Archive for the ‘Marketing Automation and Demand Generation’ Category
Social Media: Making Friends for Fun & Profit
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010Guest post by Kim Albee
With all of the hype surrounding social media, knowing how to dip your toe in the water without falling into the deep end of the social media pool can be challenging. Should you participate? What avenues will be most fruitful? And how do you optimize the time you spend with social media sites?
Excerpted from my new booklet, Effective Online Marketing In A Nutshell, here are some tips that will help:
1. Find 3-5 groups in your target market and join them. Follow the discussions, and when one comes up where you can add value (not just spout about yourself and your business), then participate – help people solve issues and think more effectively about whatever the subject is.
2. Subscribe to LinkedIn Answers for your segments and/or categories. Answer a question every day (be within the top 5 answers posted) until you are selected as the “Best Answer”. Then slow to 3 times per week until you get another “Best Answer” designation. Then slow to one per week (or keep it up if you’re having fun and have the time). The purpose is to build you up as an expert who adds value in your arena / subject matter.
1. Think carefully about your Twitter name. Use your name or a name that is memorable or says something relevant about what you do for your customers.
2. Tweet according to your content strategy. Push traffic to your available downloads. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly or su.pr to schedule tweets ahead of time.
3. Re-Tweet good posts and make friends.
The jury is still out on Facebook’s effectiveness for the B2B market. We’ve got some useful first steps in the booklet on Facebook specifically, as well as additional tips on both LinkedIn and Twitter.
Social media is in the press every day. Its impact on many industries is still murky, but how it is re-shaping marketing strategy and activities like market research and demand generation continues to get clearer and more understood.
Utilizing social media as part of your overall marketing strategy and understanding where it fits in your marketing mix are critical to effectively leveraging your participation and time.
Effective Online Marketing In A Nutshell covers the 10 essential items of Internet Marketing – the 10 critical factors to focus on to be as effective as possible. It offers more information on social media, where it fits, and ways to use it effectively in your online marketing strategy.
To your Internet Marketing Success!
Kim Albee is Founder and President of Genoo, a marketing automation and online marketing tools vendor for small and midsize businesses. She is a frequent speaker at marketing conferences, such as Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Summit, the Online Marketing Summit national, virtual and upcoming regional conferences, as well as the upcoming Niche Digital Conference in Chicago this September. She founded the B2B Online Marketing group on LinkedIn, and is committed to providing information and tools that allow businesses to compete and win in their online marketing activities.
FTC Disclosure Notice: I have absolutely no financial relationship with Genoo whatsoever, and have not been compensated for this post in any way—other than hopefully getting a few retweets.
Genoo Aims to Shake Up Marketing Automation Market
Sunday, February 14th, 2010Marketing automation / demand generation software enables marketers to build microsites and use content marketing to capture leads and nurture them through the buying process. Companies evaluating established providers such as Marketo, Eloqua, Silverpop’s B2B Engage and HubSpot would be well-advised to check out a relatively new contender as well—Genoo Marketing Automation.
The company’s new marketing automation platform enables users to create complete websites as well as microsites and landing pages, automatically send emails triggered by specific actions, configure lead scoring, and integrate with Salesforce.com. Because Genoo is a SaaS offering and includes a flexible and powerful (Genoo’s own website runs on their platform) yet easy-to-use content management system (CMS) that allows non-technical users to create websites and pages, marketing departments can implement and use the product with little or no IT involvement.
Features include:
- Point-and-click stylesheet editing, enabling users to create a custom look and feel without any knowledge of HTML or CSS;
- Javascript headers and footers, making it easy to add web analytics tracking code such as for Google Analytics;
- Ability to add Flash files anywhere on a page;
- Auto-generated email messages to marketing or sales personnel based on action taken, which can even place the lead’s email address in the “From” field for easy reply;
- Flexible options for Salesforce.com integration, such as the ability to push lead information into specific campaigns;
- Ability to set up an automated sequence of activities based on user actions (e.g. downloading a file, clicking a link in an email) to provide relevant content;
- No limit on the size or number of visits permitted to microsites.
Pricing starts at $199 per month for a single user and microsite, with no limit on the number of leads in the account, plus $8.50 per 1,000 emails sent. Additional marketing users (with full editing privileges) are $49 per month, while sales users (access to leads only, with ability to update information about a lead, synchronize with their Salesforce.com account, view lead interest profile or push leads back to nurturing from within their Salesforce.com account) are $9.95 per month. Large companies can opt to pay a one-time fee of $2,500 for unlimited sales users.
For a truly custom design, the company will convert a layered PhotoShop file into a Genoo template for $500.
With a boatload of advanced features and an affordable price point, Genoo hopes to earn a spot on the shortlist for any marketing automation / lead gen purchase.
Note: this post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in September 2009.
Marketing Automation: Like Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight
Sunday, February 14th, 2010One of the biggest challenges b2b marketers face is what to do with all of those “names” that come into your system that aren’t really “leads” yet; contacts collected from white paper downloads, webinar registrations, trade shows and other activities. How do you separate hot leads from long-term leads from tire-kickers? How can you efficiently nurture those long-term prospects, learning more about their interests in the process, until they are really ready to engage with sales?
Those are the types of questions marketing automation / demand generation software vendors seek to address with their offerings. They apply technology to a difficult process. For b2b companies who are able to use such software effectively, the competitive advantage is akin to Indiana Jones taking on his would-be assassin in Raiders of the Lost Ark:
The challenge for b2b marketers in adopting marketing automation / demand gen systems isn’t with the technology, which is stable and reasonably easy to use. It’s with internal processes, office politics and other issues. In the scene above, although Indy clearly had the technology advantage, if he’d been a lousy shot, or didn’t have his gun loaded properly, he’d have ended up as shredded professor in a hurry.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Steve Woods, CTO and co-founder at marketing automation provider Eloqua, for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of marketing and the challenges faced by those adopting marketing automation / demand generation systems. Here are six key points that surfaced from our conversation.
1. “Marketing automation” is a misleading term. You can’t really automate marketing, of course, any more than you can automate gourmet cooking or great painting. “Demand generation” is a better term, though still not precise. “Software-that-helps-turn-raw-names-into-qualified-leads-by-delivering-the-right-content-at-the-right-time-and-monitoring-response” would be most accurate, but kind of a mouthful.
2. The buying process has fundamentally changed. Many marketers are starting to get this. Most sales people still don’t. Buyers no longer rely on sales people for basic information or exploratory “consultation.” They get 95% of the information they need from the Internet—online publications, analyst reports, vendor websites, blogs and other social media—before they have any contact with sales. They expect sales and marketing pros to be using the web as well to understand their problems before the sales conversation even starts. The key role of sales is to provide that last 5% needed to reach a buying decision: the company’s differentiating value, or what pain the prospect will experience if they don’t buy the right product or service.
3. Customers are those who’ve advanced from email service providers (ESPs). Small b2b companies often manage their email campaigns through hosted email services like Constant Contact, VerticalResponse or ExactTarget; when they’ve outgrown those and need more sophisticated segmentation, response tracking and automated response features, plus the ability to create and manage targeted microsites, they graduate to marketing automation / demand generation systems.
4. Building the logic behind the nurturing process is the hard part. Marketers who can do this effectively will command (or should be able to command) a premium. The technology is relatively easy. The hard part is mapping out the information delivery process. If we know that John Doe is the CIO at a medical manufacturing company with $100 million in revenue, what information should we deliver first? And we offer him two paths in that message, what should we provide if he chooses path A? What should we do differently if he chooses path B?
5. It won’t work if the processes and incentives between sales and marketing aren’t aligned. If, for example, marketers are focused on delivering leads who meet a defined threshold of interest as soon as they cross a certain point, but sales reps are comped on the number of calls they make, there is a fundamental disconnect. Calling even the right prospect at the wrong time, or trying to sell them the wrong product, can destroy the value of the marketing investment made to that point.
6. There is a crying need for this. It aligns vendor messages with buyer needs, saving money and corporate reputations. Prospective buyers are overloaded with information. Sending them more junk—information they can’t use or that isn’t relevant to them—makes your company look out of touch and reduces your ability to get the sale. Quick example: I used to have high-speed Internet service through AT&T. They would actually send me promotional mail for the dial-up service. Why on earth would they waste my time and their money trying to get me to downgrade my service with them? On the other hand, providing compelling information at the right time can reduce the sales effort required, shorten sales cycles, and make you look smarter than your competition as well.
The “science” of marketing automation / demand generation is well-established and readily available. The winning users will be those who manage to get the “art” part right.
Note: this post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in September 2009.
Manticore VII Marketing Automation and Lead Generation Released
Sunday, February 14th, 2010Marketing automation / demand generation software provider Manticore today announced the release of Manticore Technology VII, which includes a fully customizable user interface, email and landing page folders, an email delivery wizard, and drag-and-drop list building functionality. The company made the announcement at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Although the improved UI is the big change, the new version also adds integration with SalesForce.com for AdWords campaigns and improved lead generation capabilities.
Manticore was founded in 2001 by Nick Walker, who is now the CTO, and has been led since March of this year by Jeff Erramouspe. The company’s original focus was on web analytics. At the request of customers, email delivery and tracking capabilities were added in 2004, and the firm’s product has now evolved into a full marketing automation suite. Privately held and self-funded, Manticore has grown at a 50+% clip since 2005. It competes with vendors such as Marketo, Eloqua, Marketbright and Genoo. Pricing for Manticore VII, delivered on a SaaS platform, starts at about $24,000 per year.
The marketing automation market as a whole is still in early stage growth mode. Sirrius Decisions projects that penetration of marketing automation systems will increase from less than 10% in 2005 to more than 50% of BtoB marketers by 2015. Manticore’s Jeff Erramouspe believes penetration is still likely no more than 15% in the North American market, and even lower internationally. The early-adopting high tech segment is perhaps 25% penetrated. Jeff contends that marketing automation systems will become required tools for any b2b “considered purchase” (i.e., any significant price point, non-commodity products).
As many others have noted, the rise of social media and the explosion of online content has fundamentally altered the b2b sales process. Prospects no longer rely on sales people and marketing collateral for information; most of their research is now done before they ever make contact with a sales rep. This has made the marketing funnel longer, and the actual sales process shorter. Proper lead nurturing has become critical, which is where marketing automation systems come in.
As Jeff and other executives in this space point out, the biggest barrier to adoption isn’t the technology—which over time has become both more powerful and easy to use—but rather the change of mindset required, and developing analytical, process-driven marketing practices that capitalize on building upon the information prospects already have to help move them through the marketing and sales pipeline. While Manticore relies on its resellers to provide expertise with client-specific issues, the company is also creating a “success framework” that will guide users through the basic steps in lead nurturing.
Interestingly, the company notes that the heaviest users of the system tend to need the least technical support, because they know what they want to do with the product and use it on a daily basis. The experience of other vendors is likely similar; customers who have truly made marketing automation and lead nurturing an intrinsic part of their marketing and sales processes will be the most self-sufficient, and should theoretically be the most successful as well.
Marketing automation vendors like Manticore are likely to see continued sales growth as more b2b companies recognize the expectations of their buyers have changed. Just as buyers are now able to access and incorporate more information about vendors and products early in their buying process, so vendors will be expected to use all of the tools at their disposal to understand their prospects, and address their specific issues rather continuing with obsolete one-size-fits-all marketing practices.
Note: this post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in November 2009.
How to do Lead Nurturing Right
Sunday, February 14th, 2010Marketing automation provider Marketo has just published The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing, a white paper that provides real value, covering the lead nurturing process from the basic how and why through ROI measurement. Unlike most white papers, this guide is very light on marketing (selected pages have sidebars headed “How Marketo Does It” rather than embedding marketing copy in the content—a nice touch). Also, it’s available in full immediately for those willing to provide their basic contact information, or as a series of chapters to be distributed throughout the month of August for those who prefer to obtain the guide anonymously.
The guide itself is well-researched, clearly written and highly practical. It starts with a clear rationale for making investments in lead nurturing processes:
- “Up to 95 percent of qualified prospects on your Web site are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but as many as 70 percent of them will eventually buy a product.” (Brian Carroll)
- “On average, nurtured leads produce a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus nonnurtured leads.” (DemandGen Report)
- “Only in the last third of the today’s purchasing process do buyers want to engage with sales reps. This changes the role of marketing; instead of generating the lead and moving on, today’s marketers must synchronize their marketing throughout the buying process, providing potential buyers with high quality content that is contextually relevant.” (Scott Albro).
Research from other sources shows companies that excel at lead nurturing generate more qualified leads at a lower cost per lead, reduce the percentage of marketing-generated leads that are ignored by sales, increase win rates, and have a higher percentage of sales reps who make quota.
Content marketing plays a key role in lead nurturing as well as a successful lead generation and social media strategy. As the report notes, “The most important brand attributes for a B2B vendor are often credibility and trust – and unless you are a well known company like IBM, the best way to build credibility and trust is by sharing useful information. If you can help frame the discussion, your company will be seen as a trusted advisor and thought leader. If buyers believe that your company understands their problems and knows how to solve them, this helps reduce the feelings of fear and can make a big difference in being selected for consideration and purchase.” It also sets you apart and builds credibility on the front-end of the buying cycle, making efforts from SEO to banner advertising and AdWords more effective and productive.
The report provides helpful guidance on lead nurturing basics, lead scoring, the different types of opt-in (and when each is most appropriate), and advanced lead nurturing tactics such as accelerator campaigns (“campaigns that attempt to move prospects along the buying cycle faster by providing relevant `nudges’ at the right time, usually triggered by specific buyer behaviors or sales updates”).
It closes with a section on the ROI of lead nurturing, complete with worksheets for performing your own lead gen activity return calculations.
Again, Marketo’s lead gen guide will be made available in chapters throughout this month for anonymous download, or you can grab the complete Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing today.
Note: this post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in August 2009.
