Marketing
Automation from a Sales Perspective
With more-marketers shifting to a revenue-orientated model and the recent sea-change in marketers’ desires to show both business results and brand impact, uptake of marketing automation looks to continue its upward trend in 2013. Despite a high rate of adoption- (a Recent Forrester Report suggested 45% usage within the B2B Enterprise Market*) - companies are only now beginning to understand and leverage the full spectrum of the applications of marketing automation platforms, which can often be very complex.
As a marketer, the physical implementation of a marketing automation platform as the promised silver bullet for their marketing woes can often overshadow an important consideration during the set-up process – planning. More specifically, a plan which will allow the Sales department to reap the benefits of this platform and not use it as another tool for lead-generation or lead management.
With more-marketers shifting to a revenue-orientated model and the recent sea-change in marketers’ desires to show both business results and brand impact, uptake of marketing automation looks to continue its upward trend in 2013. Despite a high rate of adoption- (a Recent Forrester Report suggested 45% usage within the B2B Enterprise Market*) - companies are only now beginning to understand and leverage the full spectrum of the applications of marketing automation platforms, which can often be very complex.
As a marketer, the physical implementation of a marketing automation platform as the promised silver bullet for their marketing woes can often overshadow an important consideration during the set-up process – planning. More specifically, a plan which will allow the Sales department to reap the benefits of this platform and not use it as another tool for lead-generation or lead management.
Follow these 5
simple steps to ensure you can get the most from your marketing automation platform
from a sales perspective.
- Align Sales and Marketing: The core purpose of marketing
automation is to make sales and marketing one cohesive structure, and will
not work if your organisation has been designed to keep sales and
marketing as separate entities. Ensure you share cross
departmental objectives and success metrics to increase transparency to
ensure everyone understands the goals of a specific campaign - everyone’s
happier once they know what defines a successful campaign!
- Focus on Content: Creating enough content to satisfy various
newsletters, drip campaigns and blogs throughout a long sales cycle can be
a tough job, however it is absolutely worth it when you consider that content really
is the coal fueling the marketing automation furnace. To make
life a little easier why not consider re purposing your content from
your existing assets e.g. one whitepaper can become the topic of
a series of webinars or a series of blog posts pulled together could
become a new whitepaper and gives your sales team another hook with which
to entice prospects. It’s all about working Smart!
- Plan your Attack: The benefit of a Marketing Automation platform
is putting science and process behind the sales funnel therefore
defining responsibilities for various stages of the sales cycle
is extremely important. e.g. Who's responsible for designing the
lead-scoring threshold?, Who's responsible for delegating leads to the
Sales team?, Who's monitoring conversion success from these leads? There
are important questions to answer and having a designated
process firmed up prior to the implementation of a platform so
that you can hit the ground running and get the most from your platform
and sales team is key.
- Look to Customize: Most marketing automation platforms will have
a plethora of out-of-the-box functions, such as sales alerts and lead
scoring which can dramatically improve a traditional sales process but are
even more effective when you customise these even further.
Having a deep understanding of your industry, specifically your
clients purchasing needs will allow you to tailor these functions to your own
brilliant needs. Creating customised rules to fit your audience will also
allow your sales teams to better target your prospects and marketing
to create more bespoke content.
- Pick a front-runner. Buy-in from Sales is key to the success of
marketing automation. By picking a high-performing sales rep and educating
them about the benefits of the platform from a sales-perspective you can
leverage their kudos to ensure the rest of your sales team understand how
it can help reps save time, identify qualified leads and allow for a more
targeted approach. Hopefully this will encourage a more rapid uptake
of the technology but also more effective usage.
You may not be able to wave
a magic wand and change your sales and marketing processes overnight, but by
following the tips above, marketing automation can help transform your
marketing programs and re-frame the role of the marketer from a cost centre to a
revenue-driving, sales-collaborating winner!
