Truly effective and efficient marketing automation that has a positive impact on revenue is so much more than the technology. Marketing Automation also requires deep organizational examination and readiness.
Anyone looking to apply MA needs to have a deep understanding of their existing processes relating to both sales and marketing; the relationship between the two; the gaps in that relationship; KPIs and business goals that define success; data quality; and, finally, organizational culture.
New technologies always demand change and adjustments –new ways of seeing and doing things. Use the start of your Marketing Automation journey as an opportunity to realign your revenue engine and marketing campaigns.
Lead management is defined as the process by which marketing acquires, evaluates, nurtures, and hands off leads to the sales team. (Marketo)
You can apply lead management to potential, existing, and dormant customers.
However, lead management should not be confused with lead nurturing or lead scoring, which are more specific parts of lead management that take place towards the end of the process. (BigCommerce)
By implementing lead management, it enables you to improve the way you:
Deliver personalized comms to people based on the buyer persona profiles they fit and where they are along their buyer journey
The truth is, your prospects are constantly telling you what they're interested in and where they are in their buyer journey.
They're just not usually doing it with so many words, but more by the way they behave online: what they open, click, watch, or even ignore, and more.
You want to be able to listen to these behavioural signals, and Marketing Automation is what can help you do it.
Some of the key benefits of Marketing Automation include being able to identify and monitor such online activities, as well as to trigger actions and build buyer databases based on them.
With these insights, you can improve the way you attract audiences (via Inbound Marketing), communicate with them (via Content Marketing), directly interact with them (via Event Marketing and Social Media Marketing), and overall deliver better experiences to them that ultimately lead to purchase.
Inbound Marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. (Hubspot)
Content Marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. (Content Marketing Institute)
Event Marketing is the promotion of a product, brand, or service through in-person and virtual events or interactions. (Bizzabo)
Questions to ask: What defines a sales ready lead? How do you nurture leads that aren't sales ready? What happens with sales leads that don't move forward? What are the SLAs around lead follow up?
Sales and marketing alignment is key to getting the most out of any marketing automation platform.
Questions to ask: What are the key metrics that will define your success? How is campaign ROI measured?
With marketing automation, marketers can look beyond traditional metrics such as opens and clicks and see marketing's impact on current and future pipeline, revenue and profit.
Questions to ask: How accurate is your data currently? How will you make sure your data is clean before you start feeding it into a MAP?
Questions to ask: Do you have content for each stage of the buyer's journey and for each buyer persona? Have you performed a content audit, and if you have what are the gaps and needs?
Content is a must-have for consistent and effective lead generation and nurturing. It should be based on a solid understanding of your company's different personas and stages to ensure relevant and timely communications to your audience at all times.
Questions to ask: Is your marketing team equipped to align on demand generation efforts with the modern buyer's journey? Do you have internal champions who can can analyse, visualise and make data-driven decisions? How comfortable is your marketing team using technology? What adjustments have to be made culturally?
Don't have a steady stream of leads coming in? Take a step back. To see returns on your lead scoring efforts, you will need a steady stream of leads to score. Start by getting leads into your database and working out what the gaps and needs are regarding your inbound marketing and content strategy.
Marketing and Sales are not aligned? If marketing and sales aren't aligned it's hard to determine what it means for a lead to be sales ready, let alone to take action on it. Sales and marketing have to work together to come to a score that will actually give sales leads that convert.
Don't know enough about the leads in your database? A prospect's fit with the organisation is almost as important as their level of interest. Acquire the data that's important to your organisation and its sales structure, such as company size, location, job title, and more.
Aren't tracking leads' behaviours online? Behavioural data is key to gauging a leads interest and readiness to talk to sales. Tracking a leads behaviour trough website visits, email open and clicks, form fills, and more as well as trough third party intent data can tell you if how interested your lead is and if you should be reaching out to them. Not sure about your buyer personas? Before you can score your lead, you need to know what your ideal customer profile looks like and who the key buying personas are within that profile. Marketing and sales should work together to figure this out.
