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What are the technologies that best-in-class marketers absolutely have to have at their disposal?
Marketing Automation software? Analytics? What else? What are the technologies that best in class marketers have to have at their disposal?
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10 Answers
My answer is for "best in class" b2b companies and is based on large budgetary options. It is worth noting that I have seen lots of amazing companies cobble together some proprietary technologies along the way to achieve the goals.
I have to mention one other thing: process and people come before technology. The "best-in-class" marketing organizations know "why" they need technology before the implement. The organizations that don't have a framework are often the ones who end up on the "failed implementation" list. (Marketers are learning the challenge that is enterprise software -- see ERP and CRM failures for reference point. A great blog on this is Michael Krigsman's IT Project Failures blog: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures
First, everyone needs a platform:
-CRM comes first and that decision is typically not driven by marketing. In this case, the question was "technologies at their disposal" and CRM may be the most important piece even though marketing doesn't control it.
-Marketing Automation - One thing I struggle with when discussing marketing automation for small businesses is the category for Hubspot, they don't call themselves marketing automation (I believe they are going with "marketing software"). Whatever you call it, the best marketers have a solution that manages their marketing processes specifically.
-Database - Most companies leverage the CRM database, but I have seen some companies create a separate repository. Either way, if you read what the pundits are talking about these days, it's the idea that keeping data clean and up-to-date is the key to the kingdom.
Email Marketing Solutions:
I decided to separate this process out in this answer. I realize marketing automation is predominantly email and most organizations deliver email via marketing automation, but I have seen some big companies leverage industrial strength email marketing platforms as part of their best-in-class platform. Basically, have automation to support email.
Analytics:
To me, there are two types of analytics:
-Conversion or Tactical Analytics -- data that can help you optimize very specific areas of your marketing processes such as paid search, website optimization, landing page optimization, etc
Automation options depend on what you are trying to solve, some examples:
1. Web analytics (I rarely see large enterprises that aren't using Adobe Omniture these days)
2. Paid search analytics (if necessary)
-Revenue Chain or Revenue Performance Management analytics - the best in class marketers have automation to track the overall effectiveness of their sales and marketing spend.
Automation people use:
1. BI -- big organizations with lots of different automation pieces and touch points often use a separate BI solution to cobble the data together.
2. Marketing Software/Automation - these solutions are being designed to provide metrics
Community platform - Organizations are creating on-site communities for their prospects and customers. Depending on the community you want to create, there are often other stakeholders that care about the community (customer service for example).
Social Media solutions:
Social Media Monitoring -- Salesforce.com buying Radian6 pretty much validates the social media monitoring space. Best-in-class marketers know what people are saying about them and arm themselves to do something about it. (See Dell for example)
Social Media Marketing Effectiveness and Management solutions -- This is new so I am still wrapping my hands around the solutions people are creating.here but we will likely see more companies spring up that will try to help companies manage their outbound social marketing and it's effectiveness.
Paid search management -- this depends on what your marketing model looks like, but organizations that manage their search in house typically leverage something to manage this process
I probably missed some, but I think I covered a lot.
Very comprehensive answer by Craig - rather than trying to add to it, I will try to simplify.
Bottom line, to be effective marketers need analytics capabilities, and the execution tools to take action on the results of their analytics, and also to integrate the results of their campaigns back into those analytics to produce a 'continuous improvement' cycle.
In other words, we need to understand what is driving customer behavior and the success (or not) or our campaigns (analytics) - take that understanding and improve our operations (execution), and then take those results and plug it back into those analytics. And so on.
The details will differ across industries. B2B industries tend to have longer, more considered sales cycles so tools like Sales Automation/CRM and Marketing Automation - integrated with BI & Revenue Performance/Cycle analytics are typically used in Best-in-Class organizations.
For B2C industries, the channels are generally different, transaction sizes smaller and the sales cycles much shorter, so traditional email and social marketing (for instance, Facebook campaign tools) are more common and effective, and the analytics tend to be more 'big-data' focused - less tied to traditional CRM (which may not even exist in B2C companies) and more tied to transactional and/or social data. Loyalty programs are also quite common.
Regardless of industry, Social is clearly becoming key - it has to date been more rapidly adopted in consumer-facing industries but B2B is rapidly catching up. Integrating traditional customer-facing CRM initiatives with customer activity on (and data about) social networks is what 'Social CRM' is ultimately all about.
Last but not least, the most important factor of all isn't necessarily that marketers have these tools at their disposal, but use them in an integrated fashion, and in a way where they are continually learning from and improving the effectiveness of their operations. This also implies that Marketing is tightly integrated with the tools, analytics and processes of other parts of the organization, especially (although not exclusively) other customer-facing operations such as Customer Service and Sales.
In other words, true Best-in-Class marketers use their tools in a way where the parts fit together tightly, and where the organization operates as a well-oiled machine, and is continually learning and improving. In a rapidly-evolving market like today's (where the evolution is only going to become MORE rapid) integration, analysis & continuous improvement is the true key to being - and staying - 'Best-in-Class'.
No matter what I say, it won't look as well thought out & documented as Craig's response, but here goes anyway!
--3 entirely free tools I use every single day--
1) Google Reader: never stop learning about your industry and your profession. (RSS some blogs, twitter searches, anything)
2) Website Optimizer: let them A/B test! (button size, color, location, # of fields, headlines, you name it)
3) Rally Software Community Edition: And they went agile and it was good. (track daily output in points, estimate time to complete, plan iterations & releases)
Just my $.02.
Good question and my answer will echo Craig's in many ways as it is very comprehensive and while I am always discussing the importance of process with any technology I will also add that you need the right people within the marketing org to also get the most from your technologies.
Just having the right technologies does not make you "best-in-class". What get's an organization to that level is how they are used to help drive revenue.
As for the technologies themselves:
1. Marketing Automation & CRM: I believe these two must go together. Companies who have one or the other are only addressing half of the challenge of buyer engagement and will not be able to properly engage with their buyer and get a full view of their customer. While CRM is mainly used by sales, the information and data it can provide is invaluable to marketing. As for automation, the ability to automate the delivery of content i.e. nurture, score and track buyer behavior is a must.
2. Social Monitoring Solution: If you are not where your buyers are and have no understanding of what they are saying it will be very difficult to communicate effectively. Having a social monitoring solution to enable better listening and engagement will go a long way in building relationships with your buyers.
3. Web Analytics: This should not need a detailed explanation as you need to know what is happening on your website and the actions being taken.
4. Business Intelligence: There is so much information that a company collects about their customer from sales, to marketing, finance, customer support, etc. Multiple reports and data feeds that it would benefit any marketer to be able to have a repository to make sense out of all of this information.
These are my top 4 and will state again that process & people are paramount to success.
Carlos Hidalgo
@cahidalgo
If I do a quick inventory of the technology I use every day to manage our own sales and marketing as well as marketing & sales for our clients, here's a handful:
Google Analytics (for site analytics and conversion tracking)
Wordtracker (for keyword research)
Optify.net (for inbound marketing management & analysis)
Wordpress (for publishing)
ExactTarget, Vertical Response and WhatCounts (for batch-and-send email campaigns)
Marketo and Eloqua (for marketing automation)
Retargeter (for increasing site visitor conversion)
Marketsync (for on-demand direct mail integration with Salesforce)
Jigsaw and InsideView (for list development, management and prospect research)
Gist.com (for account/prospect research)
Salesforce.com and Oracle (for CRM)
HootSuite, TwitHawk, TweetAdder, Timely.is, Dlvr.it (for social media)
Let's not overlook that the best new technology might actually be using one you have. It is painful to watch the wasted spend above the funnel; and the wasted opportunities that simply get lost in the funnel of many if not most companies. Comparing your company's metrics to those of average and best-in-class companies will go a long way toward improving ROI on investments made in existing technology. Above the funnel metrics such as cost per lead converted to sales accepted, and in funnel metrics such as percent of marketing qualified leads reaching sales qualified status, are just two examples of relatively simple measurements with huge potential payoffs!
Great answers guys, but... does anyone has suggestions for the little guys? The big enterprises have the means to go the ways you all suggested above, but what about the little guys? Presumably, the little guys are the future that you all will presumably serve so, where do we begin. Does anyone have suggestions? Rick Anzola, CEO, IIT Organization.
As much as I agree with all the comments above, I would first ask - Who is the technology for? For some clients, the best thing for them is a good CRM system. For others, it is a good contact management and email system like Infusionsoft, Aweber or similar. For someone who is just starting to make their presence online, then they need good web technology like Wordpress, and combined with a well developed Facebook, Twitter and Hootsuite solution. It is important to understand who the technology is for before diving in and stating what is the best marketing technology. There are some very good technologies available to marketers today, each offering some unique benefits. It's important to find out what the client really needs to achieve before recommending what are the best technologies for them.
1. Marketing Automation: ideally a SINGLE platform that includes the following:
• Email marketing: email creation and blasting, landing page development and hosting, webinar integration including event set up and automated email marketing invitations, reminders etc.
• Data management, including an integration with CRM with data push/pull
• Lead nurturing / automated programs
• Behavioral data and lead scoring
• Social media broadcasting and "listening" management
2. Web Analytics
3. Social Media Management, if not included in your marketing automation platform. The ability to monitor multiple social media properties from a single platform, schedule social media content pushes etc. is crucial.
Nice answers guys but you're missing #1: a taser.
Marketers first need to stun the organization to get the product and customer service right.
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