- A PUBLICATION OF LEDGEVIEW PARTNERS-

HARNESSING

THE POWER OF

MARKETING

AUTOMATION4 STRATEGIES TO UNLEASH THE POWER OF

YOUR MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Intro

Marketing Strategy & Buyer

Personas Development

Website Strategy

Lead Management Strategies

Success Metrics

Conclusion

1

2

3

4

Harnessing The Power

Of

Marketing Automation

INTRODUCTION

4

The Power of Marketing

AutomationIf you are new to Marketing Automation systems you may be a bit

overwhelmed by the feature set available to you and you may be

wondering where you should begin. Or maybe you have been using the

email functionality in your Marketing Automation tool but you are

unsure where to begin with the rest of the features. Marketing

Automation is a very powerful tool and we are going to look at ways to

unleash the power of the system to enhance you marketing strategy.

There are several Marketing Automation tools to choose from and some of the

names you may be familiar with like Act-On, HubSpot, Pardot and Marketo. If you are a

Microsoft Dynamics CRM user, you may also be familiar with the ClickDimensions tool

that can only be used within Dynamics CRM. They all provide a platform that is

intended to help you manage and successfully execute your marketing strategies.

INTRODUCTION

5

Think about Marketing Automation like a All-Inclusive Resort. If you have ever been to an

All-Inclusive resort, it’s great because it includes your airfare, lodging, food and drinks….no

worries about needing to go off location for a meal or have your wallet with you while you are

out. It’s all included. Marketing Automation is somewhat similar as it includes all (or most of)

the tools in one package that you need to execute your Marketing Strategy. With Marketing

Automation, you no longer need to purchase an email package and another package for social

and another one for web tracking, etc. It’s all nicely put together for you in one package!

This eBook will focus on four key areas to help you harness the power of a Marketing

Automation “package”. We will focus on ways to help you to increase traffic to your digital

assets and then covert those visitors to leads, nurture those leads and eventually convert them

to sales. Because, let’s be honest, not only do we want to show the ROI of our Marketing

Automation tool but we want to ultimately help our organizations by increasing sales! Let’s

take a closer look.

Marketing Strategy &

Buyer Persona

Development

CHAPTER ONE

1

7

Marketing Strategy &

Persona Development

The first step in any good Marketing Strategy is first starting with

defining who you are targeting and what strategy you will be deploying

to reach those audiences. The same is true with your Marketing

Automation system. You now have an ample set of tools available to

you but the core marketing principles still apply and you need to truly

understand your audience in an effort to create a targeted, personalized

message to your defined customer segments.

In setting that strategy, it’s more

important than ever to have a

keen awareness of the stages

that your prospects go through

as they move along your sales

funnel. Think about your

different customer segments. Do

you know what information and

what answers they are looking

for during each of these buying

stages? What information is

relevant to them when they first

encounter your company versus

when they have moved further

down the funnel and are

considering a purchase?

You would, or should be, talking to the prospect in different ways depending on the stage

you find them in. Understanding this ahead of time, is critical in effectively deploying the

toolsets of your Marketing Automation system.

CHAPTER ONE

8

Through the adoption and execution of technology,

today’s marketer, has been given the opportunity to create

personalized experiences at scale. The execution of this

1:1 marketing will involve harnessing the power of two core

technologies – Marketing Automation and CRM.

Whether you already have those technologies in

place or are considering the adoption of these powerful

tools, there are three questions that are critical to answer in

developing a personalized marketing strategy even before

you touch the technology.

1. Who Are Your

Personalizing

For?

2. What Content/

Messaging Do

Your Want To

Position?

3. Where Will

You Use Your

Content?

Personalized Marketing

9

Three Key Questions To Ask When Creating Targeted

Communications

This is a critical step in the personalization process. You need to really know your

customer segments, understand the needs, wants and desires of each segment and also

understand what the sales triggers are for each segment to understand how they are

moving through the sales funnel and becoming “sales ready”. Why is this critical?

Understanding this will help you target the right messaging, the right content at the right

time to the right people.

9

Personalized Marketing

1. Who are you personalizing for?

After you have defined those segments, your next step is to determine what content

and messaging you want to position to each of your customer segments. Examples of

content include case studies, blogs, eBooks, events, videos, infographics, social posts,

product demos, webinars, etc.

The types of content that you should create will also be dictated by the industry in

which you serve and the customer you are reaching. Take a look at your customer

segments and create a chart that aligns content to each of the defined buying stages for

your product and/or service. This will be a good starting place to know what content you

currently have and what you will need to create to execute your personalization strategy.

2. What content/messaging do you want to

position?

Finally, the last “how” question to be answered in developing a personalization strategy is

the “where”. You have defined your customer segments, aligned content and now the next

piece of the puzzle is where will you use your content? Again, the “where” opportunities are

ample and just a few examples of areas where you can execute a personalization strategy

include email, landing pages, forms, social and web content. The most important thing here is,

once again, to know your audience and know where they want to engage. This is why question

#1 is so important. The segmentation of customers will help to define demographic as well as

behavioral attributes that will help to define where your customers seek and access information

so you can position accordingly.

Once you have answered these three critical questions, you can now begin to harness the

power of your Marketing Automation System and CRM System to create personalized marketing

experiences at scale.

3. Where will you use your content?

Website

Strategy

CHAPTER TWO

2

11

Website Strategy

Marketing Automation tools can help you to enhance your website

strategy. While not all Marketing Automation systems have the ability

to manage your web content some do have this feature. For those that

have it, one strategy that can be used to maintain a powerful website is

the use of personalized web content.

With personalized content you can deliver content specifically tailored to where a

prospect is at in the buying process, or content targeted to people the very first time

they visit. Personalized content lets you target content based on anything you know

about your contacts, for true relationship-driven marketing. Content can be tailored to

anonymous visitors based on their location, device, or referral source. Or, you can tailor

content to known visitors based on your marketing lists, or the contacts current buying

stage. By creating lists that recognize your different buying stages, you can customize

the content that people in each stage will see. Visitors see content personalized for

them. Not all marketing automation systems offer this but some do. If this is something

that is important to you check to see if your tool offers this or if your Content

Management System has this feature.

Another feature, is the use of Live Chat. Use live chat on your website so that

people visiting our site can quickly connect with you while they are on the site. While the

chat platform is not typically part of the Marketing Automation features set, you can use

web tracking to track visitors using the Live Chat tool. You can then trace this activity

as part of their buyers journey to understand if the use of the tool is a factor in the

conversion of a sale. If your audience seeks to communicate with you this way, give

them the option to do so!

CHAPTER 2

Create a Powerful Website Presence

12

Another strategy that

can be used is the use of

web tracking. Most

automation tools will offer

the ability to place a

tracking script on your

companies website. Once

this tracking script is in

place, you can then start

tracking your anonymous

visitors but also the web

activity of your prospects

and contacts. Use this web

activity to tailor content,

calls to action, etc. as you

learn more about the

activity of your visitors over

time.

Quick Fact

Businesses that personalize

web experiences see an

average 19% increase in

sales.

(MarketingProfs)

With your powerful website in place, you have built a great digital asset but now

it’s time to bring people to it. There are many strategies that can be used to push traffic

to your website but listed here are a few that can be executed as part of your Marketing

Automation tool box. Blogging, Social Media, Search Engine Optimization and Event

Management are all excellent tactics to drive traffic to your website and can be

accessed from within your Marketing Automation system. When executed, the goal of

each of these tactics should be to drive traffic to your website and then covert that

visitor to a lead for your company.

Generate More Traffic To Your Website

Lead Management

Strategies

CHAPTER THREE

3

14

Lead Management Strategies

This is where Marketing Automation really starts to shine. To convert

traffic to leads, you will want to utilize landing pages, forms, calls to

action (CTA’s), adopt a list segmentation strategy and use offers and

promotions to convert your website traffic into leads.

A lead or prospect, is considered

“converted” when an anonymous

visitor to your site fills out one of

your web forms or clicks on a link

in an email that they receive from

you. Including relevant Calls To

Action (CTA’s) on your website

that lead your visitors to a

conversion form, will be critical.

These call to actions should

again be relevant to the buying

stage the consumer is in.

Once you have captured a lead, your next step should be focusing on moving that lead

through your sales funnel. In marketing. you want to nurture that lead and ultimately

qualify it as a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and then send it off to sales. The tools

within your Marketing Automation system that will give you the power to do that include:

email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring and an integration to your CRM System.

CHAPTER THREE

15

The use of email marketing is a critical component

to a lead management strategy since the conversion of a

lead off of your website will involve an email address.

The key here is to develop an email strategy that focuses

on sending relevant and timely messaging to your leads

based on their stage of the buying process or other

specific attributes such as job title, industry, etc.

Lead Nurturing builds upon the use of Email

Marketing and offers Marketers the ability to set up

automated nurturing campaigns based on the behaviors

your prospects and customers take when engaging with

your campaigns. It’s important to note that while email is

an often used component of a Lead Nurturing strategy it

is not the only strategy that can be deployed. Lead

Nurturing campaigns can also include triggers based on

list membership, event participation, web site activity and

sales alerts among others. Lead nurturing campaigns

can be set up for many different customer profiles and

Businesses that

use Marketing

Automation to

nurture prospects

experience a

451%INCREASE IN

QUALIFIED LEADS

(The Annuitas Group)

16

With the use of lead scoring, you can manage the qualification of a Marketing

Qualified lead and know when to send the lead to sales through an automated process.

As you are nurturing your leads, you want to automatically add scoring values to their

activities so that you can determine their likeliness to buy. Ultimately your sales team

wants to know…is this lead worth contacting? Lead scoring helps you to assign a value

to the activity that the customer is engaging in and when you hand the lead to sales they

know it’s someone worth contacting.

That brings us to our next step which is CRM Integration.: As marketing is working

to qualify a lead, there are several marketing activities that will take place and actions

done by the customer such as how they are engaging with your website, emails, forms,

landing pages, events., etc. . With an integrated system, you can share this information

with your sales team so they can see and understand how your leads and contacts are

engaging with your marketing activities by exposing that information in CRM. This will

lead to a more relevant and direct conversation when your sales team engages with the

prospect and/or customer.

having a strong understanding of your customer segments/buyer personas will help

you in knowing how you want to structure your lead nurturing campaigns. Some

companies set these up based on a series of behaviors, others by lead nurturing score

levels or by demographic information. Knowing your audience will help to direct your

strategy.

Success

Metrics

CHAPTER FOUR

4

18

Success Metrics

It’s critical, to analyze and measure your successes and failures. There

are many Key Performance Indicators or KPI’s that you can choose to

measure. However, most Marketing Automation tools that are

integrated with a CRM system provide you with the following:

CHAPTER FOUR

The number of website visitors to your website and the source of that

traffic such as organic, paid, social, referral, etc.

The number of leads generated during a specified time period.

Data on the leads generated that turned into Marketing Qualified Leads

(MQL) and then into Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).

The number of RFQ/Quotes generated (if that is relevant to your

business) and ultimately the number of Customers acquired.

Act-On

Revenue Impact Reports | December 2016

19

Another KPI that will be important to measure is the

website visits, leads and customers acquired from the

types of campaigns that you deployed. Most Marketing

Automation systems will provide a report that shows the

number of Opportunities that were won and their original

campaign source. This type of reporting can really help

you to showcase the successes of your marketing efforts

and provide you visibility to those efforts that are not as

successful so that you can readjust strategy.

Companies with

the best quality

data drive

70% more

revenue through

marketing

programs than

those with

simply average

data quality. (SiriusDecision)

Harnessing The Power

Of

Marketing Automation

Conclusion

21

of successful marketers cite

marketing automation as being

most responsible for improving

revenue contribution. 78%

Don’t be intimidated by your Marketing

Automation System. While the tools

available to you may be ample, break

down and prioritize the tools that will

best help you meet your marketing goals.

Begin with those and then add more

functionality as you become more

comfortable with the system over time.

Conclusion

Meet

Ledgeview PartnersLedgeview Partners is a business and technology consulting company who partners with organizations to transform sales, marketing and customer service operations & processes that are supported by core technologies including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation.

Ledgeview Partners’ consultants combine savvy business intellect with strong technological aptitude to provide solutions that extend well beyond software implementations. It’s about building relationships, transforming business, and delivering phenomenal customer experiences.

Ledgeview Partners is a Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner and a Salesforce Silver Consulting Partner.

ledgeviewpartners.com