How to choose the best marketing automation system for your business

Whether you’re an existing user of marketing automation or you’re preparing to invest for the first time, the rush of acquisitions in the sector can be disruptive to your technology decision-making. For those yet to invest, it can cloud the solutions in uncertainty. While existing users of one vendor have the disruption of suddenly finding themselves customers of a different company entirely. And if you’re an Eloqua user that isn’t happy about becoming an Oracle customer, then it means you’re back into the market for a new solution. But the recent spate of activity is entirely reshaping the marketing automation landscape. 'In some ways, the discrete category of marketing automation is fading away a bit,'says Gerry Brown, Senior Digital Marketing Analyst at Ovum. 'IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Adobe and Teradata have all been involved in mopping up best-of-breed marketing automation companies of…

Insights on the best times to follow-up on leads in B2B marketing

Here's a summary of research specifically of interest to readers selling to marketers, but also relevant insight on best time for follow-up for B2B marketers selling technology to other professionals. Traditional lead generation techniques work well when selling marketing technology to marketers - it's not seen as 'cold calling'. According to Jenny Vance, President of Leadjen 'Marketers wear many different hats in their organizations: social media, events, public relations and advertising, to name a few. It’s no wonder they are bombarded with sales messages. When done properly, traditional lead generation efforts to marketers can be very effective in driving sales appointments and revenue.' Leadjen has backed this up with their study from 2010-2013, to look at best prospecting practices to Marketers, and traditional lead generation techniques. Leadjen made over 1 million calls and email contacts across more than 20,000 conversations. It…

4 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success

One of the biggest challenges business owners as well as marketers will face in 2014 is how they can use different online media together to achieve inbound marketing success.  Many think of (social media, email, search…etc) in silos, and that’s the reason why many inbound marketing strategies may fail. In order for you to be able to design a less siloed, more effective inbound marketing strategy, I have found you need 3 elements:

1. A defined customer journey

This begins when a complete stranger finds your brand online. They go through a conversion path that is designed to turn them into customers and then turn those customers into evangelists who will promote your brand for you. You might get lucky turning very few of those strangers into customers from the first interaction if your product and copy resonates with them really well, but then you’ll be missing on…

A practical way to link different types of plan within a business

It’s often the blanket reactions to the word ‘planning’ that suggest somebody’s misunderstanding of what the word actually means. The classics are “I don’t have time to plan”? This is interesting since the same person has time to do the work again, or write off budget, for marketing that fails “I’m spending this week / month planning”. Wow - for what, the over keenness to get lost in planning can feel a bit too excitable sometimes! “I’m just getting on with it”. It’s common to see people deep dive into their work with lists, Gantt’s and schedules, and little context for the mass of action

So what’s the solution?

All planning is not the same, the purpose of planning is to enable enough forethought around the desired results vs costs from a set of actions. So it’s a ‘horses for courses’ thing and the…

A smart technique for online lead generation

Envisage entering the office after a relaxing weekend to find the information of several piping hot leads sitting on your desk - Sounds too good to be true? Think again. Historically sales and marketing teams have relied purely on avenues such as a trade shows to make their mark. Online marketing gave new options, but there are many competing, often laborious forms to capture vital prospect information. Online Lead Generation, and in particular web-based lead scoring, is a newer approach to these traditional ways, making it possible to obtain viable business opportunities. Potentially it can create a cost-effective platform which requires less marketing spend as every potential lead is captured and even identified by company. We will give a briefing about these techniques in the next free Smart Insights webcast with this post introducing the approach - please register here. …

How European marketers are applying data-driven marketing

Value/Importance: ★★★ Recommended link: Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2013 Europe and Infographic on key findings We are alerting you to the new report by Teradata, who partnered with The Technical University of Munich and the University of Applied management,  to survey over 1000 Senior Marketeers across 19 European countries to find out their biggest challenges, how to address them and adoption of technologies. Findings delved into the use of technology into today's multi-channel environment, tools to improve ROI and performance and acquiring budget. Sound familiar? ".. the tough economic climate is putting marketers under severe pressure to directly increase the revenue of the overall business and to justify their success by applying strict return on investment (ROI) measures" The findings will be of interest to Marketers who are in similar positions and being asked…

Assessing how the latest technology trends can support the sales process

Mobile, social, Cloud and Big Data are converging, with the sales department seemingly sat directly on the nexus point. Not only are these mega-trends impacting sales behaviours, but also sales technologies. Mobile, social, Big Data and Cloud are influencing the entire sales force automation (SFA) ecosystem, from sales opportunity management (contact management, sales forecasting, lead distribution, etc), sales effectiveness (prospect qualification, proposals/contracts, order management, etc) and sales performance management (objectives/quota management, territory management, etc). With such widespread influence, sales teams that harness these forces have the potential to significantly improve their business results. 'The trends help the sales leaders address the perennial issue of how to make salespeople more productive, while the next generation of sales tools also mean you can have deeper insight about your customers – know which ones to call, be able to qualify leads better, be able to enter…

A Solid Lead Generation System starts with a Nose for News

Whether you are a kid with crayons, a Journalist or a Content Marketer, we all have an expectation that audiences will love every sentence we write. After all, we put a lot of effort into each thought – how can the story not be perfect? The harsh fact is that most web readers skim stories, which means that it takes even more effort to make the important points of a piece relevant, clear and arranged in a logical style. For Content Marketers, this storytelling technique is particularly important in developing a lead generation system. 

Four Tips for Content Marketers

Content marketers would do well to imitate Journalists, who by training are some of the best storytellers because they focus on the following areas: 1. Relevance. Answers to the key questions of who, what, when, where, how and why are the foundation for making a story…

Marketing Automation Tool recommendations

Value/Importance: [rating=4]

Recommended link: B2B Marketing Automation Tools 2013: Marketers Guide

We thought it would be helpful to share this new free report since we have had several recent questions on our Answers forum about selecting CRM and Marketing Automation systems - CRM seems preferred as a term in the UK.

Can anyone recommend a marketing automation solution?Selecting a CRM DatabaseCRM tool recommendations

This guide provides many practical tips, checklists and advice for companies seeking to source the right marketing automation tool, ideas to overcome barriers and challenges, information to help justify the requirement for it and to find out the major players, and trends.

The 61 page document collates findings from primary and secondary research including interviews with marketing adopters, vendors of marketing automation and leading industry leaders.

You can access the full report to…

Which sites work best? Lead generating focused sites foster growth, but branding focused sites have their place

Lead generating vs branding websites: Which is right for you? With the web well past the 20-year mark and it's presence continuing to dominate, companies and organisations must continue to upgrade their online presence in order to survive.

Among professional services firms, the need for better websites is often tied to business development and presents the challenge of how to best support those efforts. The answer increasingly lies in one of two areas: the lead generating website and the more basic 'branding' website.

How much does your website facilitate sales?

A first step for deciding the type of website is to evaluate how sales are made. Are they mostly referral-based, or do they rely on repeat customers? What role does the website play and when do prospects visit most?

For some companies, the answers point to existing relationships…