This series of posts were created when I worked at a Marketing Automation company called “Loopfuse” in the early 2010’s. I was the Senior Manager of Technical Support and I posted blog content on the merits of Marketing Automation in general, as well as some of the technical aspects specific to that platform. I recently rescued these posts from the Wayback Machine for posterity and to remind myself of what I have written in the past. The images are missing, but you’ll get the idea.
Traditional Marketing Management courses talk about the “Marketing Mix” and how different elements come together to form a marketing plan. Each company has a different corporate culture and approach to doing business so knowing how to balance these different marketing pieces is essential to creating a successful image that reflects the company’s goals. The well-known “Four Ps” model of marketing (price, promotion, product, and place) has been updated with the more customer focused “Four Cs” model (cost, communication, consumer, and convenience) but either way, marketing automation can make your company more successful by giving a power boost to your marketing mix. This is how LoopFuse can help you do better in each of these four areas.
Promotion and Communication
One of the basic components for any marketing automation tool is an email campaign module. Despite the rise, utility, and importance of social media, email continues to play a vital role in getting your message out to potential customers, especially when they have opted in to your lists and are willing to hear more about your products. I’m not putting down social media, but in my opinion, a well-crafted email can represent your branding efforts much clearer than 140 characters can. You still need as much reach as you can get, however, so always include your social media presence in your email communications. Coordination between your social, email, and web site messaging will create a much more effective impression on your prospects.
Product and Consumer
Know your product. Know your customer. Get those two in harmony and you’ve got yourself a winning formula. Marketing Automation software helps you extend the communication portion of the marketing mix in to other areas so you can effectively meet the needs of your customers. Track how people respond to the product line on your web site by tracking page view behavior – know whether they visit your pricing page and if they are interested in your product features. Make use of LoopFuse Custom Events to track user behavior within a SaaS product – get your product to sell itself and serve up relevant content automatically based on user actions. Tailor messages for different markets – automated list segmentation eliminates all the wasted time and headaches involved with sending a targeted email campaign. Set up some list criteria for a couple of “buyer personas”. Do this using demographic data (who are they?) such as industry, title, role, stage of sales process and/or behavioral data (what were their search keywords? Have they viewed your pricing page 3+ times?). Tailoring your messages to a few key “buyer personas” is much more effective than a one-size-fits-all email blast, so you can expect much higher engagement rates if done correctly…and say goodbye to copying/pasting those Excel spreadsheets!
Price and Cost
You may have the most killer App or the most fantabulous product ever devised by mankind, but without a solid understanding of how much it will cost your customer, they will not have a satisfying sales or user experience. When pricing your product you need to make sure that you include everything, including marketing costs. Marketing Automation programs can help you by cutting the amount of time sales teams waste on unqualified prospects. A well-organized MA effort can also help you use assets more effectively to get the most for the money spent on developing them. See how quickly people have saved money using LoopFuse by check out our case studies. See how many extra closed deals you would need to have LoopFuse pay for itself at your organization by using our ROI calculator.
Place and Convenience
Most of what marketing automation facilitates in the B2B world are products that can be accessed or acquired online. In this context placement of your product or ease of access is very important. You want lead capture forms that give up access to useful product information, such as white papers or webinars, in exchange for useful information from the prospect, such as email address and level of interest. LoopFuse can help you by gathering that customer data and using it to serve up other meaningful bits of information that will help them down the path of customer acquisition. We also integrate with other customer facing tools that you might use on a daily basis like WordPress, Wufoo, and Unbounce.
Marketing Automation is becoming an ever increasingly important tool in the Marketing Manager’s arsenal. Make sure you’ve got an understanding of just how well it can help you as you strive to balance your company’s marketing mix. Get started with LoopFuse for free and start seeing success!
