Hype versus reality:Are you ready for marketing automation?

A brief analysis of marketing automationpresented by Marie Wiese

April 25, 2014

Workshop Agenda

• Take the quiz• Hype versus reality• Process• Measurement and metrics • Case Study• Tools

Quiz: Rank on a scale of 1 to 51 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree

1. We understand our buyer’s education process and recognize it involves many touches from marketing or sales.

2. We understand that buyer behavior has changed and our target market wants several types of content to help them research and self-serve before they contact sales.

3. Our company requires more insight into the exact value that our marketing programs deliver so we can quantify our investment.

4. Our customer base is larger than our sales team, so we can only personal relationships with a small percentage of the marketplace.

5. Many of our new leads aren’t ready to buy from us. They require nurturing.6. We would improve our sales results if we could develop other means of nurturing relationship

with early stage prospects on than through sales team follow up.7. Data, not opinion, drives every decision that our marketing team makes.8. We have the ability to generate personalized content for segmented prospects and schedule

through a formal content marketing plan.9. Our management team understands that 60% of the sales funnel is happening in the digital

space and they allocate money and plan resources to support that new reality. 10. We realize that digital marketing is not a campaign, but a process and we are prepared to use

marketing automation as a way to test and evolve our program, not just automate it.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

…Bill Gates

The sad reality…

Revenue is what builds a business.But the time, money and resources dedicated by many companies to truly understand the buying and sales process of a prospect in misunderstood, under-invested and poorly managed in most businesses today.

Marketing automation does not solve the problem of understanding the buying and sales process. It only magnifies it.

Putting Marketing Automation in Context

• Marketing automation is not a new thing. • Today we use content management platforms (CMS),

customer relationship management (CRM) or email marketing tools to communicate with customers.

What is marketing automation according to Wikipedia?• Marketing automation refers to software platforms and

technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.

• Marketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error.

• The use of a marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions.

What it does NOT do for you…

• It can’t think for you• It can’t provide a strategy• It doesn’t know your customer• It can’t create content for you• It is not an analytical brain• If you don’t get the results you are looking for, it

won’t tell you what to do next

Marketing automation…

• Is an opportunity…– To gain insight– To have data not available before– To automate a process

It is not a silver bullet that solves all your marketing problems.

The Buyer Map(Steps to purchasing)

Website

Customers Prospects

Content

32

1

DatabaseSegmentation

Inbound Tactics

Outbound Tactics

The Gray ZONE of Marketing Automation

If you don’t have…

• A clear and tested value proposition,• A well mapped buyer process,• Content for each step of the buying process,• Defined metrics that confirm success,• A well organized testing program,• Expertise, resources and dedicated time…

Then marketing automation is a waste of time and money.

Questions for consideration…

• Turn to your guide…

Why do we need MA now?

• Buyer behavior has changed.• Content is driving online engagement (because

Google says so).• Personalization - one size no longer fits all.• Digital is not a channel. It needs to be an integrated

part of the sales process.

But…

• As Bill Gates said, technology is useless without a well-defined strategy and metrics to help you analyze your success

Why would you want marketing automation?

• Customers use 11.2 pieces of data in the buying process (www.zmot.com)

• They are 70% of the way through the buying process before you will hear from them

• 60% of the sales funnel is now happening in the digital space

• For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them

Lead Management

Lead Management Functionality Common Variance Sometimes

Marketing Database – The system that records your leads and contacts and shows a rich view of all marketing interactions with a person such as website visits, email clicks, data updates and so on.

Single view of the customer – The more powerful marketing automation tools extend the marketing database to include information from other systems to create a true view of the customer.

Segmentation – The ability to segment people in different ways so you can send different things means creating a micro-view of a prospect or customer so you can send the right message at the right time.

Multi-touch Campaigns/Lead Nurturing – The ability to automate drip marketing campaigns that send relevant messages over time.

Online Behavior Tracking – This is the ability to track who opens what and know what they visited and when – all with the goal of understanding who they are and what they need in the buying process.

Lead Scoring and Grading – Qualifying and scoring leads is important to know, so you can send leads to the sales team at the right time.

For marketing automation tools to be of value you need 3-Cs

1. Content2. Conversion3. Consistency

Convert

Keep

Find

Convert

Keep

Too much $$ goes here

Small % say yes to fill funnel

Spend time and $$ with people you know and your funnel is always full at less $ and time

Old Way New Way

A new model for Lead Generation

1 2 3 4 5

RavingFans

Customers Members

Prospects Suspects Disinterested

Always be aware of people moving from one bucket to the next

List segmentation

Content Map…

• Turn to your guide…

MARKETING COPILOT OPINION

How to choose marketing automation tools…

Look at your business Classification• Large Enterprise

– 20+ people in marketing and team dedicated to running the website and lead gen program

– Managing more than 50,000 in a database– Spending $20,000/month on technology

• Medium Enterprise– 5+ people in marketing and managing 10,000+ database – Generating 150-500 leads per month– Spend $10,000+ monthly on software and services to support it

• Small Enterprise– 1 part time person in marketing working with sales team– Generating less than 100 leads per month online– Does not have a web presence budget or monthly spend on software

Laser jet vs Ink jet

• We believe that the first platform for any company implementing digital marketing should be:– Google Analytics reviewed weekly– Wordpress with new content updated weekly– Constant Contact doing 2-4 email sends per month

Until this platform “breaks”, ink jet is good enough and will teach you enough to understand where you could improve processes and results.

Marketing Automation Tools for Consideration• Large Enterprise

– Eloqua– Marketo

• Medium Enterprise– Hubspot– Pardot– Infusionsoft– Act-On– Leadformix– Silverpop

• Small Enterprise– Integrated Wordpress, Google Analytics, Constant Contact

CASE STUDY

What we learned about buyer behaviour using Wordpress, Constant Contact and Google Analytics.

Where we started…

• Confirmed value proposition• Created buyer map• Developed value-added content• Built V1 website in Wordpress

What we learned…

• Value proposition not compelling• Weren’t going to the “right” next step on the website• Content we thought was useful. It was product-

centric, not buyer-centric.

What did we do next?

• Clarified value proposition• Mined navigation data in Google Analytics to adjust

content• Looked at “ignore” rates in Constant Contact to

understand who was in our list and who actually cared

• Developed a new conversion tool• Studied conversion path• Qualified hand raisers

What did we learn…

• Project profitability worked with a subset of the contact list (but not all of it)

• Project profitability and that conversion path was compelling for decision makers but not influencers and influencer were first-line analysts

• Needed to take away more “stuff” from the home page

• Needed to dump certain lists that were not performing

Learn to add and take away…

November 2012 to March 2013

November 2013 to March 2014

What changed?

• Improved lead quantity by 191%• Improved lead quality by a ratio of 5 to 1• Improved the buyer path by putting the right content

in the right place• Improved suspect engagement by 266%

Creating a conversion point in Wordpress

1. Title: Create an engaging, valuable and keyword rich title.

2. Permalink: Ensure your permalink contains your focused keyword.

3. Content Optimization: – Format: Add style to your content. – Readability & Call-to-action: Present

your content in a readability flow to capture the audience’s attention and provide next step options (CTA).

– Images: Insert content related images and set the featured image.

– Forms: Add Gravity forms to the page so you can capture a new email address in exchange for value added content.

Conversion

Add tracking to your links

• Tag your URLs so that you can track different sources, mediums and campaigns:– Specific Source: Constant Contact, LinkedIn, external

referral site etc.– Category of Source: CPC, email, social media, etc.– Precise description of Campaign: march-21-blog, XYZ-

tradeshow-postcard, ABC-press-release, etc.

Push out content

Measure your success

• Email open rate, click thru rate• Time on page• Bounce rate• Next page >>> follow call-to-action• Download form or subscribe form completed• Time on site• Engagement within industry

Results

versus

Onsite results over 5 day period

Good time on page = good engagement.

Onsite results over 5 day period

Get this presentation at…

www.marketingcopilot.com/resources• Connect with us on LinkedIn…

http://ca.linkedin.com/in/marketingcopilot

• Email…marie@marketingcopilot.com

• Follow on Twitter@mariewiese

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