Vocus Marketing Automation Guide
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Transcript of Vocus Marketing Automation Guide
Do Marketing Automation Better\ guide
GET STARTED NOW AT VOCUS.COMGET VOCUS. VOCUS GETS BUSINESS.
Do Marketing Automation Better
Do Marketing Automation Better
Do Marketing Automation Better
The great promise of marketing automation is the ability to segment customer databases and customize
communications to produce better results. These communications are highly tailored and deliver more
conversions and better leads.
The statistics provide an interesting picture. Most companies realize a 10 percent or greater increase in
revenue in six to nine months, according to the Gartner Group. However, 85 percent of companies feel
like they are not using automation systems to the fullest potential, according to Research Underwriters
and Ascend2.
Earlier this year, industry analyst David Raab compared four marketing automation reports from analysts
Aberdeen, Gleanster, Schulze and Winsper, head-to-head. 1 The results were astounding, as you can see
from David’s chart below.
1 http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2013/10/which-b2b-marketing-automation-features.html
Almost every company is using email and some form of nurturing in its marketing automation solution.
After that, the drop is dramatic. Only a minority of companies use important automation tools like social
media interaction and web tracking.
Raab’s comparison shows that many companies treat marketing automation tools like glorified email
programs. To maximize marketing systems, companies need to go further, taking a strategic approach to
their customer ecosystem and the tools they use to communicate.
This Vocus guide offers productive tips for companies looking to maximize their marketing software
system. We’ll help you take a strategic approach, using ad tools to manage campaigns, deliver key
performance indicators (KPIs) and maximize return on investment (ROI).
Winsper Gleanster Aberdeen Schulze Average
Email 100 100 100 91 98
Nurture 80 63 93 79
Analytics 49 70 100 73
Landing Pages 53 65 88 82 72
Scoring 57 56 73 62
Web tracking 29 82 55
Social 14 47 30
Do Marketing Automation Better
Use Lead Paths to Put Outcomes First
Rather than simply saying “we want more conversions
from our emails,” companies should take a step back
and look at how a marketing solution can impact
their entire ecosystem.
To achieve ROI, most companies have to
build awareness, generate leads and quali-
fy them. Only then can they close. After the
sale, companies need to retain customers and
resolve customer needs with strong service.
The larger impact of marketing communications produces
a need for marketers to examine how automation touches all
of these functions. How can marketing software maximize
speed, efficiency and results? This is where starting with KPIs
and analytic dashboards can make a big difference.
Considerations for Marketers
Software and process can do seemingly mag-
ical things to optimize your marketing, but
you need to understand what you’re optimiz-
ing first. Understanding your Key Performance
Indicators – such as opens, likes, list growth,
website visits or simply leads generated– is
your first step.
Spend some time looking over your current
metrics and think about how you would use
them to optimize your marketing plan. What
can you measure? Social? Email? Web? What
will you use to determine the design and suc-
cess of your marketing?
Understand your KPIs and design a pro-
gram to maximize what is most import-
ant to you. Use your automation soft-
ware to design campaigns and drivers that
deliver the right message, at the right time,
to most effectively nurture and convert
your prospects.
- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.
#1 Begin your marketing automation system by building KPIs
and outcomes from the beginning, spanning the ecosystem.
To succeed with campaign management and KPIs you must
understand lead flow. You can’t create KPIs for a market-
ing automation system if you don’t know how leads come
into the system, by what means and how they successfully
become more interested and convert.
From Lead Paths to KPIs
When you can identify the components of the lead path, it
becomes possible to optimize individual pieces within the
marketing system and increase revenue.
Let’s build a hypothetical example to
illustrate our point.
An aerospace company uses
social media to attract potential
airplane buyers to its website. It
uses blogs and infographics to
keep people on the site, and white
papers and blogs to encourage
them to identify themselves as leads.
Because buying airplanes can take years
from initial interest through RFP to close, the
lead is not called when first identified. Instead, they enter a
nurturing system with specific types of email and content.
Only after they exhibit certain behaviors, such as register-
ing for a company trade show event or downloading specif-
ic information, does the lead receive a phone call.
If the aerospace company was only using marketing auto-
mation for email, it would not be able to analyze its larger
performance. However with systems like the Vocus Market-
ing Suite, it could do a lot more. A company can see how
individuals are interacting with it on social media channels
like Twitter and LinkedIn, and determine which of those
people visit the site and what types of content they prefer.
From there, the company can see how these social leads
identify themselves and convert.
This creates an opportunity to use the analytics dashboard to
measure specific components of the company’s marketing
ecosystem by using automation software.
#2
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Do Marketing Automation Better
Let’s say that LinkedIn leads identify themselves as plane
buyers faster than Twitter followers. Even more interesting,
they tend to buy jets for private corporate use. The company
decides to create specific content to share for this particu-
lar type of customer on LinkedIn, from updates and info-
graphics to webinars and nurturing emails. The company
can measure the following KPIs, among others:
O Increases in LinkedIn followers
O Click throughs from LinkedIn
O Leads who come from LinkedIn AND share the
company’s aerospace information on the network
O Webinar conversion based on the specialized
content
O Nurturing email open and click-through rates
O Speed of sales cycle (quicker to close?)
O Number of sales
Considerations for Marketers
KPIs are different for every marketer. For exam-
ple, the B2B aerospace scenario is very different
from B2C e-commerce. While leads arrive in
both through a similar path - either account cre-
ation or information submission - the type of en-
gagement is very different. Unlike the aerospace
marketer, the B2C marketer will immediately en-
gage, providing information (and maybe a spe-
cial offer) to close that business.
Using your analytics dashboards to under-
stand customer behavior will help improve
your strategy. To determine what KPIs are
important, start by segmenting your most suc-
cessful wins and looking at the commonalities.
Can you build a profile based on these? Where
did they come from? How did they engage
with you? What is their demographic profile?
Answer these questions to begin the building
a profile of your ideal customer – one that you
know you can market to successfully.
- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.
Empowering a Campaign Point of View
When you build out your marketing automation system,
you can label data points. This lets you build out personas
and qualify where someone is in the nurturing process
(think the old funnel metaphor).
Let your data drive your decision-making when someone
is ready to receive different types of content, and when they
should receive an email request to buy or a phone call.
You have worked hard to build custom lists
and databases. Let these tools do the work.
With a persona in mind and a clear
nurturing path based on data, you
can create campaigns.
For example, if you are a restaurant
chain, Valentine’s Day is one of your
busiest nights in Q1. You should build a
custom campaign for that night, integrat-
ed with your overall brand and sales initiatives.
Let’s say you’re trying to cater to buyers with a higher income
and a desire for healthier foods. Knowing that women usual-
ly determine menu choices in the house (93 percent, accord-
ing to she-conomy2), you could create a campaign that helps
men make their special ladies happy on their dinner date.
The campaign specifically targets married men, who are
more indoctrinated into the day-to-day routine of the
house’s diet. They know what their wives want.
If your team is advanced, you already collect data on which
customers have kids (offering special kids’ events and deals
is the way to capture this data). Now you can run two cam-
paigns: one to married men with kids and one without kids.
The campaigns both feature the same creative and con-
tent theme: Make Valentine’s Day Romantic, Delicious AND
Healthy. However, the campaign for fathers with kids offers
an extra discount to help pay for a babysitter.
Imagine the primary message, “Don’t get stuck in this Val-
entine’s Day; have a romantic healthy meal with your wife.
Let us help pay for the babysitter with this 25% off coupon.”
#3
2 http://www.she-conomy.com/facts-on-women
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Do Marketing Automation Better
The restaurant can execute the campaign in a variety of ways.
They can build the custom landing pages first. It may make
sense to have extra content about what makes a romantic
and healthy Valentine’s Day meal, capturing the company’s
ethos on the day. Another data-capturing call-to-action is a
sign-up for future holiday events and discounts.
From there, the restaurant can build a press release, blog
post, email campaigns and social network updates to bring
people into the site. They can nurture potential reservations
through value-added content and sign-ups for discounts,
and then of course, take reservations through the site. Their
social media manager responds to inquiries online, because
in today’s complex buying process, people have questions.
Because brands who deploy campaigns like this already
have KPIs and website tracking in place, they can compare
performance of individual tactics and the overall campaign
to their larger marketing efforts. This shows how efficien-
cies and automation produce better results.
Considerations for Marketers
The data you need to create a targeted cam-
paign must come from your customers. You
can acquire it with a variety of tactics, usually
involving a form.
You can include forms on landing pages, blogs
or your website. A good form is tailored to reflect
the page content and asks the prospect or cus-
tomer for relevant information (such as an
email address, phone number or demographic
information.)
Gathering too little information, such as
just an email address, reduces your abili-
ty to segment your lists and target your mar-
keting. Conversely, asking for too much in-
formation can discourage prospects from
completing your form. A great marketer
understands the balance between the need for
information and the need for prospects. Ulti-
mately, consider a central marketing automation
database to target your prospects with different
forms over time, gradually improving your data.
- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.
The Role of Content
Content plays a huge role in the marketing automation process.
First, from a smart press release to the right infographic,
content brings people to your site. Next, more advanced
content on your site encourages people to qualify them-
selves as potential leads. Finally, highly-specific, custom-
ized content nurtures leads until they close, and retains
existing customers.
Many brands only lightly customize their content for perso-
nas and scenarios. This is a mistake. With so much relying
on content, it pays to be particular about
creating specific pieces for the right
persona in the right situation.
If a marketing software sys-
tem were a power drill,
using generic content is
like using thread-bare
screws. Marketers need
highly customized con-
tent to succeed.
Let’s go back to our restau-
rant example. Perhaps 5 percent
of the upscale healthy restaurant’s
patrons are gay men. The restaurant
knows this, thanks to special incentives and
targeted campaigns to the gay and lesbian community.
But for whatever reason, the restaurant fails provide a
customized message to gay and lesbian patrons in its
Valentine’s Day campaign. Instead, it lumps gay men into
the general “men without kids” category, where the creative
says, “Take your special lady out on Valentine’s Day.” Now,
the gay men are offended. They feel marginalized. Ten per-
cent of them opt out of the list. Several complain online
about getting spammed.
Imagine the opposite approach, with a persona for the
GLBT segment. A similar email is sent, part of the overall
campaign, but inviting gay men and lesbians to bring their
partner in for a romantic healthy Valentine’s Day Dinner.
Sales to this constituency double compared to its 2013 fig-
ures. Precision pays.
#4
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Do Marketing Automation Better
The power of marketing automation lies in its ability to
create highly customized segments and touches, based on
your lead path. To realize its potential, you must create the
corresponding content for each persona and situation.
Considerations for Marketers
Building customer personas can be tedious but
it’s crucial to understanding your audience and
providing them with customized, quality content.
Keep the number of your personas manageable
to your business. Start with two or three, and
build out from there as necessary.
To begin a persona, identify the major char-
acteristics that define these groups of cus-
tomers and prospects. Start by thinking
about the ‘average’ in each group. What
is their profile? Are they typically male
or female? What is their average level of
education? What is their average income?
Where do they live? How does their day to day
life relate to your business? Answer these ques-
tions and build a succinct, bulleted profile that
can tell you, your writers and the rest of your
team in 90 seconds or less who the target of
your marketing is.
Use these personas to shape your content, and
improve your marketing and conversion!
- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.
Conclusions and Takeaways
When it comes to marketing systems and
automation, you have access to tools
that make your communications
more effective.
Intelligent building of KPIs and mea-
surable objectives based on your lead
path will empower your brand to do
more with its campaigns.
Remember that your campaigns revolve around the
personas you build and the specific lead path your cus-
tomers tend to follow. Always use custom-built preci-
sion content for your personas and scenarios to gener-
ate the business your company needs from its marketing
software solution.
About the Author
Geoff Livingston is the founder of Tenacity5 Media, a mar-
keting consultancy serving companies and nonprofits. He
has advised organizations including AT&T, Cox, eBay, Ford,
General Dynamics, Google, PayPal, Pepsi Co., Procter and
Gamble, SAIC, Verizon and Yum! Brands, as well as numer-
ous start-ups, mid-cap companies and nonprofits.
A former journalist, Geoff has authored four books. He pub-
lished his first novel Exodus in 2013, co-authored Marketing
in the Round and wrote the social media primer Welcome
to the Fifth Estate.
About Vocus
Marketing can be hard. To help you succeed and generate
more revenue, Vocus offers an integrated suite of the most
powerful tools you need.
We help you attract and engage prospects on social media,
search engines and in the news. We get your message in
front of the right prospects at the right time with tools, cus-
tomized landing pages and targeted emails.
Our suite includes a social CRM to manage the activity of
your prospects and customers, and integrated analytics to
discover what drives likes, shares, opens, click-throughs
and conversions.
With our marketing consulting and services team ready to
help, Vocus delivers marketing success.
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