Searching for the best marketing automation product? If you’re on a budget, looking to accelerate revenue and improve your sales and marketing efficiency then you’ve landed in the right corner of the web. Differentiating one marketing automation product from another is a difficult task – which is most likely why you’re here, you’ve been researching solutions. Many vendors claim to have a marketing automation solution – when in reality, they don’t. They have a piece of the solution, such as the ability to send email campaigns.
A marketing automation solution is much more than that – including features such as lead scoring, lead nurturing and more. At Lead Liaison, we offer the highest return on your dollar by delivering a cost-effective solution, which we call revenue generation software. Additionally, we go above and beyond features in the typical marketing automation product by integrating sales automation, sales prospecting, real-time lead generation and inbound marketing into our platform.
Our platform has lots to offer; however, keep in mind it’s vital to identify your primary needs. Start with a marketing automation product that meets your primary needs and offers you an option to scale features/benefits as you grow. Contact lead liaison to hear more about a marketing automation product that delivers best-in-class ROI and helps business grow from small to large – dare I say “automatically”.
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Lauren Carlson of Software Advice recently published an article entitled New Skills Needed to Address Marketing Gap. Lauren, and others, made some interesting statements and we thought we’d share them with our readers. The statements describe necessary skills to address the marketing gap and underscore the growing importance of marketing’s role as the B2B buying landscape evolves. Below is a compilation of our favorite comments from her post. Feel free to read Lauren’s article for more insight on this subject.
“Marketing automation is more than a tool. It is a strategy.” – Lauren Carlson, Software Advice
“B2B organizations are losing upwards of 10 percent of revenue per year due to their inability to properly align sales and marketing around the right processes and technologies, according to IDC. To put that in perspective, that would be a $10 million loss for a $100 million company.” – Lauren Carlson, Software Advice
– Carlos Hidalgo, Executive Director of the Marketing Automation Institute
Marketers who define their job as filling the top of the funnel will not be successful with marketing automation software. Lead management has to be built on a strategy that focuses on managing the entire pipeline, not just one end of it. – Lauren Carlson, Software Advice
Learn how Lead Liaison can help you develop the necessary skills to keep pace with the changing B2B environment. Contact us today!
What’s your opinion on the necessary skills required to address the marketing gap?
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https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-08-30 12:28:382014-09-16 14:46:33Necessary Skills to Address the Marketing Gap
A recent study by Marketing Sherpa showed a breakdown of B2B marketing budgets in 2011. Frankly, I’m shocked to see how businesses are allocating their marketing dollars. I propose B2B marketing companies re-prioritize their budgets by re-allocating dollars from one marketing investment to another to produce a higher ROI and generate more revenue. Specifically, marketing investments in website design and trade shows should be decreased while marketing investments in social media, marketing automation and lead nurturing should be increased.
Increasing B2B Marketing Budgets
Marketers must recognize it’s a buyer’s world. More and more buyers conduct research online before ever contacting a vendor. The internet-era changed the landscape of sales and marketing. Data sheets, white papers, webinars, blogs, forums, public profiles, employees, competitors and more can be researched without ever picking up the phone. It’s the same concept as in the B2C world when consumers buy a car. Case in point, Polk and Autotrader.com conducted a survey of 4,005 U.S. consumers and found 71% of those surveyed conducted research online before buying their car.
The same process applies to the B2B world. More than 80% of B2B buyers research the internet for answers about products and services before calling a sales rep. With the proliferation of mobile phones and tablets this percentage will surely rise. B2B marketers have got to be in the right place at the right time (social media), monitor/listen to buyer’s behavior (marketing automation) and engage prospective buyers (lead nurturing). As the volume of online and/or digital activity increases, so does the opportunity to interact and engage with potential buyers. Lead nurturing helps B2B marketers create meaningful dialogue with prospects based on their research and interests. The net result of lead nurturing is stronger relationships and shorter sales cycles as prospects will keep you top of mind through consistent and on-target communications. For these reasons B2B marketing budgets should include social media, lead nurturing and marketing automation as a high priority.
But, what if there’s no more money in the budget for these items? That’s an easy problem to solve. Reduce investments in website design and trade shows and re-appropriate the funds.
Decreasing B2B Marketing Budgets
Trade shows are generally a thing of the past and put pressure on B2B marketing budgets. We’re not implying you completely do away with trade shows; however, reduced investment should be considered. Trade shows are expensive and usually cost about $10,000 minimum just to get in the door. Do yourself a favor and analyze ROI from past trade shows. The easiest way to do this is to look at past sales wins and identify if the lead came from a trade show. If you can’t tie revenue to your trade show investments they’re not worth it. Although, attending a trade show might help prospects recognize your brand/image; sometimes you’ve just got to show up. My advice is to pick a few select trade shows that you must attend and get an exhibitor pass for the others.
As for website design, I encourage B2B companies consider moving their website into a content management system (CMS) such as Drupal or WordPress. These tools have very professional off-the-shelf themes and several plug-ins for search engine optimization, blog authoring and more. You might spend a little more up front to change your site but its well worth it over time. Many of the processes which you rely on 3rd parties for can be automated and you’ll have more control over your content and of course, reduce costs.
Take your money saved from trade shows and website development and invest in social media, lead nurturing and marketing automation.
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If you’re thinking marketing automation is only for big businesses, think again. Marketing automation for small companies is available now. Historically, micro, small and medium sized businesses (typically <= $5M in sales) couldn’t afford marketing automation systems. It used to be a requirement to spend six figures on a professional program. With the introduction of scalable features and pricing in software packages such as Lead Liaison’s, small companies can benefit from marketing automation.
Putting economics aside, let’s discuss why marketing automation for small companies is advantageous. Most small companies share many of the same problems. For example, they
• need more leads • have limited sales and marketing resources • need to understand their market and audience better • have fairly primitive marketing processes
Marketing automation for small companies will help a business appear larger than they actually are by automating marketing processes such as email marketing, drip nurturing, lead response, lead follow up and more. Small companies also benefit from marketing automation through automated lead qualification technology. Marketing automation what leads are interested in by tracking search words, pages viewed and place a score on the lead (lead scoring) to help prioritize hot leads for sales. Systems such as Lead Liaison also include unique “Buy Signals”. Buy Signals are triggered when prospects and/or customers express certain conditions indicative of a potential sale. Here are a few additional reasons why marketing automation for small companies is ideal:
1. Capturing leads via lead capture technology – creates a new source of leads, vital for any small business. 2. Closed loop email marketing – helps an organization raise awareness of their solutions and boosts brand awareness. A “closed loop” alerts sales of leads that are genuinely interested saving precious time with trade show or webinar follow up. 3. Building relationships with customers and prospects via lead nurturing – automates sending of relevant and personalized communication based on your prospect’s interests. 4. Know how leads find your site – connecting search words and page views with a visiting website company via lead tracking. 5. Consolidated activity into a single repository via CRM integration.
If you’re in search of marketing automation for small companies look no further and reach out to Lead Liaison. We’d love to help.
Are you a small company using marketing automation? If yes, how has marketing automation helped you?
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https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-08-16 09:36:332014-09-16 14:52:20Marketing Automation for Small Companies
This is the final article on our blog series related to marketing automation obstacles. The last obstacle has to do with challenges inside an organization. Unfortunately, dealing with corporate politics is something we all have to go through. Politics are not as “thick” with small companies vs. large companies; however, it still persists to a certain degree. When it comes to having a hyper-efficient sales and marketing process, one political barrier that must be removed is communication between head of sales and head of marketing. It’s important to remove politics for marketing automation success.
Sales and marketing alignment is a vital component of a successful business. Although creating alignment is priority number one, maintaining alignment is equally important. Sales must work with marketing on demand creation activities to help create, qualify and nurture leads. After all, sales is good at selling, but they can’t sell if they have no one to sell too. That’s where marketing steps in. Marketing creates leads and sales closes them. Marketing must be equipped with the right marketing content, lead management technology and lead nurturing solutions to meet the demands of any sales organization. At Lead Liaison, we take sales and marketing alignment seriously; so serious that we’ve created a contract between our sales and marketing teams. The contract, or Service Level Agreement (SLA), gets our teams on common ground – providing them with a framework for common definitions, metrics and responsibilities. Let us know if you’d like a copy of it. As mentioned above, alignment is the first step and maintaining alignment is the second step. Make sure you have periodic meetings to review progress against your desired goals. Also, have a set of common/shared goals that benefit both teams and leverage the core competencies of each respectively. Matt Smith, Executive VP and Co-Founder of 3forward, noted there are four shared metrics for sales and marketing to follow to align their efforts.
1. Mutually define a sales-ready lead 2. Decide how many sales-ready leads must be created each month 3. Set a shared target % for how many sales-ready leads convert to qualified pipeline opportunities 4. Agree on the target % for how many qualified opportunities become new wins
What are the political barriers you face between your sales and marketing teams? How have you been able to remove politics for marketing automation success?
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https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-08-08 15:32:192014-09-16 14:59:25Remove Politics for Marketing Automation Success
Last month we wrote an article on the size of the marketing automation market. A couple weeks after writing the article we picked up David Raab’s article on “B2B Marketing Automation Industry Size and Segments”. David’s post presented some interesting data on the marketing automation market worth summarizing as a follow up to our last post on the industry.
The report shed some light on how many clients per company type are using marketing automation. Company type was split up into four categories using revenue ranges, defined below:
Micro business: Under $5M in revenue
Small business: $5M – $20M in revenue
Mid-size business: $20M – $500M in revenue
Large business: $500M+ in revenue
The report then estimates annual revenue of the marketing automation market for each segment, yielding $257.5M in annual revenue, which comes very close to our estimate of $200M in last month’s post. David’s estimate does not include smaller marketing automation vendors as well as B2C marketing automation vendors. When these vendors are included, the marketing automation market is around $325M in annual revenue.
Here’s a breakdown of estimated revenue per company type:
Company Type
Customers
Revenue/Client/Yr
Annual Revenue
% Total
Micro business
11,917
$3,600
$42.9M
17%
Small business
2,848
$12,000
$34.2M
13%
Mid-size business
3,609
$30,000
$108.3M
42%
Large business
1,203
$60,000
$72.2M
28%
Total
19,557
$26,400 (Average)
$257.5M
100%
Experts typically estimate about 2% to 5% of all businesses use marketing automation technology. Interestingly, actual penetration may be lower than that – particularly very small businesses (<$20M in revenue). It’s estimated that less than 1% of all micro and small businesses use marketing automation technology, which presents a huge opportunity for these businesses to grow and gain a competitive advantage in the market place. Using data from Manta about the number of companies in each revenue range we can estimate approximately half of all businesses are a candidate/fit for marketing automation. Based on this data we can estimate the footprint of the marketing automation market relative to the TAM (total available market).
Segment
Companies
TAM
Customers
% Total
Micro business
2,991,627
1,500,000
11,917
0.8%
Small business
645,121
320,000
2,848
0.9%
Mid-size business
237,130
120,000
3,609
3.0%
Large business
9,245
4,500
1,203
26.7%
Growth potential in the marketing automation market is huge. Micro and small businesses outside the manufacturing and high tech industries (current adopters) stand to gain the most. Lead Liaison uses marketing automation technology as part of our Revenue Generation Software. If you’re a business looking to adopt marketing automation below are a few additional resources to help:
Risk of not using revenue generation software
Revenue generation for marketers
Revenue generation for sales
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Earlier this week we published a blog post entitled “marketing automation challenges – avoiding status quo”. Our second post in the marketing automation challenges series covers new marketing technology. The primary challenge marketer’s face in adopting new marketing technology is lack of awareness. Marketers need to know that new marketing technology exists that represents today’s minimum marketing requirements.
Let’s begin by comparing old marketing technology with new marketing technology. The marketer using old marketing technology feels their “batch and blast” email program works just fine. They use the email program to send the same email bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or bi-annually to their entire database. They track opens and clicks to measure campaign effectiveness. Sadly, they feel this is adequate.
Conversely, the modern marketer uses new marketing technology to communicate with prospects and customers. The modern marketer uses marketing segmentation and sends tailored email communications to related groups within their database on behalf of sales (appearing to come from the sales person). They schedule a series of relevant email communications and track how recipients respond and interact over time. They setup optimized landing pages and use lead tracking technology for lead capture. Finally, their new marketing technology automatically qualifies leads for sales and alerts sales when a hot lead is ready to buy.
Additionally, the modern marketer integrates newsletters, testimonials, content libraries, events and more into their company’s website and uses landing pages and other opt-in strategies to grow a segmented database.
Are you a marketer using old or new marketing technology? Below is a table that further compares old marketing technology to new marketing technology. Lead Liaison provides new marketing technology that transforms Flinstone marketers into Jetson marketers. Please ping us if you’re still in the Flinstone era!
Comparing Old to New Marketing Technology:
Old Marketing Technology
New Marketing Technology
“Batch and blast” email marketing tool
Intelligent, closed-loop email marketing
Communication to a single database of contacts
Ability to quickly and easily segment database by various parameters such as demographics, company information and interests
Leave contacts that have hard bounces in their database
Marks the contact as “graveyard” status and/or adds “email opt-out” automatically to the record
Automatically opt-in contacts to their batch and blast email
Uses landing pages, web forms, email campaigns and email client plug-ins to opt-in contacts
Manually pull reports to count opens and link click through
Real-time updates of whose interested and when. Tracks current and future page views to build a prospect profile and prepare sales
Subjectively qualifies leads
Uses automated lead scoring technology to find only the hottest leads ready to speak with sales
Uses google analytics to measure website traffic
Uses real-time lead tracking technology to identify businesses and people visiting your site
Relies on web forms to capture information
Uses real-time lead tracking technology to capture web form submissions as well as general website visits
Has no way of auto-responding to leads
Uses intelligent automated campaigns to send relevant, personalized and automatic email communications based on a prospects interaction with your website and marketing content
Consults a web master or IT group to build a landing page or web form
Marketers do it themselves using PowerPoint-like tools to visually build web forms and landing pages in minutes
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Matt Smith, Executive VP and Co-Founder of 3forward, recently published an article on the MASG blog highlighting four roadblocks of marketing automation. Over the next few weeks we’ll issue four blog posts related to each obstacle. Each post will summarize the individual marketing automation challenges, include color commentary and provide additional recommendations.
Our first post pertains to Matt’s marketing automation challenge, “afraid of the water”. Here’s the premise; if companies maintain sales and marketing status quo and fail to keep up with new technology and process enhancements then they prohibit change. Most of the time change is good. I’ve always said the biggest risk is not knowing what your risk is. If your company seems to be off in their own world thinking their marketing processes and technology are just fine – to be blunt – it’s a bit ignorant.
In the post-Google and high tech era (year 2000 and beyond) change is inevitable. For example, sales and marketing processes have changed considerably. Buyers no longer opt to contact the vendor as their first step. Instead, they research solutions online and only contact the vendor when they’re ready. Check out our posts on B2B Buying Process and B2B Buyers to see how the sales and marketing landscape has changed. A growing number of businesses are adopting marketing automation or revenue generation software as we like to put it, to foster advancement and change in their sales and marketing processes. Revenue generation software increases leads, improves organizational efficiency, and produces higher quality leads. The benefits aren’t limited to these three things either. For example, revenue generation software provides vendors with valuable insight into a potential buyer’s interests and online behavior prior to vendor contact. For more information on how revenue generation helps marketers and sales click here: revenue generation for marketers, revenue generation for sales.
Before adopting marketing automation platforms companies need to avoid ignorance and embrace education. Matt recommends educating the entire C-Team on the new sales and marketing 2.0 environment (how marketing and sales should work together, what is marketing automation, how buyer’s buy, etc.). Once executives are up to speed it’s time to implement a plan. Matt suggests the head of marketing and sales mutually build a demand generation program. Finally, Matt suggests the CMO and CEO ask the rest of the organization to stay out of the way. Marketing will have their hands full adapting to sales and marketing 2.0.
Its clear avoiding status quo is a major obstacle to overcome when adopting marketing automation. Lead Liaison can help your organization get an education and design a plan. We can provide you with a complementary overview of the changing sales and marketing landscape and give you and/or your team an education on marketing automation. We also have a template to help you build and define your demand generation program. The template is called a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is a contractual-style document between sales and marketing teams for sales and marketing teams. The SLA provides a framework for a company’s entire lead management process.
Feel free to contact us if you think Lead Liaison can help your company avoid status quo in route to adopting marketing automation and revenue generation solutions.
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https://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.png00Lead Liaisonhttps://www.leadliaison.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lead-Liaison-Logo5.pngLead Liaison2011-07-11 13:35:512014-09-16 15:34:50Marketing Automation Challenges – Avoiding Status Quo
Considering more than 60,000 companies have deployed CRM solutions, yet less than 4,000 are using marketing automation tools (7%), the marketing automation market size is poised for growth. Venture capitalists realize this opportunity as they’ve invested over $396 million in marketing automation vendors since 1998.
Although marketing automation is ripe for growth, two factors impede the marketing automation market size from exploding – awareness and confusion. For example, the term “marketing automation” alone is confusing. Marketing automation is really just a small feature that’s part of a broader revenue generation platform. It’s a disservice to businesses to name a solution after a feature. What marketer wants to automate their job? If they did, there would be no reason for the market to have a job in the first place! Another challenge is the level of feature adoption. Some companies claim to use marketing automation when in actuality they’re only using email marketing or landing page optimization features. As evidenced by the 7% figure above, lack of awareness also stunts growth. Limited adoption and confusion over what marketing automation really is makes it difficult to gauge exactly how big the marketing automation market size is.
Despite all the confusion, we can focus on a few simple facts to better understand the marketing automation market size.
Here are the data points that serve as the foundation for our calculation:
Experts estimate 2% to 5% of all B2B firms use marketing automation
Top four vendors (less Aprimo and Unica) attribute $141M in sales.
Forrester estimates 2 to 5% of all business to business firms use marketing automation. Conversely, Jonathan Block of Sirius Decisions estimated adoption of marketing automation platforms at about 18%. In our experiences, we find this estimate bold and a bit aggressive. It’s realistic to believe Jonathan is referring to an 18% growth rate, which might be a wash with the number of new business startups added to the calculation. Since Forrester’s estimate represents market penetration, not growth, we’ll use their data to calculate marketing automation market size.
Using a penetration rate of 5% means 95% of all business to business companies do not have a solution. To calculate market size, let’s go a level deeper and look at historical sales of marketing automation software. Last year the top six companies in the industry made $321M in sales. Two of the six companies are Aprimo and Unica, both of which have been acquired by large enterprises (Teradata and IBM respectively). Removing Teradata and IBM from the marketing automation market size calculation gives us $141M in sales from the top four companies. Approximately another 20 companies round up the space. Let’s conservatively estimate that each of these 20 vendors generate $3M in revenue. That’s another $60M in sales, totaling $200M in sales of marketing automation software.
In summary, we can conclude the marketing automation market size is about $200M in revenue comprised of about 25 vendors.
With the marketing automation market size at $200M with 5% penetration (best case) there’s plenty of growth opportunity for vendors and businesses.
Opportunity for Vendors
To calculate the marketing automation market potential for vendors we can assume there’s $3.8B in available revenue (5% x $4B = $200M) worldwide.
Opportunity for Businesses
For businesses, marketing automation platforms enable a well planned lead generation and lead management process that helps them connect with customers at the right point in buying process. The net benefit is higher quality leads sent to sales while sales cycles are accelerated – driving more revenue for the business.
However, implementing workflow and business process tools require a time investment. Proper strategic planning and organizational alignment will enhance the value of marketing automation. Avoid making the mistake of using a marketing automation platform purely as an expensive e-mail marketing system.
See how you can prepare your people and process for marketing automation capabilities by creating a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Click the link to get started.
How big do you think the marketing automation market size is? What barriers stand in the way of accelerated growth of marketing automation?
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Are you considering a free marketing automation system to power your sales and marketing efforts? In this article we’ll present ideas for consideration to help you make an educated decision.
Background on Free Marketing Automation
Free marketing automation systems were created as a way to “shake up” the industry. Some analysts and commentators have speculated a free marketing automation strategy was created as a “Hail Mary Pass” when no other business models were working. If this is true, it probably means the company providing free marketing automation could be struggling. It’s worthwhile to consider whether or not you want to place your bets on a struggling company who may not be around after a while.
When researching the few companies providing free marketing automation look closely at the restrictions. My momma once told me “son, nothing in life is free”. One vendor clearly puts an asterisk next to “fully functional…account” and suggests reading the full terms and conditions. Without a doubt, offering a purely free marketing automation system is not a sustainable business model for the vendor. The marketing automation vendor’s sole purpose is to get you to upgrade and pay. That means limiting things like number of contacts, users, emails per month, page views per month and more. If you’re okay using a restricted version and have no plans to exceed these limitations then free marketing automation might be a good approach.
A Product, Not a Solution
Analysts have pointed out that a free marketing automation solution benefits the industry, not the customer. It creates more exposure and awareness of the capabilities and power of marketing automation; however, it doesn’t benefit the customer as the product is not the entire solution.
For this reason, probably the single most important item to consider with marketing automation is that it’s not an off the shelf solution and a technology anyone can just pick up and start using. It’s a high-value, strategic solution that requires long term commitment. Marketing automation should be a core strategy engrained in a company’s sales and marketing DNA.
Unfortunately, free marketing automation systems are typically a technology play only. The truth is, technology is only part of the equation. To be successful with marketing automation companies must choose the right vendor who can provide support, training and consultation, which isn’t free. Integrating, using, applying and adopting a free marketing automation system certainly will have its price without proper support, training and consultation. Make sure to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a free marketing automation system.
Other Items for Consideration
Will “Free” attract the wrong people and inundate a system with spam emails thereby affecting other accounts?
What happens when you need to upgrade? Will pricing change or go up?
Will community support be good enough for you?
Is it worthwhile to save money up front when it could cost you in the long run?
Are you a “one-man-shop” or do you have plans for growth and will you need help?
We found a quote from one of the leading analysts in the marketing automation space, Jep Castelein of LeadSloth, which sums this up:
If your company is looking to adopt Marketing Automation, count on paying for your Marketing Automation system. Either you will go over the limits of the free version, or you will require support. Instead of focusing on free or cheap, choose a vendor that you trust, that best meets your requirements, and that provides excellent support. – Jep Castelein, LeadSloth
At Lead Liaison, we consider marketing automation as a feature, not a solution. Our revenue generation software ties together sales prospecting, marketing automation and lead generation capabilities combined with best-in-breed support, training and consultation to help grow your company’s revenue. We look forward to hearing from you and getting the opportunity to work with you.
What’s your feedback on free marketing automation systems? We would love to hear it.
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