Pump Up Your Pipeline With Lead Management Automation

January 29, 2010 — Laura Ramos

 Will 2010 be the year the lead management automation market takes off? Early indications show that the automation market ended on a high note in Q4 2009 as marketers turned to technology to help generate and manage demand more effectively. While technology alone does not guarantee healthy pipelines, automation can help most firms hand better qualified leads over to sales. So when Silverpop engaged Forrester last year to research the top issues marketers face when generating demand and which approaches deliver the best results, I quickly agreed to take the lead on this project.

Lead Management Automation Helps To Plug Leaky Funnels

In the spirit of full disclosure, let me give a little background about the project. Silverpop hired Forrester to conduct research and write a whitepaper independently on the results. Forrester follows strict guidelines to ensure objectivity as a neutral third-party advisor. As a matter of policy, we don’t write whitepapers for hire, and the few we do must meet specific requirements, include primary research, and educate the market on a topic of broad  interest — regardless of the sponsor’s intent.  For example, we interviewed 15 Directors, VPs, or SVPs of marketing in midmarket firms of 100 to 5000 employees for the report. Some were Silverpop customers but the majority were not and Forrester made the call about who to include to achieve a full range of perspectives.  However, my company does not employ a team of consultants separate from the analyst ranks and, when a project like this comes along, analysts who cover the market or technology play a major role conducting the surveys and writing the report.

So what did we learn?  Well there are several ways you can find out. First, you can go to Silverpop’s Web site and register for a copy.  On January 26, Silverpop CEO, Bill Nussey, invited me to join him on a webinar to talk about the report findings and to offer a few case studies illustrating the tangible benefits of lead management automation. In addition, Amanda Ferrante, with DemandGen Report, wrote a very thorough and thoughtful review of the paper earlier this week and details many of the findings.

In summary, here’s what we found:

1) Mature lead management pays off in measurable impact on pipelines, marketing efficiency, and accountability. On average, one-half or more of the marketers we spoke with cite healthier pipelines, increased marketing proficiency, and more efficient resource/budget use as key outcomes when investing in lead management process and technology change.

2) Process development and sales collaboration are essential first steps. More than selecting the most innovative or feature-rich technology, top firms succeed when they approach lead management as a process change that requires close and continuous interaction with sales.

3) Four practices shorten the time from implementation to value. Lead management experts focus on customer profiling, lead scoring, content design, and nurturing to accelerate investment returns.

4) Successful lead management improves marketing’s standing and stature. Marketers that follow lead management best practices increase marketing execution efficiency, help sales optimize deal-closing activity, and turn customer relationships into valuable corporate assets.

5) Ability to share and instill best practices is key to selecting the right technology partner. Long term success depends on trading off flashy features, promised ease of use, and low price tags for proven expertise, a track-record of successful implementations, and a growing, vibrant community of like-minded users.

Bottomline: Lead management automation works and helps markters to close up leaky marketing funnels, put better qualified opportunities in front of sales, and help drive stronger topline revenue.  If you have had similar success, or suffered a few failures, with marketing automation, feel free to chime in her with your experiences.

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Best Practices For Marketing To Buyers “In The Cloud”

January 27, 2010 — Laura Ramos

“Cloud computing” is a very hot topic, and like social media, subject to much debate about “what is cloud computing?” and “what does it mean for business?” Simply stated, cloud computing lets your customers and potential buyers take advantage of services and resources delivered as an online utility. Buyers get the benefits of using your technology without worrying about the technical details as much as they would if they implemented software inside their data centers. The benefits can include: lower capital investment, faster implementation, reduced risk, proven security and improved scalability to handle the increased amounts of data. Purists believe that true cloud computing requires large scale sharing by infrastructure/application providers and their consumers alike. While my colleagues at Forrester try to sort out the market and make it easier for IT buyers to decide where to invest, I’d like to explore the idea of marketing to customers in the cloud. 

B2B marketing needs to embrace the cloud. Most executives see marketing as a large discretionary line item in the corporate budget. During tought economic times, that “discretion” gets cut more often than not.  Marketers perpetuate this short-sighted perspective when they focus more on program and campaign spending and fail to invest in the capital or IT support needed to make marketing execution more efficient and the results more visible to the organization. Cloud computing can give marketers ready access to technology and services that can drive demand and evaluate the effectiveness of their programs without the burden of traditional technology implementation and management.

Cloud computing will also transform the way marketing gets done. In this Web 2.0 world, buyers spend more of time online searching for information, interacting with like-minded colleagues, and comparing offerings long before the first sales call occurs. Cloud-optimized marketing strategies such as social media, paid search, search results optimization, content syndication, and engaging with buyers on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter deliver brand building and customer engagement results.

To futher explore how social media marketing in the cloud can help to build deeper — and eventually more profitable — customer relationships, I joined Jon Miller (VP of Maketing at automation rising-star Marketo) and David Alston (social media guru who heads up both community and marketing at Radian6) on a webinar, which you can access here.  During the event, we looked at a number of different cloud-related topics including:

1) How to use Forrester’s Social Technographics® Profiles of business decision-makers to design marketing programs that not only capitalize on emerging social behaviors but also fundamentally change the nature of the marketing relationship between B2B buyers and sellers.

2)Forrester’s P-O-S-T methodology – Why starting with People, Objectives and Strategy first, then moving to Tactics and Technology is the best way to ensure success when using social media to engage with prospects and customers in the cloud.

3) How to use social media monitoring to engage prospects, build communities, service customers, uncover influencers, and listen for the point of need.

Over the next few months, I will join the the Marketing Cloud conversation to continue to explore how cloud-centric service and technology providers may be in a better position to serve the modern needs of B2B marketers who see social media not simply as a way to reach new audiences. More importantly, these marketers see social media as a tool to help them build communities of like-minded customers; customers who will remain loyal, buy more over time, and advocate to others on the marketer’s behalf to influence the standing and reputation his/her firm in a transparent, community-centric manner.  The 2009 Forrester Groundswell Awards winners in the B2B marketing categories demonstrate where this trend is heading.  But I would love to hear from you with examples of companies that you feel are doing an exceptional job of using social media to connect with business buyers who purchase high consideration products for on behalf of their firms.

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B2B Marketing Mix and Budget Trends Survey: Please Participate!

January 13, 2010 — Laura Ramos

For the third year, MarketingProfs and Forrester teamed up to author and field a survey that looks at business-to-business marketing mix and budget trends. With many parts of North America and Europe (my home state of California for one) still feeling the effects of last year’s economic downturn, I believe that this year’s survey will show some marked changes on which tactics marketers choose to spend their limited budget dollars.

Would you like to help me find out?  If so, please click here to take the survey.  The survey should take you approximately 15 minutes to complete, and I will share a copy of the report — due sometime in March — with those of you who complete the survey.

Taking a closer look at B2B marketing budgets in our 2008/2009 survey, we found:

1) Digital spending moved ahead but failed to shake up the status quo. While B2B marketers wrestle with a more complex marketing mix, digital channels have finally gained much needed mindshare. Web sites and email topped the list of the most popular marketing tactics, and search marketing moved up six percentage points since our last report. However, conventional approaches like trade shows, PR, direct mail, print advertising, sponsorships, and executive events still dominated the marketing mix in 2008. Will 2009 show even more dramatic changes? Tell us in the survey and find out.

2) Traditional tactics commanded the lion’s share of B2B budgets. Conventional marketing tactics continued to capture big chunks of B2B marketer budgets. In fact, traditional tactics had a tight grip on the five top spots in our list of the most expensive B2B tactics. Coming in sixth, the company Web site was the only digital tactic to scrape together a double-digit percentage of the budget.

3) Social media managed to make only a few budget inroads in 2008/early 09. Virtual trade shows, community sites, rich media (video, podcasts, etc.), blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools like RSS subscriptions, mashups, and widgets got the B2B budget scraps. Yet, while marketers try to work out social media’s place in the marketing mix, we were pleased to see, when taken together, these tactics accrued more than 10% of the marketing budget. I expect this year’s survey may show some surprising changes in this category.

I can hypothesize on my blog all day about how marketing tactic choices and budgets changed in 2009 relative to 2008 — and where B2B marketers expect them to go in 2010 — but the survey results will provide the real facts, not conjecture.  Please join me and take 15 minutes now to let me, and your B2B marketing colleagues, how your 2010 budget plans are shaping up.

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DMA Webinar: Tracking Online Buyer Behavior in B2B

January 8, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Next week I have the pleasure of speaking to several affiliate groups of the Direct Marketing Association about demand management. Please join me Wednesday, January 13, 2010, for a webinar-based panel discusison about: How to Track a Buyer’s Online Purchase Research Behavior: and then send appropriate messages to influence that buyer’s purchase.

As we see it, the Internet empowers buyers to research products and services long before engaging in a formal sales process — leaving marketers to guess when and how to engage with prospects. This almost guarantees that marketing messages will be sent to the wrong people at the wrong time — filling sales funnels with unqualified leads — a poor formula for permission marketing.

Smart marketers are harnessing digital technology to monitor and track buyer research behavior long before the formal sales process begins — to estimate buying stage — to predict buying intent — to evaluate buying influence — to send appropriate marketing messages to the right people at the right time — and to more accurately score leads for sales funnels. This yields a better formula for permission marketing.

The DMA invited two top industry experts (and yours truly) to help B2B marketers clearly understand how they can improve demand generation process by identifying, monitoring, and evaluating the online research behavior of prospective buyers.

Joining me are:

Steve Woods – Eloqua – Chief Technology Officer / Co-Founder. Author – Digital Body Language.

Debbie Qaqish – The Pedowitz Group – Chief Revenue Officer. Demand Generation Agency – Digital Buyer Behavior applications.

I hope you will visit the DMA Northern California site and join us for this educational, lively discussion!

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