Chapter 1
Introducing the Concepts of Marketing Automation
In This Chapter
Defining marketing automation
Defining the modern buyer
Knowing why companies implement marketing automation
Starting the conversation about marketing automation
Marketing automation is a buzzword in the marketing world. This chapter explains what it means and why marketing automation has made such a big difference in so many companies.
I show you what defines marketing automation and why itâs such a big deal. I list the major reasons that companies are implementing marketing automation solutions and show you how to start conversations about it at your company. I also dig into the changes in the modern buyer that have made marketing automation so popular.
Defining Marketing Automation
The term marketing automation got its start in the mid to late 1990s when a few people were combing their databases with automated code to make it easier to segment their databases into more granular segments based on more data. Since then, it has turned into a massive industry and has been called the fastest-growing software segment in the CRM space.
In short, marketing automation refers to the process of using a single platform for tracking leads, automating personal marketing activities, and being able to produce full closed-loop reports on the effectiveness of all marketing activities.
There are also many other ways to refer to the processes that marketing automation encompasses. Each company that sells marketing automation software calls it something slightly different, and even the analysts call it something different. Hereâs a list of terms you may hear in place of marketing automation:
- Demand generation
- Lead performance management
- Revenue performance management
- Automated lead management
- CRM lead management
Marketing automation (or whatever name you call it) really consists of three parts:
- The first is lead tracking, which consists of tracking a lead across all marketing channels.
- The second is automated execution, which enables you to have automated processes take place either as marketing campaigns or as internal changes based on these tracked actions.
- Finally, the third part allows for closed-loop reporting for proving the value of your marketing efforts down to every dollar those efforts bring in.
When thinking of marketing automation, many people may be confused, wondering whether itâs a technology or a way of marketing. Itâs actually both. Marketing automation is just as much a new way of marketing as it is a new tool that most companies have never used before. There are also many levels of marketing automation. Throughout this book, I cover all levels of marketing automation and show you how to implement the new technology while thinking about marketing in a new way.
Recognizing the Relationship Between Marketing Automation and Online Marketing
Marketers are running the majority of their campaigns online. This fact makes many marketing activities easier to execute and track but also adds a lot of technical challenges. Marketing automation and online marketing have a symbiotic relationship. Think of marketing automation as an extension of online marketing. It needs online marketing to work, just as online marketing is made more effective by marketing automation.
Online marketing usually consists of many different channels and types of campaigns. Here are the marketing campaigns that can be made more effective with marketing automation:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Marketing automation allows for the tracking of each keyword, and full closed-loop return on investment (ROI) reporting on every keyword.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Marketing automation provides full lead tracking so that you can see each person and every paid advertisement that person has engaged with.
- E-mail marketing: E-mail marketing changes with marketing automation because you donât have to send blast e-mails, which are individually executed marketing pieces not tied to other prospect interactions. With marketing automation, you gain the ability to execute automated, personalized lead-nurturing campaigns that may last for months and dynamically change based on peopleâs interactions with the emails they are receiving. So you move from a manual execution and scrubbing of lists to an automated campaign that can optimize itself for best results.
- Content marketing: Marketing automation gives you the ability to track every piece of content and see each person in your database who engages with your content.
- Trade shows: If you attend trade shows, marketing automation gives you the ability to track each lead from your booth and prove full ROI on each trade show.
- Social media: Tweets, blog posts, LinkedIn, Facebook, and all other social media channels can be tracked and reported on. So you can prove the ROI on social media down to the tweet and demonstrate how it influenced your last closed deal.
- Website: You can drive more value out of your website by knowing every page a prospect looks at, helping you to identify hot leads based on the prospectâs level of engagement with key pages.
Marketing to the Modern Buyer
A European study in 2013 noted that the average consumer is in front of a screen 12 hours a day. More than 294 billion e-mails are sent each day, and more than 2 million new blog posts go online every day. The Wall Street Journal reports that more than 42 percent of holiday shoppers in 2013 did their holiday shopping online. Clearly, with the amount of time people spend online, if youâre not online, youâre going to be left behind.
Most of this is not news to you. You probably have a website, an e-mail tool, and a Twitter account. You have started to blog and create content for your website. Youâve learned about the benefits of SEO and optimized your content for search results. The next sections explain how to engage with the modern buyer in more granular detail so that you can easily see how marketing automation helps you better engage online with your consumers.
Feeding the need for content
Content marketing has become another buzzword in the marketing world. It has sparked the New York Times bestselling book Youtility, by Jay Baer, and spawned new institutes such as the Content Marketing Institute. Content marketing even changed the way Googleâs algorithm ranks websites in natural searches. The Internet is now made up of content, and marketers are clued in. Weâre creating more content than ever before, and itâs because we have to.
Todayâs buyers want to get help and are looking to your company for that help â and they should be getting help from your content, too. This is one of the key messages Jay Baer puts forth in Youtility. Itâs also the message of Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute. Your content needs to be helpful to get people to engage with it, and you need to provide a lot of it, as well.
The need for all this content has put a strain on a marketerâs day and made distribution of content a massive problem. Marketing automation helps to solve a lot of this content problem by giving marketers an automated way to distribute their content and by opening up more time in their day to create more content instead of managing a database. The need for content isnât going away. Content is only getting more important, which means that the problem of distributing content, and following up with ...
