In this third instalment of Inbound Marketing Fundamentals, let’s take a closer look at the keystone of what makes Inbound Marketing feasible:  Marketing Automation.

“Whoa”, you say. “Automation in Marketing?*%!”

Nice Dashboard!

I know the term automation doesn’t exactly warm most marketer’s hearts.  Some envision losing control to an oppressive system (can you say Orwell’s 1984?), while others see a cute, but annoying R2-D2 from Star Wars. But before you run screaming for the hills, I’m talking about user-friendly automation: flexible, customizable, easy to buy, easy to use. Automation that actually frees you and your team from the repetitive, mundane tasks to allow you to focus on truly creative, strategic, value-added tasks. A Marketing Automation solution where the slave and master relationship is set up clearly in your favour.

Face it, today’s internet-driven world is too big and too fast to deal with effectively in a manual way. According to some estimates, this year we will be creating some 600 exabytes (600,000,000,000,000,000,000) of new information. Wow! Put into perspective, that is 11 million times more than the information contained in all the books ever written! Staggering figures are everywhere: In 2009, it is estimated that there will be 1 trillion unique searches on Google and other search engines.  Facebook has upwards of 200 million members. LinkedIn alone features almost 50 million members.

The key question is: What’s relevant, and what’s not? More specifically, how do you sift through the online conversation and news to zero-in on what is truly relevant to you and your company? How do you weed out the real prospects coming to your website from the internet wanderers? Which prospects do you focus on and nurture, which do you pass to sales, and which do you drop?

The key Sales & Marketing Automation (SAMA) elements

The truth is that you can’t answer any of these questions efficiently without automation. Today a host of tools exist to make your marketing life easier by automating routine, repeatable tasks. Demand Generation solutions automate the generation and management of sales leads by incorporating your best practices from sales and marketing. Reputation Management Analytics automatically comb the internet for mentions of your brand, your company, and your products, telling you not only where the key conversations are taking place, but whether they are positive, neutral, or negative. Other automation products simplify your SEO/PPC campaigns, and your Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

At a minimum, your Marketing Automation solution should be Easy to Buy and Easy to Use. But I think you should be even more selective. Here’s my TOP 4 list of things to look for in a Marketing Automation solution for your company:

1. Does it deliver ROI? Automating for the sake of Automation is useless. Have the supplier justify the expense of the system by detailing the actual $$$ benefits and the return-on-investment for your company. For example, check out our ROMI calculator.
2. Customization and Best Practices: Make sure the solution can it be easily customized to incorporate the best practices currently used by your sales and marketing groups. You want the system to fit your business, not the other way around.
3. Useful data: The data that the system delivers must be actionable, concise, without requiring hours of Excel analysis. Reams of raw data won’t get you ahead. Check out the Gossamar dashboard for an example of an “at-a-glance” overview.
4. End-to-End Turnkey Solution: Choose a supplier that goes end-to-end with services/technology/content. You don’t want to be left putting the pieces together yourself. Unless you have a massive budget and extra staff you can throw at this full time, you want single source responsibility. In other words: “Just give me the keys, so I can turn it on”.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into this issue, check out our whitepaper on How Gossamar automates Sales Lead Management, as well as other resources on the shift to Sales and Marketing Automation.

Next week’s post on Inbound Marketing Fundamentals will uncover the shift from “Art to Science”. In other words, how to tap into the amazing new insights that Marketing Automation and Marketing Analytics will deliver on your prospects, customers, and market. In the process, get ready to turn yourself into an all-knowing marketing wiz.

Till then – Axel

Tags: b2b marketing, Demand Generation services, Inbound Marketing, Inbound Marketing Fundamentals, Marketing 2.0, Marketing Automation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 11:03 am and is filed under Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.