Let’s talk B2B marketing. And MarTech tools. And connecting Sales and Marketing. Are you running yet? For many businesses, these terms alone are enough to send everyone heading for the hills. Go ahead and complicate the matter future by sprinkling on some B2B rules, restrictions, and compliance standards. Still with me? While uncomfortable for some, the ones who succeed recognize this challenge and know there is an answer.
Digital Transformation is a major movement for businesses large and small right now. B2B businesses are finding specifically cloud, automation, and advanced capabilities for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to be extremely beneficial. As new features are conceptualized and developed, a simplified experience seems forlornly far off in the distance, a dream only the lucky ones catch.
Well, wake up! In this article, we discuss tools to help align content with the buyer’s journey, questions to ask when speaking “MarTech” with IT (and how to build a game plan around your findings!), reasons why marketing automation is making B2B marketers across the world happy, what a lead scoring model is — and how to set yours up, and the value in creating meaningful connections with prospects and customers at scale. If you’re still reading, congratulations! You either don’t scare easily or are committed to finding the best processes for Sales and Marketing success for your business. (We like to assume the latter.) Let’s get started!
4 Things We Can Learn From B2B Marketers Using Marketing Automation
The advancement of tools, channels, and techniques means the role of the marketer is more technologically complicated now than ever. While this evolution is discouraging to some, smart marketers see how this transformation helps develop better quality leads by bridging the gap between Sales and Marketing and helps measure the direct impact of each effort on the overall business.
Below are a couple of highlights other marketers have cited as the key takeaways from their marketing automation journey.
Marketing Automation is a marathon, not a sprint
“Start simple, build confidence, and trust in the new approach, then layer on sophistication over time.” Use the data provided by your marketing technology to prove ROI at all steps of the Marketing Automation journey.
The right people with the right skills (and tools) are essential
“These are the people who can give meaning to your reports and organize your data for compliance and better targeting. They’re essential if you’re to communicate the value of your program to the rest of your business.” To have a well-oiled machine, you have to build it.
Concerned with compliance? Collaboration will help.
“Though it will lead to more work, GDPR compliance will actually help B2B marketers do a lot of the customer-centric things they’ve been planning to do anyway.”
See more reasons B2B marketers are using Marketing Automation and the last takeaway in the article below.
https://www.pardot.com/blog/4-things-can-learn-b2b-marketers-using-marketing-automation/
5 Steps to Creating an Effective Scoring Model
Questions: What piece of content has brought in the most sales? Where was this piece of content consumed in the buyer’s journey? If you can’t answer these questions, how are you supposed to know its true value as it relates to sales? And the age-old question: HOW DO YOU MEASURE CONTENT MARKETING ROI?!
Answers: First of all, take a deep breath and stop yelling at yourself. The answer is relatively simple: use tools to help measure the effectiveness of your content. A lead score applies a meaning to the data you are (hopefully) already collecting, providing a gauge for how interested someone might be in your product or service. Maybe it’s been consumed a lot but never results in a conversion; marketing technology helps you identify that is top-funnel content, so you know when and where to serve it. Have a highly specific guide that rarely gets downloaded but always is part of the buying decision, especially at the end? With marketing technology, you can make that association and feed that guide to the customer right when they need to see it.
Once you have a baseline scoring model for your marketing assets in place, you can start identifying what content your customers need to see and when. Use the instructions in the article below to create an effective scoring model to prove the effectiveness and ROI of your Marketing team.
https://www.pardot.com/blog/5-steps-creating-effective-scoring-model/
Why Integrated Marketing and Sales Tech is Critical for B2B Growth
We all know the closer Sales and Marketing work, the higher the profitability. One might argue the secret to success is the ability to share data, specifically around the buyer’s journey. In addition, having access to each other’s data can help Sales and Marketing overcome challenges and save time when quick answers are needed.
If you are trying to make a case for Digital Transformation in your business, this article highlights the key facts needed to prove a case for Sales and Marketing automation. Here’s one example of how sharing data of the buyer’s journey can have a critical outcome:
“Marketing can’t launch any account-specific campaigns unless they know which accounts sales wants to pursue, and Sales can’t ride the coattails of a good ABM campaign unless they take cues from Marketing. Running these campaigns from an integrated platform and sharing account-based scorecards can make all the difference.
“Marketing Automation and CRM platforms are two of the most important systems that, when integrated, can support this kind of collaboration and goal alignment, but they aren’t the only options.” Read more about your options in the article below.
https://www.pardot.com/blog/integrated-marketing-sales-tech-critical-b2b-growth/
Maximizing Your Marketing Automation Platform: Creating a Pardot Roadmap
What happens when Marketing, Sales, and IT walk into a conference room? [Insert your own punchline here] Jokes aside, this is the perfect team to talk Marketing Automation.
Determine your objectives by asking these questions
“Why is your organization interested in Marketing Automation? Is it to provide better leads for Sales teams? Is it for your Marketing to better help manage the relationship with clients? Is to get a better grasp on ROI?”
Identify foundational activities
“Once you have your objective outlined, review the people, processes, and technologies you need in place. You’ll need to pick an administrator . . . and make sure Sales, Marketing, and IT agree on what each role is supposed to do and at what step.”
See the other phases of the process in the article below — then go out and define your own!
https://www.pardot.com/blog/maximizing-marketing-automation-platform-creating-pardot-roadmap/
Marketing Automation and Your Account-Based Marketing Strategy
Do you want to build more meaningful connections with prospects and tighter customer relationships? One of the reasons why Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has become one of the most valued strategies in B2B marketing, strongly due to increased functionality within automation marketing tools.
When Marketing and Sales work together best, automation helps scale your lead management process. Here are step-by-step instructions how you can use Pardot to target multiple accounts instead of just individual prospects, allowing more opportunity for connecting (which, in most cases, increases ROI).
https://www.pardot.com/blog/marketing-automation-account-based-marketing-strategy/
Are you concerned with your marketing? In addition to skilled professionals that work with Marketing Cloud, our digital agency is the team we turn to first. Check out Perficient Digital here. (BONUS: They have A TON of additional marketing content in their blog!)
