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Posts in category B2B Marketing

What is keeping companies from investing in Marketing Automation?

Feb20
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Marketologist

It is an understatement to say Marketing Automation is a hot topic amongst B2B marketers.  Marketing Automation leaders like Aprimo, Eloqua, Marketo and Silverpop are still rapidly growing their customer base, while smaller players like Act-On and Pardot have come on very strong recently.  According to Raab Associates, the B2B marketing automation industry was projected to hit $325 million in 2011, representing 50% year-over-year growth.  Yet the market saturation is still fairly low (Raab estimates the market penetration at 10-30%).  Many organizations are still in the education or consideration phase, and have not yet made the decision to purchase an implement a MA platform.  If their peers are clearly finding a lot of value in Marketing Automation, what is keeping the majority of the market from diving in?

The Marketing Leadership Roundtable surveyed 161 marketing organizations and of those that had not yet purchased an MA solution, “resource constraints” was the number one reason they were not investing.  These constraints encompass both the expertise to use it effectively and the budget for purchase.  Clearly, organizations are not yet convinced that the return on their marketing automation investment is there.  If you are in one of the organizations not using MA, but are personally convinced that the technology can be a strategic asset, it is worth reading Kim Roman’s article on MASG about persuading your boss to buy marketing automation.  Besides some of the usual tips on presenting a business case and leaving emotions out of it, she offers a great point on how you can incorporate MA into your goals and KPIs.

If you are considering solutions, it is important to keep in mind that the monetary investment in the technology must be paralleled in your investment in people.  In the aforementioned survey by the Marketing Leadership Roundtable, the number one challenge of Marketing Automation is “People: training, encouraging adoption, gaining buy-in, Sales & Marketing alignment.”

Image Courtesy of Marketing Leadership Roundtable

Marketers want their tools to be easy to use but complexity is an issue.  Complexity leads to the need for experts (which are hard to come by, as discussed in this marketing skills gap post).  If your organization decides to move forward, it is crucial that those responsible for implementation understand that a significant investment will to be made in either an external support model or in bringing in/upskilling talent to manage the unique projects that marketing automation leads to (lead scoring/nurturing, etc).  And of course technology will not solve your other problems like lack of compelling content, poor marketing & sales alignment, and bad marketing processes (if anything, it will make these issues more painful).

In choosing and implementing a Marketing Automation platform, significant challenges remain.  The vendor market is still relatively immature, and many organizations have struggled to successfully use MA and see the great ROI touted by the industry.  Yet others have seen a tremendous ROI (10x + as estimated by Jeff Pedowitz) thanks to their successful MA deployments.  As long as your organization is aware of some of the potential pit-falls and is prepared to make the investment required, you may be able to realize similar returns.

Posted in Marketing Automation, Marketing Technology

Sales & Marketing Alignment Presentation from Altamont Group’s Total Customer Management Conference

Jan02
2012 1 Comment Written by Marketologist

In December, Baxter Denney presented at the Altamont Group’s Total Customer Management conference in San Francisco.  The presentation was a case study of sales & marketing initiatives at Citrix Online (makers of GoToMeeting).  The key takeaways are pretty simple, but powerful when applied well:

  1. Align sales and marketing incentives with common performance metrics (revenue in this case)
  2. Ensure your project teams have the appropriate mix of “thinkers” and “doers.”  Empower the project team leaders with the responsibility and accountability (and appropriate resources) to execute.
  3. Validate your results (both process and performance-wise) with benchmarks of your peers if possible.

You can view the presentation on Slideshare:

Baxter Denney’s Sales & Marketing Alignment Presentation at Total Customer Management Conference

Posted in Sales & Marketing Alignment

The Marketing Stack

Sep19
2011 1 Comment Written by Marketologist

As a marketing geek, I tend to make friends with my colleagues in IT, who in my mind have the really tough job in any organization: making things work.  I often hear discussions regarding organizations’ technology stack.  Wikipedia simply says a technology stack “comprises the layers of components or services that are used to provide a software solution or application.”   You might hear web development folks talk about using LAMP or WAMP, examples of open-source software stacks for running a web server.  The non-geek in me just thinks about it as the combination of “stuff” used to make things work.

Technology Stack Example

Technology Stack Example

Marketers might not be writing queries in MySQL or coding in PHP or (the “M” and “P” in LAMP respectively) but we still should think strategically about the technologies we use to run our business.  As it happens, most marketing organizations add on technologies as the need arises, but do not always consider additional technologies holistically.

As marketers, we tend to get very excited about the latest and greatest technology.  Here are some of the factors I consider when approached about investing time and/or money in adding to the marketing stack:

  • What is the business problem you want to solve?
  • Are you being technology agnostic?  Or are you starting with the technology?
  • What is the total cost (including effort to properly evaluate, negotiate, purchase, implement, and achieve success) of this tool?
  • How does this fit into our other solutions?
  • How are we going to quantitatively evaluate success?

Of course, each situation is unique.  This is one example of a typical B2B marketing organization’s stack:

Marketing Technology Stack Example

Marketing Technology Stack Example

Your mix of technologies might include social media monitoring tools that feed directly into CRM, business intelligence tools used for in-depth analysis, additional content delivery platforms, or a number of other technologies to help you do your job better.  If you have not sat down and diagrammed your technology stack, it is worth the effort.  Your partners in IT can probably assist in the endeavor if you need help, and it really is not too difficult once you get going.  This is a great exercise because it can also highlight needs you might not be aware of.

No matter what tools you use within your marketing organization, next time someone comes running to you about the latest and greatest technology, take the time to think about how it fits within your current marketing stack.  Perhaps it will make your business grow and increase productivity across the board; or perhaps you have something in your stack already that can solve the need.

 

Posted in Marketing Technology
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