Yvonne Tocquigny, chief creative and strategy officer of Archer Malmo, Austin, reveals how marketers can get the most from their MA platforms
Though nearly 50 per cent of B2B companies had implemented marketing automation (MA) by the end of 2015, the unfortunate truth is that many will be finding little value in their investment. As sales cycles get longer and buying processes become increasingly complex, it’s smart to check for inefficiencies in your MA implementation to realize the full potential of your efforts.
A recent study by SiriusDecisions showed that companies using MA combined with good processes produced four times the sales volume of companies using automation with weak processes. When marketers automate poor practices or nonexistent processes, they actually automate chaos. MA doesn’t magically produce marketing transformation. Your strategic marketing foundation should be in place and operating smoothly before being automated. The most common mistakes are centered on the basics. And, until those basics are addressed, each has the potential to undermine your overall success.
Use the right success criteria
More leads per marketing dollar spent doesn’t equate to more revenue. A high volume of leads, if they’re low quality, will actually waste the sales team’s time and increase the overall cost of sales. A more accurate success measure is the percentage of marketing generated leads that become part of the pipeline and result in a sale. Review your success criteria to ensure marketing is producing results that are optimal for the organization.
Marketing automation isn’t just lead gen
MA doesn’t add contacts to a database and won’t inherently resolve a company’s lead generation problems. MA platforms automate many marketing functions and provide data to better understand prospects and their needs. They will nurture and activate leads in the upper and middle parts of the funnel, but they won’t generate a prospect list or offer all the digital marketing tools necessary for growth. Marketers must still develop a process for generating new leads to nurture along with a marketing foundation that includes excellent content, offers, calls-to-action and landing pages. Take a look at the health of your database to determine if your information is correct and if you have sufficient contacts to yield the results your company needs.
Don’t oversimplify
Mapping the buyer journey is a key component of MA success. Companies must gain a deep understanding of the path their leads take during the purchase process. This includes insights on personas, knowledge of when they need content and communications, and how/why they move toward responding to calls-to-action. It’s probably time to re-examine your buyer journeys to see how they can be enhanced to fuel better performance.
Fine-tune lead definition
If your sales team was complaining of poor-quality leads from marketing prior to automation, then automating the same processes will just create more poor-quality leads. Marketing must collaborate with sales to use everyone’s insights and all available data to develop finely tuned, insight-driven definitions for leads.
Create triggers
The batch-and-blast approach of sending prospects content they don’t care about won’t win any customers. Rather, use a process of creating triggers to deliver targeted, personalized, valuable, timely content to an engaged database.
Respond quickly
A Harvard study found that companies that followed up on a ‘hand-raising action’ within a few hours were 60 times more likely to win the business than those who followed up later. Still, a separate study shows that 40 per cent of B2B marketers do not use an automated email responder to follow up with new leads. Follow-up emails should be programmed to send as soon as possible. The best practice is to immediately send a follow-up email after someone has responded to a content offer. The email should contain intelligent suggestions for more content instead of just a thank you.
Create enough content
One of the beauties of MA is that it allows you to target buyers by giving them individualized content at the right points in the buying process. To maximize this, it’s essential to provide customized high-quality content to each buyer persona. This means that a substantial amount of content is required to keep up with leads. For instance, if you have three buyer personas with four differentiating pain points in five channels, and you post content 12 times a year, you will need 720 pieces of new content each year. And quantity is just half the story. Your audiences must also perceive the content as high quality. Relevancy trumps quantity.
Don’t limit yourself to leads
MA software includes the nurturing technology and access to CRM data that gives you the ability to effectively automate sales and marketing activities that are too labor-intensive for sales to cost-effectively manage. Develop a comprehensive strategy that uses MA to improve customer retention, increase add-on sales and repeat purchases, generate customer referrals and solicit customer reviews.
MA is a complex undertaking that requires a carefully orchestrated mix of software, process, content, and people. Not to mention adequate budget. Without those components in place, the integrity of the vision can be out of reach. It’s necessary to continuously reevaluate your practices from a fresh perspective to ensure that your system and efforts associated with it are returning the value you deserve and the value you, and the wider business, expect.