Leveraging Martech to Increase Marketing’s Impact – An Abridged Ebook

If you haven’t had a chance to read our latest ebook, Leveraging Martech to Increase Marketing’s Impact, (it’s an in-depth 35-minute fact-filled read) we’ve summarized the highlights for you below into a quick and easy seven-minute version.

CHAPTER 1: AS DECENTRALIZED MARTECH PROLIFERATES, SO DOES THE NEED TO INTEGRATE

Today, there are over 7,040 martech tools for marketers to choose from, and the average marketing department uses nearly 100 different cloud services and more than 20 marketing-specific tools to get their jobs done. The solution to the ever-growing martech stack is a unified approach wherein tools and departments are empowered to work together for the greater good. Previously siloed departments must lay down their differences and connect because it is impossible to make data-informed decisions when every department uses different information. Integration enables everyone to see the big picture.

7-Step Integration Checklist

1. List data you have, and data you want
2. Decide what data you want systems to exchange
3. List KPIs you want to monitor
4. Connect tech using pre-built or configurable integrations
5. Map data and user workflows, noting manual steps
6. Track how integrations impact users and customers
7. Look for opportunities to improve integrations

Benefits of a Well-Connected Martech Stack

• Increase efficiency via streamlined workflows
• Automate processes saving time and money
• Know where customers are in their journey
• Increase productivity and reach goals faster
• Access actionable data in real-time
• Reduce reliance on IT
• Kick Excel spreadsheets to the curb
• Eliminate time-consuming manual processes

CHAPTER 2: ALIGN DATA GOALS AND STRATEGIES

In order to execute data-driven marketing, companies must identify which data points to monitor and measure, so they can achieve their goals. Here are seven steps that will help you do this:

1. Inventory Data Sources – Make a list of all tools and systems collecting data in your organization. Organize the list by department and note what types of data are being collected and how data is being stored.
2. Integrate Data Sources – If you haven’t invested in an integration platform to connect data sources in your company, now is the time. Be prepared to show people in other departments how they can benefit from integration.
3. Prep Data for Use – Just as integrated data allows you to see the whole story, clean, high-quality data ensures you get the story right. Add a data management tool to your stack to ensure data is perpetually complete, enriched, standardized, and ready for use.
4. Centralize Data Access Use a marketing data dashboard to centralize access to customer data and:

• Create a single customer view
• Understand and execute a flawless CX
• Enhance targeting for campaigns
• Track customer journeys
• Mine data for insights

5. Determine Measurements and Establish Benchmarks – Write down goals for the marketing department and company as a whole. Ask yourself: What problem are we trying to solve? What KPIs must we measure to determine progress? What result connotes success?
6. Analyze Data – The KPIs from the previous step are the variables you will measure. To find insights, you will need to start at a fixed point in time and track the journey of your KPIs. Compare benchmarks to your latest measurements to determine if you are on track to hit goals. 
7. Share Insights – As you track metrics over time, and note patterns and trends, you will glean insights on how to optimize performance. A good marketing/data dashboard will help you share insights in graphic reports that enable everyone to see and make decisions based on what the numbers show.
   

CHAPTER 3: ALIGN CX GOALS AND STRATEGIES

Modern B2B customers expect you to know them personally, and to anticipate their needs. They expect to communicate with you across multiple channels with the same simplicity and convenience they experience as consumers. Thus, your mandate as a B2B marketer is to create hyper-personalized, seamless, omni-channel campaigns that resonate. It’s a tall order, but nowadays there are martech tools that help you develop and send personalized omni-channel campaigns at scale. Steps you must take to achieve your CX goals are:

1. Prep Data – Personalized campaigns require high-quality data that is clean, complete, enriched and standardized.
2. Map the Customer Journey — Tracking the interactions of each touchpoint in the customer sales cycle will reveal insights you can use to improve CX. You will also be able to see where prospects are dropping off and which campaigns are generating the most action, etc.
3. Develop Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) — Analyze customers according to a variety of variables (demographics, geography, industry, etc.) and note commonalities your best customers/biggest deals share. These characteristics comprise your ICPs and enable you to develop more targeted lists.
4.  Segment Lists — Targeting the right customers through personalized campaigns is easier when campaign lists are segmented into groups that share interests, backgrounds, needs, budgets, etc.
5. Develop Personalized Campaigns — List the needs of each segment you plan to target and create multi-channel (email, RSS, SMS, etc.) campaigns that speak to those needs.
6. Automate Campaigns — Use a combination of content management tools and MAPs to make personalization scalable. Seek a content management tools that can pull content from data sources throughout your company and organize it into queues for various channels.
7. Monitor Campaign Performance — Track open, click-through, and opt-out rates, as well as requests for materials. These metrics will reveal campaign strengths and weaknesses and enable you to make modifications that enhance performance.
   
   Benefits of Great CX

• Companies that prioritize CX generate 60% higher profits than competitors
•  A commitment to CX typically yields a 25% increase in customer retention
• A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 125%
• By 2020, CX will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator

CHAPTER 4: ALIGN ENGAGEMENT GOALS AND STRATEGIES

Create Content Customers Want
Customers want informative communications that are genuinely helpful. Producing content that resonates with a customer’s pain points, wants and needs requires a data-driven approach. When creating content make sure the information you provide is:

• Relevant — Make it clear you understand customer needs. Then, introduce your solution.
• Direct — Speak the customer’s language clearly and concisely.
• Timely — Use your CRM and content management tool to send the right message at the right time.
• Real — Banish jargon from all communications.
• Valuable — Provide content that answers customers’ questions.
• Respectful —Use channels customers prefer and communicate with the frequency they request.

Become a Sales Enabler
Nothing is worse for your brand or sales, than for marketing to create pieces that communicate one message and sales to send communications with an entirely different message. It appears uncoordinated to potential customers at best and completely amateur at worst. A few of the ways you can speed the alignment of sales and marketing teams include:

1.   Take the Lead – Build and maintain supportive relationships by hosting monthly meetings between leaders of both departments to hash out how to help each other unite and conquer.
2.   Develop Shared Goals – Identify goals you have a mutual interest in and can help each other reach. Track the progress of all goals in a public space so they stay on people’s minds and priority lists.
3.   Get on the Same Page Catalog all communication pieces in use on both sides. Create a timeline to retire, update and develop new pieces.
4.   Coordinate the Look – Ensure all customer-facing communications uphold your brand’s image and feel related to all other pieces through design, colors, fonts, imagery, logos, etc.
5.   Make it Easy – Employ the aid of a user-friendly content management tool with a searchable library of cross-channel marketing-approved messages that sales teams can customize and send on-demand.
6.   Share Results – Inspire sales teams to use marketing-approved messages by regularly sharing highlights from individual efforts of sales team members, and results from campaign pieces.
7.   Provide Incentives – Create contests around using marketing-approved messages. Reward those who are consistent with something tangible and honor them in company-wide meetings.

Benefits of Focusing on Engagement for B2B Marketers

• 49% Higher ROI
• 50% Increase in revenue and sales
• 34% Increase in profitability
• 55% Greater share of wallet

CHAPTER 5: EXECUTE A DATA-DRIVEN ABM STRATEGY

Accommodate Multiple Decision-Makers
Harvard researchers found that the average number of people involved in a B2B purchase is around six or seven folks. Adding to the complexity of multiple decision-makers is the fact that “these stakeholders come from a lengthening roster of roles, functions, and geographies.” Fortunately, your data should be able to simplify much of the complexity inherent in this step. Clean, complete and enriched data is critical to your ability to identify and market to the targets of your ABM strategy. To ensure you choose wisely, look at the historical performance of each account and compare it to your ICP to determine who will make the list of accounts upon which your teams will focus their time, energy and resources. A few questions to consider include:

• Which accounts are most profitable now?
• Which accounts have dropped in profitability?
• What data characteristics are good indicators of sales success?
• What attributes are ideal for our products/services?
• What characteristics are best for exempting an account from ABM? 

Rank Customer Needs for Content Clarity
Once you create a list of accounts to pursue, you need to identify the primary need, want or issue of each person involved in making the decision to purchase. If you don’t have this information, you should:

• Talk to customers or send brief surveys
• Track customers on social media like LinkedIn and Twitter
• Follow the company blog of customers
• Read company publications, like annual reports, investor newsletters, etc.
• Purchase insights from a vendor

When creating a ‘needs’ list, several different needs should emerge. For example, the CEO and CFO will have different reasons for considering your solution. Rank each need according to importance. Use titles and perceived influence levels to create a ranking system for whose needs get addressed first. Upon completing this exercise, your marketing team will have the information necessary to develop compelling campaigns that provide desired accounts with valuable content that speaks to their needs.

Scale Personalization Across Channels
Marketing to every customer in a way that resonates deeply, without overwhelming your budget and resources is a matter of automating as much of the process as possible. There are a variety of levels of personalization, from broad approaches that are industry and or job-title specific, to highly customized content created for a specific segment of accounts or a single account. A few simple ways to personalize content include:

• Addressing the recipient by name and noting their title and role
• Using images that reflect the customer’s industry and experience
• Sending case studies specific to the customer’s industry or market
• Adding a personal note to pieces through a sales enablement tool

A MAP that is integrated with a content management tool makes it easy to segment ABM lists and coordinate and automate personalized omni-channel campaigns. Integrating these tools cuts down on content development costs, since information can be repurposed for a variety of campaigns such as SMS, RSS, chat, email, etc. Your content management tool should also enable you to establish a searchable library of content that both marketing operations team members and sales team members can access and use on-demand. 

Benefits B2B Marketers Experience With ABM

• 92% consider ABM an important strategy in their marketing efforts
• 84% give ABM credit for retaining customers and growing those relationships
• 87% report that ABM delivers a higher ROI than other marketing initiatives
• 208% more revenue is generated by the marketing efforts of companies with ABM in place