Marketing automation has been an emerging technology since the early 1990s. With the help of Al Gore and the explosion of the Internet, marketing automation and customer relationship management (CRM) systems have been coming together like chocolate and peanut butter since the early 2000s. Things really picked up steam during the acquisitions in the early part of this decade to transform a tool only used by your company’s IT departments to full integration with the marketing and sales teams. Now that we have the tools to drive revenue, whether it be Marketo, Salesforce, Sitecore, Hubspot or Adobe, the next step is to amplify your system to maximize your investment and continue to drive revenue and sales. The latest statistics report that there is 27% more marketing automation technology on the market in 2018 than last year. How are you getting the most out of your marketing automation efforts?
We recommend 4 ways to amplify your marketing automation program.
Step 1: Identify Your Customer’s Journey
The Customer Journey is not an adventure in DnD (Dungeons and Dragons), it is measuring your marketing automation and CRM to see where your customers are in your sales funnel. If I told you that a customer journey roadmap would deliver more leads, sales and revenue – would you do it? Now that I have your attention, let me share with you what I mean.
By this point, you have been using your marketing automation for a couple of years and have plateaued with your results. It’s time to turn it up to 11. The goal of the customer journey roadmap is to transform your audience and customer data insights into a framework, with actionable insights, so you can better know and message your customers and prospects.
By understanding your customer from a cohesive and comprehensive view you will:
— Only market to users when, where and how they want – making efficient use of your budget
— Develop more personalized messaging and marketing
— Create accurate attribution models
— Strategically and accurately align marketing efforts to KPIs
— Accurately understand your customer value
— Accomplish true ROI
Step 2: Integrate AdWords with Your Marketing Automation Program – SEM
Integrate your AdWords campaigns into your MA platform to show campaign data in one location. This is a critical step that most companies do not implement. The Marketo Nation website lists out the steps to get this up and running and it takes three basic steps:
— Connect your AdWords account to Marketo in the Admin section. If you’re using an MCC account, you can choose one or more AdWords accounts to send conversion data to
— Setup your conversions and match them to your steps in your revenue cycle model (assuming you have this setup)
— Show the conversions in your AdWords interface
See how to here:
— Add Google AdWords as a Launchpoint Service with a Manager Account – Marketo Docs – Product Docs
— Set Google AdWords Conversions in the Revenue Model with a Manager Account – Marketo Docs – Product Docs
— Create custom columns – AdWords Help
Step 3: Keyword Research and Long-tail Keywords Yield Gold – SEO
What is your unique selling proposition (USP)? Why do you have a loyal set of customers? Somewhere that answer lies within your keywords and that is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. Most SEO tools within your marketing automation platform are like a garbage. If you don’t know SEO, I recommend using MOZ or SEMrush as your resource to learn more about your keywords to find lead gold that you can replicate. We recommend you identify and map all relevant words that support organic, paid search and social media efforts to ensure precision targeting to qualified customers and prospects. Long-tail keywords are more specific to your business and less competitive (expensive) than generic keywords in your category.
What are the terms your customers are searching to get into your sales funnel? What are the lower volume terms that still yield sales? Those are the terms you can effectively use to drive revenue.
Resources for Google Analytics integration
https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Integrate+RTP+with+Google+Universal+Analytics
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/11/google-analytics-360-salesforce.html
Step 4: Social Media Integration
Social media integration is where most marketing automation platforms stumble. They seem to be able to post and schedule content but they are a bit clunky because this was a bolt-on service, not a core competency of the platform. We have met with many companies that struggle in this area and we recommend to use a third-party platform like Oktopost, or use SproutSocial. Both will serve your B2B needs and can scale to help you whether you’re an enterprise or SMB.
The foundation to make each of these steps amplify your existing marketing automation platform is auditing your customer journey. The data will reveal the triggers that your customers and prospects interact with the most and allow you to drive revenue for your organization.
Anvil specializes in Customer Journey, SEO, SEM and Social Media. Contact us today to start amplifying your marketing automation platform.
References
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brief-history-marketing-automation-sourabh-mathur/
https://nation.marketo.com/thread/38548-marketo-and-google-adwords-integration