail, e-mail templates and anything else your company might use in the process of educating and eventually converting a suspect to a valued customer. Many companies still don't know what resources to use and when for specific points of their customers buying process. Just because someone attends a webinar, visits your tradeshow booth, or fills out a form on your website to get a sales sheet, that does not mean they are ready to speak with a sales person. You must use your available content resources to further qualify these leads before sending them directly to sales. Leads passed to sales before they are ready can cause opportunity leakage and a lack of follow-up. In many cases you may uncover a lack of specific content in areas where it is needed, like a technical whitepaper or a webinar on a specific topic. The content evaluation can also help you identify what messages are needed and for what audience at what time to achieve what purpose. Content creation can take a lot of time and resources so make sure you know exactly how you plan to use it before you make that investment. Marketing automation tools enable you to develop a "resource center" where all of these materials can be served up at the right time to the right person. Once this has been done, your marketing automation tool will enable you to automate offering these resources to prospects (both proactively and reactively),enabling your marketing team to focus on additional initiatives and goals.
#3: Clean your marketing and sales databases. Have a data maintenance plan!
We've all heard the term GIGO (garbage in-garbage out). Taking your current customer and prospect database and just importing it into your marketing automation database will only create more headaches when you actually start using it. Duplicates, wrong addresses, missing e-mails, invalid data, executive names in the wrong fields or contact information missing altogether can all cause huge problems as you begin to import your data into your new marketing system. There are a number of sources available to you that can help you validate, normalize, and enhance your database. Basic validation of addresses, phones, e-mails, and contact information is a great place to start. For those of you looking for very specific information there are firms that specialize in this by using telemarketing and/or highly sophisticated internet research technologies to acquire this type of information. But before you employ one of these firms you should make sure you know what it is going to cost (as some charge $1.00 - $10.00+ per company/contact), your target cost per lead, and that your sales and marketing teams will use the data you provide. If you do all the work to clean the data but no one uses it the money spent on cleaning it goes to waste. You must also have a maintenance plan on how to maintain the data as studies show databases go out of date at a rate of about 1% per week. The maintenance plan will define roles and responsibilities for entering and validating data, running consistency checks, appending new data, and periodic refreshing of existing data. If the database is allowed to go stale, its value will diminish rapidly and spiral downwards in quality as users abandon it.
#4: Define and Implement a Lead Management Process
Don't expect your new marketing automation technology to "force" your sales and marketing teams into a quality process; that's one of the main reasons many companies failed in their implementation of CRM. You should have a lead management process clearly defined and agreed upon by sales, marketing and management prior to implementing your new technology. In our October e-newsletter the feature article discusses this and provides a road map for how your company can develop and/or refine your lead management process.
#5: Develop a Dashboard
One of the most beneficial things a marketing automation solution brings to your company is the ability to measure, and report on just about everything! But in order for it to provide you the kind of reports it's capable of you must first identify what you would like to track and measure, and how you plan to utilize the dashboard to improve your marketing investments. The following are some examples of key measurements we recommend to our clients:
Dashboards tend to be specific to the individual and their role, so don't be surprised at the number of different metrics that are required in order to get your entire marketing team working effectively. Additionally the CEO and/or CFO may want an entirely different set of metrics than a marketing programs manager. Once you've identified the measurements best suited for your company the marketing automation solution you choose can be configured to provide these reports on-demand and customized the way you need to see them.
Have a great Quarter!
#1: Define and document your customers' buying process
Any marketing automation technology will enable you to communicate very specific messages based on where your prospects are in their buying process. To maximize your ability to get the most from this capability you must be very clear on the following:
- What is the nature of the buying process
- Who makes the purchase decision - role, titles
- Who are the economic buyer, executive sponsor/champion, technology influencer/buyer, other influencers, supporters or buyers?
- What are the buying criteria (what factors do they use in making a decision to move ahead with you vs. a competitor)
- What is the length of the sales cycle (in terms of time)
- What information do they need during the buying process and at what point do they need it
Make sure you look at each product or service independently to get an accurate picture of what each buying process looks like. In most companies, the customer buying process is different for the enterprise solution or product than for a product or solution that serves small firms.
#2: Develop a full list of available content and evaluate and map each piece to the different stages of that buying process.
Once you've outlined and identified your customers' buying process you then need to collect each and every viable content resource available and map it to that process. This includes sales sheets, whitepapers, case studies, product demo's, archived and up-coming webinars, podcasts, online video, brochures, direct mail, e-mail templates and anything else your company might use in the process of educating and eventually converting a suspect to a valued customer. Many companies still don't know what resources to use and when for specific points of their customers buying process. Just because someone attends a webinar, visits your tradeshow booth, or fills out a form on your website to get a sales sheet, that does not mean they are ready to speak with a sales person. You must use your available content resources to further qualify these leads before sending them directly to sales. Leads passed to sales before they are ready can cause opportunity leakage and a lack of follow-up. In many cases you may uncover a lack of specific content in areas where it is needed, like a technical whitepaper or a webinar on a specific topic. The content evaluation can also help you identify what messages are needed and for what audience at what time to achieve what purpose. Content creation can take a lot of time and resources so make sure you know exactly how you plan to use it before you make that investment. Marketing automation tools enable you to develop a "resource center" where all of these materials can be served up at the right time to the right person. Once this has been done, your marketing automation tool will enable you to automate offering these resources to prospects (both proactively and reactively),enabling your marketing team to focus on additional initiatives and goals.
#3: Clean your marketing and sales databases. Have a data maintenance plan!
We've all heard the term GIGO (garbage in-garbage out). Taking your current customer and prospect database and just importing it into your marketing automation database will only create more headaches when you actually start using it. Duplicates, wrong addresses, missing e-mails, invalid data, executive names in the wrong fields or contact information missing altogether can all cause huge problems as you begin to import your data into your new marketing system. There are a number of sources available to you that can help you validate, normalize, and enhance your database. Basic validation of addresses, phones, e-mails, and contact information is a great place to start. For those of you looking for very specific information there are firms that specialize in this by using telemarketing and/or highly sophisticated internet research technologies to acquire this type of information. But before you employ one of these firms you should make sure you know what it is going to cost (as some charge $1.00 - $10.00+ per company/contact), your target cost per lead, and that your sales and marketing teams will use the data you provide. If you do all the work to clean the data but no one uses it the money spent on cleaning it goes to waste. You must also have a maintenance plan on how to maintain the data as studies show databases go out of date at a rate of about 1% per week. The maintenance plan will define roles and responsibilities for entering and validating data, running consistency checks, appending new data, and periodic refreshing of existing data. If the database is allowed to go stale, its value will diminish rapidly and spiral downwards in quality as users abandon it.
#4: Define and Implement a Lead Management Process
Don't expect your new marketing automation technology to "force" your sales and marketing teams into a quality process; that's one of the main reasons many companies failed in their implementation of CRM. You should have a lead management process clearly defined and agreed upon by sales, marketing and management prior to implementing your new technology. In our October e-newsletter the feature article discusses this and provides a road map for how your company can develop and/or refine your lead management process.
#5: Develop a Dashboard
One of the most beneficial things a marketing automation solution brings to your company is the ability to measure, and report on just about everything! But in order for it to provide you the kind of reports it's capable of you must first identify what you would like to track and measure, and how you plan to utilize the dashboard to improve your marketing investments. The following are some examples of key measurements we recommend to our clients:
- Number of Qualified Leads (quarterly, annually, by product, channel, and region, etc)
- Cost Per Qualified Lead, by source
- Lead quality (degree of hotness, or qualification)
- Qualified Lead to Sales Opportunity Conversion
- Sales follow-up percentage and timeliness
- Opportunity Aging (sales funnel quality as measured by age)
- Lead Generation cost per Sale/Order
- Leads per Source (initial contact and last contact)
- Data richness (and contact frequency)
- Pipeline coverage (total number of leads needed for sales to make its numbers)
- Campaign and program effectiveness metrics
Dashboards tend to be specific to the individual and their role, so don't be surprised at the number of different metrics that are required in order to get your entire marketing team working effectively. Additionally the CEO and/or CFO may want an entirely different set of metrics than a marketing programs manager. Once you've identified the measurements best suited for your company the marketing automation solution you choose can be configured to provide these reports on-demand and customized the way you need to see them.
The five recommendations above will enable you to get the most out of the many benefits your new marketing automation technology. Our experience has shown that clients who take this approach can increase the overall effectiveness of their marketing programs by 50% or more. We've even seen a recent client increase their online lead generation by over 500% within an 8 month period. Any new technology takes time and resources to implement to get the best results. Rubicon Marketing Group can assist you in selecting and deploying your new marketing automation solution, and even help you manage your campaigns. Marketing automation systems will help Marketing become more of a science, and less of an immeasurable art form...don't be left behind
Have a great Quarter!