Well, that’s a great question and we’ve got answers! It’s us, Lead Liaison. It’s been interesting to see Marketo evolve over the past few years. They started providing analytics on pay per click ads along with a few other basic marketing tools. They’ve grown to a public company with multiple products in their suite. They’re a great company and industry leader, don’t get us wrong. But they might be overkill for your business.
When a prospect of ours contacted us we found they were using Marketo. They’re considering switching as they’ve wondered if Marketo is “more horse than they need”. Well, this happens. As companies grow, especially really quickly, they tend to pile on features and capabilities and often times lose track of the essence of what people need. With this prospect, they cared about the following services:
They’ve been paying Marketo upwards of $40,000 per year and I’m sure much more on top of that for support and implementation services. When we showed them Lead Liaison we quickly got their attention. We were checking the box in all these areas and were able to show them innovative capabilities that simplified their sales and marketing operations. Best of all, at about a 45% cost savings. Marketo wants your business, and they want a lot of it. They’ve got to meet Wall Streets demands so they need those big sales. Lead Liaison wants to meet your demands, not Wall Street’s, through customer satisfaction.
Our platform is small business friendly and enterprise ready. We’re hungry for new customers and ready to respond when people ask, “Who are Marketo’s Competitors?”. Give us a chance to show you what we’ve got. We want to win you over.
Alex Williams of TechCrunch reports that as of the end of Q4 in 2012, Marketo was at a deficit of about $82.2 million. [1] The $75 million IPO obviously won’t relieve Marketo of all that debt, but it will do one thing: position them for new growth and marketing.
In the fast-paced business world of grow-often-grow-more, big companies like Marketo recognize the inherent potential of automation marketing and are ready to take it as global as possible. The Marketo IPO will give the company funding to better compete with Oracle and other larger cloud solutions who are getting involved in the marketing automation game. However, there are some downsides to the Marketo IPO filing – and you should be aware of them.
Getting Too Big for Their Britches
In many cases, an IPO filing of this size could hint at Marketo’s desire to set itself up for acquisition. Popular articles out in the blogosphere speculate that this buyout would come from Marketo’s partner company, Salesforce. Clearly Marketo would be a great buy for Salesforce and a win-win for everyone involved – right?
Not necessarily. In previous articles, we’ve discussed how Marketo’s out-of-the-box solution becomes less user friendly later in the process when a client wants to explore Marketo’s full marketing automation functions. If you think Marketo is only going to get more user-friendly when it’s bought out by another company, you might want to think again.
Acquisitions – or growth of any kind – aren’t always necessarily the best answer for a service’s customer base. If you need a good example of this, take a look at Ooma Telo. (www.ooma.com). A popular internet telephone service, Ooma’s growth has forced them to make the kind of overseas customer service strides and policy enforcement that can end up being very painful for customers.
You may find that after the Marketo IPO, you’re paying the same money for Marketo services – ensuring they can use your money to pay the bills – while the new funds are put toward getting new customers instead of servicing existing ones.
Going with a Smaller Company
It’s not that brands like Lead Liaison aren’t positioning for growth – it’s that we’re growing, quarter to quarter. We’re interested in profitability and accountability – not in making business investments while we’re still in the red. These types of investments could guarantee that not only will you get crummy service – you’ll be without a marketing automation solution when the company goes belly up. Worse, if the company does start to fold, a competitor could buy it out for cheap – and where would that leave you, the customer?
This is why at Lead Liaison, we’re growing comfortably and at the best pace for our clients. We don’t spend money we don’t have – we are positioning ourselves for the future so that we can adequately care for current and new customers. This is our absolute top priority. Marketo is losing money fast, and we’re gaining. We aim to keep it that way – and we won’t make far reaching decisions that could possibly affect you just to corner the market. It’s about customers from top to bottom.
To find out more about how Lead Liaison is 100% committed to serving you first and foremost, contact us for a free consultation today.
Marketo is everywhere you look and there are a lot of good things about them. For one, their aim is to on board new clients to an advanced marketing automation suite fairly quickly so businesses don’t waste valuable lead tracking time. They do this well with their quick start program – giving small to large businesses the tools necessary to begin scoring leads and creating customized email segmenting out of even complex marketing campaigns.
Is Marketo awesome? Absolutely. The question isn’t so much whether or not their marketing automation programs are good for businesses – it’s their growth, and how their recognition in the industry affects the service they’re able to give. What about Marketo and customer follow through, what can we learn?
Marketing Automation Systems: Making the Decision
There are a lot of competitors out there with lead management and CMS integration capabilities. What sets them apart isn’t necessarily the advanced suite of analytics or their tech offerings – it’s how comfortable customers get with the idea of marketing automation, a concept that’s difficult to prove necessary to customers in the first place.
Once customers see how assessing the quality of their leads from inquiry to purchase can be beneficial, they’re hooked. It doesn’t end there – great marketing automation is all about ensuring that once customers are with you, the tracking is in place to know how to shape your services to better accommodate your client’s needs. This is what great customer service is all about – meeting the customer on their level, not the other way around.
Marketo Reviews
One of the most frequent complaints you’ll find about Marketo on popular review websites is the lack of support after the on-boarding process. Marketo is great at giving you all the tools you need to launch and understand their simple interface, but some sources suggest you’ll need to hook up with Marketo’s marketing partners to get hands-on training for using the more robust features of Marketo. This can be frustrating for customers who want to use consulting for on-site services or get specific answers to questions about how to best ingrate their lead tracking software and use it over time.
Marketo is not an out-of-the-box solution for all companies. If you don’t have a tech person on hand, you may find it difficult to hook all your advertising platforms up to Marketo or your CRM. Another problem with Marketo – and many marketing automation software platforms in general – is that once many companies set up email and other initial connections and start tracking and scoring, they use only the bottom level data they get from the marketing automation software and never explore its full capabilities.
Lead Liaison is Different
Marketing automation software companies are growing – and fast. We are, too. Month after month we see an influx of new customers. The difference is, marketing automation companies that are growing often focus on initial installation with their customers, then never revisit the account – or don’t revisit in a timely fashion – to let customers know how marketing automation software can make their businesses better. These aren’t conversations you should have with your clients only in the beginning. Both marketing automation companies and their customers should commit to bettering the way we track our businesses by fostering conversations about how businesses can better use advanced marketing automation features.
When you work with Lead Liaison, you’ll find a company that is growing and investing in itself – but isn’t going to jump ship on you once you make that initial payment. We seek relevant conversations with customers about how we can better their businesses over time – not just in the beginning.
We’d love to get to know you! For more information on Lead Liaison marketing automation systems and how to get the level of attention you deserve throughout your marketing automation journey, contact us today!
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 Liaison2013-04-10 10:00:392014-09-15 12:03:24Marketo and Customer Follow Through: What Can We Learn?
