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Interview with Brian Hansford: 5 Tips on Lead Nurturing for the Complex Sale

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Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

Z47 Note:  This interview originally appeared in Manticore Technology’s Funnel Focus blog.  We have posted here as well.

In the B2B market, long, complex sales cycles come with the territory and can last anywhere from 6 months to 3 years. Therefore, lead nurturing is a critical part of many organizations’ sales processes. In the Lead Nurturing Cookbook, we offer a recipe for building long-term lead nurturing processes marketers can implement using their marketing automation platform. Brian Hansford, Founder and CEO of Zephyr 47, an agency that specializes in helping organizations implement and improve their lead management processes, participated as an “Guest Chef” on this recipe offering marketers advice on how to successfully execute a long-term lead nurturing program.

I caught up with Brian and asked him to expand on the insight he offers in the Cookbook and help you understand what factors are important to consider when building a long-term lead nurturing program.

In an extended lead nurturing program where you might be engaging with buyers six months to a year before they are sales-ready, how do you ensure they are getting the right message, at the right time?

I like Rules of 3 when tackling an opportunity. There are three factors to help B2B marketers effectively engage with prospective buyers over an extended period and win the business.  First, develop the profiles of the buyersand influencers involved in the buying process. Profiles or personas are incredibly important in lead nurturing success because they will help steer content and lead management. These profiles should outline the roles, responsibilities, points of pain, and messages that prospective buyers care about.

Secondly, develop a content strategy that provides the information for these contacts at the various stages of buying process.  The buyer personas will help focus a content strategy on the right audience with the right information. In addition to the content focus, the content strategy should identify the channels to publish and serve the content. A buying process begins when buyers research the problems and the solutions, transitioning to vendor evaluation, purchase decision, decision validation, and ongoing loyalty. As buyers move further into their process, marketing automation solutions help marketers provide the right information to the right people over a given period of time.

Thirdly, B2B marketers should have their lead management strategy.  This takes into account the workflow, contact cadence, campaign themes, and definitions that move leads through the buying process and a qualified handoff to Sales.  Marketing automation systems integrated with a CRM solution are very important and enable this entire lead nurturing process.

What are some mistakes you’ve seen b2b marketers make in building a long-term nurturing program?

Many B2B marketers fly blind with their lead nurturing because of inadequate or poorly developed content. Actually, I think many still follow more of the old ‘drip marketing’ model where every database contact gets peppered with the same content at random intervals.  Here we are in 2011 and I still get unfocused and irrelevant emails, calls and offers from various B2B companies!

Marketers must think long-term and cater nurture programs to potential and existing customers based on their stage in the buying process, their role, the need, and the timeframe. The spray and pray scattergun approach just doesn’t work anymore. Just as important as nurturing new business opportunities, B2B marketers should nurture their existing customers! This entire process requires heavy lifting in analyzing data, speaking with customers to profile what information helps them, testing campaigns, and involving Sales in the nurturing process.

Companies with extended product lines can improve nurturing performance with targeted messaging, relevant content and offers.  Providing the same content in a random fashion for all potential contacts misses the mark.

A study by Gartner states that 45% of leads that enter your website will purchase from either you or a competitor within 12 months. What can b2b marketers do to help ensure these leads purchase from them not their competitors?

Statistics like Gartner’s show there are amazing opportunities for B2B marketers to engage buyers and drive revenue. B2B marketers can use marketing automation solutions to engage the gold in ‘Gartner’s 45%’ and minimize the risk of lost sales to competitors. Lead nurturing strategies that engage prospective buyers with content, timing, and workflow provide a tremendous competitive advantage.  Just increasing the number of sales of those 45% can have a dramatic and incremental positive impact on revenue.

I may sound repetitive, but my message is consistent!  A lead management and content strategy that helps B2B marketers engage prospective buyers with the right content at the right time can cause a dramatic increase in conversions. B2B marketers cannot solely rely on capturing contact information and sending random forms of content irrelevant to the recipient and sending generic messages solely through email. Nurturing with lead scoring provide focus and help deliver marketing qualified leads to Sales that should have an accelerated decision cycle. Without the nurturing by Marketing and Sales, supported by a marketing automation platform, the competition will win.

How does marketing automation help you track where leads are in their buying cycle and how should this impact your content offerings?

In my corporate experience and with clients now, I have seen time and again how marketing automation solutions enable B2B marketers to track activity-based behavior and user-provided information to help score prospective buyers as leads, or not. From there, leads can be guided through a nurturing process where the ultimate benefit is a shortened sales cycle and accelerated revenue generation. This is done by following a strategy that involves scoring leads and escalating them to Sales at the right time, based on previously agreed definitions.  Scoring models implemented with marketing automation platforms are critical in helping B2B marketers deliver and serve the right content through the right channels at the right time. The beauty of this entire process is how Sales can be involved by serving content and passing leads back to Marketing for further nurturing if needed.

Marketing automation solutions enable nurturing programs by providing the right content to prospective buyers based on their scores which determine where they are in their buying process.  Content throughout the nurturing process includes detailed white papers, case studies, performance tests, RFPs, entertaining videos, product demos, and more. Marketing automation solutions like Manticore enable the entire process of serving this content to the right people at the right time. B2B marketers will achieve strong conversion and revenue results with rich content that effectively addresses each stage of a buying process, delivered through multiple channels and formats.

In creating lead nurturing programs, one of the biggest challenges marketers face is creating enough valuable content. What are some techniques for repurposing existing content effectively?

This has to be one of the biggest areas of pain that I saw both in my corporate life and with clients or companies in the B2B realm. So many organizations struggle with this and it’s an ongoing battle to produce relevant, interesting content.

There are all kinds of different forms of content that can be targeted to audiences, depending on where they are in their buying cycle. It’s not just the job of the marketing manager to create all the content. All organizations is have subject matter expert in some area within their four walls that can help produce some content.

It’s important to look past just the marketing manager and the product manager. Maybe there’s a sales rep or an engineer that can provide expertise on a subject, which could then be turned into a three-paragraph blog, for example.

A technique that we’ve used successfully is actually working with partners to develop content, and jointly publishing offerings. If you have a channel organization, recruit their subject expertise to develop content.

There may already be even an existing library of content that can be updated or repurposed, or refreshed.  Just because a white paper is three years old doesn’t always mean that it’s outdated. Many times they can be updated and refreshed pretty easily, and you can repurpose and incorporate them into some campaigns.

Categories : Demand Generation, Lead Definition, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Manticore Technology, Marketing Automation, Uncategorized
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12 Sources of Marketing Automation Content You’ve Already Written

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Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
Ed. Note - We are honored to have Matt Heinz provide this content for our Zephyr 47 Expert Blog Series.  Matt is a recognized leader, author, and speaker on demand generation and sales acceleration.

12 Sources of Marketing Automation Content You’ve Already Written

Matt Heinz with Heinz Marketing

No matter how you’re approaching marketing automation strategies, the single-biggest hurdle for most organizations isn’t the software or the process or the sorting of prospects.  It’s the content.

Effective marketing automation requires a constant stream of relevant, engaging and new content to work.  That content needs to speak to current and prospective customer needs, well beyond what you’re directly selling.

For most organizations, this hurdle keeps them from implementing marketing automation programs and reaping the benefits.  But I’d argue that those same organizations have already written most of the content they need to get started.

Below are 12 sources of content you already have.  I’m guessing there are far more in your unique organization, but these should get you started.

Speeches & Presentations

You probably have a ton of these.  Some may be primarily a set of slides, but there are (or were) talking points behind those.  Check the “notes” section of your PowerPoint decks for pre-written copy.  Avoid product-centric presentations and look instead of for places where you’ve shared a vision, or shared best practices and market expertise.

Customer Service Calls

Every day, you’re helping your customers become more successful.  Every day, your front-line reps are hearing not just specific requests but context – where the problem came from, what it’s solving, what else is affecting the customer’s day and decisions.  Much of this is ripe for translating into customer-centric marketing automation content.  If your customer service team is regularly logging customer service calls in a CRM system, that’s a gold mine for content.

Discussion Forum Topics & Contributors

There’s no rule that says your content needs to be completely self-generated.  If you regularly read or participate in customer discussion forums, find those who like to write the most and have the most to say.  Take snippets of their content and ask permission to use it in your marketing.  If positioned right, they’ll likely be excited you’ve chosen them and will help promote the republished content for you to other prospective customers.

Your Vendors & Suppliers

They’re addressing the same target audient and market, and many of them will have content as well.  Tell them you want to help promote their brand and services via your marketing channels, and all you need is some of their pre-written content.

Customer Blogs & Newsletters

Why not feature other customers directly?  Or even prospects?  Helping prospective customers get access to the insights and expertise of their peers is a great way to fill your marketing channels with quality content, most of which is pre-written and ready to go.  This is also a great way to build deeper relationships with those current customers, and potentially get access to their blogs, newsletters and channels to reach additional prospects down the road.

Trade Press

I don’t know about you, but I rarely have enough time to keep up with all of the trade publications I want to read.  If someone could do the reading for me, and feature the best, most relevant articles for me, I’d be grateful.  That’s your opportunity as well by publishing a regular “In The News” section as part of your marketing content.  Third-party news is also a great way to feature more relevant content in Twitter and other social channel feeds.

Written Responses to Customer Questions

Do you have a database of pre-written responses to customer questions?  Is your customer service team writing custom responses to customers on a daily basis?  Many of these are going to be tactical and not relevant to a wider audience, but you don’t need more than a couple good pieces a day to have a steady flow of great, already-written content that needs just some copyediting before it can be republished elsewhere.

Training Materials

How to use the product isn’t your best bet, but how often are you teaching your customers about broader themes and topics?  If you’re selling marketing automation software, for example, your training probably includes basic overviews of how marketing automation works.  Best practices from other clients.  How marketing automation fits into a broader sales pipeline strategy.  These topics and more are likely already written and packaged elsewhere in your organization.   Find them.

White Papers, Buying Guides & Other Lead Generation Assets

If you’ve been marketing your product or service for awhile, you probably have lead generation offer assets that aren’t active anymore.  White papers, presentations, buying guides – tools you perhaps don’t perform optimally from a response-rate standpoint but might be perfect to fill marketing automation content channels.

Sales Scripts

Your sales team has a ton of these.  Different customer types, different industries, different approaches.  These will likely need a bit more editing to be appropriate for a marketing channel, but the hard work of originating content will have already been done.

Case Studies

If your case-studies are written from a customer point of view, with your product or service as the enabler of a broader set of success achieved, these can be great.  They’re proof of concept for what you’re doing in the field.

What other sources of content have you found around your business, already written or near ready to go?

About The Author

Matt Heinz is a national speaker and author, and his most recent book is Successful Selling. He is President of Heinz Marketing Inc, a Seattle area Marketing Agency focusing on Sales Acceleration. Matt’s career has focused on delivering measurable results for his employers and clients in the way of greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty.

Categories : Content, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Expert Guest Blog, Marketing Automation
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5 Steps to Take Before Buying a Marketing Automation Solution

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Monday, April 25th, 2011

Zephyr 47′s Brian Hansford recently wrote this blog for Matt Heinz with Heinz Marketing.

5 Steps to Take before Buying a Marketing Automation Solution

Marketing automation follows the trends similar to the early stages of other business automation technologies including Customer Relationship Management to Supply Chain Management to the pre-Web 1.0 era of client-server development projects before that. All those technologies were promised to solve problems, make jobs easier, and generate revenue.

But even today, the successful utilization of CRM solutions is low, regardless of current SaaS services and technologies. Michael Krigsman, CEO of Asuret, Inc., reports 47% of CRM implementations in 2009 are judged as failures. The good news is marketing executives can learn from the mistakes and best practices of predecessor systems in business automation. Marketing is generally the last department in an organization to automate business processes and faces many of the same challenges other departments and functions faced.

However, DemandGen Report quotes Jonathan Block, Sirius Decisions, estimating that the success rate for companies adopting marketing automation is approximately 18%. When used primarily as an email engine, adoption is “probably more than 50% (DemandGen Report, October 5, 2010). There are many reasons for partial utilization or outright failure and system abandonment. Most of the issues come from people – simple as that. Don’t let this be your company!

When executed well, marketing automation platforms enable a well planned demand generation and lead management process and help organizations connect with customers at the right point in buying process.  Higher quality leads are sent to sales with sales cycles that are accelerated which drive more revenue.  However, implementing workflow and business process tools are difficult. Proper strategic planning and organizational mobilization can greatly enhance the value and revenue driven by a marketing automation platform.  Don’t make the mistake of using a marketing automation platform purely as an expensive e-mail marketing system. Here are 5 steps to follow before buying a marketing automation solution.

  1. Secure Executive Sponsorship

Any successful business strategy requires executive sponsorship, support, and even enforcement and marketing automation initiatives are no exception. Marketing automation impacts an entire enterprise and these champions are critical because they help mobilize the hearts and minds of people across the organization.  To get the CEO and CFO on board, you will need to explain the “why”—the business case for a marketing automation initiative. This is the time for executives and marketing managers to focus strategically on how to directly grow revenue through sophisticated and measurable demand generation. Build the business case that shows how marketing automation drives revenue.

2. Develop a Demand Generation Strategy and Lead Management Process

Before even beginning to evaluate marketing automation solutions, the marketing and sales managers must develop an initial demand generation strategy and lead management workflow. Every organization will do things differently and the better defined the demand generation strategy with supporting lead management process, the greater the chance of success using the right marketing automation system.

A marketing team won’t flip a switch and magically have a funnel of highly qualified leads instantly flowing into the sales department. The workflow should identify where inquiries come from and how they move through a buying cycle and different treatments. A well planned marketing automation implementation can cultivate or nurture these leads to a point and then hand off to sales for direct follow up. The process should map how campaigns will support the required flow of qualified lead flow which ultimately leads to revenue generation. The strategy provides the direction and vision which will be supported by the rights tools and people.

3. Establish a Collaboration Channel and Service Level Agreement with Sales

Before a marketing team even engages in an automation solution evaluation, the sales management team should be involved along with the support of the executive sponsor. Marketing automation enables new levels of revenue generation by helping develop high-quality leads more efficiently, while preventing funnel leakage.  Marketing has the fantastic opportunity to hold themselves and sales accountable for revenue generation.  Collaboration and buy-in from sales management is a critical success factor. This step should also include coming to agreement, as much as possible, on what a “marketing qualified lead” is and the expectations, or service level agreement, by which sales will contact those leads and track opportunities or pass back to marketing for nurturing.

4. Test and Evaluate the CRM Integration

Generating high quality leads without a systematic way to hand them off to sales is pointless.  Cloud-based CRM systems like Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM are prolific and many marketing automation systems provide efficient technology integrations with most of the major CRM players. This is where organizations derive massive value from the advanced heavy lifting of developing a lead management process.  To be clear, this step is not as easy as mapping fields. The process must be in place at least 80% of the way for this to work. Sales management and the sales representatives must buy into the process. Sales must follow up on the marketing qualified leads and provide data back to help measure whether the right leads are flowing, or not.  Marketing automation integrated with CRM supports the full cycle of developing and managing leads and measuring effectiveness. Marketing executives can directly measure their performance on revenue generation. Both marketing and sales are held accountable with this integration, and that is good! This critical information must be captured within a CRM system.

5. Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy

Content is often the most overlooked and underestimated ingredient for a successful marketing automation strategy.  A well run marketing organization must have an annual campaign strategy and calendar, regardless of whether or not a marketing automation system is employed. Without a strategy and calendar, lead flow will be inconsistent and the content requirements will be unknown. Without content, the campaigns won’t get off the ground and the investment in marketing automation will be wasted.  Consider the content required to run campaigns for leads at various stages in the buying cycle. And from there additional content will be required to support nurturing campaigns that help prevent leakage in the marketing funnel. Depending on which industry in B2B marketing, there will be different individuals at a target company that will require content suited to their roles and influence. Develop the right content for the right audience to be delivered at the right time using a marketing automation platform.

Marketing automation platforms and solutions provide a powerful resource for organizations to drive revenue and strengthen customer relationships. The unstructured methods of activity-based marketing behavior are extinct—at least for those marketing executives who want to continue their careers and help organizations grow revenues. Marketing executives and Chief Marketing Officers must show how they will use their people, process, budget and technology to impact revenue cycles. Marketing automation solutions provide the foundation to accomplish this mission. Strong planning, preparation, process development, and creativity will greatly enhance the magnitude of success using marketing automation.  The 5 steps here are a great steps before buying the marketing automation solution.

Categories : Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Marketing Campaigns, Marketing Communications, SOSTAC, Strategic Marketing
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Manticore Technology delivers sophisticated marketing and sales capabilities through its certified platform ready Custom Connector to Microsoft Dynamics CRM

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Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Disclosure: Zephyr 47 is a partner with Manticore Technology. Manticore’s original announcement is available here.

AUSTIN, TX – April 20, 2011 – Manticore Technology™, the trusted provider of easy-to-use, powerful, marketing automation solutions for managing the marketing funnel, is now listed on the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace – a comprehensive marketplace for Dynamics customers interested in applications and services for Microsoft products – making it the first enterprise-class marketing automation solution available on the site.

Manticore Technology’s Dynamics CRM Custom Connector provides seamless data and process integration, giving CRM users visibility into marketing activities and associated lead response, all within the native Dynamics interface.

Key integration points between Manticore Technology and Microsoft Dynamics CRM include:

  • Bi-directional field sync – Real-time synchronization between lead and contact profile details, including unlimited custom field creation and mapping.
  • Online lead activity – Synchronization of website, email, search terms and form behavior, delivering insights to sales for increased efficiency.
  • Real-time list segmentation – Ability to segment database based on CRM Account, Contact, Lead and Opportunity fields without any mapping required increases targeted marketing campaign effectiveness
  • Campaign integration – Improved reporting through delivering lead nurturing and outbound marketing campaign integration directly into Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
  • Configurable integration parameters – Allows customers to decide how and when leads are transferred between systems for seamless execution of lead management processes.
  • Lead scoring – Synchronizes directly into custom fields in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, enabling prioritization of leads for sales follow-up.

“Interest in our Dynamics CRM integration is increasing dramatically—long-time Microsoft customers appreciate the integration depth that parallels what most marketing automation platforms have only made available to Salesforce.com,” says Stacey Steiger, Director of Product Management at Manticore Technology. “Likewise, existing Manticore customers considering a CRM switch are pleased to know that they won’t be forced to give up functionality or involve their IT department in costly customizations.”

Manticore launched its Customer Connector integration for Microsoft Dynamics CRM in late 2010 and has since been rapidly on-boarding customers.

About Manticore Technology

Manticore Technology is a leading SaaS marketing automation solution provider that enables marketers to effortlessly move sales prospects through the pipeline through demand generation, lead management, lead scoring, and lead nurturing, while feeding their sales team invaluable insight about the interests of each lead. Manticore Technology has enterprise customers around the globe, including, UPS, Sharebuilder 401(k) and Yamaha. For more information visit www.manticoretechnology.com or call 1-866-Manticore.

Categories : CRM, Manticore Technology, Marketing Automation, Microsoft Dynamics CRM
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Close the Loop – Integrate Marketing Automation with CRM

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Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
The following content is provided in our latest white paper: “Maximize Your Marketing Automation Investment” which includes 10 keys for success.  You can download the paper here.

Generating high quality leads without a systematic way to hand them off to sales is pointless.
Cloud-based CRM systems like Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 are prolific and many marketing automation systems provide efficient technology integrations with most of the major CRM players. This is where organizations derive massive value from the advanced heavy lifting of developing a lead management process.
To be clear, this step is not as easy as mapping fields. The process must be in place at least 80% of the way for this to work. Sales management and the sales representatives must buy into the process. Sales must follow up on the marketing qualified leads and provide data back to help measure whether the right leads are flowing, or not.
Marketing automation integrated with CRM supports the full cycle of developing and managing leads and measuring effectiveness. Marketing executives can directly measure their performance on revenue generation. Both marketing and sales are held accountable with this integration, and that is good! This critical information must be captured within a CRM system.

The lead funnel requires marketing automation integration with CRM.

Marketing automation systems that have the best integration with CRM systems allow for bi-directional information synchronization. A sales rep can add qualification or prospecting attributes to a lead in the CRM system and pass the lead back to marketing for further lead nurturing. Additionally, sales reps can add their own contacts into sales-led nurturing campaigns using a defined library of high value content that will help them progress the lead closer to a sale. Tight integration with bi-directional synchronization ensures these efforts are well coordinated.

A sales organization that has the training and methodology implemented with their teams to effectively utilize CRM has a competitive advantage. Without showing the interaction and behavior prior to sales engagement, a representative is essentially selling cold.

Categories : CRM, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, White Paper, workflow
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4 Pillars of Marketing Automation Success – Expert Guest Blog

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Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
Ed. Note: We are honored with the latest in our Zephyr 47 Expert Guest Blog series that delivers fantastic content on marketing automation, customer marketing, public relations, and content marketing.  Josh Stailey is our latest contributor from The Pursuit Group and he delivers practical advice for organizations looking to to succeed with a marketing automation initiative.  Josh Stailey is a founder and chief funnel strategist of The Pursuit Group, Inc., an Ohio-based company that provides turnkey Demand Generation services primarily for business-to-business enterprises.  Additional content on this subject is available in our latest white paper here.

The 4 Pillars to Marketing Automation Success

The right foundation can make or break your marketing automation initiative.

by Josh Stailey, The Pursuit Group, Inc.

To say that marketing automation is a key initiative for many companies this year is an understatement. “Not implementing a marketing automation solution may be the ultimate career limiting move for today’s marketers,” suggests global technology research company IDC.

Companies are acquiring marketing automation capabilities to maximize their ability to move prospects through extended sales cycles, and optimize their marketing and sales resources.

Unfortunately, many of those companies will focus on the technology and overlook the steps necessary to successfully launch and sustain a marketing automation program. A recent study showed that only a quarter of respondents get full value from their investment in marketing automation, results that parallel the early days of CRM implementations.

And that’s not good enough. Particularly when you consider that doing just a few things right will virtually guarantee a multiple of your investment in higher sales and more cost-effective marketing.

The Four Pillars of Marketing Automation Success

Getting marketing automation right starts with a wider definition than simply an investment in new technology. In fact, technology is just one leg of a four-pillar foundation: technology, process, content and connectivity.  Here’s an overview of the other three pillars:

  • Process is an efficient routine for every step and stage in the marketing/sales cycle; technology schedules and oversees the actions and reactions in a pre-designed workflow.
  • Content is the substance of every outbound and inbound communications between you and your prospects; technology houses and deploys the right communications at the right time.
  • Connectivity ensures that all possible touchpoints – e-mail, landing pages, each page on a website – are wired together; technology provides that complex, real-time interlink.

Neglect just one of these and your marketing automation system cannot deliver full value. Neglect more than one and your implementation is likely to fail.

Pre-Automation — Preparing for Technology

Prior to buying a marketing automation solution, or even looking for one, review your marketing/sales assets. Determine which of your assets can be integrated and which need to be revised or replaced. Here’s a beginning checklist:

1. Lists. You probably have more lists than you think. That’s par for the course in marketing and sales, where efforts are often dispersed, disjointed, or even dysfunctional. Where are the lists you have in each of these categories?

  • Leads. Most organizations get leads from a variety of sources: trade media, the company website, tradeshows, sales people, etc. Are yours organized with separate fields for first name, last name, phone, address? Do you have email addresses for your leads? What qualifying information do you have about them and is each information element in an individual field?
  • Prospects. Also known as qualified leads. Because most companies don’t have a nurture cycle for qualified-but-not-ready-to-buy prospects, these tend to be neglected, if not abandoned outright. What do you know about your interaction with them? These may be your greatest source for future sales…and the hardest to find in your current systems.
  • Customers. Because they often disappear from the marketing radar once they come on board, these will also be a major source of new marketing opportunity. What information do you have about them (revenue, purchase cycles, types of products, services, etc.) and their people? Is it organized effectively?
  • Don’t worry about what to do with these lists just yet. At this point, you need to know they’re there, and how to get them organized properly.

2. Links. Identify every place your company maintains a digital presence, as each will be a link that needs to be captured and poured into your marketing automation system. This is far more than the “contact us” page on your website:

  • Every single page on your website should be able to capture visitor activity, especially if you want to track individual online behavior and use that to automatically customize the next step in the process (e.g., send a particular type of content or alert a sales rep).  This is also necessary to add sophistication to any lead scoring system you create.
  • Landing pages from various campaigns should be trackable, as well as the web browsing done after.
  • Web forms, where visitors register to download white papers or other information. These are perfect tools for automated data capture.
  • Emails, including corporate campaigns and the ones your sales reps run on their own.

Chances are, your company has dozens, if not hundreds, of links to identify and move into the marketing automation system.

3. Content. Thanks to the Web and Google, buyers today want at least part of their connection to you to be electronic, web-based and self serve. Which makes content the fuel that keeps the marketing automation engine running.

Most companies have a ton of content that can be sliced up, repurposed and repackaged in a way that prospects want to absorb throughout their buying cycle. So expect to assemble lots of articles, reviews, independent tests, white papers, configurators, technical sheets and the like. And that’s just for your website for reading or downloading.

Then add in:

  • E-mails and attachments for long-term nurture campaigns.  This is likely to be a surprisingly long list…think one contact every two weeks for a buying cycle that extends over 18 months and branches by segmentation.  That’s 35-40 different e-mails, plus customization for each segment, plus attachments.  It adds up.

Landing pages, preferably by segment, product line, campaign and offer, plus any other variables.

  • Videos and presentations
  • Social media posts, including company and individual blogs
  • So inventory your content. In our experience, more companies underestimate the content they will need to create or repurpose than any other of the marketing automation “pillars.” This sales-nurture content will be the hardest to acquire or create…and the most valuable in your future nurture cycles.

4. Workflow. This is the sharp edge of process, the way you get marketing automation to integrate links, lists and content into a coherent selling cycle. Leading vendors have built robust workflow creation tools into their software, and good workflow strategists can leverage internal resources twenty-fold with automated – instead of manual – steps in the cycle.

Your pre-technology challenge is to audit your current workflows (if you have them), or, if not, to document how marketing goes about acquiring, qualifying and nurturing leads, and what criteria they use to determine when a lead is ready to turn over to sales. A good way to do that is by using flowcharting and process mapping to show how a lead moves through your funnel and becomes a customer (or not).

Here’s a high-level workflow sample:



Sample Marketing Automation Workflow - Courtesy The Pursuit Group

The boxes represent activities you take in marketing to leads and prospects: sending e-mails, creating landing pages and webforms, loading and making content available via links. The diamonds represent the options that a targeted lead or prospect has…opening an e-mail (or not), visiting a landing page (or not), completing and submitting a webform (or not), etc. Each of those yes/no decisions yields new boxes in the workflow, which yields new decisions. And so on, until the target buys, opts out, or you decide that enough is enough. For your salespeople, the most important boxes in a workflow are the notifications or alerts, when the prospect is ready to buy and needs person-to-person contact.

The marketing automation system you select is capable of integrating this seething mass of people, process and content into a unified, effective nurture marketing flow. But only if you tell it to. And in order to do that, you need to go through all four pillars to assemble what you have, and identify what you need.

This is not meant to be discouraging. But it’s easy to underestimate what it takes to design, provision and implement an effective automated nurture process. And while marketing automation can yield enormous return on investment, there’s no magic potion that makes it easy.

Josh Stailey is a founder and chief funnel strategist of The Pursuit Group, Inc., an Ohio-based company that provides turnkey Demand Generation services primarily for business-to-business enterprises.  He can be reached via email at jstailey@thepursuitgroup.com, or at 866-4-PURSUE.

Categories : Campaign Workflow, Content Marketing, email, Email Marketing, Expert Guest Blog, Josh Stailey, Marketing Automation, Pursuit Group, workflow
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Content Marketing Strategy – Fuel for Marketing Automation Success

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Monday, April 11th, 2011

Ed. Note: The following content and nine additional tips for marketing automation success are available in our latest white paper.  You can download the paper here.

Content is often the most overlooked and underestimated ingredient for a successful marketing automation strategy. A well run marketing organization must have an annual campaign strategy and calendar, regardless of whether or not a marketing automation system is employed. Without a strategy and calendar, lead flow will be inconsistent and the content requirements will be unknown. Without content, the campaigns won’t get off the ground and the investment in marketing automation will be wasted.
Consider the content required to run campaigns for leads at various stages in the buying cycle. And from there additional content will be required to support nurturing campaigns that help prevent leakage in the marketing funnel. Depending on which industry in B2B marketing, there will be different individuals at a target company that will require content suited to their roles and influence. Develop the right content for the right audience to be delivered at the right time using a marketing automation platform.

Educational Content—Information designed to help prospective customers better understand the segment and solution. Well developed content that educates also establishes credibility. Industry reports, webinars, keynote event presentations, blogs, social media user groups, and white papers are excellent formats for educational content.

Awareness Content— As prospective customers become more educated on the segment and solutions they will evaluate how vendors address their needs. In addition to the formats used with educational content, customer evidence through case studies is fantastic in this area. Also, content that focuses on “how-to” or “best-practices” is a perfect fit in this area.

Affirmation Content— As leads are nurtured into opportunities for sales follow up, they need information that helps lead them to a confident purchase decision. This is the area where vendors can define the terms of an evaluation that competitors must follow. Develop an RFP model or template. Provide more case studies and best practices. ROI models are also valuable and help develop a business case. The goal here is to build confidence that YOU are the right one to work with.

Loyalty Content— The sale has been won but now is not the time for complacency. Develop the content and delivery channels that help your hard-earned customers squeeze every drop of value from your solution. The more value you provide with strong communications and content, the stronger the relationship and the less chance of a defection.

Not all content is created equally. Make sure the right content is provided to your customers and leads at the right time in their buying process. When done properly using marketing automation, you will build credibility, awareness, and set the standard your competition must react to in order to keep up. That’s a position of strength!

Categories : Content, Content Marketing, Content Publishing, Content Strategies, Marketing Automation
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7 Must-Have Lead Nurturing Recipes for B2B Marketers – Focus.com Marketing Expert Roundtable:

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Friday, March 11th, 2011

Zephyr 47′s Brian Hansford is honored to participate in a Focus Marketing Roundtable March 18.

Join us for our roundtable teleconference on March 18th, 2011 at 1pm PT/ 4pm ET with Ardath Albee, Brian Hansford, Craig Rosenberg, Emily Mayfield, Jeff Erramouspe, Michael Damphousse, and Tibor Shanto where we will discuss ingredients, techniques and timing b2b marketers need to effectively execute lead nurturing programs.
Based on Manticore Technology’s Lead Nurturing Cookbook,  we will share our “recipes” for creating proven-effective nurturing programs that B2B marketers can implement in real-world scenarios.
Topics Include:
1)    What 3 basic ingredients you need to successfully build and implement a lead nurturing process
2)    The optimal number and timing of touches for different types of lead nurturing processes
3)    How to integrate human touch points into lead nurturing and maximize call-connect rates
To follow the conversation and to submit your own questions use keyword FocusMarketingRT on Focus.com and #FocusRT on Twitter.
Moderator
  • Emily Mayfield, Director of Marketing, Manticore Technology
Panelists
  • Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist, Marketing Interactions Inc.
  • Brian Hansford, President, Zephyr 47
  • Craig Rosenberg, Leader, Focus Expert Network, Focus.com
  • Jeff Erramouspe, President, Manticore Technology
  • Michael Damphousse, CEO/CMO, Green Leads
  • Tibor Shanto, Sales/Marketing, Renbor Sales Solutions, Inc.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION HERE

Categories : Brian Hansford, Demand Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Manticore Technology
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White Paper – 10 Keys to Maximize your Investment in Marketing Automation

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Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Zephyr 47 has published a new white paper to help organizations maximize their investment in marketing automation.

The white paper is FREE and you can DOWNLOAD HERE

Maximize Your Marketing Automation Investment

Don’t make the mistake of using a marketing automation platform purely as an expensive e-mail marketing system. Follow these ten keys outlined by the marketing automation experts from Zephyr 47 to get the most from your purchase to drive more revenue and be a strategic hero for your business.

10 keys to success are provided in this 2011 white paper, including:

  • Executive Sponsorship
  • Metrics that show impact to revenue
  • Training
  • Content marketing
  • Demand generation strategy
  • Data management and integrity
  • And more!

DOWNLOAD HERE


More Information on Zephyr 47′s Marketing Automation Services

Categories : Content Marketing, Content Publishing, Marketing Automation, Strategic Marketing
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With Marketing Automation – Analyze the Data that Impacts Revenue

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Monday, February 28th, 2011
Marketing automation platforms help marketing professionals identify revenue opportunities based on interactions and behaviors with a prospective company. Using the right metrics in demand generation will show how a marketing automation strategy drives revenue and connects with customers.

Find the right data on the dials to measure marketing performance

With companies adopting Web 1.0 technologies in the 1990’s and the Internet reaching the masses, marketers struggled to learn how to measure their impact to the business.  Email marketing reached a fever pitch with the promise of promoting e-commerce Web sites to consumers and businesses in the New Economy. Marketing teams still measure bullet point items like click-thrus, impressions, open rates, number of site visitors, and more. Even senior-level marketing executives could not connect the path between these activity metrics and impact to revenue.  Even today marketing managers and executives just look for higher activity numbers – more site visitors, more webinar attendees, more tradeshow leads and on. This type of analytical behavior places higher values on quantity over quality.

Now it’s more important to have higher quality leads that are ready for sales to engage versus a bucket of thousands of contact names with no identified or qualified interest. Marketing automation can help marketers identify the campaigns that produce the highest quality leads that generate the most revenue with the lowest cost.  This informational is powerful and empowering.

Here are some general examples of data to analyze and build the complete picture of how a marketing automation strategy impacts revenue.
1. Inquiry conversions – Measure conversion performance from initial contact through nurturing, opportunity, win/loss.
2. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) – Leads that meet agreed on qualification criteria that move to sales for further qualification and prospecting
3. Sales Qualified Leads – Track the percentage of MQLs that develop into Sales Qualified Leads. Also track the percentage of leads that sales disqualifies.
4. Sales follow up – Track the percentage of MQLs that are contacted by sales
5. Fallout – Track the percentage of leads that drop out of each stage of the marketing funnel and sales cycle. Identify opportunities to minimize dropoff
6. Conversion to Revenue – What is the overall picture of revenue generation from demand generation. Revenue per month, quarter, year.
7. Revenue per Campaign – Analysis that combines qualitative and quantitative analysis. Too often the old school method of direct marketing permeates marketing that more is better. Revenue per campaign may show the most effective campaigns produce the fewest number of leads. But, those leads may produce the highest revenue.
8. Cost per Campaign – Again, the lowest cost campaign may produce the highest revenue or highest volume of qualified leads.
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Using Web 1.0 metrics will focus on incomplete data and miss the whole story a strategic marketing function needs to tell. The list above provides ideas on the metrics to analyze to determine impact to revenue and the overall support of strategic marketing objectives. Focus on combining the quantitative data with qualitative over a period of time.~
Additional Resources

Categories : Demand Generation, Key Performance Indicators, Lead Management, Marketing Automation, Strategic Marketing
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“Here at Isilon, we have a growing dependence upon and sophistication with our marketing automation solution and its integration with CRM to support global marketing campaigns. Zephyr47 has provided us with high quality, timely and affordable program support, enabling us to expand both the type and number of digital marketing programs launched concurrently.”
~ Michael Korch, Sr. Marketing Operations Manager, Isilon Systems a division of EMC

“Zephyr 47 is a great resource to augment our in-house marketing staff. They have developed concise messaging, targeted outreach programs and professional marketing material. I would highly recommend Zephyr 47 based on their commitment to produce deliverables on time and budget and the quality of their work.”

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