In 2013 and 2014 marketers began adoption and testing of the practice. The hype surrounding the market was near deafening but a lot of fun. During 2015 and 2016 we saw ABM practitioners beginning to craft and adopt best practices. What’s around the corner for ABM?!
!
During Q4 2017 Demand Metric connected The Account-Based Marketing Consortium and five C-Level executives in a live discussion. These experts from around the world applied their combined experience to explore what the next stage of ABM will look like. This report will identify and discuss the positions of these ABM experts and will share answers to the following key questions:!
!
• What are the areas of focus in 2017?
• Where should practitioners place their investments?
• What mistakes of the past can we learn from?
• And, what successes should we seek to scale?
Sales Compensation Solution Acquisition Best Practices ReportDemand Metric
This guide suggests a better process for acquiring an ICM solution. For many companies, sales compensation is the largest component of Sales, General and Administrative (SG&A) costs. The monthly calculation and payment of variable sales compensation is often an arduous, manual process that must accommodate a number of exceptions and changes: rarely does a sales compensation plan start and end a fiscal year intact.
The plan must survive the attrition and addition of sales representatives. It must accurately calculate and pay commissions on time, as there are risks and trust issues involved when it doesn’t. While the sales compensation plan is, theoretically, an enabler of revenue growth, these characteristics prevent it from scaling as the business grows.
This guide will examine the problems that motivate ICM solution acquisition, the limitations of acquiring one through a traditional RFP, a recommended approach, an example project plan and conclude with a discussion of associated risks and rewards.
To obtain this document, visit us at http://www.demandmetric.com/register
High Performance ABM Capabilities Benchmark ReportDemand Metric
This report will present the framework, the maturity milestones it represents, recommended actions to achieve maturity with ABM and therefore maximize its revenue impact.
It’s well known among marketing professionals that customers go through a series of stages – a lifecycle – in their relationship with vendors. Despite differences in customers and the vendors with whom they do business, the lifecycle stages are pretty universal: Awareness (also known as Attraction), Consideration, Purchase, Retention and Advocacy. What differs is how long prospects remain in each stage, what kind of experience they have while they’re there, and what must happen to advance the relationship to the next stage.
Marketing is ideally the steward of the customer journey, and it faces several challenges in fulfilling this responsibility. One of the most formidable challenges is the self-directed nature of the journey. The norm is for prospective customers to start their journey in stealth mode, making significant progress on their own without marketing and sales aid, influence or assistance. Marketing has historically presided over the Awareness stage, and together with sales, the Consideration stage. But now, customers often pass through both of these stages undetected, and marketers understandably feel some anxiety over their diminished influence in these lifecycle stages.
While the stages of the customer journey are well known, from the customers’ perspective traversing them is sometimes a bumpy ride. Customers don’t view their relationship with vendors as a series of stages, each with a different conductor who may or may not know what transpired in a previous stage. Customers want a smooth journey and expect vendors to know the history of their relationships and the content already consumed; they don’t want to have to re-explain their needs and interests each time they transition to a new stage. They prefer seamless, consistent quality across all touch points and stages of the relationship, regardless of the device or channels through which interaction occurs. They value one-to-one, contextually relevant engagement that is sensitive to who they are, what they do and where they’re going.
Sales and Marketing Alignment Benchmarking ReportDemand Metric
How influential is sales and marketing alignment on achieving revenue goals? A Demand Metric Benchmark Study concluded that sales and marketing alignment is more than just “happy talk”; it has a real effect on revenue performance.
In June 2013, Demand Metric conducted a benchmarking study to assess the influences on sales and marketing alignment and how in turn in impacts revenue performance. Key findings from this study include:
• Not an “all or nothing” proposition: complete alignment of sales and marketing goals is related to the highest revenue achievement, but even partial alignment is far superior to none.
• Rose-colored glasses: Presidents, CEOs or owners of their firms are more likely to perceive strong or complete sales and marketing alignment than their sales and marketing teams.
• Two is better than one: Organizational structure is related to achievement. Separate sales and marketing teams outperform organizations where sales and marketing operate as a single, combined team.
• The one with the best tools wins: Mature implementations of sales and marketing systems, such as marketing automation or CRM, are having a significant impact on revenue achievement.
• Integration = Revenue: The highest level of revenue achievement coincides with the highest level of integration effectiveness between sales and marketing systems.
• Diminishing returns: once qualified leads account for 10% of total leads generated, revenue achievement remains flat even as the percentage of qualified leads increases.
Learn more about the impact of sales and marketing alignment on revenue performance by downloading a copy of the report.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Executive Summary
3. Research Methodology
4. Revenue Goal Acheivement
5. Perception of Alignment
6. Organizational Structure
7. Alignment & Technology
8. Leads & Lead Quality
9. Analyst Bottom Line
10. Acknowledgements
11. About Demand Metric
Research Methodology
The Demand Metric 2013 Sales & Marketing Alignment Survey was administered online over a period of June 24th through June 30th, 2013. During that time, over 600 responses were collected, 550 of which were complete.
All members of the Demand Metric community received email invitations to participate in the survey, and participation was encouraged through a random draw incentive for an iPad Mini.
While respondent email addresses were collected in order to facilitate the prize drawing, no identifying information was retained or considered in the analysis of the survey data.
Following collection of the survey data, Demand Metric used IBM SPSS statistics software to analyze the results and draw statistically significant conclusions.
Agile Marketing How-To Guide and ToolkitDemand Metric
Your Problem
You need to help your marketing team become more efficient.
Our Solution
Agile Marketing is a powerful and proven tactical approach to improve the processes that empower your marketing team, encouraging constant and swift growth. An Agile approach allows teams to be more capable to adapt to real-time marketing challenges or opportunities. Not only does the Agile process improve a teams speed, but it encourages transparency and rewards adaptability, ultimately leading to happier and less stressed team members and more consistent results. This How-To Guide and Toolkit will help your team achieve an Agile Marketing process that is proven to deliver more results.
Key Benefits
leverage Agile Marketing best practices
quickly discover how to implement Agile
Full toolkit that supports what you learn
CMOs live in one of two worlds: possessing the ability to prove the long-term, quantitative impact of marketing, or lacking the visibility and control to make confident marketing decisions. When proof of marketing’s successful performance and contribution to the business is undisputed, it is because the CMO runs marketing as a profit and loss center. Furthermore, marketing defines its performance by comparing results to a set of CEO-relevant objectives. For top performing marketing departments, There is little gray area; it’s always clear how marketing is performing. Thanks to this clarity, marketing enjoys ample resources as the business case for investing in it is easy to make, and when the pressure to grow revenue increases - marketing’s value only grows.
It’s a different story for CMOs that are unable to quantify the impact of marketing. When this is the case, marketing is viewed as an expense, and determining marketing’s impact is a popularity contest. Marketing’s existence in this environment is regularly in peril, subject to the whims of the C-suite’s opinion du jour and all the while marketing rides a funding rollercoaster. At the first sign of corporate economic distress, rather than turn to marketing to engineer a rescue, marketing is often at the front of the line for the budget-cutting axe.
The State of Digital Marketing for Associations 2017Demand Metric
The State of Association Marketing Benchmark Study is now in its fourth year. From its inception, the study’s purpose has been to help associa- tions become better at marketing. To do this, the study inventories associ- ation marketing practices and through analysis attempts to identify those associated with the highest level of marketing effectiveness.
The importance of member understanding has continued to emerge as a key success factor in association marketing. A deep member under- standing is crucial for many reasons, not the least of which is so asso- ciations can better allocate their budgets. Those associations that have certainty about the needs of their members will allocate line items in their budget to better serve them.
Sales Compensation Solution Acquisition Best Practices ReportDemand Metric
This guide suggests a better process for acquiring an ICM solution. For many companies, sales compensation is the largest component of Sales, General and Administrative (SG&A) costs. The monthly calculation and payment of variable sales compensation is often an arduous, manual process that must accommodate a number of exceptions and changes: rarely does a sales compensation plan start and end a fiscal year intact.
The plan must survive the attrition and addition of sales representatives. It must accurately calculate and pay commissions on time, as there are risks and trust issues involved when it doesn’t. While the sales compensation plan is, theoretically, an enabler of revenue growth, these characteristics prevent it from scaling as the business grows.
This guide will examine the problems that motivate ICM solution acquisition, the limitations of acquiring one through a traditional RFP, a recommended approach, an example project plan and conclude with a discussion of associated risks and rewards.
To obtain this document, visit us at http://www.demandmetric.com/register
High Performance ABM Capabilities Benchmark ReportDemand Metric
This report will present the framework, the maturity milestones it represents, recommended actions to achieve maturity with ABM and therefore maximize its revenue impact.
It’s well known among marketing professionals that customers go through a series of stages – a lifecycle – in their relationship with vendors. Despite differences in customers and the vendors with whom they do business, the lifecycle stages are pretty universal: Awareness (also known as Attraction), Consideration, Purchase, Retention and Advocacy. What differs is how long prospects remain in each stage, what kind of experience they have while they’re there, and what must happen to advance the relationship to the next stage.
Marketing is ideally the steward of the customer journey, and it faces several challenges in fulfilling this responsibility. One of the most formidable challenges is the self-directed nature of the journey. The norm is for prospective customers to start their journey in stealth mode, making significant progress on their own without marketing and sales aid, influence or assistance. Marketing has historically presided over the Awareness stage, and together with sales, the Consideration stage. But now, customers often pass through both of these stages undetected, and marketers understandably feel some anxiety over their diminished influence in these lifecycle stages.
While the stages of the customer journey are well known, from the customers’ perspective traversing them is sometimes a bumpy ride. Customers don’t view their relationship with vendors as a series of stages, each with a different conductor who may or may not know what transpired in a previous stage. Customers want a smooth journey and expect vendors to know the history of their relationships and the content already consumed; they don’t want to have to re-explain their needs and interests each time they transition to a new stage. They prefer seamless, consistent quality across all touch points and stages of the relationship, regardless of the device or channels through which interaction occurs. They value one-to-one, contextually relevant engagement that is sensitive to who they are, what they do and where they’re going.
Sales and Marketing Alignment Benchmarking ReportDemand Metric
How influential is sales and marketing alignment on achieving revenue goals? A Demand Metric Benchmark Study concluded that sales and marketing alignment is more than just “happy talk”; it has a real effect on revenue performance.
In June 2013, Demand Metric conducted a benchmarking study to assess the influences on sales and marketing alignment and how in turn in impacts revenue performance. Key findings from this study include:
• Not an “all or nothing” proposition: complete alignment of sales and marketing goals is related to the highest revenue achievement, but even partial alignment is far superior to none.
• Rose-colored glasses: Presidents, CEOs or owners of their firms are more likely to perceive strong or complete sales and marketing alignment than their sales and marketing teams.
• Two is better than one: Organizational structure is related to achievement. Separate sales and marketing teams outperform organizations where sales and marketing operate as a single, combined team.
• The one with the best tools wins: Mature implementations of sales and marketing systems, such as marketing automation or CRM, are having a significant impact on revenue achievement.
• Integration = Revenue: The highest level of revenue achievement coincides with the highest level of integration effectiveness between sales and marketing systems.
• Diminishing returns: once qualified leads account for 10% of total leads generated, revenue achievement remains flat even as the percentage of qualified leads increases.
Learn more about the impact of sales and marketing alignment on revenue performance by downloading a copy of the report.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Executive Summary
3. Research Methodology
4. Revenue Goal Acheivement
5. Perception of Alignment
6. Organizational Structure
7. Alignment & Technology
8. Leads & Lead Quality
9. Analyst Bottom Line
10. Acknowledgements
11. About Demand Metric
Research Methodology
The Demand Metric 2013 Sales & Marketing Alignment Survey was administered online over a period of June 24th through June 30th, 2013. During that time, over 600 responses were collected, 550 of which were complete.
All members of the Demand Metric community received email invitations to participate in the survey, and participation was encouraged through a random draw incentive for an iPad Mini.
While respondent email addresses were collected in order to facilitate the prize drawing, no identifying information was retained or considered in the analysis of the survey data.
Following collection of the survey data, Demand Metric used IBM SPSS statistics software to analyze the results and draw statistically significant conclusions.
Agile Marketing How-To Guide and ToolkitDemand Metric
Your Problem
You need to help your marketing team become more efficient.
Our Solution
Agile Marketing is a powerful and proven tactical approach to improve the processes that empower your marketing team, encouraging constant and swift growth. An Agile approach allows teams to be more capable to adapt to real-time marketing challenges or opportunities. Not only does the Agile process improve a teams speed, but it encourages transparency and rewards adaptability, ultimately leading to happier and less stressed team members and more consistent results. This How-To Guide and Toolkit will help your team achieve an Agile Marketing process that is proven to deliver more results.
Key Benefits
leverage Agile Marketing best practices
quickly discover how to implement Agile
Full toolkit that supports what you learn
CMOs live in one of two worlds: possessing the ability to prove the long-term, quantitative impact of marketing, or lacking the visibility and control to make confident marketing decisions. When proof of marketing’s successful performance and contribution to the business is undisputed, it is because the CMO runs marketing as a profit and loss center. Furthermore, marketing defines its performance by comparing results to a set of CEO-relevant objectives. For top performing marketing departments, There is little gray area; it’s always clear how marketing is performing. Thanks to this clarity, marketing enjoys ample resources as the business case for investing in it is easy to make, and when the pressure to grow revenue increases - marketing’s value only grows.
It’s a different story for CMOs that are unable to quantify the impact of marketing. When this is the case, marketing is viewed as an expense, and determining marketing’s impact is a popularity contest. Marketing’s existence in this environment is regularly in peril, subject to the whims of the C-suite’s opinion du jour and all the while marketing rides a funding rollercoaster. At the first sign of corporate economic distress, rather than turn to marketing to engineer a rescue, marketing is often at the front of the line for the budget-cutting axe.
The State of Digital Marketing for Associations 2017Demand Metric
The State of Association Marketing Benchmark Study is now in its fourth year. From its inception, the study’s purpose has been to help associa- tions become better at marketing. To do this, the study inventories associ- ation marketing practices and through analysis attempts to identify those associated with the highest level of marketing effectiveness.
The importance of member understanding has continued to emerge as a key success factor in association marketing. A deep member under- standing is crucial for many reasons, not the least of which is so asso- ciations can better allocate their budgets. Those associations that have certainty about the needs of their members will allocate line items in their budget to better serve them.
The State and Impact of Content ConsistencyDemand Metric
The creation and dissemination of content is at the heart of the modern marketing organization’s work. Any digital marketing endeavor is fueled by content, and prospects who embark on a buying journey are most likely to first encounter a selling company through its content.
This report summarizes the results of a survey used to collect the study’s data, sharing the key findings and insights that came from the data analysis.
State of Video Marketing Benchmark Report - 2016Demand Metric
Since the inaugural version of this study was completed in 2014, Demand Metric and Vidyard have researched video content marketing on an annual basis. The study’s primary goal remains consistent: to understand how video performs as a content type. In addition, this study explores other aspects of video content marketing, such as where video is hosted, how it is measured and how video viewing integrates with the sales funnel. The 2016 study investigates some themes that are relevant to video: video content personalization and the use of video with an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy.
What this study did not investigate is the popularity of video compared to other content types. There are many, current studies that show that video continues to enjoy a position of favor among the many content types in use. Instead, this study’s focus is on the use of video, the usage maturity indicators such as measuring video content performance, and how video viewing data integrates with Marketing Automation and CRM. This report will show what progress, if any, has been made in the third year of this study.
The emphasis on video content marketing has understandably been on production quality: the higher the quality, the more marketing value a video is presumed to have. Quality is certainly an important aspect of video content, and fortunately, the tools for producing video are enabling higher quality video at lower costs and requiring less skill. However, just producing quality video is not the only success factor for video content marketing. Success is very much a function of how well video content and viewing data integrate with the marketing technology stack, and of course, how the sales team exploits that data. This study will share research insights to help marketers get the highest possible return on their video content investment.
State of Digital Marketing in Associations Benchmark Report - 2016Demand Metric
This association marketing benchmark study is now in its third year, and from the beginning, the study’s goal has been to help associations become better at marketing. A healthy, effective marketing function whose contributions are well understood is a key ingredient to overall association wellness and growth. Yet, such market functions are in the minority, not just in the association world, but across corporations as well. At the low end of the marketing effectiveness spectrum are organizations that struggle, as represented through comments shared by this frustrated association marketer:
“Email blasts are the main communication tool. When angry recipients demand opt-out, the leadership team doesn't take the request seriously until legal action is threatened. There are no goals set from Social Media to measure success. We still use FAX blasts with the assumption that they are effective. Brochures are still used with very heavy amounts of text (copy). Any time a discussion is brought up about content marketing with valuable information provided for free to help grow the community - the idea is dismissed as ‘giving away the farm’...We've seen membership remain flat and decline and event attendance is flat with fluctuating numbers by location but no real evidence of growth.”
As the comment above suggests, marketing’s failure to perform isn’t always the fault of marketing. There are many issues that help or hurt marketing’s effectiveness. This study takes a broad look at the issues shaping the association marketing landscape, reports the data from the study survey, providing some analysis and commentary to help association marketing improve.
When a customer refers a friend, peer or acquaintance to a vendor, it’s an indication of trust and satisfaction. A customer who refers is essentially putting their reputation at stake, so rarely are referrals made lightly. From the vendor perspective, referrals are the most coveted type of lead, because they come assuming that a vendor is trustworthy and competent. Referred customers are a faster path to revenue, and a previous study completed by Demand Metric showed that referral marketing has one of the lowest costs per acquisition.
Surprisingly, many vendor firms allow referrals to occur organically, hoping that they generate enough satisfied customers who will then take the initiative to refer others to the vendors with whom they are pleased. This type of organic referral does occur, but rarely with the frequency to have a noticeable revenue impact. There is benefit for marketers to be more intentional about referral marketing, to blaze a trail that makes referrals more likely and easier to make.
Demand Metric and RewardStream conducted a study to learn about the current state of referral marketing. This follows up on a study completed in the fall of 2014, so this report can now share trend data about the interest in, evolution of and success with referral marketing. This report shares the findings and recommends some best practices based on the data.
The State of the Sales & Marketing FunnelDemand Metric
The classic B2B sales and marketing funnel is a model that has served marketers well for decades. An entire ecosystem of job titles, roles, responsibilities and technologies now exists around the funnel. Funnel management has evolved as a science with precise measurements that marketers use to manage and optimize a set of complimentary tools, processes and relationships that have to work in harmony to pull things through the funnel. But whether marketers realize it or not, they’re no longer working with their grandfather’s funnel.
A sustained period of barely perceptible change with the funnel has taken most marketers to an unfamiliar place. Top of funnel performance in the not too distant past was often the worst. It was predictably unreliable, with a chronic shortage of leads to feed the more efficient, demanding and hungry sales process at the bottom. An expansive collection of tools, technologies and solutions has been directed at the funnel’s traditionally weak point – the top – to increase the inflowing leads from a trickle, to a stream to now in many cases, a deluge. While marketers welcome the lead flow, for most it simply moves the problem to another funnel location.
The reality for many marketers is they now have more people interacting with their content. There are ever greater numbers of things to follow-up on, to route, to track and to push through the funnel. Demand Metric, in partnership with MRP, has completed a study about the current state of the funnel. The “funnel flow” survey measured how well leads flow through the sales and marketing funnel. This report shares the data and analysis from this research effort, providing insights on how to optimize the flow of leads through the funnel.
This report presents the findings of Inbound Marketing research, providing all marketers with a useful set of benchmarks to compare their use of these approaches.
Acquired Data Benchmark Report Resource Overview Dun & Bradstreet sponsored ...Demand Metric
Two broad approaches exist to improve data quality, accuracy and completeness: an in-house data hygiene process, and using external data or services. In a study sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet, Demand Metric studied both approaches, looking closely at the use of acquired data in sales and marketing applications/solutions.
The goal of the study was to learn how companies are using acquired data and how that data is making a difference in campaigns, demand generation and other key results. This report details the findings of this study, providing benchmarks for acquired data performance and making the case for its use.
Rethinking Sales and Marketing alignment: [How Marketing will help close deals]CRMT Digital
Better Marketing and Sales alignment improves profits, customer services and internal relationships. Most organisations have already realised that traditional business unit divisions hinder more than they help and are now seeking to improve internal relationships between departments. For successful alignment between Marketing and Sales, employees need to be empowered by technology.
We created the Customer Engagement Framework to help organizations improve their shopper marketing efforts across 6 categories: Roles, Responsibilities, Processes, Technology, Content and Metrics.
This framework was designed with shopper marketing best practices in mind. It should be used to audit your current capabilities and ultimately help you document an action plan for each of the following stakeholders: Senior Management, Shopper Marketing Owner, Brand Marketing, Insights, Digital & Social Media, Sales Management, Field and/or Account Teams and Retail/Channel Sales Partners.
Lead Scoring: Five Steps to Getting Started How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
This How-To Guide will help marketers score leads by showing how to set up a simple lead scoring system and then refine it over time.
Lead scoring applies mathematical formulas to rank potential customers. It is chiefly used to identify prospects that are ready for direct sales contact. Because the calculations are automatic, the scores are consistent, current, and can include more variables than any manual assessment. This saves marketers work, ensures that all qualified leads are sent to sales promptly, and keeps non-qualified leads out of the sales system.
Read this brief 11-page guide to learn about:
The case for lead scoring
Setting up a simple lead scoring system
Refinements to improve results over time
Companies that follow this process will quickly gain immediate benefits from lead scoring and have a solid foundation for future growth.
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com to make a content request.
Better Together: How Integrating Your Sales Tools Can Accelerate Sales Perfor...Demand Metric
This Sales Tool Integration study had a simple goal: to determine if integrating multiple sales tools that support different parts of the buying journey result in greater efficiencies and better outcomes.
Download the PDF: https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-solution-study
Our Content Marketing Solution Study presents the insights, landscape and vendors within the content marketing space. Demand Metric defines content marketing as the strategies, processes and software technology that enable marketing departments to automate, measure and improve the performance of marketing strategies, activities and workflows.
These strategies and activities include: Email Marketing, Multi-channel Campaign Management, Inbound/Search Marketing, Landing Pages, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Scoring, Lead Nurturing, Social Marketing, Marketing Resource Management, Event Management, Engagement Marketing and Marketing Analytics.
The three foundation functions of marketing automation systems are – email marketing, campaign management and lead management. While the most advanced and sophisticated marketing automation systems have extending capabilities far beyond this base, these functions are core to a Marketing Automation system.
7 Methods to Get your Sales and Marketing Teams Aligned InfographicInsideView
Learn what separates leaders from laggards. Then discover 7 best practices these leading B2B businesses follow to achieve sales and marketing alignment.
Account Based Marketing: A Look Around the CornerMRP
So, what does 2017 have in store for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) practitioners?
In 2013 and 2014 marketers began adoption and testing of the practice. The hype surrounding the market was near deafening but a lot of fun. During 2015 and 2016 we saw ABM practitioners beginning to craft and adopt best practices. What’s around the corner for ABM?
During Q4 2016 Demand Metric connected The Account-Based Marketing Consortium and five C-Level executives in a live discussion. These experts from around the world applied their combined experience to explore what the next stage of ABM will look like.
The State and Impact of Content ConsistencyDemand Metric
The creation and dissemination of content is at the heart of the modern marketing organization’s work. Any digital marketing endeavor is fueled by content, and prospects who embark on a buying journey are most likely to first encounter a selling company through its content.
This report summarizes the results of a survey used to collect the study’s data, sharing the key findings and insights that came from the data analysis.
State of Video Marketing Benchmark Report - 2016Demand Metric
Since the inaugural version of this study was completed in 2014, Demand Metric and Vidyard have researched video content marketing on an annual basis. The study’s primary goal remains consistent: to understand how video performs as a content type. In addition, this study explores other aspects of video content marketing, such as where video is hosted, how it is measured and how video viewing integrates with the sales funnel. The 2016 study investigates some themes that are relevant to video: video content personalization and the use of video with an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy.
What this study did not investigate is the popularity of video compared to other content types. There are many, current studies that show that video continues to enjoy a position of favor among the many content types in use. Instead, this study’s focus is on the use of video, the usage maturity indicators such as measuring video content performance, and how video viewing data integrates with Marketing Automation and CRM. This report will show what progress, if any, has been made in the third year of this study.
The emphasis on video content marketing has understandably been on production quality: the higher the quality, the more marketing value a video is presumed to have. Quality is certainly an important aspect of video content, and fortunately, the tools for producing video are enabling higher quality video at lower costs and requiring less skill. However, just producing quality video is not the only success factor for video content marketing. Success is very much a function of how well video content and viewing data integrate with the marketing technology stack, and of course, how the sales team exploits that data. This study will share research insights to help marketers get the highest possible return on their video content investment.
State of Digital Marketing in Associations Benchmark Report - 2016Demand Metric
This association marketing benchmark study is now in its third year, and from the beginning, the study’s goal has been to help associations become better at marketing. A healthy, effective marketing function whose contributions are well understood is a key ingredient to overall association wellness and growth. Yet, such market functions are in the minority, not just in the association world, but across corporations as well. At the low end of the marketing effectiveness spectrum are organizations that struggle, as represented through comments shared by this frustrated association marketer:
“Email blasts are the main communication tool. When angry recipients demand opt-out, the leadership team doesn't take the request seriously until legal action is threatened. There are no goals set from Social Media to measure success. We still use FAX blasts with the assumption that they are effective. Brochures are still used with very heavy amounts of text (copy). Any time a discussion is brought up about content marketing with valuable information provided for free to help grow the community - the idea is dismissed as ‘giving away the farm’...We've seen membership remain flat and decline and event attendance is flat with fluctuating numbers by location but no real evidence of growth.”
As the comment above suggests, marketing’s failure to perform isn’t always the fault of marketing. There are many issues that help or hurt marketing’s effectiveness. This study takes a broad look at the issues shaping the association marketing landscape, reports the data from the study survey, providing some analysis and commentary to help association marketing improve.
When a customer refers a friend, peer or acquaintance to a vendor, it’s an indication of trust and satisfaction. A customer who refers is essentially putting their reputation at stake, so rarely are referrals made lightly. From the vendor perspective, referrals are the most coveted type of lead, because they come assuming that a vendor is trustworthy and competent. Referred customers are a faster path to revenue, and a previous study completed by Demand Metric showed that referral marketing has one of the lowest costs per acquisition.
Surprisingly, many vendor firms allow referrals to occur organically, hoping that they generate enough satisfied customers who will then take the initiative to refer others to the vendors with whom they are pleased. This type of organic referral does occur, but rarely with the frequency to have a noticeable revenue impact. There is benefit for marketers to be more intentional about referral marketing, to blaze a trail that makes referrals more likely and easier to make.
Demand Metric and RewardStream conducted a study to learn about the current state of referral marketing. This follows up on a study completed in the fall of 2014, so this report can now share trend data about the interest in, evolution of and success with referral marketing. This report shares the findings and recommends some best practices based on the data.
The State of the Sales & Marketing FunnelDemand Metric
The classic B2B sales and marketing funnel is a model that has served marketers well for decades. An entire ecosystem of job titles, roles, responsibilities and technologies now exists around the funnel. Funnel management has evolved as a science with precise measurements that marketers use to manage and optimize a set of complimentary tools, processes and relationships that have to work in harmony to pull things through the funnel. But whether marketers realize it or not, they’re no longer working with their grandfather’s funnel.
A sustained period of barely perceptible change with the funnel has taken most marketers to an unfamiliar place. Top of funnel performance in the not too distant past was often the worst. It was predictably unreliable, with a chronic shortage of leads to feed the more efficient, demanding and hungry sales process at the bottom. An expansive collection of tools, technologies and solutions has been directed at the funnel’s traditionally weak point – the top – to increase the inflowing leads from a trickle, to a stream to now in many cases, a deluge. While marketers welcome the lead flow, for most it simply moves the problem to another funnel location.
The reality for many marketers is they now have more people interacting with their content. There are ever greater numbers of things to follow-up on, to route, to track and to push through the funnel. Demand Metric, in partnership with MRP, has completed a study about the current state of the funnel. The “funnel flow” survey measured how well leads flow through the sales and marketing funnel. This report shares the data and analysis from this research effort, providing insights on how to optimize the flow of leads through the funnel.
This report presents the findings of Inbound Marketing research, providing all marketers with a useful set of benchmarks to compare their use of these approaches.
Acquired Data Benchmark Report Resource Overview Dun & Bradstreet sponsored ...Demand Metric
Two broad approaches exist to improve data quality, accuracy and completeness: an in-house data hygiene process, and using external data or services. In a study sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet, Demand Metric studied both approaches, looking closely at the use of acquired data in sales and marketing applications/solutions.
The goal of the study was to learn how companies are using acquired data and how that data is making a difference in campaigns, demand generation and other key results. This report details the findings of this study, providing benchmarks for acquired data performance and making the case for its use.
Rethinking Sales and Marketing alignment: [How Marketing will help close deals]CRMT Digital
Better Marketing and Sales alignment improves profits, customer services and internal relationships. Most organisations have already realised that traditional business unit divisions hinder more than they help and are now seeking to improve internal relationships between departments. For successful alignment between Marketing and Sales, employees need to be empowered by technology.
We created the Customer Engagement Framework to help organizations improve their shopper marketing efforts across 6 categories: Roles, Responsibilities, Processes, Technology, Content and Metrics.
This framework was designed with shopper marketing best practices in mind. It should be used to audit your current capabilities and ultimately help you document an action plan for each of the following stakeholders: Senior Management, Shopper Marketing Owner, Brand Marketing, Insights, Digital & Social Media, Sales Management, Field and/or Account Teams and Retail/Channel Sales Partners.
Lead Scoring: Five Steps to Getting Started How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
This How-To Guide will help marketers score leads by showing how to set up a simple lead scoring system and then refine it over time.
Lead scoring applies mathematical formulas to rank potential customers. It is chiefly used to identify prospects that are ready for direct sales contact. Because the calculations are automatic, the scores are consistent, current, and can include more variables than any manual assessment. This saves marketers work, ensures that all qualified leads are sent to sales promptly, and keeps non-qualified leads out of the sales system.
Read this brief 11-page guide to learn about:
The case for lead scoring
Setting up a simple lead scoring system
Refinements to improve results over time
Companies that follow this process will quickly gain immediate benefits from lead scoring and have a solid foundation for future growth.
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com to make a content request.
Better Together: How Integrating Your Sales Tools Can Accelerate Sales Perfor...Demand Metric
This Sales Tool Integration study had a simple goal: to determine if integrating multiple sales tools that support different parts of the buying journey result in greater efficiencies and better outcomes.
Download the PDF: https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-solution-study
Our Content Marketing Solution Study presents the insights, landscape and vendors within the content marketing space. Demand Metric defines content marketing as the strategies, processes and software technology that enable marketing departments to automate, measure and improve the performance of marketing strategies, activities and workflows.
These strategies and activities include: Email Marketing, Multi-channel Campaign Management, Inbound/Search Marketing, Landing Pages, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Scoring, Lead Nurturing, Social Marketing, Marketing Resource Management, Event Management, Engagement Marketing and Marketing Analytics.
The three foundation functions of marketing automation systems are – email marketing, campaign management and lead management. While the most advanced and sophisticated marketing automation systems have extending capabilities far beyond this base, these functions are core to a Marketing Automation system.
7 Methods to Get your Sales and Marketing Teams Aligned InfographicInsideView
Learn what separates leaders from laggards. Then discover 7 best practices these leading B2B businesses follow to achieve sales and marketing alignment.
Account Based Marketing: A Look Around the CornerMRP
So, what does 2017 have in store for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) practitioners?
In 2013 and 2014 marketers began adoption and testing of the practice. The hype surrounding the market was near deafening but a lot of fun. During 2015 and 2016 we saw ABM practitioners beginning to craft and adopt best practices. What’s around the corner for ABM?
During Q4 2016 Demand Metric connected The Account-Based Marketing Consortium and five C-Level executives in a live discussion. These experts from around the world applied their combined experience to explore what the next stage of ABM will look like.
In this on-demand seminar HubSpot and BrainSell provide actionable tips to create a Smarketing (Sales + Marketing) approach to automating your business and revenue growth.
Looking for new ways to win over those high-potential B2B prospects? Account-based marketing may be the answer. Learn how advances in marketing and advertising technology help you leverage account-based marketing to build affection, relevance and trust to engage your high-potential prospects.
In this extensive review of account-based marketing, Eric Mower & Associates provide B-to-B marketers with everything they need to know about this rapidly growing tactic, including how and why it must be done.
This presentation takes a deeper look into one of the most effective marketing strategies for B2B companies: account-based marketing. We'll discuss how to approach account-based marketing, create a strategy, and execute that strategy using HubSpot's software.
Live Webinar: How to Launch & Scale an Effective Account-Based Marketing Stra...LinkedIn
Join us to find out how modern marketers can:
- Align with Sales on targeting, content and ABM specific metrics
- Adopt the ABM tactics real marketers are implementing today
- Understand the technology that will fuel your ABM strategy
How do you successfully pilot, refine, and scale your account-based marketing...The Marketing Practice
This isn’t an account-based marketing ‘how to guide’, this is a collection of learnings and things we wish we (and our clients) had known when we first started ABM over 5 years ago.
We hope that by sharing these with you, you can avoid some of the recurring issues that stall ABM programs and ultimately demonstrate how valuable the first 12 months of an ABM program is.
Explore what all could be done when you have ability to match leads against account in the real time. From routing to segmentation, account intelligence to competitive positioning. Possibilites are countless.
Marketing within Recruitment - The Swiss Army Knife of Modern Day Recruitment...Colleague Software
The role of marketing throughout the contemporary recruitment landscape is evolving – and fast. Marketing professionals able to adapt to unfeasibly quick changes and lead strategies across a sector so domineeringly dynamic, really have become the Swiss Army knife of modern-day recruitment performance. Once it was the recruiter making all the business decisions: now this role is the domain of the marketer.
From employer branding to candidate attraction to content production to choosing the most suitable internal tech structure, today’s recruitment marketers are not only on the cusp of change, they are leading it. And the staffing sector is a better place for it: Slicker, exciting and undeniably more professional.
This Whitepaper highlights how to become a brilliant marketer within the recruitment sector, covering topics including:
• What is the point? How can modern marketers really help recruiters?
• Recruitment is a process – so how can you really differentiate?
• Harnessing the power of your audience
• How to create compelling content for LinkedIn that drives traffic
back to your website
• Content plans which don’t cause discontent
• The Big Brand Approach to Engaging Customers
• Behavioural Tricks for New Business Persuasion
Our Shopper Marketing Methodology is a planning methodology that highlights our premium tool-kit of tools & templates to help you develop and implement a shopper marketing strategy that increases sales, builds shopper insights, and grows brand awareness.
Demand Metric methodologies are step-by-step guides that help you build strategic processes using "Best Practices" and other Demand Metric tools & templates. For background info on Demand Metric methodologies, read our blog post: Much Ado About Methodologies.
Stages of this methodology include:
Learn About Shopper
Analyze Opportunities
Strategic Planning
Technology Selection
Campaign Execution
Measure Results
The Impact of COVID-19 in B2B MarketingDemand Metric
In Q2 2020, we asked marketing leaders at mid-sized B2B companies in the USA abouthow the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their plans for the year.
Here’s what we found.
In 2018, Return Path and Demand Metric partnered to study the state of email marketing to equip marketers with data and best practices to improve the use of email.
Engagement is the key to getting email into subscriber inboxes. This relationship to deliverability made engagement a logical next candidate for the study. Return Path and Demand Metric partnered again to study engagement and its relationship to email deliverability.
Infographic Vidyard Video Marketing 2018Demand Metric
For far too long, the emphasis on video content marketing has been on production quality; the higher the quality, the more marketing value a video is presumed to have. While quality is certainly an important aspect of video content, producing quality video does not guarantee video content marketing success. Success is very much a function of how well video content and viewing data integrate with the marketing technology stack, and how the sales team leverages the intelligence. In this fifth annual video content marketing report, Demand Metric and Vidyard partnered on research to better understand the use of video for sales and marketing, how performance is being measured, and what impact video is having. This study’s focus is on the use of video in marketing, the maturity indicators such as measuring video content performance, and how video viewing data is integrated with marketing automation platforms (MAP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. This report shows what progress, if any, has been made in the fifth year of this study. These study results provide insights and data useful for helping marketers get the highest possible return on their video content investment.
Download the PDF: https://www.demandmetric.com/content/digital-marketing-best-practices-report
It has been said that “All Marketing is Digital Marketing.” And with good reason! In the last decade (or less), the marketing environment has been transformed.
Marketing has moved from an environment in which traditional marketing, brick and mortar storefronts and Digital Marketing options all competed for the time, attention and resources of the marketing department to one in which Digital Marketing reigns supreme – with an occasional nod in the direction of the storefront, or traditional marketing (direct mail, print advertising, etc.)
One of the biggest challenges of Digital Marketing is the speed of which it has taken over the marketing organization, often in an ad hoc, uncoordinated fashion.
Demand Metric’s research has consistently shown that Digital Marketing has a very significant and positive impact on the organizations that are employing it when they do so by following best practices and processes in a coordinated, holistic approach.
In this Best Practices Report on Digital Marketing we will cover the Digital Marketing landscape in five distinct categories - Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Video Marketing and Public Relations
Download the PDF: https://www.demandmetric.com/content/seo-technology-overview
SEO is no longer just about search.
In fact, SEO, which in its early days focused primarily on keywords
(finding, optimizing, ranking), is now a baseline factor of a broader Internet
Marketing strategy across the Enterprise.
This new SEO-driven market segment that has been called Web
Presence Management (WPM) is based on the reality that keywords no
longer drive search results, but rather optimized content does.
As the SEO market matures, quality measures, such as reputation, trust,
content relevance and author authority, are replacing the old quantity
metrics, such as keyword rankings and link volume.
Advanced SEO solutions now weigh campaign performance metrics
(based on brand building, site traffic and conversion) more heavily than
keyword rankings.
This reality is based on changes in the way customers search, the
increasingly integrated omni-channel marketing environment and,
most notably, changes to Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
algorithms that favor page content freshness, density and content-rich
media over standard keyword search.
All of this means that Modern Marketing Organizations (MMOs) must
re-evaluate their SEO strategies, processes and campaigns.
In this report we will examine the state of the market, share results from the
SEO Benchmark Study, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of 15 top
SEO solutions in our vendor landscape to help organizations choose the
best solution for them, highlight the current trends in SEO that will have an
impact on Enterprise SEO initiatives and provide some recommendations
for the way forward as SEO is redefined right before our eyes.
Demand Metric defines Search Engine Optimization Platforms
as those frameworks, tools and technologies that use searchrelated
functionally to secure high visibility and web presence
for brands, products, services and companies through the use
and management of elements, such as keywords, links, content
relevance and social signals tracking.
In its fourth year, this report on video marketing metrics highlights best practices including video hosting to how video viewing integrates with the sales funnel.
Formalizing the Sales Support Function How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
At the highest level, the Sales Support function is responsible for ensuring that the Sales & Marketing departments have the tools, resources, and systems they need to achieve current and future sales revenue targets.
Read this brief 2-page guide to learn:
Director of Sales Support Roles & Responsibilities
Action Plan for formalizing the sales support function
Read this report to learn how to assess your current level of effectiveness, and if necessary, hire an experienced Director of Sales Support.Download our Director of Sales Support Job Description to get started!
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
How to Launch a Mobile App Guide How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
A mobile app is a software application designed for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices that has been built on a mobile operating system such as iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows.
Mobile apps were originally developed for productivity and information retrieval. Today, over 91% of all U.S. citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7 (Morgan Stanley). The rising use and accessibility of mobile phones has influenced many companies to enter this growing market with new and innovative use cases.
This How-To Guide discusses the benefits of creating a mobile app, things to consider before building a mobile app and an action plan to help you launch your new app.
Read this brief 5-page guide to understand the following:
Benefits of creating a mobile app
Things to consider
Action plan for launching your mobile app
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
Getting Started with Agile Marketing How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
Agile Marketing is a method for planning and executing a marketing plan borrowed from the world of software development. Instead of long, “waterfall” methods of development that too often result in delayed or out-of date products launching later than planned, the Agile method follows a simple process of build, measure, and learn. Marketers all over the world are adopting this method to the extent that 2013 has been dubbed “the year of Agile Marketing".
This How-To Guide defines why Agile Marketing is important and outlines its key principles and identifies and action plan for getting started.
Read this brief 5-page guide to understand the following:
How to apply agile methods to marketing
Important terminology
How Agile Marketing is currently being used
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
Entering the European Market Successfully How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
Leaving your domestic comfort zone to operate in another country or even continent requires careful planning. Expanding into new geographical markets is very exciting, but also very nerve-wracking. Any firm considering entering into international business transactions must understand that doing business abroad is not a simple task. It is stimulating and potentially profitable in the long-term but requires much preparation and research prior to the first transaction.
Europe is probably the most heterogeneous continent on our globe, making understanding market potential more challenging than in more homogeneous markets. Because of the European Union, it’s tempting to view Europe as a single market. In reality, you must consider each country as a market, because each country has a different mix of history, culture, language and business etiquette.
This How-To Guide will describe the steps required to successfully expand into the European market.
Read this 7-page guide to understand the following:
Understand market potential
Identify product-market comibinations
Identify a local partner
Launch and start selling
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
Driving SEO with Press Releases How-To GuideDemand Metric
This How To Guide will explain how press releases can boost SEO efforts, how to write press releases for SEO, the pros and cons of doing so and conclude with an action plan on using press releases in your SEO efforts.
For decades, press releases were the basic building blocks of a public relations strategy. A company that wanted press coverage would write and issue a press release. The more skilled the company was at media relations, the better this strategy worked. Press releases still serve this purpose, although a new and important use of press releases has evolved as a tool for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
For companies whose websites are key to revenue generation, the SEO benefits are the primary motivation for writing and issuing press releases. If releases also produce favorable media coverage, that’s viewed as a bonus. The benefits of this SEO strategy result from the links a press release can produce back to the issuer’s website. These links are known as backlinks. The more external, authentic backlinks a website has pointing to it, the higher it ranks on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). While this strategy is conceptually simple to grasp, executing it effectively requires some insider knowledge of both media relations and SEO.
Read this brief 8-page guide to understand the following:
How press releases boost SEO
Writing press releases for SEO
The pros and cons of a press release SEO strategy
Using press releases in your SEO efforts
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com to make a content request.
Calculating Customer Lifetime Value How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
This How-To Guide details the definition of customer lifetime value (CLV), the advantages of calculating CLV and the standard formula for calculating CLV.
Common sense tells us that the longer a customer is in relationship with a company, the more profitable that customer relationship is. However, many companies put the emphasis on new customer acquisition and not enough effort is made to retain existing customers. This is a mistake, because the financial impact of retaining customers is substantial: companies can increase profits by as much as 100% by retaining just 5% more of their customers. For these reasons, CLV is a crucial metric that most organizations overlook mainly because its definition and purpose are not entirely known. Understanding the monetary value each customer represents to your organization can help you budget correctly for your business needs, strategically plan your marketing initiatives and improve long-term relationships with your customer base.
Read this brief 4-page guide to learn about:
Customer Lifetime Value
The advantages of calculating CLV
The standard formula for calculting CLV
Use the Customer Lifetime Value Calculator to get started!
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
Executive Summary
Social media are now part of every business and consumer activity, joining telephone, Web, broadcast, and face-to-face interactions as primary communication channels. This means that all marketing, sales, and service organizations should include social media as part of their basic activities. Yet social media are still new enough that many organizations are still struggling to learn how to use them, while others are learning how to use them most effectively.
This How-to-Guide provides an overview of social media applications and emerging best practices for deploying social media at your company.
Read this 9-page guide to learn:
The definition of social customer relationship management (CRM)
The main functions needed for social CRM
The vendor landscape for social CRM
Social CRM best practices
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
Executive Summary
This How-To Guide will explain the components of a Marketing Resource Management (MRM) system, provide an action plan for deployment, and conclude with a plan for implementation.
Marketing Resource Management (MRM) systems control the administrative processes that support customer-facing marketing programs. This distinguishes MRM from marketing execution systems that store customer databases and deliver marketing messages through email, Web ads, and other channels. MRM may be sold independently or as a component of comprehensive marketing management systems which also provides execution.
MRM functions fall into two primary clusters. The first involves functions related to company-level marketing management, including program planning, scheduling, budgeting, and cost reporting. The other cluster relates to program management, including task lists, purchasing media and materials, and content creation, approvals, storage, and distribution. Some MRM systems specialize in a few of these functions. Others specialize in additional functions such as customizing content for local offices or dealers or in marketing reporting and analysis. Systems may also be tailored to specific industries or companies of a certain size.
Companies buy MRM systems when their marketing programs become too complicated to run in a less systematic fashion. This, along with the systems’ high cost, originally meant that MRM was used almost exclusively by large marketing organizations with hundreds of marketers in multiple offices. More recently, the growth of digital marketing has meant that even small marketing organizations need to manage many different programs and content versions across multiple channels, and to introduce new versions more quickly. This expanded complexity has rarely been accompanied by a corresponding expansion of staff, adding to the pressure for more efficient operations. At the same time, costs have decreased as MRM capabilities were added to integrated marketing suites and as stand-alone MRM products became available as vendor-hosted services (Software as a Service, or SaaS). The result has been increased use of MRM systems among companies of all sizes.
Read this 7-page guide to learn about:
The components of a Marketing Resource Management (MRM) system
An action plan to deploy an MRM system
How to implement an MRM system
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
Driving Value with Marketing Automation How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
B2B marketers have enthusiastically adopted marketing automation, with industry revenue growing at 50% per year according to Raab Associates estimates. The reason for this adoption is simple: marketing automation works. Users consistently report growth in quantity and quality of leads, in lead acceptance rates, and in marketing revenue contribution. Recent acquisitions by major software vendors including Oracle, Salesforce.com, Microsoft and Adobe further confirm that marketing automation is becoming a standard part of every company’s technology foundation.
But simply deciding you want to make better use of your marketing automation doesn’t end the discussion; it just raises the much more difficult question of how. This How-To Guide will provide you with some answers.
Read this 12-page guide to learn about:
The Marketing Automation Maturity Model
The levels of Marketing Automation Maturity
How to evolve your Marketing Automation strategy at each level
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com
Executive Summary
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing automation systems are among the hottest sectors of the technology industry. Vendor revenues have grown at 50% per year since 2009 and will probably top $1 billion in 2014. Leading vendors including Eloqua, Marketo, and Pardot have been acquired or gone public at tremendous valuations. Major software companies including IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Adobe, and Teradata have purchased B2B or business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing automation products. Venture capitalists have invested several hundred million dollars in start-ups and existing firms.
Yet, despite this growth, fewer than 20% of B2B marketers have purchased an integrated marketing automation system (although many more use email, Web analytics, and other component technologies). Even more alarming, many past buyers do not use their systems fully and a significant portion report little benefit from their investment.
The lesson of these statistics is not that marketing automation doesn’t work. The same studies show that the majority of users are satisfied and productive. Rather, the point is that marketing automation works only when marketers deploy their systems effectively. This How-To Guide will help to ensure that you are among the successful majority of B2B marketing automation buyers, not the unhappy remnant.
This 15-page guide includes the following sections:
What is B2B Marketing Automation?
Core Functions
Specialty Functions
Key Considerations
Vendor Landscape
Best Practices
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
Optimizing Asset Management for Sales Success How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
Asset Management has historically been seen as a marketing and branding function. This technology is used to deliver materials to sales but is not within the sales teams’ direct control or influence. Today, as more organizations focus on marketing and sales alignment, many tools and technologies that were once managed exclusively by marketing have become shared marketing and sales functions.
Despite this alignment progress on many fronts, Asset Management has tended to remain squarely in the hands of marketing. Demand Metric believes that marketing organizations that retain control are missing an opportunity to use Asset Management to its fullest capability.
The purpose of this How-To Guide is to provide Modern Marketers with a clear understanding of how to effectively use Asset Management Systems as a Sales Enablement tool.
This 6-page guide includes the following sections:
What is Asset Management?
The Sales Benefits of Asset Management
Asset Management & Marketing Automation
Asset Management Vendor Selection Criteria
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com (link sends e-mail) to make a content request.
About the Sponsor
Mindmatrix is a cutting-edge marketing automation and sales enablement company. Our platform incorporates all the functions and metrics essential to your sales and marketing departments into a single software package.
Mindmatrix’s marketing automation platform will help you generate leads, cultivate interest and excitement about your organization, and ultimately… close sales. From the initial contact with a potential customer all the way through to their first purchase, and beyond, we have your sales and marketing teams covered.
Most small businesses struggle to see marketing results. In this session, we will eliminate any confusion about what to do next, solving your marketing problems so your business can thrive. You’ll learn how to create a foundational marketing OS (operating system) based on neuroscience and backed by real-world results. You’ll be taught how to develop deep customer connections, and how to have your CRM dynamically segment and sell at any stage in the customer’s journey. By the end of the session, you’ll remove confusion and chaos and replace it with clarity and confidence for long-term marketing success.
Key Takeaways:
• Uncover the power of a foundational marketing system that dynamically communicates with prospects and customers on autopilot.
• Harness neuroscience and Tribal Alignment to transform your communication strategies, turning potential clients into fans and those fans into loyal customers.
• Discover the art of automated segmentation, pinpointing your most lucrative customers and identifying the optimal moments for successful conversions.
• Streamline your business with a content production plan that eliminates guesswork, wasted time, and money.
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
How to Run Landing Page Tests On and Off Paid Social PlatformsVWO
Join us for an exclusive webinar featuring Mariate, Alexandra and Nima where we will unveil a comprehensive blueprint for crafting a successful paid media strategy focused on landing page testing.With escalating costs in paid advertising, understanding how to maximize each visitor’s experience is crucial for retention and conversion.
This session will dive into the methodologies for executing and analyzing landing page tests within paid social channels, offering a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical insights.
The Pearmill team will guide you through the nuances of setting up and managing landing page experiments on paid social platforms. You will learn about the critical rules to follow, the structure of effective tests, optimal conversion duration and budget allocation.
The session will also cover data analysis techniques and criteria for graduating landing pages.
In the second part of the webinar, Pearmill will explore the use of A/B testing platforms. Discover common pitfalls to avoid in A/B testing and gain insights into analyzing A/B tests results effectively.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
Digital marketing is the art and science of promoting products or services using digital channels to reach and engage with potential customers. It encompasses a wide range of online tactics and strategies aimed at increasing brand visibility, driving website traffic, generating leads, and ultimately, converting those leads into customers.
https://nidmindia.com/
Monthly Social Media News Update May 2024Andy Lambert
TL;DR. These are the three themes that stood out to us over the course of last month.
1️⃣ Social media is becoming increasingly significant for brand discovery. Marketers are now understanding the impact of social and budgets are shifting accordingly.
2️⃣ Instagram’s new algorithm and latest guidance will help us maintain organic growth. Instagram continues to evolve, but Reels remains the most crucial tool for growth.
3️⃣ Collaboration will help us unlock growth. Who we work with will define how fast we grow. Meta continues to evolve their Creator Marketplace and now TikTok are beginning to push ‘collabs’ more too.
Financial curveballs sent many American families reeling in 2023. Household budgets were squeezed by rising interest rates, surging prices on everyday goods, and a stagnating housing market. Consumers were feeling strapped. That sentiment, however, appears to be waning. The question is, to what extent?
To take the pulse of consumers’ feelings about their financial well-being ahead of a highly anticipated election, ThinkNow conducted a nationally representative quantitative survey. The survey highlights consumers’ hopes and anxieties as we move into 2024. Let's unpack the key findings to gain insights about where we stand.
Digital Commerce Lecture for Advanced Digital & Social Media Strategy at UCLA...Valters Lauzums
E-commerce in 2024 is characterized by a dynamic blend of opportunities and significant challenges. Supply chain disruptions and inventory shortages are critical issues, leading to increased shipping delays and rising costs, which impact timely delivery and squeeze profit margins. Efficient logistics management is essential, yet it is often hampered by these external factors. Payment processing, while needing to ensure security and user convenience, grapples with preventing fraud and integrating diverse payment methods, adding another layer of complexity. Furthermore, fulfillment operations require a streamlined approach to handle volume spikes and maintain accuracy in order picking, packing, and shipping, all while meeting customers' heightened expectations for faster delivery times.
Amid these operational challenges, customer data has emerged as an important strategy. By focusing on personalization and enhancing customer experience from historical behavior, businesses can deliver improved website and brand experienced, better product recommendations, optimal promotions, and content to meet individual preferences. Better data analytics can also help in effectively creating marketing campaigns, improving customer retention, and driving product development and inventory management.
Innovative formats such as social commerce and live shopping are beginning to impact the digital commerce landscape, offering new ways to engage with customers and drive sales, and may provide opportunity for brands that have been priced out or seen a downturn with post-pandemic shopping behavior. Social commerce integrates shopping experiences directly into social media platforms, tapping into the massive user bases of these networks to increase reach and engagement. Live shopping, on the other hand, combines entertainment and real-time interaction, providing a dynamic platform for showcasing products and encouraging immediate purchases. These innovations not only enhance customer engagement but also provide valuable data for businesses to refine their strategies and deliver superior shopping experiences.
The e-commerce sector is evolving rapidly, and businesses that effectively manage operational challenges and implement innovative strategies are best positioned for long-term success.
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
Short video marketing has sweeped the nation and is the fastest way to build an online brand on social media in 2024. In this session you will learn:- What is short video marketing- Which platforms work best for your business- Content strategies that are on brand for your business- How to sell organically without paying for ads.
10 Video Ideas Any Business Can Make RIGHT NOW!
You'll never draw a blank again on what kind of video to make for your business. Go beyond the basic categories and truly reimagine a brand new advanced way to brainstorm video content creation. During this masterclass you'll be challenged to think creatively and outside of the box and view your videos through lenses you may have never thought of previously. It's guaranteed that you'll leave with more than 10 video ideas, but I like to under-promise and over-deliver. Don't miss this session.
Key Takeaways:
How to use the Video Matrix
How to use additional "Lenses"
Where to source original video ideas
Mastering Multi-Touchpoint Content Strategy: Navigate Fragmented User JourneysSearch Engine Journal
Digital platforms are constantly multiplying, and with that, user engagement is becoming more intricate and fragmented.
So how do you effectively navigate distributing and tailoring your content across these various touchpoints?
Watch this webinar as we dive into the evolving landscape of content strategy tailored for today's fragmented user journeys. Understanding how to deliver your content to your users is more crucial than ever, and we’ll provide actionable tips for navigating these intricate challenges.
You’ll learn:
- How today’s users engage with content across various channels and devices.
- The latest methodologies for identifying and addressing content gaps to keep your content strategy proactive and relevant.
- What digital shelf space is and how your content strategy needs to pivot.
With Wayne Cichanski, we’ll explore innovative strategies to map out and meet the diverse needs of your audience, ensuring every piece of content resonates and connects, regardless of where or how it is consumed.
5 big bets to drive growth in 2024 without one additional marketing dollar AND how to adapt to the biggest shifting eCommerce trend- AI.
1) Romance Your Customers - Retention
2) ‘Alternative’ Lead Gen - Advocacy
3) The Beautiful Basics - Conversion Rate Optimization
4) Land that Bottom Line - Profitability
5) Roll the Dice - New Business Models
3. EXPERT SPEAKERS
Mark Ogne – Founder of The Account Based Marketing Consortium
@markogne / @AcctBasedMktg / www.AccountBased.Marketing !
Srihari Kumar - Founder & CEO of ZenIQ
@SrihariSKumar / @GetZenIQ / www.zeniq.io !
!
James Regan - Co-Founder & CMO of MRP
@jamesregan1 / www.mrpfd.com !
!
Stephanie Kidder - CMO of Azalead
@stephaniekidder / www.azalead.com !
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Christopher Engman - Founder and Head of Vendemore
@chrisengman / www.vendemore.com !
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4. OVERVIEW
So, what does 2017 have in store for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) practitioners?
!
In 2013 and 2014 marketers began adoption and testing of the practice. The hype surrounding the
market was near deafening but a lot of fun. During 2015 and 2016 we saw ABM practitioners beginning
to craft and adopt best practices. What’s around the corner for ABM?!
!
During Q4 2017 Demand Metric connected The Account-Based Marketing Consortium and five C-Level
executives in a live discussion. These experts from around the world applied their combined experience
to explore what the next stage of ABM will look like. This report will identify and discuss the positions of
these ABM experts and will share answers to the following key questions:!
!
• What are the areas of focus in 2017?
• Where should practitioners place their investments?
• What mistakes of the past can we learn from?
• And, what successes should we seek to scale?
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5. OVERVIEW - Key Takeaways
Our experts identified the following three key issues as areas where ABM practitioners should prioritize
resources in their programs during 2017:!
1. ABM practitioners need to target key people within accounts – there are a limited number of people
at any target account who can actually influence or purchase. This is a signal vs noise issue where “all
engagement’s not created equal.” ABM practitioners must be able to identify (within CRM and across
marketing systems), target and measure their ABM programs against this critical group within each target
account.!
2. Multi Channel – because buyers engage with marketing programs across platforms and channels,
marketers need to be able to sense this engagement and respond with precision. The highest performing
marketing programs start with the indicated need of the target audience – topics that interest them and
channels they respond to historically. This is NOT about creating campaigns to deliver through different
means, this is about listening and responding to user needs as they occur.!
3. Sales and Marketing alignment – it’s not a foregone conclusion that ABM will solve the communication
and alignment issues with your peer organization. Key issue for marketers is that most are stuck in an
inbound mentality where they still gauge success based upon quantity of leads. Your sales team needs you
to find and engage the right people through the right means. In a sense, Sales and Marketing Alignment is a
culmination of finding and targeting your Buying Centers, and then engaging them in a Multi Channel
means.!
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6. ABOUT DEMAND METRIC
Demand Metric is a marketing research and advisory firm serving a membership community of over 90,000
marketing professionals and consultants in 75 countries. !
!
Offering consulting methodologies, advisory services, and 500+ premium marketing tools and templates,
Demand Metric resources and expertise help the marketing community plan more efficiently and effectively,
answer the difficult questions about their work with authority and conviction and complete marketing projects
more quickly and with greater confidence, boosting the respect of the marketing team and making it easier
to justify resources the team needs to succeed. !
!
To learn more about Demand Metric, please visit: www.demandmetric.com.!
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