Any recommendations for good marketing automation consultants?

There are a number of great ones out there. We created a directory of certified marketing consulting providers that we believe are good at what they do. These folks are certified in HubSpot (of course!) but most of them also have experience with other systems and marketing strategy in general. The directory is here http://services.hubspot.com

Hi Jeff;

I don't know how big your office is or what your specific needs are. MA consultants I recommend checking out include:

* Left Brain Marketing (http://leftbrainmarketing.com/)
* Zephyr47 (www.zephyr47.com)
* Annuitas Group (http://www.annuitasgroup.com/)

If you have specific needs, happy to give you some insight...ping me at christopher dot doran @ manticoretechnology.com

Jeff,

Spear Marketing Group is a full-service marketing agency and around half our work involves helping clients with marketing automation – from system implementation to lead management strategy, content development, and campaign execution. Our client base includes companies in both residential development and property management. We’d welcome the opportunity to learn more about your needs.

One note of caution – marketing automation is a marvelous thing, but very few companies set out with “marketing automation” as a goal in itself. Rather, marketing automation technology is a means to an end – a way to improve sales productivity, convert more leads to sales, and increase demand generation ROI. We’d be happy to advise you whether marketing automation is indeed the best or most effective way to address your sales or marketing challenges.

Regards,

Howard Sewell
Spear Marketing Group
http://www.spearmarketing.com

Howard Sewell at Spear Marketing Group (see two entries above). Used him directly when on the client side, very good at starting with objectives in mind and building the right lead-flow and automation strategy to match.

Finding an experienced, unbiased consultant is well nigh impossible, Jeff.

This is a very new field and there are two types of marketing automation and which you choose depends on the type of company you are.

B2C MA majors on automation. The company gets so many leads that it has to automate the response. This I regard as similar to the "press 1 for sales" type phone systems - often impersonal but better than dropping the interaction which would occur if left to manual systems.

B2B Marketing Automation majors on Marketing Intelligence. It gives you data on who is talking about you on social media, who is visiting your website and how they arrived there and what they show interest in when they get there - with real insight into prospect intent. It can be set up so that visits from companies you have identified as targets are scored highly, multiple visits are aggregated and it can even narrow the field down to one or two likely contacts, even if they haven't given you name and email. It can gather intelligence on who else they are considering, what their decision making criteria will be and who else is involved. It can then help these buyers through their buying process and nurture them towards closer engagement, integrating with telephone and webinar. Along the way it can qualify them so you have really powerful leads. Best of all, the data it yields allows you to continually improve your processes, evaluate the effectiveness of your lead generation methods, collateral and nurturing so your sales and marketing efforts get better and better over time.

So your first decision is: am I automating because I'm drowning in interactions, or because I want better intelligence on my customers?

If it is the former then someone who has experience in Eloqua - which has been around for 10 years - is relatively easy to find. But you'll still hit problems. Many of their customers are FMCG companies and retailers and this is a very different buyer decision making process from Real Estate which, although technically B2C, has more in common with B2B.

Next set yourself some real parameters on what you expect from the system. Is it for handling demand generation (buzz) or lead generation (nurturing)? Do a thorough audit of all the things you do currently to get your name out there and think through how Marketing Automation could help that process. Then think through how you can aggregate them all together into a single source of prospects and compare and contrast them.

Thirdly, consider what content you plan to use. What is the buying process? What collateral will help? Many nurturing programs are designed for much longer, multi-step decision processes with little engagement and over long distances. They may not be right for you.

Lastly consider how it will integrate with your CRM and accounting solutions and how you can leverage these so that you have an end-to-end intelligence process. Once you have this you can evaluate exactly how successful every piece of your marketing program is and can be. You can manage an AB testing program to improve your data, your process, your collateral effectiveness and your closing, all feeding into a total ROI.

A lot of the people put forward here can't achieve this - indeed some are unaware that these are key factors. So choose your consultant as carefully as you choose your program.

Thanks John for backing up my statement. Jeff Ogden is one of the most experienced people out there and knows a lot about Marketing Automation as well as having an exceptional view of the modern marketing methodology it needs to map to. There is no point in employing new technology if it is just to automate the methods of marketing you've already found don't work!

He is a partner with Silverpop, one of the less shouted about but more capable platforms out there. He's made a good, considered choice. But that leads to my concern about a consultant for your task, Jeff.

I grew up in Northern Ireland. There they had a saying "If you're not on one side or the other, you don't really understand the problem". MA consultants are the same - if they are to really know their stuff they need to work closely with one of the vendors. Slowly that develops - they drink from the vendor's Kool-aid and start to map tasks to the capabilities of that particular product suite.

There is one particular consultant who makes a big thing of being independent and has what he claims is a comprehensive review of all the products on the market. But he is paid to write blogs and do webinars for one particular vendor and has set his column headings around that vendor's feature-set. Needless to say that vendor looks good.

So how you use your consultant is important. You may even need two.

Do you need them to set the parameters for your decision? Work out the customer data you wish intelligence on and the processes you want to automate? I suspect you will find yourself drawn to their preferred solution.

Alternatively, research the market, decide which solutions match your needs and shortlist a couple. Then seek consultants with expertise in managing this installation - consultants with experience with this vendor and with your type of operation.

I doubt you will find one consultant who can do both.

Hello Jeff,

We have some outstanding consultants we work with, that cover a wide variety of services around marketing automation. I can name a few but I don't want to exclude any that may make sense to you based on more specific goals of yours. Feel free to shoot me an email at mfilios AT net-results.com and we can discuss further. Thanks.

Hi Jeff,
The Pedowitz Group http://www.pedowitzgroup.com/ has implemented several different flavors of marketing automation for over 400 customers, and are the largest vendor independent consultants in this area. Worth checking out the leader!
-Kevin

Jeff,

Are you looking for an "online business manager" or programs to automate your efforts?

Maria
http://www.ElevatingYourBusiness.com

Jep Castelein is a good marketing automation consultant. He writes frequently about this market and is someone I would recommend. More about him at http://www.leadsloth.com/about-leadsloth/

Lisa DeSouza at Radix Promotions and Marketing {RPM} has a ton of marketing automation experience that might prove useful. Her organization can review your online efforts and put together an entire strategy for implementing marketing automation and measuring success for tweaking and testing.

I recommend using the resources at http://fearlesscompetitor.net/ created by Jeff Ogden. He's created lots of free content, podcasts and whitepapers to help you marketers get smarter on Marketing Automation.

He consults too of course but the site is full of 'free-stuff'!

Hi Jeff,
I work with several realtors here in the Northeast. If you are not blogging, I would strongly recommend you do, as the more successful online marketing Brokers/Realtors do. Let me recommend that you check out a consultant who specializes in marketing for Realtors.

Her name is Kathy Goughenour - http://www.leadboosterclub.com/. I would start with Kathy as she has worked with realtors all over the country and has a very customized program that can be applied to you or to an entire office.

Since most of the larger firms such as Coldwell and Prudentail have email/marketing automation tools specific to real estate, you should look at those tools first. Kathy can also assist you with that as well.

Good luck.
Henry

Jeff,
Henry Bruce was very kind to recommend my services to you and email me to mention your needs.

I want to offer you a free 20-minute consultation during which I'll help you figure out the best way to achieve your marketing automation goals. Depending on your needs, I may recommend something I provide or something another company offers. Either way, the consultation is free.

Just email me at kathy@leadboosterclub.com to schedule the consultation. I look forward to talking with you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi Jeff! I urge you to have a look at www.acquireb2b.com and www.sales-lead-experts.com

These guys are experienced, no-bull experts who actually diagnose before prescribing. Plus, they are not so tied to the technology that they miss the business strategy.

May you prosper!

Michael A. Brown, President
Business To Business By Phone

Honored to be mentioned in this elite group.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
Find New Customers "Lead Generation Made Simple"
http://www.findnewcustomers.com
@fearlesscomp

To see our services for marketing automation, please visit our Marketing Automation Jumpstart Service at http://www.findnewcustomers.com/marketingautomationaccel.

Thanks,
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
Find New Customers "Lead Generation Made Simple"
http://www.findnewcustomers.com
@fearlesscomp