Product Documents

The following is a guest post from Sam Melnick at Lattice Engines and a former analyst in IDC’s CMO Advisory Service. For all of the chatter of “marketing stacks” these days, I found Sam’s description of capability-specific “layers” to be a more precise way to think about how to best implement marketing technology in context. This may be the understatement of the year: the marketing landscape is becoming increasingly complex and difficult to navigate. As publicized here on the chiefmartec.com blog, there are close to 2,000 different marketing technologies, all with visions and pitches of making the lives of marketers easier. But last I checked, there are still only 24 hours in a day and, if anything, the expectations of today’s marketer are greater than ever before. The challenge is not only picking the right vendors, but understanding what type of technology should be purchased next, the efforts that will go into making it successful, where it will fit within the current marketing strategy, and what the returns to the bottom line will be. All these questions can invite “analysis paralysis” — or lead to unrealistically lofty goals for whatever technologies ultimately are purchased. So what is a marketer to do? The answer that I suggest is: Don’t buy point solutions or marketing technologies in a vacuum. Instead, build capability layers into your marketing organization and organize marketing technologies in the context of those layers and the actions they need to perform. Over the past several years, I have had hundreds of conversations with B2B marketers about successful marketing practices. In my pervious role as an analyst at IDC’s CMO Advisory Service, we urged folks to build systems, not silos within marketing. Now at Lattice, I talk to customers about the actions they want to take, create, and improve with predictive. These both are backed by the same principle: creating harmony towards a common goal, in a complex environment, by building sets of layers within marketing. Let’s beyond the theory and examine a couple of tangible examples of actual marketing layers in action. In these examples, an important factor to note is it is not just about technologies. The marketing organization and the sets of layers should revolve around four factors: people, process, technologies, and data. Example 1: Improving Sales Effectiveness The use case for this set of layers is to work more intelligently to enable and arm the sales team during the sales process. Layer 1: Eloqua & Salesforce.com (Technology) — The systems of records and view into each deal from start to finish. Layer 2: Marketing & Sales Lead Flow Process (Process) — The steps in place to assure consistency and measureable actions are taking place across the organization. Layer 3: Analysis on Content Utilized in Deals (People & Data) — Detailed analysis of what content and collateral was used in successful and unsuccessful deals. Predicated on the information being in place (Layer 1) and repeatable processes being taken (Layer 2). Layer 4: Savo (Technology) — The execution of arming sales with the content, collateral, and messaging that will be most effective depending on the selling circumstances and timing.   Example 2: Account-Based Retargeting Advertisements The use case for this set of layers is for supporting account-based marketing to run a more effective advertising campaign. Layer 1: Lattice Engines (Technology) — The targeting engine behind this campaign, using predictive analytics to identify the accounts that are most likely to buy. Layer 2: Demandbase (Technology) — The vehicle to action to map and deliver retargeted ads in B2B networks. Layer 1 provides the “who,” whereas this layer is the “how.” Layer 3: Creative & Copy (People) — The content, put in place by the staff running the advertising program, that will be delivered to market. Layer 4: Advertising Ops/Execute (People & Process) — The overall management of the program, including A/B testing and confirmed methods of measurement. The final step of any of these sets of layers is to bring in the data, take the learnings, iterate and repeat (or cross it off the list and move on to the next test case). How to Put Layers in Place The imperative for these sets of layers isn’t to build complexity into marketing, but rather to be strategic with marketing actions and technology purchases and avoid losing money and time. And while it’s unrealistic to think that with a snap of the fingers every part of your marketing will have these high functioning sets of layers, it is something to push towards. Here are four suggestions to get you started: 1. Ask Why. I am a huge fan of the “5 Whys” to derive what is truly the problem or what truly needs to be accomplished. So, before any technology is purchased or a major campaign is launched, ask those critical “why” questions. 2. Start Small. Don’t take on the juiciest, cross-departmental, multi-geo problem to begin with. Identify a well-defined capability — like the examples above — and look to build a set of layers around that. This will be easier to manage and facilitates incremental testing and experimentation. 3. Map It Out. For each campaign, technology and problem you are solving, map out the layers involved. This can be as simple or complex as you want, but getting these layers on paper will help with the approach and provide valuable documentation. 4. Make it a Team Effort. Ask each team member to map out or explain the set of layers they are building. When each team member brings something to the table, this will produce interesting conversations and learnings. It will also provide clarity into what skills and technologies are most valuable to your organization. Finally, as you advance and begin to successfully build and map sets of layers, the end goal should be to create sets of layers on top of each other — ultimately rolling into a single marketing vision or goal. See below for how this might look: I’d love to hear what sets of layers you are building in your marketing organization. What has worked? What hasn’t? What’s the ultimate set of layers you are working to build towards?

Personal thanks to Stephane Hamel​ for providing this document. If you have an feedback, .. if you find it useful, if it helps you, if you see any errors or things that could be improved - let me know! Please let Stephane Hamel​ know.

By: Camille Crandall When I first came on board at Marketo, I was amazed by the power of marketing automation and the data it provided to marketers and salespersons alike. Starting a conversation with a new prospect was easy when I already knew what they were interested in—it was like Facebook stalking for marketing and sales professionals. Sign me up! A few months into my SDR (Sales Development Representative) role, with the marketing automation engine running in the background, I began to understand what I was selling and changed my messaging to create value instead of only building upon what was already provided by marketing automation. Thinking of it with “if/then” logic, I would draw lines between interests and needs, mapping Marketo’s services to customer pain points. For example: If a person is showing interest in creating content and they are a marketing manager, then they might be interested in aggregating data to determine what content is the most successful. This changes the conversation from “I noticed you downloaded XYZ whitepaper” to “I noticed your interest in content creation, and so I am curious about your engagement strategy. How are you leveraging data to help your team create marketing assets that will most greatly affect the bottom line?” See the difference? With a marketing automation platform working in the background, it’s easy for a salesperson to become a fanatic. But what happens when the inbound engine (aka: inbound marketing leads qualified by SDRs) isn’t getting you to your quota? Or what if certain prospects haven’t converted into known leads? You don’t want to miss out on such great opportunities—especially if there is a true business need or pain point your prospect is experiencing that your product could solve. To meet this delta between what the inbound engine produces for your pipeline and blowing your numbers out of the water month over month, you, the sales rep, needs to explore the world of outbound prospecting. Let’s take a look at just what this entails: The Outbound Prospecting Landscape Cold emailing/calling can be a daunting task; however, outbounding is extremely similar to inbounding. The only difference is knowing where a prospect’s interest lies and inferring. For outbounding success, it is imperative that you: Do your research: It is necessary to understand who you are reaching out to and why that individual would care to engage in a conversation with you. We’ve all heard of the Why You, Why You Now (WYWYN) email—now it’s time to put it to use. Reach out to key decision makers and stakeholders: After you’ve done your research and crafted a thoughtful email, make sure it reaches decision-makers (C-Suite, VPs, Directors, etc). You don’t necessarily have to talk to those people, but if you catch their interest, it will trickle down. Look for employees to begin pinging your site and let the inbound engine get to work. Follow up: This may sound pretty simple, but you’d be surprised how effective this can be in getting a conversation with either a decision maker or an influencer. For a well-crafted email, I send two follow-ups on the same thread to ensure they received my note. Reuse the work you have already done (research and personalized emails) as talking points when you call to follow up. Now, let’s expand on the primary area of successful outbound prospecting: research. Research — The Key to Successful Outbound Prospecting The concept of researching harkens back to the good ol’ college and high school days of writing a well thought-out essay. Whether the essay was expository, persuasive, analytical, or argumentative, the most important aspect was to understand your topic. And what’s the best way to truly grasp your topic? Research it! The same could be said today when you, as a working professional, are trying to make connections with potential customers. You need to come off as knowledgeable about them (as much as you are about your product or service).So how can you increase your credibility in this respect?: Understand the space the company is in and any competitors that are already customers Know the role of the person you’re reaching out to and how your product affects them Leverage 3 rd party data for validation—graphics, images, and stats go a long way Remember to always ask yourself “why should they care?” If you can’t answer this, then the answer is “they don’t.”Here are my favorite “go-to” resources for research: Company’s and individual’s LinkedIn pages: These are a quick, one-stop shop to find who you should be reaching out to and what matters most to them (check the recent posts from the company and the individual prospect’s bio). Twitter page: This is the millennium’s version of “a little birdy told me.” It’s great for connecting with a prospect on a personal level on a topic that’s relevant to them. CrunchBase: Find succinct details on a company and its funding rounds. One of my favorite triggers for a newly-funded organization is to discuss the value its sister portfolio companies find when using our product. Company website: One quick glance tells you what your prospect is proud of. Be aware of what they are promoting! TechCrunch: Third-party articles highlight why your prospect is awesome. Be aware of how they are being promoted! Work Smart and Use Your Tools Now, as a fan of the “work smarter, not harder” mentality, I recommend using the tools you have available to you to track, prove, and recreate your successes. On this note, try: Using your marketing automation tools to track the success of your outbound prospecting: Are prospects opening your emails? Which emails performed best? Are individuals from your target company beginning to interact with your site? Saving your favorite emails and using them as templates: If your email to the CEO gets a response, use it again and personalize wherever you need to while keeping the value points from the original email. Remember: any response is a good response. An email that grabbed enough attention to elicit a reply is useful—even if it’s a “no.” If you get a “no,” ask them what is keeping your product from being top of mind today and when would be a better time to connect. You can use their response to help craft your next touch-point. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize Take the time to “be better” and go the extra mile in your outbound activities. We’ve all seen or heard of prospects who buy the product from the sales person they had the best relationship with. Know who your customer is and listen to them (both in what information they make available about themselves and in what they say). Make sure the person they want to buy from is you. I hope that these tips have been helpful. What advice can you share to make your outbound marketing and sales more effective? Please share your ideas in the comments section below!

The marketing and IT leaders we interviewed for this report made numerous observations about the state of digital marketing and technology, and the customer trends that are impacting the way they work. They also identified the pain points each department routinely encounters as they strive to work together more closely. A number of common findings emerged from the interviews.

This article was written by Steve Sloan, Marketo's SVP of Product and Engineering Who hasn’t ever watched Ronco rotisserie salesman Ron Popeil tell you to "set it and forget it" or marvel while someone shows how they created their perfectly chiseled body in a P90X class? Ever since the FCC lifted advertising time restrictions on television in 1984, the airwaves have been chockablock with high-buzz pitches hawking everything imaginable. I love them. These infomercials represent some of the absolutely best examples of content marketing you’ll ever find. They’re clever, compelling and tell stories that resonate with people. And they offer lessons that marketers ought to take to heart. Lesson 1: They use storytelling to inspire emotions Nearly all of us have watched one of those commercials for a few minutes, a half hour or many half hours. Infomercials tell wonderfully compelling stories about human beings that we all can relate to in some way. They may make us feel hopeful; they may make us feel more optimistic, they may make us feel more alive – the point is that they make us feel something. If you’ve ever watched an exercise infomercial, you can almost believe you’ve just completed a workout. (Hey, I’ve burned calories just watching them go through their paces!) The best infomercials feature the smart use of visual images and personal testimonials to help convince any fence sitters watching that this would be a perfect fit for them. And they do wonderful jobs telling stories that get viewers emotionally involved. Great marketers understand that it’s about how people feel, not about what they think. People may think based upon rational ideas but they act on feelings. We want to get them to act but we first need to get them to feel. What infomercials get right is the focus on the human element and what it means to people, not just what a product does. That’s the way to draw us in. One company that gets this right is Patagonia, who used storytelling to turn their customers into activists. The company, which sells high-end outdoor goods, also has a mission to improve the environment. The company long relied on its owned media – both catalog and website – to foster its message of conserving the environment amidst its wares for sale. And through this consistent, cause-driven promotion, Patagonia fans remained loyal customers and believers in the company mission. Show your customers some love by making them feel like their voices are heard and that they’re a part of your greater cause—it will make a big difference. Lesson 2: They go hand in hand with attribution metrics The smart strategy behind infomercials isn’t solely focused on the fact that they can influence viewers’ feelings. The marketers behind infomercials can be extremely disciplined about measuring the economic impact of their story telling.  Based on the phone number someone dials or website they hit, marketers have clear metrics about what is working – by ad, channel and time slot. They will pull multiple levers to find a mix that gets the outcome they really matters – a purchase.  We’ve all seen scattered, irrelevant marketing storytelling across the web.  Combine that with the cryptic attribution metrics that so many of marketers rely on every day. Lesson 3: The narrative passes “The Two Drink” test If marketers are ever going to better connect with people, they must frame their stories with the right lenses.  A marketing friend of mine has a great little trick when he gets stuck or just created some jargon-laden blather that doesn’t mean anything intellectually or emotionally.  He applies what he calls the `two beer’ test. Imagine sitting down for a drink with a friend while you describe your product. What would you say? Would they smile and lean in, or start to check their phone?  If you really want to grab someone, you would serve up a few anecdotes as part of a fun story with colorful, compelling details. And after that first drink, you might loosen up even more and really get into the actual story. You wouldn’t focus on product specs; you’d talk about why your product really matters. Next time you are passing across the channels and land on QVC, pause and check it out.  They have been connecting with viewers for 29 years. There’s no secret formula at work. QVC succeeds because they know that the path to people’s wallets is through their hearts, not their minds. It’s a lesson that all content marketers would do well to take to heart. PS – And yes, you now have a new excuse to watch that P90X commercial!

This article was written by Chandar Pattabhiram, Group SVP - Marketo Earlier this month I had the pleasure of participating in a Google Hangout sponsored by our partner Neustar on the topic of marketing to customers, not devices. This is something I’ve spoken a lot about in my time in marketing and especially during my time at Marketo. The industry has moved beyond the concept of business-to-business interactions or even business-to-consumer; today, it’s all about business-to-human interaction, or, as this particular discussion series is named, human-to-human interaction. In the hour or so that I spent with my esteemed fellow panelists, there were a multitude of interesting insights, but I’ve boiled it down to five pillars to share this knowledge with you. It’s About Long-Term Interaction, Not Short-Term Transactions The most successful companies are those that look to build long-terms relationships with their customers, not just market for the sake of the quick sale. Today’s consumers have so many choices, short attention spans and are constantly getting bombarded with marketing messages. Ultimately, they will pay the most attention to messages and brands that resonate personally. Marketers that engage  customers with individualized messages, in a manner relevant to them, will see the most success i.e. transactions. This concept can be overwhelming if you’re a large enterprise company connecting with thousands, even millions of customers regularly. Luckily, we finally have the technology to complete these humanized interactions at-scale. The marketers who can lead their companies to connect with customers every step of the journey will win. Pick Your Technology: Think Empirically, not Emotively This idea of being with your customers at every step of the journey is critical. If you’ve looked at the marketing lumascape recently, you’ve noticed that there are hundreds of technology solutions and potential partners, with new options appearing every day. What this means is that marketing teams have the flexibility and power to choose the solutions that best fit their needs along whichever point in a customer’s journey. Their ultimate goal should be to fuel what I refer to as the “virtuous engagement cycle”—a look at the complete customer journey that results in acquiring customers faster, keeping them longer and converting them into advocates for your brand, who in-turn influence new prospects. Smart marketing leaders will only invest in technology that provides measurable ROI at these different stages. For example, if your team needs to grow pipeline, invest in the product that is going to generate the highest volume of opportunities , not just ones that are best suited for driving inbound marketing leads. In other words, technology that drives complete value vs. interstitial value. We have the luxury of choice, and it is imperative to take the time to determine what the right technology partners are for ourselves and ultimately our customers. Show Me the Money: Value, Not Vanity Speaking of ROI, marketers in the last decade or so have prided themselves on vanity metrics—clicks, engagements, website visitors, and so on. This is an improvement from the mass media campaigns of the past, but modern marketing needs to be aligned toward how much revenue it is driving for the business, as I’m sure your CEO or CFO would agree. This goes hand-in-hand with the ideal of choosing the best technology partners, because you need the right tools that will measure ROI in the way that’s most beneficial to you. It’s all about the cha-ching! Focusing on driving revenue is the best way to align with with your CEO or CFO and even your sales teams in a B2B context. Simply put, how can you demonstrate that marketing is moving the needle and contributing positively to the company’s bottom line? Opti-channel vs. Omni-channel You’ve probably heard the term omni-channel, but what about opti-channel? Omni-channel is somewhat an utopian concept about reaching your audience across all potential avenues–web, social, email, mobile, print, TV, etc.  A customer rarely engages across every channel. But opti-channel is about understanding how–i.e. via which channels–the customer prefers to engage in. Then, the task is optimizing your communications to create a seamless and unified experience across them all as a customer engages with your brand. I call this continuous context. The best way I can illustrate this is by referencing my Netflix account. Let’s say I’m watching The Shawshank Redemption (one of my favorite flicks) on my iPad while I’m on the road, but I don’t quite finish the movie before I get home. Later, when I have a moment to finish watching, I log in to my account via my TV, and there’s the movie ready for me to view right where I left off. Not only that, but Netflix is full of suggestions for what else I should watch based on my past activity and preferences. It’s not feeding me advertisements for some movie I’ve already watched, it’s trying to continue the conversation by providing personal value. Imagine doing that as a marketer! That’s what we now have the technology to do. Balancing Art and Science For marketing, tomorrow will be about the Einsteins as much as it will be about the Picassos. What I mean by this is that the marketing leader of tomorrow will need to be as much a scientist as an artist. Marketing will always be about connecting to build relationships with your audience and doing it in an emotive away, but the trade has evolved so that we now need to understand data and use it to guide our actions. Data is the key to what’s working and what’s not working and it is imperative that we pay attention and adjust our interaction strategy accordingly. If you haven’t seen the weather reports, the data blizzard is coming. Humans are about to hit 19 billion devices. That’s 19 billion streams of data and 19 billion ways to respond. The most important thing will be finding the beacons in the blizzard; what data really matters and what will best inform your actions to meet your goals. To make it through this storm, you’ll need technology that not only tells you how your current programs are doing but that will also predict what your customers will be doing in the future. A good metaphor for this concept would the Google self-driving car —in this case, you just pick the destination where you’re headed and the car’s system processes massive streams of data and does all the self-driving to get you there, anticipating the route and road hazards ahead of time; Marketing systems will do the same—you pick your destination and goals, and the system does the all the complex processing of data to get you there, listening and adapting as you learn more. That’s All, Folks So there you have it. At last we have the technology available to treat every customer like a real, live human, not just a B or a C in the business-to equation. As marketing leaders, let’s get out there and drive these humanized interactions. At scale.

This blog originally appeared on Forbes.com, July 28th, 2015 and was written by Marketo's CEO Phil Fernandez Technology is no longer the tail that wags the marketing dog – it is the entire dog, nose to tail. There was a time in the not too distant past when digital was an add-on function in the marketing equation. Today, digital is at the core of everything we do in marketing. And that has profound ramifications for the business of marketing, the people who practice it, and the companies that rely on it to grow and succeed. Just as technology has transformed how companies market themselves and their brands, it is having a similarly momentous impact on corporate marketing organizations and the people who staff and manage them. For corporations to fully capitalize on the technology-fueled marketing revolution– or just avoid being left behind – they will need to completely rethink and restructure their marketing departments. Companies large and small are already starting to align their marketing departments with the new technology-driven business environment, but these changes are happening with less urgency than is warranted. Marketing should be a leading indicator in business (and technology), not a lagging one. So what does the tech-empowered marketing organization of the future look like, and what do you need to do to build one today? In my mind there are two big areas of focus: A Customer Mindset A study we commissioned earlier this year that found that 75% of CMOs and senior marketing executives expect to own the end-to-end customer relationship in the next three to five years.  Assuming even more responsibility for managing the entire customer lifecycle, the CMO is now organizing the marketing function around the customer rather than around channels, internal processes and tools (e.g., no more separate email and social marketing teams). We’re also seeing centers of excellence emerging to connect common, horizontal functions and drive coordination around engaging the customer. This includes breaking down the old barriers between customer acquisition and loyalty.  Suffice it to say that if you still have a separate digital group in your marketing department, you are probably headed in the wrong direction. A New Team For years the key players in the marketing department were the VPs of brand marketing, corporate marketing and product marketing. Who are the leaders in this new digital age? The term “content marketing” barely existed five years ago. Today most marketing departments have at least one executive whose sole job is to oversee the development and distribution of content to attract and engage customers. The modern marketing organization is increasingly being powered by an engine that is process-driven. This has given rise to a new role, the head of marketing operations,who isresponsible for driving that engine with the right blend of technology and data. I also believe we need to designate a head of listening. This individual would listen to what the customer really says and understand how she behaves via the web, mobile, social and the “real” world, too. Always advocating for the customer’s needs and wants, the head of listening would use these insights to empower the marketing team to respond in real-time, customer-by-customer, thus helping to build the long-term relationships that produce outsized revenue growth. Notwithstanding all of this progress, too many companies are not evolving fast enough. To paraphrase the great poet Chaucer, time and tide wait for no company. Forward-thinking corporations are moving aggressively to build customer-centric, technology-driven marketing organizations that are competing more effectively and poised to win the future. Is your company ready?

Provided by Dan Stevens​

Back by popular demand: Johnny Cheng Following my blog earlier this month on win rate and velocity, we’ve finally reached the most important metric of the series… drum roll please…The Golden Ratio! With the Golden Ratio, aligning channels across conversion rate, win rate, and velocity will give you the full picture of channel performance. What Is the Golden Ratio? The Golden Ratio is pipeline generated over cost. I believe pipeline/cost is more important than ROI for marketing metrics. While ROI depends on multiple factors, some of which are out of marketing’s hands, such as sales performance and capacity, the Golden Ratio is measured primarily on marketing aptitude—the ability to deliver pipeline across certain channels. Now, before we dive into the data, let’s set some context around first-touch and multi-touch attribution, since those are the two lenses for viewing the Golden Ratio across channels. First-Touch vs. Multi-Touch Attribution When looking at pipeline attribution, it’s crucial to understand the difference between first-touch and multi-touch. First-Touch Attribution: Attributing the pipeline contribution to the first touch point of the opportunity. Example: If a lead came in as a result of attending a webinar, regardless of all subsequent touch points, all credit gets attributed to that webinar. Multi-Touch Attribution: Attributing the pipeline contribution to all touch points of the opportunity. Example: If a lead came in as a result of a webinar, but later responded to an email campaign, attended a tradeshow, and then downloaded a whitepaper, all of those channels would get credit distributed equally across them. Many companies only look at first-touch attribution, which is good for looking at acquisition snapshots (specific point in time), however it does not give a complete picture of channel performance across time. A lead could have come in through a certain channel, but gained most of the influence in subsequent touches, such as through a nurturing program. In a first-touch model, only the acquisition channel gets the credit. In a multi-touch model, all touches that influence an opportunity get credit. Pipeline to Cost Ratio (First-Touch) Here’s first-touch pipeline to cost ratio. This measures pipeline generated over the cost, normalized across marketing channels. All attribution is based on first-touch (lead source). Pipeline to Cost Ratio (Multi-Touch) Here’s multi-touch pipeline to cost ratio. This measures pipeline generated over the cost, normalized across marketing channels. All attribution is credited across all touch points. What We’ve Learned I love this data; we’ve got digital marketing down to a science! The Golden Ratio proves two fundamental theories, first of which every marketer probably practices, and the other that’s not so intuitive. Let’s take a look: This Is Why We Nurture: I was waiting patiently for the publishing of this blog for the big reveal. Email nurturing is amazing! OK, you’re not surprised, but at least now you have the data to prove it. Email has THE HIGHEST pipeline to cost ratio of all marketing channels, especially in a multi-touch model where email nurturing has huge influence over opportunities relative to cost. Think of those deals that have two-year sales cycles—why would you not nurture them? First-Touch vs. Multi-Touch: I recently met with a past colleague that was using a competitor marketing automation system that couldn’t do multi-touch attribution. She told me her company had stopped doing webinars due to poor performance. But she was completely unaware how webinars affected opportunities after the first touch. And judging by the data, webinars could have been a great vehicle for nurturing prospects. The moral of the story is that first-touch attribution only gauges acquisition, whereas multi-touch attribution gauges everything else. Putting It All Together Imagine if you had a magic crystal ball that told you exactly where your best leads came from. Well now you can build your own magic crystal ball (actually more like a magic telescope). By aligning conversion rate, win rate, velocity, pipeline, and cost across all of your channels—or even better—across all of your programs, you can clearly see what works and what doesn’t. Some of my current and past demand gen. colleagues have perfected this art; some have even been able to work backwards to drive future revenue projections. That’s how marketing gets a seat at the revenue table.

By: Sesame Mish Last week, Content Marketing World (CMW) took downtown Cleveland by storm. Industry movers & shakers congregated in the vast maze of a convention center to learn the latest hacks and findings on the content marketing front. When I wasn’t checking my Fitbit (15,000 steps on Wednesday alone!), I was munching on orange-colored snacks [think: orange-frosted (and sprinkled!) donuts and cheddar cheese spread] and networking with others who share my passion for all things content. The biggest opportunity for both personal and professional growth came from attending the conference keynotes and individual break-out sessions, where we attendees heard fresh insights from content marketing leaders from around the world. So if you weren’t able to attend CMW, I’m happy to share three key take-aways that you can incorporate into yourcontent marketing: 1. Form a Strategy, Not a Vision Keynote speaker Kristina Halvorson kicked off day 1 of the conference by making us all question ourselves—but in a good way. She began with a bold assertion that many content marketers struggle with developing a solid content strategy. Why? Simply put, we go about content creation almost haphazardly, producing as much content as we possibly can in a given period. We strive to be everywhere at every given moment. Quantity is the focus. This approach is the result of us starting out with the assumption that content marketing is for us. This is the end point, she noted—not the starting point. The starting point, she said, was to ask ourselves why we are doing (or are wanting to do) content marketing in the first place. This was the million dollar question that made us momentarily sit back in our chairs and scratch our heads. We need to ask this question first in order to provide the fuel and justification for our content strategy. Otherwise, we’ll succumb to formulating a “strategy” that does not address our primary responsibilities as marketers: business outcomes and customer satisfaction. So, don’t fall into the trap of creating a “strategy” that’s really just a vision (e.g. “We will be the industry leader by delivering content that our customers can’t get enough of”). The main take-away here? Make sure your content strategy fully addresses your goals—not works against them. 2. Make Customers the Heroes of Your Story With content today being dominated by pictures of babies and kittens…and puppies, it’s harder now than ever to tune out the noise. In fact, every minute, over 204 million emails are sent, 205 million social shares occur, and three days’ worth of video is uploaded to the internet. For content marketers, this is a huge noise barrier to break through. So, how can we ensure that our content is compelling enough to stand on its own two feet? Speaker Michael Brenner addressed this predicament by honing in on the idea of content marketing as storytelling. The answer, he said, is that we content marketers need to approach marketing like it’s our job to tell stories. At the core, we are storytellers. Content marketing is about attracting people through stories that they love and that speak to them. This is the only type of content that will consistently draw people in. On that note, it’s important to point out that content marketing should be customer-focused, not brand-focused. Brenner quoted Ann Handley with: “Take your brand out of the story—make your customers the hero.” All content marketers know that it’s easy to fashion our content as a way to promote our brand. But in order to create compelling content that our customers will actually love—and which will break through the noise—we need to whole-heartedly focus on our customers, their wants, and their needs. How? Get to know your customers and use your content to answer their questions. You already have the knowledge and the expertise to answer your customers’ questions, so this should be a walk in the park. 3. Create Ugly Speaker Jay Acunzo discussed things that prolific content creators do really well…and why you should do them, too. Numero uno? Dive in and create ugly—ugly content, that is. It’s no secret that we content marketers are known for our mission to create perfect content every time from the get-go. But as a result, we seldom allow ourselves to fully unleash our creative minds. Just think—what could you create if you left the formulaic content creation process at the door and instead just let the creative juices flow…wherever they may go? The point here is that it wouldn’t matter what the initial output is (in fact, it’s meant to be ugly)—the only thing that does matter is the fact that as you go through the creative, unrestricted process of shaping your content into a masterpiece, you’ll learn more than if you stuck to your typical structured process and tried to perfect it from the start. Without taking chances with your content (side note: and in life), you won’t improve. Period. We must remember that creativity means giving ourselves permission to make mistakes—and with these mistakes comes the growth we so eagerly desire. What were your primary learnings at Content Marketing World 2015? Or if you were unable to attend—what content questions would you have wanted the keynotes and sessions to address? Please share your perspective and insights in the comments section below!

This originally appeared at Marketo.com and was written by Stacey Thornberry is Sr Enterprise Field Marketing Manager at Marketo. In her role, she partners with the enterprise sales team to create effective marketing programs to reach prospects and accelerate deals. Marketing has historically been seen as a cost center with marketers constantly working to prove ROI and fighting to be perceived as a profit generator. A marketing tactic that’s traditionally seen as one of the most pricy investments? Third-party events. I’m talking about tradeshows, hosted-buyer programs, conferences―anything where you’re giving funds to a third-party in hopes of connecting with your target audience in a live-event venue. So, how do you ensure you’re putting your coveted marketing dollars to good use with third-party events as a part of your marketing mix? The answer is to do your due diligence and research all of the available vendor-organized events in your wheelhouse that could supply you with ideal leads. Evaluate each event/sponsorship opportunity to see if it is capable of drawing the people you want to reach. You should also decide if your involvement will help you achieve your goals, whether that’s measured by new names, new opportunities, and new pipeline. With that being said, simply follow the four guidelines outlined below, and you’ll be on your way to finding the perfect sponsorship match for your money that will bring you the best ROI: Tip #1: Be Inquisitive Some vendors will resist answering your detailed questions, while others will appreciate your attention to detail and desire to find a good fit. Regardless, be tenacious! Stick to your guns, know what’s important for achieving your goals, and get the answers that you desire. Here are some questions to get you started: When is the event taking place and where? This may seem obvious, but some vendors may approach you with undefined or flexible details such as date and location. You need these specifics in order to compare against your overall program plan and budget, so get those locked down. HOT TIP: Plot out your prospective event sponsorships on a calendar. This will help give you a more visual view of your secured commitments and how your potential ones could fit in the mix. What is the conference theme? What topics will be covered? Check that your message is in sync with the event’s theme. For example, you may be marketing an app specializing in payroll fulfillment. You start looking at a human resources conference and realize that the theme revolves around conflict resolution. This likely won’t align with your company’s message, so it’s back to the drawing board for you! HOT TIP: Check out the agenda on the event website and review both the titles of the presenters and the descriptions of their sessions. This is simple research you can complete before engaging with the vendor. How many attendees are you expecting? What are your current registration numbers? How large is the database you’re marketing to? These numbers will help you create realistic goals for visitors to your booth, appointments set at the event, your giveaways budget, and more. It will also help you evaluate what kind of monetary investment you are willing to spend on the event. For example, do you want to spend $50,000 to have signage at a luncheon that only has 100 attendees? It will likely depend on how much the audience matches your ideal customer, which we’ll discuss below… HOT TIP: If you’re starting to think this event is a good fit, create preliminary goals to present to your manager for budget approval. They’ll appreciate your foresight and be more likely to give you the “thumbs up!” How many sponsors do you expect at the event? Are any of your competitors sponsoring? Have they sponsored in the past? Has your company sponsored in the past? It’s important to know how many other sponsors will be with you at the event to consider if you think you’ll be lost in the crowd. You also want to know if your competitors are showing interest―this may indicate that you should be there, too. HOT TIP: The last question (“Has your company sponsored in the past?”) may seem silly, but many marketers have only been in their roles for a few months, so don’t be ashamed to ask! Good to know if someone preceding you selected this event. Tip #2: Identify Your Perfect Persona Once you’ve got the event basics down, it’s time to check that you’d be reaching the people you actually want to reach. Start by asking some of the following questions: What are your audience demographics? Do you have a breakdown of titles and departments? What is the percentage of B2B vs. consumer-driven companies? Are there more enterprise-level companies or smaller start-ups? Regardless of the type of company you are, B2B or consumer, these may be the most important questions you ask. The answers will help you build out the audience profile they expect at their event―and see if it’s a match! For example, your ideal persona may be a CIO at an e-commerce company with more than $400 billion in revenue. But, while the event you’re currently reviewing draws CIOs, they work at smaller B2B businesses. If that’s the case, you may want to re-think your participation in this event. HOT TIP: I like to ask for past attendee lists and do some research on my own as vendors may inflate their numbers. They’ll be unlikely to give you a full list of name/title/company due to privacy concerns, but you can usually get titles and/or at least company names. Then you can go into your database or use a data vendor like Hoovers to evaluate if these attendees truly fit your criteria. Are attendees qualified in any fashion? This is especially important for executive events, like hosted-buyer programs with pre-set 1:1 meetings or executive educational events like Argyle Executive Forum. These are usually on the pricier side, so you want to make sure that the company is doing its due diligence to bring high-quality attendees to the table. HOT TIP: Ask about cancellation policies for these more upscale events―are replacements from the same company/level required to fill that newly open appointment? Make sure you’re going to get the value you expect. Tip #3: Define Your Courtship Now it’s time to define your courtship. Most importantly, this is where you determine how much value you will get from the opportunity. Ask yourself: What do sponsors receive? Are there speaking opportunities? What will bring me the most value? Get a sponsorship prospectus and scour the details. Most packages will include the basics like “branding”―aka company name/logo on the website, in the conference brochure, etc. Look beyond these for ideas that will give you more impact and get your message across to this audience. Don’t forget to check on your options for receiving contact information so that you can follow up with these leads. Review the document for the following common sponsorship packages:Do your best to evaluate the cost vs. impact. Work on predicting your ROI. It may be nuanced, and it may be qualitative based on your past experience. For example, since I’ve been at Marketo, we moved to a customized sponsorship option with a vendor because we want to get high impact with our content through a thought leadership presentation versus a moderated panel where our message could be muted by other participants. We also decided that we no longer want to participate in a VIP dinner because we weren’t seeing much value (our sales reps shared feedback that they ended up being stuck next to just two people at the table all night, so there wasn’t much opportunity). So, we got the best of both worlds in one sponsorship package! Speaking Opportunities: Roundtables Panels Thought Leadership Presentations Case Studies Engagement Opportunities: How will you be able to connect with this audience? Some options available may be: Tradeshow Booth Contests 1:1 Appointments Exclusive VIP Luncheon Extra Branding Opportunities: Lanyards Hotel Room Key Cards Charging Stations Meal Breaks Gala Entertainment Literature Distribution HOT TIP: As evidenced by my anecdote above, you have the power to negotiate! Is there a sponsorship package that tickles your fancy but is missing a piece that would make it more enticing? Ask to combine it! Or remove something you don’t find valuable. The vendor will want to make you happy (and get your $$$), so they should be willing to work with you for the best fit. Tip #4: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is You’ve asked the vendor a lot of questions and you have a detailed document describing the event, who will be attending, as well as sponsorship options and your notes on whether your company should participate. Now’s the time to present your research and recommendations to the people that hold the purse strings.Be sure to include: Audience profile Sponsorship packages Predicted ROI Where the event(s) fit into your overall marketing plan/budget Your recommendation of whether you should sponsor this particular event and why I recommend sharing everything you’ve evaluated, both positive and negative, to show your manager your critical-thinking skills and your desire to make the right investment for the company. Once you’ve agreed upon your next steps, reach out to the vendor(s) and give them the good (or not-so-good) news. Then you’ll be well on your way to gathering new leads and reaching a new audience! (Who knows―maybe these steps will lead you to sponsoring Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit 2016…) What kinds of questions do you ask when evaluating third-party events? I’d love to learn more from you to help me find the perfect match!

By Sean O’Neill Many industries felt the impact of our recent financial crisis, including automotive. Traditionally an integral part of our economy and culture, car sales in once strong markets are in decline due to lack of consumer confidence and changes in the way people buy. Today, more and more people conduct research online instead of visiting car dealerships. These changes in the way people buy have affected the marketing landscape across the board, not just in automotive. With industries such as media, retail, finance, and education, the internet has changed the way people buy and has also led to increased levels of competition. As a result of this surge of information available online, the average buyer now spends more time independently researching purchases instead of visiting more traditional shop-fronts like dealerships. Today, as consumer spend is returning, consumer marketers of luxury goods must do more to attract and engage buyers and maintain loyalty with their brand. For example, one report from management consulting firm McKinsey showed that for an average automobile purchase there are now as little as 1.6 visits to car dealerships compared to the average of five visits from buyers 10 years ago. This is reflective of the challenge for marketing luxury consumer products across the board, where customers are now on multiple channels such as social, web, mobile, and email. In this environment, the physical store has become less important for information gathering. Consumer marketers now need to be wherever their customers are, not just in-store. They need to tie up all those data points and go beyond simply collecting information about potential customers to really keeping these potential customers engaged with the brand over time. To adapt to this changing market, here are three actions marketers can take to maximize the potential for growth: 1. Get Timely Data Like all marketers, those involved in leasing cars, selling insurance, and taking out contracts over several years find a lot of potential for generating new business from targeted and timely messaging. As a consumer marketer, you can align your sales and marketing process in such a way that cross-channel visits are tracked, messaging is automated, and persona-based and timely alerts are sent to sales for follow-up. The best way to do this is by using a marketing automation platform. For example, a challenge like creating an automated process to reach out to lease holders can be solved with marketing automation technology. In this case solving that challenge means that opportunities to help customers find a new car when their lease was coming to an end don’t fall through the cracks. Instead, a marketing automation platform can automatically generate a lead for each lease approaching maturity and send an alert to the account manager involved. So by using the right technologies to analyze interest and interaction and by triggering the right flow of content to engage the buyer, you can significantly increase customer retention. 2. Engage in Linked Multi-Channel Marketing Across almost all industries we see that customers use multiple devices to research and connect with products and services. This is particularly relevant when it comes to consumer-geared businesses; however, aligning a consistent message across all devices—led by insight and tracking all of that data—continues to be a big challenge. In many large organizations, there is often a hodgepodge of different tools, all operating in their own communication silos. By using a full marketing automation suite and not simply a standalone email marketing system, you will create a consolidated approach where it’s possible to connect with potential customers across all of their channels and build a profile based off of all of their interactions. Having this profile in one place helps you communicate with your audience more effectively and personally, making it more likely that they will take action and purchase. Let’s use the example of an automotive dealer. Say it wants to run a campaign targeting those who have purchased cars within a certain timeframe, interested in upgrading their vehicle. The first thing is to send some information on why it would be beneficial to change and what kind of deals they could get. If the dealer relies solely on email, then the messaging might not be consistent when the buyer visits the dealer’s website or social media pages. And if the buyer accesses the content via mobile it should be optimized for mobile. So, the best thing for the dealership to do in this case is to provide consistent and engaging messaging to the user across all of these channels, taking into account the actions they have taken previously. Without linking up all of these channels into one system, the communications will not be personalized and consistent with buyer behavior. If the buyer has received an email and then clicked on the website and then shared a picture of a car with their social network, then they should receive messaging personalized for their stage of the buyer journey. This can only be accomplished by mapping the entire journey. Here’s how this journey can be illustrated: 3. Perform Enhanced Analytics Increasingly, emerging markets are where businesses are now experiencing growth, which means they must improve segmentation by splitting their database into the most meaningful audience for each campaign and deliver more location-specific information. Behavioral data, such as understanding click-through rates, keywords, time spent per page, and repeat visits, is a vital part of creating targeted messaging. With traditional markets slowing, it is more important than ever to find ways to entice potential buyers and upsell to your existing client base. You can do this by tracking both demographic and firmographic data and understanding the value of your content not just at a first touch but at a multi-touch level. First touch attribution is great at giving an indication on campaign performance and how many potential customers have been brought in due to that campaign, but this can give misleading data in today’s world, where buyers don’t engage straight away with the business. Instead, these prospects often touch multiple channels before they engage. So only multi-touch attribution can show marketers the true value of their content on influencing deals over time. Tying It All Together There are several ways to get timely data, implement a multi-channel strategy, and monitor buyer behavior, but by providing one system of record for all of your customer engagement, marketing automation software provides marketers with an easy, centralized way to gain insight into your customer journey. By showing you which content is working for you and what can be enhanced, this will help you decide the best strategies to optimize revenue and accelerate growth for your business. How are you engaging with your customer in a coordinated, cross-channel way? Where are you struggling? Please share in the comments below.

Columnist Sanjay Dholakia says marketers should take a page from MyFitnessPal, which has crafted its marketing strategy to think about users throughout the customer journey and across all channels. One of the great privileges of my job is the opportunity to meet smart CMOs and growth marketers on a regular basis and hear what they and their companies are doing to adapt in this new era of marketing. It occurred to me that I should try to be more intentional about regularly sharing some of those cool stories, and particularly, the insights they illustrate. One such organization that inspired me is MyFitnessPal, which is a customer of Marketo, my employer. For those of you who don’t know MyFitnessPal, the company is now part of Under Armour Connected Fitness and is the world’s most popular nutrition tracking app and healthy living platform. The idea behind MyFitnessPal is to help users meet their individual health and fitness goals. Screenshots of the My Fitness Pal mobile app. “Marketing Is Not About Acquisition” How’s that for a lesson and a head-scratcher? It almost turns centuries of dogma upside down, doesn’t it? One of my V8 moments listening to MyFitness Pal and its marketing leadership is that they saw the marketing function fundamentally differently. They saw it as the steward of the whole customer relationship — not just the engine to acquire customers. To be fair, marketing does still drive acquisition — but I wanted to make the extreme point. The truth is, MyFitnessPal has had little problem acquiring more customers; they’ve been the top health and fitness app on iTunes since 2010, attracting more than 80 million unique visitors worldwide in an incredibly short period of time. The key to value for the business, though, was about what happened to the users afterthey were acquired. Did they stay engaged with the app and the service? Did they spend increasing amounts of time with MyFitnessPal? Fostering greater interaction with users, and doing it at massive scale, was the hard part. Tara-Nicholle Nelson, VP of Marketing for Under Armour Connected Fitness, and the rest of the MyFitnessPal team realized that the app wouldn’t stick as a core part of users’ lives until they were consistently engaged in an ongoing relationship. As Nelson shared at our company’s user event in April, “Our whole business is marketing — everyone is in marketing. Everyone and everything has to be geared towards keeping that customer interacting with us.” That meant that content, customer service, product and, yes, marketing, all had to be working with that engagement in mind. It made me think that in our new world of digital marketing, we’ve learned that marketing is less an acquisition science, per se, and more about an engagement science. Success hinges on acquisition for sure, but more so on engagement and post-sale nurturing for repeat purchasing. And while Nelson as a functional leader isn’t directly responsible for all of those other functions, she is the quarterback, the architect of that holistic set of customer interactions. That’s indicative of a powerful shift in what marketing is — and is not. Customers Are Channel-less One of the other “aha” or V8 moments for me was that even though MyFitnessPal was a mobile app, the company realized that they needed to engage their users everywhere. That meant shifting from mobile-only communications to creating conversations across every channel. Nelson tells a story about going from sending three emails to regularly sending out tens of millions of emails. Surely, marketing automation technology was key to making that happen, but the bigger insight is the realization that you and I as users/buyers/consumers are now “channel-less.” We don’t think about ourselves as “different people” when we switch from mobile to email to social to the Web. Why, then, do companies communicate to us in these silos? MyFitnessPal offers a better model for how to do it. The team sends emails to people based on behavior they detect in the mobile app, building ongoing relationships with users. If MyFitnessPal wasn’t able to deliver more chicken recipes to someone when they know they’re logging dishes with chicken in them, that’s an opportunity lost. The Sound Bite MyFitnessPal has changed the way its team sees marketing. They see the function as the steward of engagement over the whole customer journey, and they think about a single customer conversation across all channels, not just one. The company says it’s since registered a surge in the number of monthly unique visitors to MyFitnessPal’s blog, which has soared to 9.5 million readers from almost nothing, and it’s logged a 22 percent increase in the number of users engaged weekly with the app. I think we could all learn something about the future of marketing from Nelson and MyFitnessPal.

By: Mike Telem Chances are you’ve already created many helpful blog posts, case studies, ebooks, and webinars in order to help educate your potential customers, so there is no need to convince you that content marketing works. But, one question remains: Are you maximizing their potential for lead generation across all of your channels? Today’s prospects independently research products and services before making a purchase, which creates numerous interaction touch-points. Now, organizations are starting to realize the importance of personalizing those touch-points and providing an engaging, valuable experience for each visitor. But realizing the importance is different than actually implementing a personalized experience. Let’s take a look at the 10 steps to help you build a successful personalization strategy: Step 1: Follow the 3 Ws of Personalization Think journalists are the only ones who live by Ws? Think again. Marketers have their own version—the 3 Ws to consider before launching a campaign: Who: Who are your key audiences, and what are the defining characteristics of your target audiences? Examine attributes such as geo-location, company size or industry, title/role, and the stage in the buyer’s journey. What: What are you personalizing? Determine which content assets are most valuable to your ideal persona, such as blog posts or case studies. Where: On which channel are you personalizing? (website, mobile, ads, etc.) Step 2: Choose Your Use Cases Wisely What goal are you trying to achieve with personalization? For example, you may be looking to generate new leads or nurture existing leads and further educate them.Start by choosing only two or three use cases that make the most sense or will have the most impact on your business. If you’re B2B, you can consider employing account-based marketing (ABM) to target specific companies, industries, or even personas that are “high-value.” However, for B2Cs, the focus can be on engaging consumers based on location, behavior, or past purchasing history or interactions with your brand. Step 3: Take a Closer Look at Your Use Cases After you’ve selected a few use cases to focus on, go one step further by detailing the specifics. For instance, for some companies this may entail listing account names or regions that are most valuable to your business. For others, you can zoom-in on a particular behavior or specific product interest. Step 4: Get Your Analytics in Place Before starting to run any campaigns, determine what you’re going to measure and how. To get started: Establish Analytics: This can help you understand how each key audience interacts with you. Set up your measurements to determine baseline metrics for the different verticals and audiences and start testing personalization campaign results to measure uplift. Create Segments: Track performance by checking how many visitors from each specific segment visit your website, how they behave on-site, and what type of content they prefer. Step 5: Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose Content marketing is the fuel that drives personalization success. Instead of creating tons of new customized content, make the most of existing assets by recreating particular sections, changing visuals, or modifying CTAs. The trick is tho repurpose what you have and tweak it to each particular segment.Once you’re equipped with all the assets, that’s where content recommendation engines (CRE), such as Marketo’s, step in. CREs identify all of the content you have, learn what works best for specific users, and then leverage this machine learning to predict and recommend the most relevant asset to each visitor. Step 6: Always Keep the Customer Journey in Mind In order to push prospects down the sales funnel, you’ll need to first map out your unique buyer’s journey. Based on your visitor’s stage, you’ll want to identify content that is the most relevant and suitable for that point. For example, with early stage buyers and prospects, hold off with case studies or gated content, and start with an asset that’s easier to consume, such as an infographic or blog post. Step 7: Use Web Nurturing to Draw Visitors Back You’re probably familiar with email nurturing, but what about web nurturing?Keep visitors coming back by serving personalized ads on social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn or other websites they frequent via remarketing ads. Adding web and ad interactions to existing email nurture campaigns can increase the effectiveness of your programs, and as a result, drive up conversions and engagement. Step 8: Super Charge Your Ad Performance with Data It’s not just about serving ads to prospects across multiple platforms—it’s about retargeting them with the right ads.Tools such as Marketo’s Ad Bridge make this simple; you can “reel” visitors back to your site by suggesting new and extremely relevant content to them even when they’re visiting other sites. Personalized ads are the most effective way to show prospects that you know exactly what they’re looking for—and that you want to help them find it. Step 9: Don’t Forget to A/B Test Your Campaigns! You know the drill; without A/B testing, you’ll never know what works (and what doesn’t) in your personalization campaigns. So, what kind of metrics should you be examining up close? Ads: Check click-though and conversion rates for ad placements. Use offline event analytics. Web Engagement: Did the personalized CTAs and content drive engagement, and lead to more page views? Did you convert more anonymous prospects into qualified leads? Sales Feedback: Consult with sales on the quality of the leads specifically from personalization campaigns. Once you collect the data, use it to optimize and improve future campaigns. Step 10: Create Reports to Help Your Sales Team Personalization is an excellent way to push prospects down the funnel, but once they turn into leads, it’s a marketer’s responsibility to turn them over to sales. Use the same segmentation capabilities to provide your sales teams with real time sales intelligence about their target customersThe best way to do this is to create reports from your campaigns, such as: Key Organizations: Are certain companies showing more interest in your website? Key Leads and Accounts: Have you identified specific decision makers in certain sales territories? Product Interest and Behavior: What was this lead’s main interest and what drove him to your website? What was the context of his interest? Content personalization is essential in 2015 (and beyond). In fact, DemandGen Report found that leads who are nurtured with personalized content produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities. If you liked this post and are looking for a more in-depth tutorial on creating a winning real-time personalization strategy, download our recent ebook, 10 Steps for a Successful Personalized Web Engagement Strategy.

Author: Ellen Gomes According to Statista, there are approximately 1.2 million apps in the Apple App store and 1.3 million apps in the Android App store. So it’s no longer news that there is an app for everything, but it might make you wonder, “Do I need an app?” A question that’s often followed by the conundrum of what app to build, followed quickly by how to build an app and then “what’s my role in building an app?” Don’t let those questions or puzzlement be a deal-breaker or a barrier for you as a mobilemarketer. In this blog, I’ll walk you through evaluating how you can (and if you should) use an app to support your business and how to get the project moving along. Why Build a Mobile App? There are a ton of reasons, but let’s start at the top: mobile apps can support your business goal, whether it’s to extend your product, drive engagement, or support commerce. They provide an opportunity to drive deep engagement with your customers on the device that they use most (who else feels lost without their phone? I know it’s not just me…). Introducing a mobile app into your marketing plan is a critical and strategic move. It’s vital that you integrate its creation into your marketing strategy and that you’re involved in some of the technical aspects of the mobile app creation and implementation. As a marketer, it’s your job to ensure that the app includes multiple engagement touch-points that create a personal and relevant experience for your customers. Set Your Stakeholder Team So how do you get started? App marketing starts with creating a strategy that addresses and supports your mobile and organizational goals. The first step is evaluating whether a mobile app is right for your business, but to do that, you need to assemble a cross-functional team of stakeholders to determine whether an app will deliver the right type of value. First, you need to assemble your app team. This is often a large committee of involved stakeholders for key decisions, but you may also want to split into sub-groups focused on individual tasks. For example, maybe your engineering and user interface teams act as a sub-committee to project manage the development of your app, while marketing and sales works together to create an effective launch plan for your app. As you think about whom to include in your committee, here is a list of stakeholder groups you should consider: Executive Leadership (CMO, CEO): Supports the initiative with vision and buy-in. Marketing: Supports the initiative with go-to-market planning, app marketing strategy, and customer insights. Sales: If you have a sales team, make sure they support the initiative with customer knowledge and requests. User Interface and User Experience Experts: Support the initiative by providing app flow guidance and design expertise. Product: Supports the initiative by sharing data-based customer insights and market data. They may project manage the app build. Engineering: Supports the initiative by either building the app or helping source good developers to build your app. They may project manage the app build. Determine Your App Goals After you’ve defined your team, the next step is to reach a consensus and define your app’s goals. Defining the goals is important because it will shape how you make key decisions. To start, you and your team need to understand why you want someone to use your app. What is the purpose? The majority of apps boil down to trying to achieve one of these three goals: Acquisition: Your app provides useful functionality in exchange for the user providing contact information. These types of apps are typically promoted in the app store and via paid channels to drive downloads and subsequent sign-up. Engagement: The activities and associated actions in your app drive the user to engage with the app and your brand. These types of apps build relationships and loyalty. Conversion: The activities and actions in these apps may have components of engagement, but ultimately, they drive conversion. Get Started! Once you have determined the primary goal of your app, you and your stakeholder committee have important questions to evaluate and decide. These questions will shape how you go about the production, development, and promotion of your app. These key questions include: What type of app best fits your organization? How should you price your app? Will you design your app in-house or through an app design firm? What is your app development timeline? How will you take your app to market? How will you handle continued feedback and development of your app? I hope this gives you a good start in how to get started in evaluating if a mobile app is right for your business. Interested in learning more about creating your mobile app roadmap? Check out “A Mobile App Primer” for more info on how to get started. Have you created a mobile app? I’d love to hear about your process and how it was similar or different in the comments below.

By: David Cain B2B marketers are always on the lookout for the best way to support their marketing goals and make their sales teams successful. Typically that means leveraging a range of owned, earned, and paid marketing channels to amplify a product message and build as much awareness as possible across a wide swath of a target market in order to maximize the number of leads brought into the funnel and deliver the most sales possible out of the funnel. As a result, B2B marketers are intimately familiar with broad-reaching marketing tactics like online and offline advertising, PR, SEO/SEM, event marketing, social marketing, content marketing, mobile marketing and more, all designed to cast a very wide net and feed a sales team with a high volume of inbound leads. This broad-reaching approach to marketing can be an effective way to generate leads and sales BUT it’s not the only way to organize your sales and marketing efforts. In fact, based on the nature of your market, there may be a much more effective approach to achieve your goals—account-based marketing (ABM). What Is Account-Based Marketing? Account-based marketing is, in many ways, the exact opposite of the inbound marketing tactics I mentioned above. Instead of leveraging a set of broad-reaching programs designed to touch the largest possible number of prospective customers, an ABM strategy focuses marketing and sales resources on a defined set of targeted accounts and employs personalized campaigns designed to resonate with each individual account. With ABM, your marketing message is based on the attributes and needs of the account you’re targeting, hence the name account-based marketing. So why would you consider focusing your marketing resources on a select group of customers with an ABM strategy? Sales and marketing teams typically select target accounts because they are “high-value”—they have the potential to generate more revenue and are strategically significant or influential in a market. You might sell products that are only relevant to a small set of target accounts (let’s say, for example, computers designed to run nuclear power plants). In this case your buyer is so specific that your target account list is obvious. But ABM often makes sense even when you can potentially sell your products to a much larger group of companies. You might have a large total addressable market that includes hundreds or even thousands of potential customers, but some customers are certainly more valuable to your business than others. And there is no doubt that optimizing your campaigns with individualized messages for each account will result in better campaign performance than a generalized approach. If you have a high-value prospect you’re trying to turn into a customer (or a high-value customer you are trying to sell more to) and you think that a personalized approach to marketing will be effective in achieving your goals, then ABM is right for you. Top 5 Benefits of Account-Based Marketing Benefit 1: Clear ROI Effective ABM drives clear business results. In fact, compared to other marketing initiatives, the 2014 ITSMA Account-Based Marketing Survey found that “ABM delivers the highest Return on Investment of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic.” Benefit 2: Reduced Resource Waste Because ABM is so targeted, it allows marketer to focus their resources efficiently and run marketing programs that are specifically optimized for target accounts. With ABM, you decide which accounts are qualified and then go after them. This can profoundly impact the way you think about sales and marketing and the types of programs you execute. Benefit 3: It’s Personal and Optimized ABM not only targets your sales and marketing efforts with laser precision to a specific audience, but ABM also entails personalizing your messaging and communications to specific accounts so that your campaigns resonate with these target audiences. In fact, according to Aberdeen, 75% of customers say they prefer personalized offers, which makes sense. Targeted customers are more likely to engage with content that is geared specifically to them, and is relevant to their business and stage in the buyer journey. And because ABM is inherently personal, your campaigns are automatically optimized for the right audience. Benefit 4: Tracking Goals & Measurement Is Clear When you’re analyzing the effectiveness of campaigns, whether email, ads, web, or events, it’s easier to draw clear conclusions, because you look at a smaller set of targeted accounts instead of a vast set of metrics and analytics that span your database. Benefit 5: Sales Alignment Is Easier ABM is perhaps one of the most efficient ways to align sales and marketing. This is primarily due to the fact that the marketer running an ABM program operates with a mindset very similar to sales—thinking in terms of accounts and how to target them, bringing them to the table, and generating revenue from them. Accounts are what sales people use to measure success, be it accounts in the pipeline or accounts won—for sales it’s all about accounts. The ABM marketer not only speaks the same language, but also works closely with sales to identify accounts and pursue them throughout the sales process. Key Steps of Account-Based Marketing If the above benefits resonate with you and ABM seems like a good strategy for your business, here are some key steps you need to take: Step 1: Discover & Define Your High-Value Accounts Use all the firmographic data and business intelligence you can find to help you prioritize your accounts. But remember, deal size potential is only one factor. You might select accounts based on other strategic factors like their influence in the market, likelihood to purchase repeatedly from you, or potential for higher than average profit margins. Step 2: Map Accounts & Identify Key Internal Players Now that you know your target accounts, you need to understand the way the account is structured and identify the critical players within the organization (e.g. decision makers and influencers). You might have this data already in-house or subscribe to services that can provide it. If not, consider having your sales team conduct the research or purchase this data from outside vendors. Step 3: Define Content & Personalized Messaging It’s important to put real thought into this step. Some define effective ABM as a web banner personalized with the prospect’s business name, which everyone loves but isn’t necessarily effective. Instead, an effective ABM strategy delivers deep and valuable content that addresses clear and significant business challenges the target account faces. Think about how your content, and ultimately your products and services, can address the target account’s specific business challenges in their industry. Step 4: Determine Optimal Channels We live in a multi-channel world and you will undoubtedly want to connect with your audience on many different channels (e.g. web, email, mobile, print…etc) in a coordinated way. But put some thought into your channel strategy because some channels are more effective for certain roles or certain industries (e.g. email is tough in the healthcare industry). You’ll also want to consider things such as opt-in rules in your region or other potential restrictions in your channel strategy. Step 5: Execute Targeted & Coordinated Campaigns Now that your content and messaging is ready to go, you need to make sure the influencers and decision makers in your target accounts see it. You can do this manually of course but technology is enabling marketers to coordinate and execute ABM campaigns at much greater scale and more efficiently than ever before. At Marketo we use our own marketing platform to support our ABM initiative. For example, we use our real-time personalization solution to serve content on our website designed specifically to resonate with key customers while we serve different content to our top prospect accounts. We employ a similar strategy with paid ads, leveraging personalized ad banners on Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook, using our Ad Bridge solution to serve ads specific to target accounts. Whatever your solution, make sure to coordinate campaigns across your channels to ensure a consistent voice and message. And work closely with your sales team so they can follow up on campaigns in a timely manner and with a consistent message. Step 6: Measure, Learn and Optimize As with any marketing initiative, it’s critical to test, measure, and optimize your ABM marketing campaigns to ensure they are effective and you’re always improving your results over time. Of course you’ll want to look at the results of individual campaigns (e.g. email open rates, click-thru rates, first-touch and multi-touch attribution…etc). But ABM isn’t about one campaign; it’s about pushing into a high-value account with a series of campaigns over time. Be sure to look at trend data to see how things are really going. Are you growing your list of known individuals (remember step 2?) within your target accounts over time? Are you generating web visits, campaign responses, meetings, sales opportunities, and, of course, deals and revenue at your target accounts? These are the metrics and signs of account engagement you’ll need to understand to assess the health of your ABM program over time. For more detail, check out the ebook we recently published, “A Recipe for Lean Account-Based Marketing,” for a deeper dive into account-based marketing and for information on how to get started quickly with ABM in your company.

By Tony Zambito It is a generally accepted notion that listening is vital to having positive and healthy interpersonal relationships. Listening is an essential skill for leaders in business, politics, sports, and in many different aspects of culture and society.  As a country, we have had many leaders rise to the occasion upon their ability to listen and connect with people and their causes. For CMOs today, LISTENING to customers has become one of the key ingredients shaping their success in connecting brands with customers.  Expanding the growth of their customer base is predicated, to a high degree, on having listening be an active part of their team’s DNA.  Yet, many CMOs are struggling with connecting with customers. A recent ERNST & YOUNG study on the C-Suite perspective, only thirty-one percent (31%) of 800 C-Suite executives surveyed believed the CMO drives best marketing practices that are tailored to constantly changing customers.  In other word, barely a third of C-Suite executives surveyed feel CMOs are listening to and understanding customers. To a large degree, CMOs are struggling with the concept of listening.  Exactly what does it mean for an organization to listen?  On an individual level, the concept of listening is graspable.  While on an organizational level, it becomes quite murky. Active Listening To Customers Versus Big Data Signals With the rise of Big Data, we have seen a corresponding rise in the use of analytics.  Analytics is popping up for a variety of channels.  Measuring and spinning out data on activities in such areas as inbound marketing and social media.  No doubt, CMOs today must develop technical prowess in making use of big data analytics to help inform their strategies and planning. On this point, however, CMOs need to avoid confusion and make an important distinction.  A distinction between what constitutes monitoring signals versus active listening.  In a rather misfortunate categorization, we have seen big data and analytics labeled as listening to the customer.  This may not be a healthy way of putting it for CMOs. When it comes to analytics and big data, it is a process of monitoring signals.  Digital signals can help relay information on patterns, responses, and trends.  And, provide clues on concrete choices customers may make whether related to an activity or a purchase.  What it lacks are context and language. Context and language are important.  Active listening involves a sense of understanding as well as hearing speech and language within the context they are provided.  Active listening devoid of hearing speech and language within contextual surroundings, to put simply, is really not listening at all. Qualitatively Hearing Customers To listen to the customer, as defined above, means developing ways to hear customers.  Hearthe speech and language of customers in their contextual surroundings.  To truly hear customers, CMOs will need to develop qualitative “hearing” programs to stay in tune with the constantly changing customer. How can CMOs then create active qualitative hearing programs?  Here are a few suggestions: Make use of big data analytics to guide where deeper hearing needs to take place Conversely, make use of qualitative hearing interviews with customers to construct big data analytics design; in other word, know what to monitor and analyze Develop a committed program to qualitatively interview customers and prospective buyers annually or biannually; utilize third-party qualitative research expertise if not in-house Create user personas, BUYER PERSONAS, and customer personas to help develop a communications platform on user, buyer, and customer INSIGHTS Armed with qualitative hearing insights, draw correlations and connections to big data analytics With the use of a communications platform, play an active role in helping the organization to hear customers, making use of personas and analytics to tell the story of customers Keep the C-Suite informed on what marketing is hearing from customers and prospective buyers and help draw implications Help the C-suite and the organization see the connection of informed marketing strategies and tactics to both the monitoring of customer signals and the qualitativehearing of customers Bringing Innovation To Marketing For CMOs, here is why distinguishing between active listening (or hearing) and monitoring big data analytical signals can be a factor in C-Suite membership: in the E&Y survey mentioned above, only thirty percent (30%) of the C-Suite believe CMOs brings innovation into marketing practices. Innovation often requires deep insights, which can be translated into innovative opportunities and trajectories.  In the next few years, we will continue to have a constantly changing customer impacted by new digital technologies and market forces.  Thus, making innovation in marketing practices an important element of CMO success. To bring innovation to marketing practices, CMOs then will need to rely on both the informed signals of big data and the insights offered from qualitative hearing of customers.  Without these, the ability to influence and help shape how organizations connect with customers can be like being in a dark room without a flashlight. Article by Tony Zambito Reposted with permission from Tony's website

Back by popular demand -- Johnny Cheng , who is the Platform Product Marketing Manager at Marketo. Johnny has a passion for tech, marketing and math – which luckily all intersect at Marketo By: Johnny Chenghttps://nation.marketo.com/people/2feccddc1ff09ea1ee9967df7f1b64bb0db7a7fd In my recent blog on channel conversion rate, I mentioned conversion was only the initial piece of the puzzle. To get the full picture of how effective your acquisition channels are, you also need to look at win rate, velocity, and pipeline created vs. cost. So in this fourth blog in the Marketo Institute series, we’re going to look at the next two channel pipeline metrics: win rate and velocity. The Happy Marketing-to-Sales Handoff You can’t measure the effectiveness of a channel just based on conversion rate. A lot of marketers fall in to the pit trap of stopping their metrics right before the marketing-to-sales handoff. Without closed loop visibility from sales back to marketing, you often hear conversations like these: Marketing: “Here are some high converting leads!” (3 months later) Sales: “Those leads were garbage.” Marketing: (With eyes rolling and arms crossed) “Learn to close…” Like bickering siblings, let’s stop the finger pointing and work together to solve the problem. Just because a channel converts well, doesn’t mean it’s effective. We need to look at the sales end of the funnel to really understand channel quality (regardless of whether sales can close). First let’s take a look at win rate (#Winning!) This image shows win rate across all channels (all Marketo customers). Looking at this image, you can see the various channels, here’s a quick breakdown of what they mean: Client and Customer Service is your existing customer base, so think of things like product upsell and additional support. Event, Inbound, and Other Paid are your marketing acquisition channels. Channel, Partner, and Referral are your friends and family. Prospecting and Sales are from your direct sales teams. The win rate is based off closed won/total closed, not total pipeline. Example: Out of a handful of leads, two became opportunities, and of those two opportunities, one closed won and one closed lost. So, the win rate is 50%.We see from the data that marketing and sales-sourced leads are about the same and are both lower than leads coming from your existing customers and partners (to be expected). This sets a good benchmark to compare your marketing channels to other channels. For example, if leads coming from an event have high conversion and win rate—and it’s as high as your inbound channels, then you’ll probably want to attend the same event next year, right? Well, to be sure, we need to look at velocity to get the bigger picture. The Need for Speed This image shows velocity across all channels (all Marketo customers). The channel categories are the same as the last chart.Velocity is based off of the average number of days to close. Think of this as your sales cycle time.While win rate was relatively close across channels, velocity definitely varies from one channel to another. We see that existing customers and advocates naturally have the highest velocity (as this relates to trust). But what’s interesting is that several marketing channels are just as good at delivering high velocity leads.So now that we’ve added another dimension, let’s continue from the last example. Is that high performing event still worth attending? Well, it depends on your objectives. If you’re looking to close those deals as fast as possible, then events might not be a good channel. However, if you’re in it for the long-run, and you have the resources and patience to nurture those leads for well over a year, then events may be a good choice. What We’ve Learned Now that you have a more complete picture with conversion rate, win rate, and velocity, you can start gauging the health of your acquisition channels. Here are a few common patterns you might see in your own data that align with this Marketo Customer Data: The Bad Apple: If you just look at conversion rate alone, some channels such as Sales Prospecting look average, and there’s no harm in continuing it. However, if you factor in win rate and velocity, you might see that Sales Prospecting has low win rate and high sales cycle. If that’s the case, you may want to reconsider sales-sourced leads and shift to a higher marketing-sourced model. The Hidden Gem: The opposite is true for certain channels that have low conversion rate but an incredibly high win rate and low velocity. You could be overlooking these channels due to lackluster conversion, or maybe your lead scoring system is too stringent (causing a low conversion rate). Consider opening up the funnel on these hidden gems to see if win rate or velocity drops; if it doesn’t, keep going until sales can’t handle any more leads. Content Is King: If conversion rate hasn’t convinced you yet, you should be a believer now. Inbound has the highest conversion rate, highest win rate, and fastest velocity of all marketing channels! The power of educational infographics, articles, and videos are more important than ever in this digital marketing era. The fact that you’re reading this blog should be proof enough. But we aren’t done yet. Now that we understand conversion rate, win rate, and velocity, we’re still missing one piece of the puzzle—the final and arguably most important piece. Stay tuned for the next blog as we dive into…THE GOLDEN RATIO! Notice something in the data that stood out to you? Got follow up questions for me? Let me know what’s on your mind in the comments section below. http://events.marketo.com/marketing-nation-online/2015/?vsource=blogcta

  Whether you’re new to Marketo or trying to clean up a mess, you may wonder what you can do to keep your Marketing Activities organized within your instance. Through hiccups and hair pulling, our team has finally discovered a great way to keep ourselves organized, which has enabled us to work more efficiently. Take a look at what we’ve done and determine if it’s the right fit for your organization. In the Marketing Activities section of our Marketo instance, our main folders are set up to represent different activities that are performed in Marketo. Example: >Active Marketing Programs >Demand Generation Programs >Customer Support / Operational Activities >Operational >Archive Folder >Learning Folder Within those folders, we have additional folders that are broken out by the various channels we use. *Active Marketing Programs example below Example: >Active Marketing Programs > Digital Ads > Email Blasts > Events > Newsletter > PPC > Website Within those folders, we've create more descriptive folders for the various campaigns running in each channel. *Event example below Example: >Active Marketing Programs > Digital Ads > Email Blasts > Events                 > Trade Shows                 > Webinars > Newsletter > PPC > Website We have several campaigns running in each channel, so we've built out folders to specify by a specified time frame (year and quarter). *Webinars example below Example: >Active Marketing Programs > Digital Ads > Email Blasts > Events                 > Trade Shows                 > Webinars                                 > 2015 Webinars                                                 > Q1 – 2015 Webinars                                                 > Q2 – 2015 Webinars                                                 > Q3 – 2015 Webinars                                                 > Q4 – 2015 Webinars > Newsletter > PPC > Website Within the specified time frame folder is where we house our individual campaign folders that contain our programs and other local assets for the campaign. For these folders, I’ve found it helpful to follow a very structured naming convention. This helps to ensure that our instance stays organized and everyone working in our instance knows how to label items. My recommendation would be to use the channel type, the date (YYMMDD) and brief description of the program (for our webinars we use the time of the webinar, the service name we're promoting, and the target audience of the campaign). Below is an example of our webinar folder structure. Example: >Active Marketing Programs > Digital Ads > Email Blasts > Events                 > Trade Shows                 > Webinars                                 > 2015 Webinars                                                 > Q1 – 2015 Webinars                                                                 > Webinar – 150205 11 AM SERVICE A – PERSONA 3                                                 > Q2 – 2015 Webinars                                                 > Q3 – 2015 Webinars                                                 > Q4 – 2015 Webinars > Newsletter > PPC > Website This folder houses our event program for the webinar (the event program has the same naming structure as the folder). We also use the same naming structure for our SFDC Campaign Name. Check with your Sales team to see if that’s a viable option for your organization. The folder also houses our "granular channel programs" that we use to attribute success to the various channels we use to drive traffic to the webinar event (such as PPC, email, social, etc.). Happy Building!

General Icons Icon Name Folder, New Campaign Folder Create New Folder Delete Folder Edit/Rename Folder Name Archive Folder or Convert to Archive Folder (This can appear for any folder and archived Programs) Success! (Frequently shown as Program Success, Successful Run, or Active) Filter, View, View All Community History Help Subscription Information Customer Support About Marketo Admin Icons Icon Name Workspaces & Partitions My Account Security/Logout Users & Roles Login Settings Location Smart Campaign Email Communication Limits Field Management Integration Salesforce (SFDC) Sales Insight Landing Pages Munchkin Web Services LaunchPoint Webhooks Tags - Program Attribute Revenue Cycle Analytics Treasure Chest Admin Notifications - Important Systemwide Alerts Marketing Activities Icons Icon Name Event Program Program - Default Type Import Program Engagement Nurture Add to Engagement Program Change Engagement Cadence (Paused,Normal) Change Engagement Stream Smart Campaign - Active and Triggered Smart Campaign that is Requested (By Sales Insight or Marketo Flow Action) Smart Campaign - Batch (Has been executed before) Smart Campaign - Inactive, or never executed Invalid Campaigns Program - Email Send (A/B Test) Smart Campaign - Scheduled Batch (Check mark indicates it has been executed before) Scheduled Batch Campaigns Flow Action Edit Settings Form Clone Form Edit Form Form Approved Social Social Button Actions Edit Draft Preview Clone Delete Embed Code Youtube Video Actions Edit Draft Preview Approve Clone Delete Sweeptakes Actions Edit Draft Preview Approve Clone Delete Pick Winners Download HTML Move Delete Clone Unapprove Send Sample Preview New Test Deliverability Tools Design Studio Icons Icon Name Landing Page. Landing Page Actions Edit Draft Preview Unapprove Publish to Facebook Convert to Test Group Clone Landing Page Delete Landing Page URL Tools/URL Builder Move Program Enable Personalized URLs Landing Page - Approved Landing Page/Email Template - Unapproved Landing Page/Email Template - Approved Email - Unapproved or Draft Email Approved Forms - Unapproved Template - Approved with Draft Draft of an Approved Asset (not live until Draft is Approved) Images & Files Snippet - Unapproved or Draf t Snippet - Approved New Grab Images from Web Upload Image or File Analytics Icons Icon Name Revenue Cycle Model Revenue Cycle Model (RCM) - Unapproved Revenue Cycle Model (RCM) - Approved Revenue Cycle Model (RCM) - Approved with Draft Report Actions Report New Report Subscription Delete Report View Qualified Lead Interesting Moments Expand All Collapse All Group Leads By Custom Columns My Tokens Icons Icon Name Calendar ICS - iCalendars, (Integrated Calendars) Rich Text (not a Landing Page) Number Salesforce (also on all SFDC related items) Schedule the Smart Campaign to Run Once Edit Settings Refresh (Usually Run Count, Report, Smart List) View Smart Members (Previously qualified, and current) Campaign Menus Icon Name Schedule Recurrence of Campaign (Multiple Runs) Cancel the Run, Action, or Delete Edit Qualification Rules Salesforce (also on all SFDC related items) Text Only Relative Score (also visible on all Scoring flow actions) Relative Urgency Email Script (for Velocity only) Date - Formatted as "MM-DD-YYYY" Lead Database Icons Icon Name Smart List Smart List - Cached Segmentation Or Segment - Unapproved Segmentation Or Segment - Approved or Draft Segmentation Or Segment - Approved Field Organizer Email Script (for Velocity only) Static List New New Segmentation Import