It’s no secret that marketing intelligence tools, such as research, curation and collaboration apps, make a team more productive and improve campaign results. However, having too many tools or too much information available can have quite the opposite effect. Information overload can waste time and take attention away from the goal at hand: generating leads.
For an example, let’s consider a company that sells credit management software. As two of their key responsibilities, marketing team members must create and run effective content-based campaigns and monitor key competitors for trends and successes. For such activities, they need tools to curate relevant content so that they can communicate efficiently with internal stakeholders, prospects and customers. But even with search technologies, news feeds, marketing software and/or curation apps, collecting that content is cumbersome, repetitive and ephemeral.
The way to reduce the noise is through automated curation intelligence. Imagine if instead of working with four different tools on two separate activities, all of the information the marketing team needs is delivered automatically in a single application. By simply creating topics of interest about credit management and key competitors, an automated “living collection” provides a steady stream of fresh content to create campaigns, understand competitive intelligence and ultimately supply information to prospects that is compelling enough to encourage a response (and a shorter sales cycle).
Automated curation is personal. The content that matters to me as a lead gen professional is different from what matters to you as a market research specialist, even if we’re both involved with the same campaign. And while you might be accessing your content in the CRM on your laptop, I want to see it in a stand-alone app on my smartphone.
Curation is social. A successful marketing campaign is rarely the result of a single individual; everyone has different groups of experts, colleagues and friends where collaboration adds value and the next action can take place. Automated curation brings social context – knowing my networks makes it easier to connect with the right people on our shared topics.
When considering automated curation intelligence as tool for your marketing and research programs, it is important to keep in mind the sources accessed, ease of use, and the tool’s ability to continuously learn and refine results.
- Sources — Automated curation technologies should scan and synthesize multiple sources from the web, subscribed RSS feeds, social networks and internal business systems. Integration with Salesforce and SAP, as well as other CRM systems and subscribed research services, saves time and makes life easier for you and your team. You should also be able to import existing profiling, account and contact data to ensure the most precise results – and best outcomes – possible.
- Ease of use – Multiple delivery and access options are a must. You should be able to view and use your information from any device, at anytime. And a simple email digest with the latest news can also cut down on time and serve as a reminder to check on certain campaigns or leads.
- Continuous improvement – Based on the items a user favorites, keeps and shares, the tags and keywords he uses and the comments he makes, the curation technology should constantly improve its precision – reducing the noise, assisting with discovery and enabling better collaboration.
When used effectively, automated curation technologies deliver productivity gains, the opportunity for competitive advantage when making a deeper connection with prospects, and the ability to find the “white space” for new products.
Dr. Dorian Selz is the CEO and co-founder of Squirro, the world’s first “digital research assistant.” Squirro for sales and marketing is currently in beta phase. If you are interested in testing it out for your marketing organization, visit http://squirro.com/ or contact Dorian directly at [email protected].
