Drivers of Marketing Automation for Small Biz

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Thank you for joining us, and thank you to Jonathan and Hatchbuck for collaborating with us on this Webinar.

We are going to start todays’ discussion by looking at some of the underlying drivers of MA?

Why are dozens of vendors in this space and why have VCs committed over $700 million to MA?

We will then look behind some of the hype and examine who’s actually using MA and what are some of the adoption trends we see

Lastly, I want to discuss the critical skills required to implement marketing automation.

Interestingly, and importantly for each of you….is the fact that the skills necessary to successfully implement Marketing Automation
Are the very skills you need professionally to become successful marketers.

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These are some headlines from July 29th 2013.
Front page news in both the WSJ and the NY Times, as well as lead stories on CNBC and other news networks.

Merger of large firms is always news but this extraordinary coverage highlighted something else.

What’s really going on here?

The answer is that Advertising, and more generally Marketing, is in the throes of transformation, or
what the Economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) called “creative destruction"

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Like in Nature, as old parts of an ecosystem die, new growth takes its place.

So what’s causing this creative destruction in the world of marketing?

Think of Marketing before the digital age.

Before Google, before mobile phones, and even before email and the Internet.

Content was created by a handful of companies…
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and people like Don Draper of Madmen…
It was essentially a top down PUSH of content.
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So what’s happened between then and now?
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As we all know, we still have ad agencies doing big campaigns via TV but that’s far from the full story today.

Google (and other companies as well) have transformed marketing from what was largely a top down indiscriminant push of content from a few companies…to a much more efficient bottom up, pull from 100s of millions of consumers via Internet Search.
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That’s what’s going on and that is how Google has gone from Start-up in 1998 to a $350 billion company 15 years later.
But it’s more than just Google and Search Engine Marketing.
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Content creation and dissemination has been transformed.

Here are just a few examples to highlight
In addition to 12.5 billion searches, there are 920 web sites. 42 million WordPress blog (just one of many blogging platforms)

And new forms of content are rising quickly.
There are 500 million Tweets daily now—for those who can’t be bothered writing more than a sentence.

And 4.5 billion likes—the ultimate in abbreviated content. A Like is the digital equivalent of a Nod.

But the rise in social media has not diminished email in the least – daily email messages are 144 billion and rising.

There are 1.1 billion smart phones….and here is a new favorite of mine

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Websites: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-web-sites-are-are-there-2012-3
2014: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/02/03/february-2014-web-server-survey.html

Google searches:
http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/#.Uwo3HfldWo0

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-numbers-a-few-amazing-twitter-stats/

Emails: http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/email-stats-infographic/

As of Dec 2013, there were more than 1 million apps in the iPhone catalog

For each of these new forms of content, each message sent and each interaction is a piece of data.

The transformation of marketing is represented both by the content and the ability to interact with that content.

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Because of the proliferation in content and our new ability to capture the interactions that people have with this content, Marketing is now more Data Intensive than Wall Street.

That’s why we refer to this as the “Big Data” era.

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And so this is our definition of Marketing Automation:

Marketing Automation software enables marketers to manage the complexity of modern marketing related to the proliferation of content and data.

Marketing Automation technology is at the Nexus of Marketing Data, Content and Business Processes.

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So the case for Marketing Automation seems compelling, but what’s actually going on in terms of adoption?

Well, we looked at this in our 2014 Marketing Automation eBook, and I’d like to share some of what we found.

In his book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore describes a technology lifecycle in which the adoption of a new product proceeds according to the demographic characteristics of defined adopter groups. According to Moore’s model, the first group of people to use a new product is called "innovators," followed by "early adopters”.

The “chasm” is the crucial period during which a product is either adopted broadly, or remains part of a niche market.

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In our eBook research, we dissected the Product Lifecycle by firm size.

So for large firms, we are actually seeing that they have “crossed the chasm”. For large firms, Marketing Automation is an accepted tool and quickly becoming a requirement to handle the complexities of digital marketing.

The majority of large companies that don’t currently use MAS are either evaluating it now, or will be over the next few years.

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Well what about small and mid-sized firms?

As you can see, adoption rates fall off quickly as firm size decreases.

For firms with 1 to 100 employees, only about .8% or about 50,000 firms out of nearly 6 million have implemented MA.

If you are a marketing professional in a small or mid-sized firm, this represents a great opportunity for you professionally.

That’s because, we know from larger firms, that adoption is occurring broadly, and those firms that get in early have an ongoing or systematic advantage that comes with the skills and experience accumulated during the course of implementation. (Let me repeat this)

So what are these skills that marketing automation requires of us?

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5 skills that I’d like to touch on.

Technology
Content creation
List building
Lead Scoring, and
Collaboration with Sales

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It seems Obvious that you need to understand the software if you want to successfully implement.

However, you’d be amazed to see how many companies purchase marketing automation platforms to replace their email marketing platforms but keep on doing only their monthly email blasts while ignoring other critical features such as lead scoring and automated workflow.

Go to Hatchbuck’s resources page and there is a great variety of rich content, including white papers, eBooks, and videos with details on marketing automation features and capabilities.

There is simply no excuse for not becoming an expert in this technology – that is, knowing the features and capabilities and also staying on top of new features and plans for future developments. [next slide]

Here are Five steps for Streamlining Content Creation
Start by auditing your content. Many companies have a lot of content spread out across many people and groups. This could include product brochures, articles, YouTube videos, web page content, white papers, blog posts, and more.

Map it to the buying cycle. The buying cycle is the process a customer goes through from initial contact thru transaction. So at first they may seek generic information, as they get further through the buying cycle, they make seek more targeted content to help in their decision making.
Identify the content GAPS and create a plan to generate the required content.

Create personas to understand your target audience. A persona is a way to think of a target customer segment as a flesh and blood individual. This brings your prospects from the abstract to the tangible. It’s a common vehicle to help marketers create engaging content. Check out the Hatchbuck Resource Center and download their persona workbook to create your own.
Lastly, create a content plan. A content plan specifies who get what content when. [next slide]

This is not the most glamorous part of marketing automation, but it may be the most important.

Start by Simply Asking. It’s amazing how many firms forget to ask. “Can I have your email address– I’d like to send you an article or our price list.”

I get emails all the time without a signatures at the bottom, which in itself is a big mistake, and even those with signatures usually lack a sign-up form of any kind.

Ditto for social media – I’ve seen companies with thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers but barely 100 emails in their database. Now, for most companies, an email is worth far more than a follower or a friend.

Collect business cards --- but don’t just collect; you must take the time to send an intro or follow-up message to all new contacts.

Lastly, data collection must be built into your sales processes. Getting an email address should be as second nature as getting a name or phone number. [next slide] 1:30

Lead Scoring is the feature of marketing automation that allows us to quantify a lead. A scored lead allows us to take action on information that was previously invisible to us.

Your ability to deliver quality content to the right prospects, and--through lead scoring--to deliver qualified leads to sales, is ultimately how you will be judged as a marketer.

Hatchbuck simplifies lead scoring for small businesses through the use of tags. Tags are terms that become associated with a contact when they take an action online, such as clicking a link in an email, or visiting a specific webpage.

Through tag scoring, you can easily quantify a contact’s interest in your business or even a specific service or product offering, giving you the ability to send relevant content to the right prospects, and to deliver quality leads to your sales team.

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Lastly, Marketing automation enables marketers to better integrate with sales, and that is crucially important.

The management guru Peter Drucker said that “The aim of Marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

Well, we still need salespeople but marketing automation allows marketers to develop relationships before a sales contact is made.

Because of this, Marketing has a more prominent role in the organization.

Marketing and sales are part of a single customer acquisition process and success in marketing automation means working closely with sales as collaborators in that process.

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The best way to see marketing automation in action is to take a live demo of Hatchbuck. Hatchbuck will be sending a follow-up email with a recording of the webinar, as well as a few marketing automation resources.