Psst… want to know a secret?  Marketing is simple.  Any marketer should be forced to explain their company’s value proposition in less than five words, and have it be compelling. Because that’s all marketing is: being concise and compelling, but recognizing that not everyone reacts to the same message.  The tough part is determining who will react to which message. When companies see low “returns” out of the gate (as most do in early stages of marketing or with new product lines) they tend to get a little paranoid. Instead of focusing in on that message and whom it’s being delivered to they instead take out the super soaker. They start buying lists, advertising anywhere they can get a deal, sponsoring everything, and otherwise become a checkbook for the marketing vendors.

How can marketers avoid this pothole of costly despair? How can they make sure the buying decisions are based on something meaningful? If you are a marketer asking yourself these questions, take a step back and start with this one: If tomorrow every lead in your database was standing outside your door and they were all waiting for you to tell them about how great your solution or product or elixir is – would you be able to do it in a way that meant something to each and every one of them?  That’s the most important question. And the answer makes your marketing far simpler and easier to manage.

The Content Game — How to Play

There seems to be some big debate around content. Companies aren’t always quite on terms as to what exactly qualifies as marketing content and at what stage of the funnel each lead should receive a specific piece of content. I think this debate actually jumps the gun a bit.

Before discussing what goes into an email newsletter or an ad campaign, turn your attention back to home base for a minute. I’m talking about your website. That old thing? Yes. The content on your company website will pay off 100X before anything else.

If your website doesn’t immediately tell each and every target buyer what you do and why they need you – stop fussing with all other content.  Go back. Do not collect 200 leads. This step is called buyer persona establishment. It’s critical before you can start any marketing campaigns and especially before you implement a marketing automation program.

The fact is too many websites are designed by people who SELL something – not by people who BUY something.  Buyer persona establishment allows you to get into the minds of your buyer and target them specifically with words, actions and channels that speak directly to them.

Focus in with Focus Groups

It helps tremendously to have a sounding board during the buyer persona establishment process.  A group of customers is great.  Assemble the best customers you have and start to pick apart their differences.  If you’re like me you will find that customer attitudes, psychology and desire highly determines the type of buyer they are, and ultimately the type of customer they become.

We all have clients we enjoy dealing with, and we have some we don’t.  So if we can target the ones that we want we can create better customers and reduce headaches on the backend.  Likewise, during this process you will discover the messaging you are using that is hurting your business or that no one understands or simply isn’t compelling.  That’s expected too.  You many be tempted to try to hold onto that content. Stop (hand slap), get rid of it.  All the time spent in the world doesn’t justify content that doesn’t speak to a buyer.

And what about those startups that don’t have customers?  The persona process can become an experiment in how understood your business is.  Take professionals that you know and explain the business to them. Do they get it?  What don’t they get?  And don’t worry about not knowing your exact personas for new businesses right off the bat.

Successful buyer profiling never stops. And it keeps you grounded. The next time you are tempted by a six-month ad buy pitch that happens to come in when leads are slow, you’ll refer to your personas to know for certain if it’s worth the spend. You no longer have to make decisions out of fear, but rather out of data.

Bla, Bla, Bla

Now that you know who these people are, formulate a message. In fact formulate a ton of messages.  This is where a lot of marketers start throwing slime on a wall because they are convinced the wall has to be decorated. Buyers can tell if they’re looking at slime or a piece of art and most would rather look at a blank wall than one with slime on it. In fact, if they see too much of it they’ll stop even looking at your business. So choose your content wisely.

Every piece of content should contain specific elements that speak to the buyer intended to receive it.  For instance, do you have a buyer who is apprehensive about online purchases? Make sure your pricing page has links to testimonials or case studies that speak to how secure your site is. Nurture those leads with content about PCI compliance and how to have a safe online shopping experience.

Again, this all starts with the website.  It’s the first thing your buyer sees, and the place where you will continue to funnel them back to.  Often times it’s the place they will spend the most time after they become a client or loyal customer. It’s where you’ll collect most of your data on customers and the health of your campaigns.

Your website content stems from the persona exercise and all of your outbound content stems from the website. That’s the formula for marketing simplicity and your marketing automation system will support this formula. And all of this ends (and your success starts) with the simplicity of having something to say.

Ask your team, or yourself if you’re a one man marketing show, if you have relevant messaging that’s distinguishable and actionable for every target.  If the answer is no, its time to postpone that Marketing Automation software purchase, hold off on that campaign that just can’t wait, and cancel that third-party demand gen initiative.  Without something to say, it’s simply a waste of money.

Justin Gray is the CEO and chief marketing evangelist at LeadMD. The company helps businesses generate and manage leads better through marketing automation processes and technologies. He can be reached at jgray@leadmd.com.

We had a chance to catch up with Brian E. Kardon, Eloqua’s Chief Marketing Officer at Dreamforce 2011. Brian is responsible for Eloqua’s global marketing and brand strategy, demand generation, and communications. Before joining Eloqua, Brian was Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Forrester Research, where he helped to more than double the business in less than five years, and significantly improved Forrester’s profitability. 

Tell us about Eloqua 10.

We hired IDEO to help us with the user interface.  They are one of the world’s greatest in product design and helped Apple with iTunes and the iPhone.  We realized that our software was 1st generation and the bar had come up from a usability perspective.

Nobody uses manuals any more. Eloqua 10 requires very little training and is drag and drop on many features.  By the end of the year we will add Revenue Suite, social, mobile, and benchmarking data.

Benchmarking is very exciting for us as we have 1,000 customers that will let us offer benchmarks by industry and revenue size.  This will give Eloqua customers great insight on how their campaigns are performing.

Why did Eloqua become a sponsor of The Marketing Automation Institute?

Good marketing automation is more about how you think versus technology.  How do you put together a meaningful email campaign? When should you send it out? How should you route leads? What is a sales ready lead? How do I score leads?

You can never have too much education and we are very supportive of Carlos Hidalgo and his efforts.  More people that are better educated is good for the entire industry.

What is Eloqua’s primary focus in 2011?

Our biggest initiative is our Revenue Suite. In the past, marketing automation has been about open rates, click rates and the CEO does not care.  They care about how marketing drives sales.

This tradeshow is a good example.  Most will come back and say we generated x number of leads.  Very few can say how many had marketing qualified leads that eventually lead to sales.  Revenue Suite gives marketers the power to speak intelligently to executives on these key financial metrics.

What is the biggest challenge facing the industry.

The industry is growing fast, but not as fast as we think it should.  Under 10 percent of companies that could benefit from marketing automation (Eloqua estimates B2B with $25 million in sales per year or higher) have adopted the technology.  We estimate that it is an $8 billion market size which means we have a lot of work to do.

There are various reasons why adoption has been slow.  Deploying revenue performance management (RPM) is not a small initiative.  Some marketers do not want the visibility that marketing automation provides.  They do not want people to know things are underperforming. There is a lot of caution.

What trends are you seeing at Dreamforce?

Social is big here.  The first generation of social was Facebook Fan pages and LinkedIn group conversations.  The next wave is demand generation and customer service.  The biggest source of social lead gen that Eloqua receives (80%) is from Facebook.  People trust their social network.

Social sign on.  Right now if you want to get content you need to fill out a form which has 6 fields.  With our customers we see that the average completion rate is 10 percent.  We now offer landing page users the option of loging in with a Social Handle.  Right is traditional form and on the left if you can sign in with Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.    What we have seen is 3x your current completing.  Two clicks you are in.

Mobile is huge.  Mobile for us is about the sales team.  We offer mobile alerts to sales team as well as other features.

Score! 

One of the easiest ways to pre-empt holes in the funnel is to fine-tune the lead scoring process.

What happens when marketing passes a lead to sales and the buyer never responds?  Dead, right?  Maybe not. So, why didn’t the lead engage?  In a large portion of cases, the lead was probably passed to sales prematurely or shouldn’t have been passed along at all.  Lead scoring isn’t perfect — it’s a path. It’s a path to better leads and a way for organizations to collaborate on lead quality in a very tangible way.  Getting back to this lead that never called back, what do we do with it?  Most sales reps would probably schedule a follow up in six months or forget about it completely, or, complain to someone in marketing and THEN forget about it completely.  All very bleak outcomes, and nothing seems to point to this lead becoming an eventual customer.  That’s lost revenue.

Good marketing automation software is designed to help with this process but is seldom used. Many companies are so engulfed in the process of getting leads into the funnel that they completely skip over the lead scoring step – an important first step. Take it. You’ll see your funnel retain a lot more than you did without it. 

Try a Smaller Funnel

If you’ve taken the step of appropriately scoring your leads, you’ve probably noticed something that makes your stomach drop. Your funnel is now a lot smaller. This is not a bad thing. Think about this in very literal terms. If you had a huge funnel, with the widest part at the top holding a mass amount of liquid, pressing down on the narrow opening at the bottom, you’re bound to spring leaks.  The funnel just can’t take that kind of pressure, and neither can your business. This is a fundamental shift in what we know about the concept of the funnel, but it’s an important one.

I’m not saying don’t use your marketing automation technology to attract more leads. That would be ridiculous. But be cognizant of which leads are making it into the funnel and when. It’s okay to keep a lead on the sidelines and let it ripen before tossing it to sales. It’s okay to pass on certain leads altogether. Why have your company waste time on leads that most likely won’t convert? Don’t be afraid to shrink your funnel. Your marketing automation system will make sure the leads keep coming, so you can make sure the right ones make it through, at the right time.

Push Marketing Shouldn’t Replace Personalized Marketing

Marketing automation allows us to do a lot of mass push marketing, so marketers really latch on to email blasting for quick acquisitions. This is seen as an opportunity to gain a quick spike in sales, but it’s also an occasion to lose many long-term customers.  Today’s marketing automation systems are built for personalization and lead nurturing for every kind of campaign. If you are doing acquisition-based campaigning, perhaps to a partner user base or tradeshow list (we’ve all done it), you shouldn’t see this as your one chance to build a “wow” factor.  Even with acquisition campaigns, marketers still need to learn as much about their prospects as possible and get them into the funnel based upon their preferences.  Acquisition campaigns are one of the few times that multi-CTA (calls to action) messaging is appropriate.  This allows the buyer to set their own preferences and will help you align with your target buyer personas.

This is the middle section of the funnel where leaks can happen. Once a response is received translate that knowledge immediately into next step messaging, then get them into the most relevant content nurturing track. Never think of acquisition campaigns as a “one and done” type offer, it should be an opportunity to learn and react accordingly.

The Biggest Lead Loss – Your Customers

Finally, address the holes that develop at the very bottom of your funnel, after the sale is complete. Many organizations do a poor job of marketing to their most attentive and valuable prospects – their existing customers. For organizations with a transactional model or varied product line this is the kiss of death.  On the whole, less than 12 percent of organizations are nurturing beyond the sale. Those that do often don’t tap into their clients’ current usage or product data.

Lead scoring doesn’t stop after the sale is made. You have to monitor lead score after the buyer makes a purchase for as long as they are a customer. Even if your organization doesn’t have a subscription model, and the first widget you sell is the only opportunity you have to make revenue – wouldn’t you want to know which customers are most likely to buy the newest version so you could market accordingly? For this reason it’s the hole at the very bottom of the funnel that causes the greatest amount of leakage. Marketers need to keep engaging customers after the sale and continue with right-time, right message marketing.

So the question always falls to how we can fix these problems? The only way to successfully fix a leaky funnel is to start with a new, stronger funnel. This is a hard proposition to get buy-in around as it could set you back, and is seen as non-revenue generating.  I’ve got news for you: on the whole, marketing for that last 20 years has been non-revenue generating.  When you try to plug in a fix midstream, it fails.  The excuse for a leaky funnel for a long time has been lack of visibility and lack of repeatability. You have to concede that a process that hasn’t been possible before probably hasn’t been planned for.  And that’s why we have to start over with a new view of the funnel and what makes it stay in tact.  If starting over isn’t an option, then focus on the top and the bottom of your funnel, and work inward from there.

Justin Gray is the CEO and chief marketing evangelist at LeadMD. The company helps businesses generate and manage leads better through marketing automation processes and technologies. He can be reached at jgray@leadmd.com.

Dan founded PointClear in 1997 with the mission to be the first and best company providing prospect development services to business-to-business companies with complex sales processes.  In addition to serving as president and CEO of PointClear, Dan is the author of The Truth About Leads, a book that helps focus B2B lead-generation efforts, align sales and marketing organizations and drive revenue.

This interview covers the following topics.

• How PointClear bridges the gap between marketing sales with response management, lead qualification and lead nurturing services.
• Using multi touch marketing to enhance the marketing automation process.
• When should an organization outsource outbound lead qualification.
• What it takes to educate your prospect development associates on complex business products and processes.
• How to staff outbound lead generation efforts.
• The biggest mistake most companies make in their phone qualification efforts.

HubSpot has expanded the functionality of it’s ‘inbound marketing software’ by acquiring Performable . The acquisition is intended to expand the functionality of HubSpot’s platform, and enhance its customers’ ability to turn more visitors into leads and customers.

According to HubSpot, “The acquisition brings sophisticated ‘middle of the funnel’ marketing functionality to the HubSpot platform, meaning it will enhance businesses ability to turn more visitors into leads and customers. The acquisition also adds top product development, user experience, and engineering talent, starting with veteran entrepreneur David Cancel who will become HubSpot’s Chief Product Officer.”

“Combining Performable’s innovative product features with HubSpot’s all-in-one inbound marketing platform accelerates our goal of transforming the marketing industry,” said HubSpot Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Brian Halligan, who was recently named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year. “This acquisition is just the first in a series of partnerships, acquisitions and other announcements you can expect to see from us in the coming months.”

Performable’s 18-person team will join HubSpot at the company’s headquarters beginning June 20, growing the team to over 260 HubSpotters. Leaders of both companies say this integration will allow HubSpot to better serve larger companies, support existing customers as they grow, and provide companies of all sizes with industry-leading marketing tools.

The acquisition occured three months after receiving a $32 million Series D financing round, led by Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, and Salesforce.com.  No purchase price for Performable was released.

Greg has a successful history in the software business with a track record of creating winning products, brands and businesses. For over 15 years, Greg helped grow the ACT! contact management and SalesLogix CRM businesses from startups to global brands. He has a passion for helping emerging technology companies with their marketing and growth strategies.

The interview covers the following topics…

- Why Infusionsoft is the right choice for small business owners.

- How Infusionsoft differs from other marketing automation solutions that target the small business space.

- The advantage of converging CRM, marketing automation, and ecommerce in one platform.

- Why being bigger is not the main motivation for  most small businesses.

Jantsch’s definition of marketing is ‘getting someone with a need to KNOW, LIKE, and TRUST you.  He has now expanded this idea to a concept he calls the ‘Marketing Hourglass’.  In addition to KNOW, LIKE, TRUST, he has added TRY, BUY, REPEAT, and REFER.

Often times marketing automation campaigns are more focused on getting new customers versus making sure existing customer are and stay happy.  Replacing customers is expensive and a happy customer is one of the greatest lead generators a company has.

Marketing automation could play a vital role in all 7 of these stages of the Marketing Hourglass. So often the difference between a thrilled customer and satisfied customer is the follow up and education provided after the sale.

He recommends that business work backwards from what the perfect customer experience would be and what touchpoints need to happen to keep them happy.

View his post here.

1. Lead Capture. The point at which you capture leads and how you capture them should be evaluated.  If you start nurturing leads when implementing marketing automation then would you need to capture all their information upfront? Maybe not , or maybe you could ask for less information at first and build their prospect profile over time as you nurture them with relevant content.
2. Marketing to Sales Process. How does marketing currently move leads to sales?  Are leads generated and sent via spreadsheets, email notifications off the website, or are leads manually typed into the CRM tool after a trade show? After implementing marketing automation, marketers can take more responsibility for nurturing these suspects first and passing the more qualified leads to sales– all from within one cohesive database and view.
3. Lead Nurturing. Is there a current lead nurturing process in place? Maybe sales people are responsible for nurturing their own leads.  If so, evaluate how effective lead nurturing is within you organization and where that nurturing occurs.  Most likely you’ll want to nurture early and throughout the sales process and put together programs with appropriate content to drive prospects.
4. Sales to Marketing Process (leads and opportunities in pipeline). Does your company have a process for sales to “throw back” leads that are no longer “sales ready” because they are unqualified or just won’t answer the phone? If you are like most companies the answer is “no”.  So what’s happening to the not yet ready to buy prospects? Potentially, they are being nurtured by your competitor and lost by your company.  Marketing automation gives you the ability to systematize the process of moving leads/opportunities back into nurture mode so your company doesn’t experience costly lead leakage issues.
5. Content Evaluation and Creation. Do you create content today with the thought of driving prospects through a nurturing process? Do you change content based on where your prospect is in their buy cycle? Most likely not… not yet. With marketing automation the content you put together changes, the conversation and communication you establish with your prospect changes. This is a great opportunity to deliver what the prospect finds interesting, when it’s important to the prospect.