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RightSourceMarketing 2017 Right Source Marketing. All Rights Reserved.Make the Marketing Automation Decision:A 5-Question GuideTable of ContentsIntroductionquestion 1 Do Your Leads Require Qualification or Nurturing?question 2 Do You Create Content? If Not, Are You Willing?question 3 Do You Have the Bandwidth to Pull It Off?question 4 Do You Want to Demonstrate Marketing ROI?question 5 Is Your Leadership Team on Board?Are You Ready?02040709111213Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing02IntroductionIntroductionStories and news about marketing automation are all over the place. Chances are, if your company isnt already using marketing automation, its contemplating whether to take the plunge or feeling a nagging need to look into it. Research says that 67 percent of marketing leaders currently use marketing automation and an additional 21 percent plan to adopt it in the next two years. But the big guys arent the only ones adopting the technology. Small- and mid-size businesses are using marketing automation at a growing rate, too. A 2014 study from SMB Group found that 20 percent of small businesses and 25 percent of medium businesses had purchased marketing automation or upgraded to a more robust solution within the last 24 months. The same study reported that 22 percent of small businesses and 26 percent of mid-size businesses plan to purchase or upgrade their use of marketing automation in the coming year.Growing but underutilized With this fast adoption, however, comes this reality: companies are underutilizing the technology. In some cases, companies create and push out an occasional email campaign, but dont use marketing automation nearly enough to see a return on investment. Essentially, theyre paying for a sophisticated platform with numerous capabilities theyre barely using.67 percent of marketing leaders currently use marketing automation and an additional 21 percent plan to adopt it in the next two years.Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing03Enter into marketing automation blindly, and waste your time and money. Go in with your eyes open, and marketing automation can take your marketing efforts and your company to new heights, allowing you to: Generate demand for your products or services Generate leads and nurture them through the sales funnel Save time on complex and mundane tasks Measure your effectiveness and prove ROI Is marketing automation right for you? Weighing the pros and cons of platforms is a fine conversation, but lets back up a minute: How can you decide if any form of marketing automation is right for you?Companies often believe that they need to get on board. They think they have to have marketing automation but cant really say why, or they know it would help, but dont know how to convince their colleagues.How do you know if marketing automation really is right for you?You have to do your due diligence, which involves a close look at everything from your business and sales objectives to your internal talent and content arsenal (or lack thereof).Go in with your eyes open, and marketing automation can take your marketing efforts and your company to new heights.IntroductionUse this eBook as your guide. In it, our team of technologists, strategists, and content creators break down the process into five questions that will give you a good sense of whether the time to move forward is nigh, or whether you need to do some work before you take the plunge.Top Excuses Companies Use to Ignore Marketing Automation1. We just dont have time.2. We dont know where to start.3. We cant agree on who to target.4. We dont have any content.Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing04question 1 Do Your Leads Require Qualification or Nurturing?question 1 Do Your Leads Require Qualification or Nurturing?Would you like an endless stream of leads that are ready to buy the moment they visit your website, speak with you on the phone, or meet you face to face? Many companies have products or services that skew towards a more complex buying cycle, and often these are not instant purchases. They take more time, require input from multiple stakeholders, and require marketers to stay in front of prospects with the right message, to the right person, at the right time/buying stage. Understanding who your leads are, whether they are qualified, and what information they are consuming is critical. Once you have those answers, you can deliver timely, intelligent, effective communication this is one of the first places in the buying cycle where marketing automation starts to shine.Lead scoring, grading, and qualification Lead scoring and lead grading enable you to figure out whos qualified, who is sales-ready, and who may need more nurturing. With marketing automation, lead qualification, grading, and scoring get easier and grow more sophisticated all at the same time.How?Automated lead scoring and grading are based on formulas you create to tell your platform how to rate leads, while your formula is based on the data you gather on each lead (e.g., what emails the lead opens, what links she clicks, what webi-nars she attends, title, geography, etc.). But dont let the automation part fool you: youll still need to keep an eye on the formula, fine-tune it as needed, and “read between the lines” of the data stream-ing in. Youll also want the ability to make manual entries here and there. For instance, if a trusted source tells you “Company A is ready to buy,” you can manually adjust the score and override that Company A never attends webinars and ignores your emails. In this sense, although the technology automates much of your workload, it makes room for the human side of sales, which is important.Understanding who your leads are, whether they are qualified, what information they are consuming is critical.Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing05question 1 Do Your Leads Require Qualification or Nurturing?Lead nurturing Just because somebody filled out a form to download an eBook or attended your webinar doesnt mean that they are ready to buy (in fact, they likely arent). You dont want to throw them away but you also cant push them to your sales team before theyre good and ready. So you nurture the relationship. In the past, companies would spend time “manually” chasing these prospects and that was often inefficient. Thats where marketing automations lead nurturing capabilities pay off.Bridging marketing and salesBy the time prospects talk to a sales rep, 57 percent have already made up their mind, according to a 2013 study by Google and CEB. How is that possible? In todays competitive landscape, clients and customers weigh options and see how each option stacks up. They talk to colleagues, troll blogs and social media, and read white papers, or case studies so they can make an informed decision.Sixty-one percent of B2B marketers send all leads directly to their sales team, though only 27 percent of those leads turn out to be qualified.Marketing Sherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark ReportMarketing expert Scott Gillum, in an article for Forbes magazine, refers to this phenomenon as “the disappearing sales process” and explains the enormous effect its having on how B2B buyers make decisions:What are buyers doing if theyre not talking to sales? They are surfing corporate websites to identify and qualify vendors, instead of the sales force qualifying them. They are engaging peers in social media to learn more about their needs, potential solutions and providers. And they are reading, listening to and watching free digital content that is available to them at the click of a mouse. No longer is the sales force the sole source or gatekeeper of information.Did You Know?Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing06Nuanced lead nurturing Someone vetting your company will likely seek out information about you, but you cant count on that, and you cant expect it from your lukewarm leads. Instead, you have to take the conversation and the evidence that youre a top contender to them. This is what it means to nurture, and where marketing automation comes in. With the lead scoring and segmenting capabilities of marketing automation, you can categorize leads based on any number of variables where they are in your sales funnel, what kinds of services they need, or whether they attend a particular webinar or download a white paper. You can then create email campaigns to cultivate a unique relationship with each group. Say, for instance, you release a white paper on your website and require visitors to enter an email address for full access. You can use the addresses you gather to create a series of emails (an email campaign) to extend the conversation and keep your company top of mind. Your first email might thank them for downloading and link to related content, while the next few emails scheduled to go out incrementally over a specified time period might share something like a case study or announce an event.Simultaneously, you can create another set of emails for prospects in your database who have not downloaded your white paper. In these emails, you can call attention to the white paper and start a meaningful conversation related to the topic.These capabilities are changing how buyers make decisions and how marketers engage with buyers. But they require work and decision-making on your part. You have to figure out, for instance, what voice and messaging to use in your emails, what sequence to send them in, and who to include on your lists. And its not just email, but capabilities like showing custom content to a known prospect on your website that matches their current stage in the buying cycle or their role in their company. As we discuss in the next section, all of these components require two key resources high-quality content and time. Content types include case studies, videos, and eBooks like this one not just blog posts.question 1 Do Your Leads Require Qualification or Nurturing?With the lead scoring and segmenting capabilities of marketing automation, you can categorize leads based on any number of variables; then create email campaigns to cultivate a unique relationship with each group.Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing07question 2 Do You Create Content? If Not, Are You Willing?Maybe you publish a blog post every now and then. Perhaps you also have an eBook and a couple of case studies. Thats a start, but youre going to need to create content on an ongoing basis to make use of marketing automation. Otherwise, how can your platform do what you bought it to do generate demand, generate and nurture leads, and generate the data you need to strategize next steps?Content fuels marketing automation. But how much content do you need to get started with marketing automation? What content work best?Email alone doesnt cut it We just have to write a bunch of emails, right?People ask us this a lot. And while you do need emails, those emails need to give your recipients a reason to open them.How can you add value to email? Its not by sending your audiences something that screams SALES PITCH. Thats a recipe for deletion. Rather, give them resources (i.e., links to your content) that relate to their industry and can help them on the job.Content fuels marketing automation.But how much content do you need?question 2 Do You Create Content? If Not, Are You Willing?Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing08question 2 Do You Create Content? If Not, Are You Willing?What content do you need to get started? It depends on both your short- and long-term goals. Generally, we recommend a steady mix of the following:1. Anchor content Think of anchor content as the main piece of content your company uses to make a definitive statement about a particular topic. What counts as anchor content? Think of longer, more comprehensive pieces like guides, white papers, and eBooks.2. Base-level content These are shorter pieces like blog posts, checklists, Q&As, video clips, and infographics. They tell part of your company story, provide a window into your approach, and educate your audiences. 3. Nurture content Once you have a mix of anchor and base-level content, youre ready to create nurture content. These are the email campaigns and e-newsletters that leverage your best content from the list above, along with content selected carefully from outside sources. Whatever you do, dont start creating a lot of content without a content marketing plan in place. The consequences can leave your marketing automation efforts high and dry.Make the Marketing Automation Decision: A 5-Question Guide:RightSourceMarketing09question 3 Do You Have the Bandwidth to Pull It Off?This is the question that trips everyone up. Wait a minute, they say. Isnt marketing automation supposed to make life easier as in automated?The truth of the matter is that it takes time and resources to keep an effective marketing automation program running, and that includes people. Youll need a team, but before we dive into the types of people who belong on your marketing automation team: Your marketing automation team is only as good as your marketing automation strategy, which is only as good as your overall marketing strategy, which is only as good as your broader business strategy. Teams look a little different for every company, and are based on things like marketing objectives, budgets, staffing models, and the talents, and specialties of staff.What do most teams look like today?Given the youth of marketing automation (just over a decade old), most companies do not employ a dedicated marketing automation team. But the industrys youth is not the only factor at play the cross-departmental nature of marketing automation means that creating a dedicated team involves accessing talent that traditionally sits in multiple departments. Step into a meeting with a well-staffed marketing automation team, and youre likely to find representatives from marketing, technology, sales, customer service, and operations.Yet more often than not, a company jumps in with both feet, licenses a marketing automation tool, assigns someone from marketing or IT to manage it, and six to 12 months later realizes theyre going to require more resources to take full advantage of its potential. Without augmented resources and the strategy to go with them, a marketing automation tool can become nothing more than an expensive email marketing engine.Given the youth of marketing automation, most companies do not employ a dedicated marketing automation team.question 3 Do You Have the Bandwidth to Pull It Off?
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