MARKETING AUTOMATION: A Proven Way to Become Indispensable
TABLE OF CONTENTS MARKETING GETS A MAKEOVER... 4 AUTOMATION IN ACTION... 4 ADVANCING MARKETING AUTOMATION TO THE HIGHER UPS... 5 MONEY TALKS... 6 EARN YOUR STRIPES... 7 WORK NOW, REST LATER... 8 MORE PROOF... 9 ENDNOTES... 10 2
MARKETING AUTOMATION: A PROVEN WAY TO BECOME INDISPENSABLE What does the evolution of manufacturing have in common with marketing automation? A lot. Today s savvy businesses would never conceive of having to manually assemble vehicles or computers. Automated manufacturing processes improve the quality of products, make it possible to increase the rate of production, and give businesses a way to compete in a global market. Although there s a small segment of industries and consumers pushing for the return of handmade craftsmanship, the truth is, automation has allowed manufacturing to evolve to the point where there is a huge potential to create all kinds of products at a cheaper rate, while maintaining a high level of value. Marketing is also benefitting from automation perhaps in a way even more advantageous than the manufacturing industry. Marketing professionals are the key to an organization s success, but they walk a fine line between having to create and execute a marketing strategy, as well as then produce all the materials that make up the campaign. Marketing automation lets you create it once, and use it again and again, with opportunities to finetune the campaign through measurement and testing steps you probably struggle to fit into your schedule without an automated system. Further, marketers who know how to use the power of marketing automation help their company remain competitive and increase revenue, all the while, adding to their own value within the company. 3
MARKETING GETS A MAKEOVER Standard procedure for developing a campaign used to involve a marketing team laboring for weeks to create radio spots or a magazine spread. With fewer marketing tactics to employ, standard practices allow marketers to focus on a few highimpact tactics. Today s marketers are at a severe disadvantage, particularly if they are the sole member of the marketing team, or if the team is small. The marketing landscape has dramatically changed, with consumers taking to the Internet in droves in search of information about products and services and sharing it with their social networks. In response, businesses that want to compete, and marketers that want to succeed in this new land, have to adapt their tactics, using content marketing to reach consumers. Content marketing calls for the development of a lot of relevant information, including: Blogs that inform consumers about products and services that solve key problems A website that showcases a business s brand using SEO to increase its rankings Social media posts, tweets and pins that engage consumers before they ever think about buying Segmented email marketing that targets a business s buyer personas at multiple points in the buying process In essence, developing a strategic content marketing campaign that positions your business as a thought leader will attract consumers. 1 Creating content across a variety of marketing channels helps businesses acquire leads and boosts the potential for conversions. Content that s relevant and informative wins loyal customers who believe your brand and solution is the best way to solve their problems. Sounds simple enough, right? It is. But effective content marketing takes time to develop. That s where marketing automation steps in to save the day (and your job). AUTOMATION IN ACTION The best marketing automation plan for your company largely depends on its needs and goals. HubSpot describes the ideal marketing automation program as one that can nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers. 2 When done well, marketing automation increases revenue by generating leads and loyal customers, which generates a healthy return on investment. However, forging ahead with marketing automation without also considering a plan for generating leads can cause discontent within the organization, a poor return on investment, and an epic fail for the marketing team. 3 4
ADVANCING MARKETING AUTOMATION TO THE HIGHER UPS Automating your marketing process may not necessarily make your job easier at the get-go, but eventually it will change the face of the marketing team s role in the company, from a necessary team to a take-the-bull-by-the-horns-and-win team. Like no other tool, an automated marketing system offers marketers a strategy to scale the targeting of customers that interact with your business in some way and the messages sent to prospects the messages they need to hear at just the right time. This process requires customization and attention to timing, and it s a process that s even difficult for a savvy team of marketers to stay on top of without an automated software system. Convincing the decision-makers in your company to adopt automated marketing solutions not only helps to position your marketing team as integral to the company s success, ensuring you re making a valuable contribution to the organization, but you can sell the idea using other key benefits. MONEY TALKS With today s consumers having an insatiable appetite for content, businesses must stay competitive by responding to that need. By the time consumers pick up the phone to place an order, or walk into a brick and mortar to buy, they ve already spent lots of time researching their decision. Marketing automation helps marketers tailor content and use marketing channels to provide the exact information these consumers need, from the initial point of interest to the decision to buy. Ultimately, marketing automation drives an organization s efficiency, which in turn increases revenue. This process takes lots of work and manpower without an automated process working behind the scenes. Marketing automation software gives businesses insight into where buyers are in the process so they can learn more about their interests and needs, and then deliver relevant, personalized content that creates trust. An automated solution gives marketers an edge, increasing the efficiency of the marketing team as a whole, and plays a key role in the business s success. Businesses secure improved efficiency and return on investment with an automated marketing 5
solution that targets the best leads with the highest potential for return. 4 Below are a few ways automation accomplishes these lofty goals: With highly segmented marketing materials at every stage of the buying cycle, personalization leads to high quality leads Automated marketing also leads to higher conversion rates at the top of the marketing funnel. 5 By nurturing leads along the way through personalized, segmented communications, by the time these leads reach the end stages of the buying cycle, the pump has been primed, so to speak, and they re ready to pull the trigger and buy Leakage rates also drop, as an automated marketing system makes sure the campaign covers every point in the buying cycle, preventing leads from abandonment It removes those consumers who will never buy, so you don t waste precious marketing resources on prospects with little to no potential for converting Monitoring and measuring every stage of the marketing funnel improves performance, in turn. 6 With an automated solution providing reports of the campaign s performance at every point, marketers can fine-tune the results 6
EARN YOUR STRIPES Marketers who successfully adopt automated marketing earn their keep, becoming invaluable members of the company. You see, just like with manufacturing, the forerunners who figured out how to tackle automation were integral to the manufacturer s success. Marketers who learn how to successfully implement automated solutions and scale their marketing efforts will hold the same value. Marketing automation is no simple task. However, learning how to manage data, individualize the approach to targeting buyer personas, and finetune the timing of the delivery of messages takes time and expertise not to mention the careful selection of software that best addresses your company s needs. However, your skills as a marketer who understands individual market segments, the marketing funnel, and why consumers buy, complimented by automated marketing solutions that scale your efforts will be nothing less than impressive. Improving the efficiency of your marketing team and boosting the company s overall return on investment will lead to job security. 7 Traditionally difficult to measure and justify, standardized marketing metrics via an automated solution provide you with real-time numbers that justify your work and your trajectory for upward mobility within the company, as studies show even upperlevel jobs require marketing automation skills. 8 Putting an automated marketing system in place requires that your marketing team perform actions like: Identifying qualified leads that turn into sales Quantifying marketing campaign messages that get high marks Turning an adversarial relationship with sales into a nurturing one 9 Showing how many prospects engage in actions like responding to calls-to-action that convert into sales Proving the correlation between money spent on marketing to the number of customers acquired Accessing reports and analytics that provide instant access to trends and data Having the ability to adapt to market trends, and make quick changes to campaign execution Identifying standardized metrics that are key to the company s success 7
WORK NOW, REST LATER This heading may seem misleading, as few marketers would use the term rest in their job description, but it s not. It does, however, offer a relevant picture of what marketing automation can do for your job and your team. Putting in the work now results in big rewards later; with the groundwork laid, your marketing campaign can practically run on autopilot. In truth, creating an automated marketing system for your company takes lots of time. Understanding marketing data, learning about buyer personas, developing an email autoresponder series these are tasks that require strategy and trial and error. However, these efforts deliver on the back end when you have a system in place that includes strategy and execution at scale. Imagine spending less time and effort on creation and implementation, and more time monitoring results, measuring a campaign s success, and finetuning its directions. Here s a case in point: Your team wants to create a series of responses that are sent to consumers who receive an email marketing message based upon their interaction with the message. Marketing automation allows you to send a unique message depending on how the consumer responds once he or she receives the first email. The automated system will send one message to people who don t open the message, another to those who open it, and yet another to those who click-through. Each message is personalized and based on suggested behaviors that work their way up through the customer lifecycle. You can accomplish the initial goal of setting up these marketing emails and filling out the marketing funnel from cold lead to high-quality lead by working with your team to discuss and implement these steps: Align sales and marketing goals Establish the key metrics you ll receive Decide how to measure the campaign Clean up your data, remove duplicate addresses and fill in missing information Define time lapses between consumer actions and the sending of emails Develop content for each point of the buying cycle and customer lifecycle Establish an effective lead flow. 8
With the campaigns in place, you free up your time. Instead of manually updating lists, integrating independent reports into synergistic, meaningful results, and collecting information from multiple sources, you can focus on performing high-level tasks that influence marketing success as a whole, like researching new trends, adopting new programs, strategizing, and more. 10 Automated manufacturing fundamentally changed the way products were made, and it continues to change one nation at a time. In America, mom-andpop businesses grew into behemoths and stores took their products to the nation s consumers and beyond. Automated marketing solutions can position your company to do the same, reaching more consumers with a targeted message, nurturing leads throughout the buying cycle and converting sales. MORE PROOF Many businesses are already seeing evidence of marketing automation success. Pardot reports 25 percent of Fortune 500 B2B companies already employ automated solutions, along with more than 75 percent of SaaS companies. 11 A Salesforce report shows that the number of companies adopting automated marketing programs is growing quickly, with the number of companies employing automated marketing solutions increasing by 50 percent by 2015. 12 Further, companies report the ROI for implementing automated marketing is significant, with a 77 percent increase in revenue due to more effective marketing and sales teams, a 65 percent gain in analytics or insight into marketing campaigns, and a 58 percent increase in terms of measuring marketing campaign performance. marketing automation. Can your business afford to become a relic, playing catchup to forward-thinking marketers who adapt to automation and go on to become the leaders in your industry? Or can you put your company on the map as a forerunner in adopting marketing automation solutions, going down in the history books as innovators, just like the manufacturers of centuries ago? Numbers talk, particularly when convincing upperlevel management or CEOs about the value of 9
ENDNOTES 1 http://www.marketingexecutives.biz/contentmarketing-defined#overlay-context=contentmarketing-defined 2 http://www.hubspot.com/marketingautomation-information 3 http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot. com/2013/10/marketing-automation-usersatisfaction.html 4 http://www.marketingprofs.com/ articles/2011/6478/five-proven-ways-toimprove-roi-using-marketing-automation 5 http://www.marketo.com/_assets/uploads/roiof-marketing-automation.pdf 6 http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/01/ marketing-automation-maximize-content-roi/ 7 http://www.loopfuse.com/resources/loopfuse- WP-5-Ways-Marketing-Automation-Provides- Job-Security.pdf 8 http://blog.eloqua.com/marketing-automationskills/ 9 http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/casestudy/marketing-automation-implementationspurs-successful 10 http://www.marketo.com/_assets/uploads/bigeasy-guidebook.pdf 11 http://www.pardot.com/whitepapers/statedemand-generation-2013/ 12 http://blogs.salesforce.com/.a/6a00e54ee3905b 88330192ac2176ac970d-popup 10