The Pedowitz Group, a leader in marketing technology (MarTech) solutions, announces strategic partnership with MartechTribe.

ATLANTA, Sept. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — The Pedowitz Group, a leader in marketing technology (MarTech) solutions, is thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with MartechTribe, one of the most innovative players in the marketing technology space. This collaboration is set to redefine the landscape of MarTech analysis, benchmarking, and future state assessments, offering businesses unmatched insights and strategic guidance in the rapidly evolving digital marketing world.

A Dual Force in MarTech Expertise

The partnership brings together The Pedowitz Group’s deep expertise in revenue marketing strategy and technology with MartechTribe’s renowned analytical prowess in global data. This synergy aims to create a powerhouse of knowledge, tools, and strategies, making it the most comprehensive offering in the market today for businesses looking to leverage marketing technology for growth and innovation.

Customized Solutions for Forward-Thinking Companies

Clients of this partnership will benefit from a unique blend of services tailored to their specific needs. The Pedowitz Group’s approach to revenue marketing transformation, combined with MartechTribe’s analytics, ensures businesses are equipped with the best strategies and tools to succeed. Whether it’s benchmarking current Martech stacks against industry standards or envisioning a future state with cutting-edge technologies, this partnership is positioned to deliver.

Driving the Future of Marketing Technology

“The landscape of marketing technology is constantly evolving, and staying ahead of the curve is critical for business success,” said Jeff Pedowitz, CEO of The Pedowitz Group. “Our partnership with MartechTribe represents a significant step forward in providing businesses with the insights and tools they need to navigate this dynamic market. We are excited to combine our expertise to help businesses thrive in the digital age.”

About The Pedowitz Group

The Pedowitz Group (TPG) is a premier full-service professional services firm committed to revolutionizing revenue marketing. Specializing in transforming marketing from a cost center to a revenue center, TPG equips marketing, sales, and customer success teams with world-class strategy, technology, creative, and execution capabilities. With a platform-agnostic approach, the firm works with existing tech stacks and introduces new ones, ensuring customized solutions that fit unique needs.

Since 2007, TPG has served over 1,500 clients worldwide, launched over 2,500 campaigns and programs, and generated $25 billion in marketing-sourced revenue campaigns. An industry leader recognized for its revenue marketing innovation, TPG holds more than 600 certifications and has a proven track record of delivering measurable results.

About MartechTribe

MartechTribe is a European-based analytics and consulting firm specializing in MarTech landscape analysis based on a proprietary MarTech Data Warehouse including 1,500+ MarTech stacks, 14,106 vendors, and 4,600+ requirements. With a focus on cutting-edge research and trends, MartechTribe helps businesses harness the power of marketing technology for competitive advantage.

Media Contact

Evan Whitenight, The Pedowitz Group, 1 512-971-4991, evan@pedowitzgroup.com, pedowitzgroup.com 

Frans Riemersma, MartechTribe, 31 65-4297671, FransRiemersma@MartechTribe.com, MartechTribe.com 

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As we dissect Elina Vilk’s fascinating journey, we’ll uncover how she approached her first 90 days as the CMO of Hootsuite. The conversation is packed with pearls of wisdom that shine a light on Elina’s blueprint for success. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the first section where we unravel the strategies and tactics that shaped her initial months at the helm.

Getting to Know the Company

Elina Vilk shares her framework for approaching her first 90 days as a CMO. The first step is understanding the business. This involves studying the company’s product, cultural values, and customer base. Elina shares that working for a marketing product-based company like Hootsuite allows her to be customer zero and intimately understand customer needs from day one. By understanding the business, CMOs can align marketing goals with the overall company goals and ensure marketing efforts contribute to business growth.

Align Marketing to Business goals

The next step in the framework is building a marketing strategy that aligns with the company’s goals. Elina emphasizes the importance of setting realistic goals and building a marketing plan that prioritizes what needs to be done to achieve those goals. She also recommends including competitive analysis and voice of customer research in the plan to ensure the market landscape informs the marketing strategy.

Build A Stellar Team

Once the marketing strategy is in place, Elina stresses the importance of building a team that can execute. She recommends assessing the current marketing team and identifying any gaps. She emphasizes the importance of balancing skill sets and personalities to create a cohesive team working together to achieve the marketing plan. She also discusses the importance of building trust with the team and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation.

Create Relationships with Stakeholders

In addition to building a team, Elina emphasizes the importance of building relationships with stakeholders across the organization. She recommends meeting with key stakeholders to understand their priorities and how marketing can support their goals. Building relationships across the organization can help create a collaborative culture that supports the business’s overall success.

Conclusion

Starting a new role as a CMO can be overwhelming, but with a clear framework, CMOs can make an impact in their first 90 days. Elina Vilk shares her insights on the importance of understanding the business, building a marketing strategy, building a cohesive team, and building relationships across the organization. By working through these steps, new CMOs can ensure that their marketing efforts are aligned with overall company goals and contribute to business growth.

Watch the full interview here:

Connect with Elina Vilk on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/elinavilk/

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/

Learn more about The Pedowitz Group – https://pedowitzgroup.com/

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’ – https://pedowitzgroup.com/resources/ai-revenue-architect/

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The Rise of Generative AI for Marketing

The use of AI technology in marketing has been explosive in the last 24 months. Generative AI has become the go-to for modern marketers looking to scale customization. MarketMate is a platform that helps generate and curate content ideas that resonate with target audiences. Granular data insights on customer personas, core messaging and call-to-action themes facilitate market intelligence. Nathan founded MarketMate after noticing the lack of automation in marketing content creation. The software uses natural language processing and machine learning to help generate content; marketers can generate social media posts, headlines, and blog articles. It allows them to save hours in research, identification and creation.

The Role of Human Touch

While AI can assist with content creation, Schlaffer emphasized that we must not forget the importance of human expertise and industry knowledge. AI tools should help with tasks and free up time for more strategic projects. Marketers must focus on understanding their audience, creating buyer personas, and validating the output of AI-generated content. Using AI without human oversight can result in content that is incomplete or irrelevant to a given customer set.

Nathan comments that AI should be seen as a partner for marketers. By working alongside AI tools, marketers can leverage their skills and industry knowledge to create content that resonates with their audience, generate higher revenue, and achieve higher sales ROI. A study by McKinsey found that companies that used generative AI tools saw their sales revenue increase by 10% annually.

As AI technology continues to advance, marketers should seek opportunities to collaborate with AI tools and find ways to complement each other’s capabilities. AI can be used as an orchestrator, with marketers still in the driving seat determining topics, audience, and messaging. The use of AI can lead to more targeted and effective campaigns, which can increase conversion rates and ROI. AI is here to help, not replace, marketers.

Guidance for CMOs & Marketers

Nathan recommends CMOs should consider platforms that are specific to their workflows and enable sales and marketing teams to work together. User-friendliness and a low learning curve should be considered when choosing AI tools. Strategic partnerships with AI experts can train the workforce and enable the effective use of AI technology. Aspiring marketers should know themselves, their passions, and explore different domains within marketing.

Nathan also shares that bias is a legitimate concern for AI models. CMOs should address this by working with subject matter experts and incorporating industry data into their models. MarketMate’s AI model cites its sources, allowing for validation and accuracy, and helping ensure that it’s free from bias. As AI technology improves, Nathan suggests marketers should focus on building diverse teams and involving subject-matter experts to help reduce inherent biases in the algorithms. Mitigating the risk of bias is a crucial aspect of using AI in marketing.

AI technology is revolutionizing marketing, and MarketMate is at the forefront of this transformation. But it’s important to remember that AI tools are not a replacement for human expertise. They should be seen as partners who help marketers create more targeted and effective campaigns. When used correctly, AI has the potential to boost revenue, sales ROI, and enhance the customer experience. By considering the role of human touch, seeing AI as a collaborator, mitigating bias, and following guidance for CMOs and marketers, AI can be used effectively to transform the marketing landscape.

Watch the full interview here:

Connect with Nathan Schlaffer- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanschlaffer/

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/

Learn more about The Pedowitz Group – https://pedowitzgroup.com/

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’ – https://pedowitzgroup.com/resources/ai-revenue-architect/

The post What CMOs Need to Know About Generative AI in Marketing appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

A Journey of Innovation

Brook Jay’s journey in experiential marketing began somewhat accidentally. She initially pursued studies in international trade and finance but quickly realized it wasn’t her calling. A fortuitous turn of events led her into the world of production, where she found her passion for creating experiences that resonated with people.

Her pivotal moment came during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta when she witnessed a brand activation by Champion. This activation, centered around an interactive T-shirt exchange, showcased the power of connecting with consumers in a memorable and authentic way. It left a lasting impression on her, inspiring her to delve into the world of experiential marketing.

Lessons from 25 Years of Experience

As All Terrain Collective celebrates its landmark 25th anniversary as the first female-led experiential marketing agency in the United States, Brook Jay reflects on the essential role of leadership and partnership in her journey. Every experience, even the most challenging ones, has contributed to her personal and professional growth.

Driven by her passion for guiding others in navigating the complex landscape of experiential marketing, Brook is currently writing a book that shares her invaluable insights and lessons learned. Throughout her journey, one crucial theme resonates: The significance of teamwork and the gradual release of control as a CEO. It serves as a powerful reminder that building a successful company requires collaboration and trust in one’s team.

The Power of Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing has evolved immensely since Brook Jay’s early days. In the interview, she passionately underscores the unique position of experiential marketing in today’s ever-changing landscape, emphasizing its ability to forge emotional connections with consumers.

At its core, experiential marketing is an intricate blend of understanding human emotions, social dynamics, memory, trust, empathy, and captivating storytelling. Brands that excel in this realm create authentic moments that offer genuine value without overwhelming their audience. These immersive experiences foster unparalleled loyalty and advocacy among consumers, forming lasting bonds that drive long-term success for the brand.

Navigating the Changing Landscape of Brand Loyalty

In an era when brand loyalty can be fickle and consumer expectations are soaring, experiential marketing plays a pivotal role. Brook Jay recognizes the challenges and stresses the importance of brands truly understanding their target audience.

She advises brands to remain steadfast in their core values and seamlessly integrate them into their storytelling. By establishing a consistent drumbeat of communication and delivering meaningful, unforgettable experiences, brands can cultivate enduring connections with their customers.

The Hybrid Collective Model

One of the groundbreaking innovations introduced by Brook Jay to All Terrain Collective is the “Hybrid Collective” model. This unique approach seamlessly blends elements of traditional agency and collective agency models, offering unparalleled flexibility to adapt and scale quickly based on client and project requirements. Since implementing this model, the agency’s margins have skyrocketed, benefiting both the agency and its clients.

The hybrid collective model empowers the agency to work with dream clients and curate teams that possess an intimate understanding of a specific brand. This streamlines communication and ensures that the right expertise is applied to each project, guaranteeing exceptional results.

Watch the full interview here:

The Importance of Authentic Experiences

Experiential marketing remains an incredibly powerful tool in the realm of marketing, forming genuine emotional connections and fostering unwavering brand loyalty. Brook Jay’s remarkable journey and invaluable insights showcase the true power of authentic and immersive experiences in today’s dynamic marketing landscape. By understanding their audience and staying true to their core values, brands can thrive and excel in this ever-evolving terrain.

Connect with Brook Jay on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/brookjay/

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/

Learn more about The Pedowitz Group – https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’ – https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/resources/ai-revenue-architect/

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This exciting live webinar, scheduled for October 26, 2023, at 1:00 PM ET, is a unique opportunity to gain insights from marketing and AI expert, Leslie Alore, Global Vice President of Growth Marketing at Ivanti. Let us delve into the details of what makes this event unmissable and why you should mark your calendar for this webinar. 

Meet Leslie Alore: The Growth Marketing Maestro 

Leslie Alore, with her passion for data-driven decision-making, is the Global Vice President of Growth Marketing at Ivanti. She’s the sharp marketer poised to take you on a captivating journey into the world of AI and machine learning (ML), revealing how you can integrate them into your AMB/ABX marketing strategies. Under Leslie’s expert guidance, you’ll gain insights into how Ivanti has streamlined its marketing performance and unified its marketing and sales teams around a cohesive ABM strategy. It’s not every day that you get a chance to pick the brain of a seasoned professional who has mastered the art of growth marketing. 

This webinar promises to be filled with insightful discussions and practical takeaways that you can implement right away. Here are some of the key topics that Leslie will shed light on:  

AI/ML-Enabled Tools for Targeted Marketing 

Discover how AI and ML can help focus your B2B marketing efforts on new customer acquisition, cross-selling, renewal, and customer retention. This is a game-changer in the world of marketing, and you won’t want to miss these insights. 

Exploring Strategies 

As the marketing topography evolves, so do the strategies. You’ll get a glimpse of the latest trends and innovations that are shaping the industry. 

AI Guidelines, Roles, & Responsibilities 

Understand how to incorporate AI into your marketing strategy effectively. Learn about the roles and responsibilities involved in making AI work for your business. 

Meet the Co-Hosts 

Leslie Alore isn’t going to tackle these topics alone. She’ll be joined by some talented minds in the B2B marketing world. Get ready to meet her co-hosts: 

Melanie Kennedy, Owner, Strategic Media 

Melanie Kennedy leads a team of highly experienced media professionals, each boasting over 20 years of background in the field. Her extensive network of top-performing publishers and media companies spans various industries, making her a formidable force in media strategy. Melanie’s industry proficiency includes both B2B and B2C, providing a well-rounded perspective on effective media strategies. 

Jeff Pedowitz, CEO – The Pedowitz Group 

Yes, you read that right! Jeff Pedowitz, CEO of The Pedowitz Group, renowned for hosting a series of AI marketing webinars, will be there to provide invaluable insights into AI and marketing. As one of the co-hosts, his presence alone makes this webinar a must-attend event. 

Sean Markin, StreetBond 

Sean Markin is a marketing consultant known for his lifelong passion for innovation. His journey, from early predictions of revolutionary ideas to replacing inefficient apps, led him to the dynamic world of marketing. With an uncanny ability to understand what drives consumers, Sean has carved a niche for himself in the industry. 

Bob Samuels, CEO TechConnectr 

An ABM leader and a veteran in the B2B marketing world, Bob Samuels is the principal of TechConnectr, a renowned B2B performance marketing advisory firm. His “connectr’ reputation and expertise extend across agencies, enterprise marketers, publishers, channel partners, and predictive and data players. 

Why Attend? 

Now, you might be wondering what sets this webinar apart from the rest. Well, here are a few compelling reasons why you should register and join this live event: 

Expertise at Your Fingertips 

You’ll have access to a collective wealth of knowledge from industry experts. Leslie Alore and our co-hosts are leaders in their respective fields, and their insights are worth their weight in gold. 

Practical Insights 

This webinar won’t just be about theory. You’ll receive practical insights and actionable strategies that you can implement immediately within your organization. 

Networking Opportunities 

Joining this live event gives you a chance to connect with like-minded professionals, potentially leading to valuable collaborations and partnerships. 

Jeff Pedowitz’s Presence 

As CEO of The Pedowitz Group, Jeff Pedowitz’s participation in this webinar is a rare opportunity. His insights can be a game-changer for your business. 

Stay Ahead of the Curve 

In the fast-paced world of marketing, staying ahead of the curve is essential. Discover the latest trends and technologies that can give you a competitive edge. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, the “Candid with Bob – The Advantages and Pitfalls of Harnessing AI Power in ABM/ABX Marketing” webinar is an unmissable event for anyone looking to elevate their marketing game. You’ll gain invaluable insights into the world of AI-powered marketing with a fantastic lineup of speakers and co-hosts, including Leslie Alore, Jeff Pedowitz, Bob Samuels, Melanie Kennedy, and Sean Markin. 

Register now, mark your calendar for October 26, 2023, at 1:00 PM ET, and get ready to unlock the potential of AI in ABM/ABX efforts.  

Also, TechConnectr has emerged as a powerhouse of the B2B lead generation world.  Explore their offerings and learn how they can help your business thrive by visiting their website at TechConnectr. They specialize in connecting businesses with the right sales leads, and their services are highly regarded in the industry. If you’re looking to supercharge your lead generation efforts, TechConnectr is a name you should be familiar with. 

The post Harnessing AI in ABM/ABX Marketing: Join the ‘Candid with Bob’ Webinar appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Forging Ahead with Category Creation

Carolyn starts the conversation by expressing her passion for category creation. She highlights the significance of introducing something new to the market, but also the challenge of fitting it into an existing category. According to Crandall, creating a new category involves offering something the market has never seen before or a unique variant that redefines an existing category. This process not only excites her but also enables companies to establish brand leadership in a specific space.

Harnessing AI’s Power to Stand Out

As the conversation shifts towards AI, Crandall emphasizes its multifaceted role in marketing. Beyond content generation, she sees AI as a powerful tool for understanding market trends, analyzing buzzwords, and customizing pitches for journalists. In an era where many industries start to sound alike, AI helps marketers stand out by selecting the most effective keywords and phrases. AI also plays a crucial role in tracking and improving messaging and positioning, making it an indispensable asset for category creators.

Elevating Customer Experiences with AI

AI isn’t just a content generator; it’s a game-changer for enhancing the customer experience. Carolyn explains how AI can be employed to understand customers better, from their preferences to their journey on a website. By tailoring content and experiences to individual users, AI elevates personalization and engagement, a critical aspect of modern marketing.

Empowering Data-Driven Decision-Making with AI

Marketers often grapple with an overwhelming amount of data. Carolyn Crandall believes AI’s true potential lies in its ability to sift through this data rapidly and efficiently. AI tools like Salesforce’s Imperative enable marketers to analyze customer data and gain valuable insights. Predictive scores help identify prospects with a higher probability of converting, while funnel analysis aids in optimizing the customer journey. The speed and precision of AI allow marketers to make informed decisions swiftly.

Embarking on an AI-Driven Journey

For marketers looking to dip their toes into the AI waters, Carolyn recommends starting with areas that consume significant time and effort. Content creation and editing are prime candidates for AI integration. Tools like Grammarly and Jasper can help streamline content generation and ensure it aligns with brand voice. Additionally, recording and transcribing audio content using AI tools can save time and open up opportunities for repurposing content.

Carolyn also advises marketers to prioritize website optimization, focusing on conversion rates and A/B testing to improve efficiency. Lastly, she suggests that marketers engage with their existing vendors to inquire about their AI strategies, as many tools already have AI capabilities that marketers might not be fully utilizing.

Watch the full interview here:

The Future of Marketing is AI-Driven

In conclusion, AI is poised to reshape the marketing landscape. By adopting AI tools and strategies with a focus on efficiency and productivity, marketers can navigate this transformative era with confidence and creativity. The future of marketing is AI-driven, and those who embrace it stand to gain a significant competitive advantage.

Connect with Carolyn Crandall on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/cacrandall/

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/

Learn more about The Pedowitz Group – https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’ – https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/resources/ai-revenue-architect/

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In our most recent episode of the CMO Insights podcast, we are joined by Louise Troen, the trailblazing Chief Marketing Officer of Reveri Health. She discusses her unconventional path to the CMO role and offers invaluable insights for marketers venturing into the dynamic realm of mental health and wellness. 

The Power of the Underdog Spirit 

Louise fearlessly embraces her underdog status, acknowledging the competitive nature of the mental health and wellness industry. Drawing inspiration from successful niche brands like Oatly oatmilk, she recognizes the potential to challenge the status quo and communicate a distinctive value proposition. Embracing the underestimated becomes a driving force in her strategic approach as a CMO. 

Harnessing Humility and Empowerment 

Louise’s journey defied traditional norms, lacking formal marketing training and starting with unrelated career experiences. Yet, she harnessed the power of humility and empowerment. By assembling a team of experts who surpass her own expertise, she fosters a collaborative environment where everyone’s talents are celebrated, regardless of hierarchical positions. 

Cultivating Transparency for Growth 

Transparent communication lies at the heart of Louise’s leadership philosophy. Breaking away from the conventional practice of sporadic feedback, she advocates for ongoing feedback loops within the organization. This proactive approach cultivates a culture of continuous improvement, benefiting individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole. 

Balancing Brand Building and Demand Generation 

Louise understands the delicate balance between building a strong brand and driving immediate demand. In an industry focused on quick wins, she recognizes the long-term value of brand consistency. By combining emotionally resonant storytelling with strategic demand generation efforts, she ensures authenticity without compromising short-term results. 

Embracing Mistakes as Catalysts for Growth 

Louise’s invaluable advice to her younger self is to embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth. She reframes setbacks as stepping stones on the path to understanding and improvement. Through her experiences, she encourages aspiring marketers to view mistakes not as failures, but as catalysts for innovation and personal development. 

Navigating Uncharted Waters 

Louise finds herself pioneering unexplored territories as a CMO in the mental health and wellness space. Reveri Health’s mission to demystify and destigmatize hypnosis adds an extra layer of complexity. Her journey, characterized by humility, empowerment, transparency, and embracing the underdog role, offers invaluable lessons for marketers navigating similar challenges. 

Watch the full interview here: 

In today’s ever-evolving marketing landscape, CMOs like Louise Troen exemplify the adaptability, resilience, and commitment required for success. Her inspiring journey reminds us that embracing the underdog status and leveraging it as a strength can lead to triumph in the most uncharted territories of marketing. As we navigate these uncharted waters, Louise’s story serves as a beacon, illuminating the transformative power of the journey itself. 

Connect with Louise Troen on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-troen-1895a235/ 

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/ 

Learn more about The Pedowitz Group – https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/ 

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’ – https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/resources/ai-revenue-architect/ 

The post Navigating Uncharted Waters: Louise Troen’s Trailblazing Journey as a CMO in the Mental Wellness Space appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Let’s delve into how sales and operations can harness the power of AI. 

AI can transform how teams interact with customers and prospects for sales. AI-powered CRMs can analyze customer behavior, predict future trends, and even automate follow-ups, ensuring no lead is left untouched. AI tools like chatbots can respond instantly to customer queries, increasing customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

On the operations side, AI can streamline processes and increase efficiency. AI-powered automation tools can take over repetitive, monotonous tasks, freeing up staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. AI can also aid demand forecasting, supply chain optimization, and risk management. 

In short, by empowering these departments to choose and control their AI tools, businesses can drastically improve their efficiency, customer service, and, ultimately, their bottom line.

Why Marketing Should Step Up

Marketing is not just about selling products or services. It’s all about understanding your customers, predicting market trends, and making strategic choices that boost business growth. Here’s where AI steps in. AI can analyze complex data and provide insights you can use to make course corrections or double down on your current strategy. So, is it better for marketing teams to pick their AI tools? 

AI also significantly enhances customer engagement. Just think about AI-powered chatbots. They work 24/7, providing customers with instant responses. They can answer questions, solve issues, and guide customers through buying. This interaction can significantly improve the customer experience, building loyalty and customer retention. 

And let’s remember content creation. AI tools can create informative and engaging content that appeals to your audience. They can assess past content performance, consider current trends, and predict future content needs, keeping your content strategy fresh and compelling. 

Moreover, AI excels at personalization. Marketing teams can tailor every interaction to individual customers – from emails to website content, ads, and product recommendations. AI tools analyze customer data, understanding their preferences and behaviors, allowing marketing teams to customize their strategies accordingly. This personalized customer experience drives engagement and conversions, giving you an edge in a competitive marketplace.

The Risks of Giving IT Total Control Over AI Tools

While AI has thoroughly changed how business departments operate, leaving IT to select and manage AI tools can have some drawbacks. First and foremost, each department has its own needs and workflow. What works for marketing might not work for operations or sales. If IT is in charge of picking AI tools, they might need to fully understand or consider each department’s specific needs, leading to inefficiencies and dissatisfaction. 

Secondly, IT usually has a full plate dealing with system maintenance, network security, and data management. Managing AI tools for each department could stretch their resources thin, negatively impacting their work quality and ability to respond to IT emergencies promptly. 

Also, if the IT department has complete control over AI tools, it can slow down the decision-making process. For instance, if a marketing team finds a new AI tool that could improve their campaign performance, they would need approval from IT to implement it. This delay could result in missed opportunities. 

Lastly, handing the control of AI tools to IT might create a gap between the tool users (the departments) and the tool managers (IT), leading to communication issues and inefficient use of the AI tools.

The Role of IT in Choosing AI Tech

While IT shouldn’t be the final decision-maker in choosing AI tools, it still has a crucial role. IT professionals understand the technical aspects of AI and are aware of emerging trends. 

When integrating AI tools, IT professionals ensure they are compatible with existing tech infrastructure, troubleshoot technical glitches, and enable smooth integration and operation. Without their support, implementing new tools could cause system disruptions and inefficiencies.

Moreover, IT plays a crucial role in ensuring data security. As AI tools deal with sensitive data, any compromise on security could have serious consequences. IT can evaluate the security features of prospective tools, ensuring they meet the organization’s security standards.

Furthermore, AI tools need regular updates and maintenance for optimal performance. IT can manage these updates, ensuring the tools are secure, up-to-date, and performing at their peak. 

Lastly, IT can provide training and support to other departments on effectively using AI tools, overcoming resistance to new tech, and ensuring the organization fully capitalizes on its AI investments.

Working Together: The Path to Success

In this digital age, strategically integrating AI tools across business departments is not a luxury but a necessity. The key to success lies in the optimal selection, implementation, and management of these tools and who takes ownership of them. 

While it’s clear that individual departments – be it marketing, sales, or operations – should have the autonomy to choose the AI tools that fit their needs and workflows, the role of IT is equally important.

Their technical expertise is vital for evaluating prospective AI tools’ technical feasibility, compatibility, and security aspects. Additionally, their role includes providing technical support.

Quick Start Your AI Journey

Need help getting started with AI? In just two weeks, we’ll kickstart your AI strategy with actionable insights, tailored workshops, and hands-on guidance. Within 90 days, you can identify, implement, and optimize quick wins in AI to accelerate your marketing strategy. Learn more about AI Roadmap Accelerator or contact us today.

The post Why Every Department Should Be in Charge of Their AI Tools appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Lauren’s journey from figure skating to marketing leadership has been shaped by her strong focus on people, adaptability, and passion for making a positive impact. Her leadership style reflects her commitment to building a culture that values inclusivity, innovation, and employee development. 

A Digital-First Mindset 

One of the key takeaways from Lauren’s approach to digital transformation is the importance of adopting a “digital-first” mindset. She emphasizes that starting with people is crucial rather than just focusing on technology and processes. Organizations can effectively navigate the digital landscape by prioritizing the needs and aspirations of employees and customers. 

Building a Culture of Excellence 

Sallata places great emphasis on creating a culture of excellence within the organization. This culture involves shared values, accountability, and expectations around how employees work and collaborate. The commitment to fostering a culture of inclusion has led to positive results, including improved employee engagement and a 96% acceptance rate for job offers at Ricoh. 

Embracing AI and Emerging Technologies 

With AI becoming increasingly prevalent in business, the Ricoh marketing team is actively exploring ways to leverage AI and other emerging technologies. They’ve initiated projects to identify the most suitable use cases for AI within the company, focusing on enhancing productivity and driving efficiency. 

Mentorship and Leadership Development 

Lauren Sallata strongly advocates mentorship and leadership development, both within and outside her organization. She encourages aspiring marketing leaders, especially women, to develop a general manager mindset. Understanding business principles, financial acumen, and strategy are essential skills that can pave the way for marketing professionals to become effective CMOs. 

Stepping Out of the Comfort Zone 

Lauren’s career journey includes a pivotal moment when she stepped outside her marketing role to explore a service-oriented position. The experience taught her valuable lessons about adaptability and embracing diverse experiences in one’s career. 

Watch the full interview here: 

Lauren Sallata’s journey from figure skating to becoming the CMO of Ricoh North America is a testament to the power of digital transformation and the role of leadership in fostering innovation and inclusion. Her insights provide valuable guidance for aspiring marketing leaders looking to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape and build cultures of excellence within their organizations. 

• Connect with Lauren Sallata on LinkedIn 
• Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn 
• Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’  

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Alright, so what exactly is this RevOps we’re all chattering about? Think of it this way: it’s like bringing all your favorite superheroes together to form an unbeatable team. By aligning sales, marketing, and customer success, RevOps breaks down the walls between departments and gets everyone playing the same revenue game.

RevOps Fundamental Principles

1. Alignment:

In the RevOps model, alignment is about ensuring that sales, marketing, and customer success teams are not just working together but working toward the same goals. It eliminates the common scenario where these teams operate in silos, creating a unified vision that drives business forward. This alignment reduces friction and increases efficiency, leading to a more effective rollout of strategies.

2. Collaboration:

Collaboration underpins the RevOps model. It encourages different teams to share insights and information, fostering a culture of openness and mutual respect. The result? Shared understanding, improved problem-solving, and innovative ideas that could be the next game-changer for your business.

3. Streamlining:

RevOps is all about optimization. Aligning and bringing together different teams can simplify processes and eliminate redundancies, leading to improved efficiency, quicker decision-making, and a more agile business ready to seize opportunities in a rapidly changing market.

4. Revenue Growth:

The ultimate aim of RevOps is to drive revenue growth. By fostering alignment, encouraging collaboration, and streamlining processes, RevOps helps businesses become more effective at selling, retaining customers, and increasing revenue. It’s a holistic approach that views revenue generation not just as the work of one team but as a company-wide responsibility.

RevOps Key Components

1. Strategy:

Strategy is the compass that guides the RevOps team, aligning the goals and objectives of sales, marketing, and customer success teams. It is an essential component that drives resource allocation, setting clear KPIs, and establishing benchmarks for success. A well-defined strategy provides direction and ensures that all teams work towards the same revenue goals efficiently and effectively.

2. Processes:

Processes are the engine that drives RevOps. With different teams working together, having streamlined, standardized processes in place is crucial to ensure smooth collaboration. Processes serve to eliminate redundancies, reduce friction, and create an efficient workflow. A well-orchestrated process can significantly enhance productivity and speed up decision-making, making the business more agile and ready to seize opportunities.

3. Data:

Data is the lifeblood of RevOps. It empowers teams with insights and information needed for data-driven decisions, helping to identify trends, uncover opportunities, and address challenges. Data ensures transparency and accountability, providing a common ground for different teams to collaborate and align their efforts. A diligent data analytics approach can improve customer understanding, more innovative strategies, and, ultimately, increase revenue.

4. Technology:

Technology is the toolset that enables RevOps. It supports strategy implementation, process management, and data analysis. The right technology stack can automate routine tasks, streamline processes, and provide real-time analytics, freeing teams to focus on strategic tasks. It can enhance communication and collaboration, making working together easier for different groups. Leveraging technology in RevOps boosts efficiency and brings about innovative solutions that drive revenue growth.

Benefits of RevOps

1. Enhanced Revenue Growth

Enhanced revenue growth is a direct outcome of the RevOps model. By aligning sales, marketing, and customer success, RevOps optimizes operations and accelerates business growth. It eliminates the silos often present in traditional business models and unifies the company’s efforts towards a common goal: boosting revenue. With accurate forecasting derived from shared data and insights, businesses can make informed, strategic decisions to drive sales and increase market share. In essence, RevOps acts as the catalyst for revenue growth, turning opportunities into profitable outcomes.

2. Improved Customer Experience

Improved customer experience (CX) is a cornerstone benefit of RevOps. RevOps fosters a more holistic view of the customer journey by breaking down internal barriers, ensuring that every touchpoint provides value and enhances the overall customer experience. This unified approach eliminates inconsistencies in customer interactions as teams work cohesively to deliver a seamless, personalized customer experience. With data at their fingertips, teams can better understand customer preferences and behavior, leading to improved product development, marketing strategies, and customer service. 

3. Increased Operational Efficiency

The positive impact on operational efficiency is another significant benefit of RevOps. Streamlined processes and eliminating redundancies result in a lean, efficient operation that can swiftly adapt to market changes. Clear roles and responsibilities and standardized procedures reduce confusion and increase productivity. This increased efficiency allows teams to focus on strategic tasks, enhancing the company’s agility and readiness to seize new opportunities. Furthermore, with the support of technology, manual tasks can be automated, freeing up even more resources to focus on revenue-generating activities. In short, RevOps ensures that operations are not just running but running smoothly and efficiently, driving the business forward at an accelerated pace.

How to Implement RevOps

And how do you go about implementing RevOps? Here are a few tips:

1. Goals:

When implementing RevOps, it’s crucial to set clear goals and metrics. This step involves defining the strategic objectives that your organization wants to achieve through RevOps, such as increased revenue, improved customer service, or more efficient operations. These goals should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It’s equally important to establish metrics to track progress toward these goals. By monitoring these metrics, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your RevOps initiatives and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategies.

2. Team:

Encouraging team collaboration is paramount in the RevOps model. Open communication across departments is crucial to collaboration. Include regular cross-functional meetings, collaborative tools for real-time conversations, and a shared platform for tracking and managing projects. Encourage teams to share their insights and expertise and recognize the contributions of each team member. The unity and synergy created through collaboration can lead to more innovative solutions, improved problem-solving, and shared ownership of the company’s revenue goals.

3. Technology:

Investing in the right tools is a crucial aspect of RevOps. The right technology can automate routine tasks, streamline processes, provide real-time analytics, and foster collaboration. Your technology stack might include Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, marketing automation tools, data analytics software, and project management platforms. It’s important to select tools that can be integrated to ensure a seamless flow of information across departments. Remember, the right technology will boost operational efficiency and provide the insights needed to make strategic decisions that drive revenue growth.

4. Improvement:

Finally, RevOps is not a one-time initiative but a continuous improvement journey. So, always be ready to keep improving. Regularly review your goals, strategies, processes, and tools. Use the insights from your metrics to identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments. Encourage feedback from team members, and be open to experimenting with new ideas. Continuous improvement is vital to staying competitive and achieving sustainable growth in the rapidly evolving business landscape.

RevOps: “The Superhero of the Modern Business World”

In summary, Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the superhero of the modern business world, acting as a catalyst for enhancing revenue growth, improving customer experience, and increasing operational efficiency. It does so by aligning the objectives of sales, marketing, and customer success teams, fostering a culture of collaboration, optimizing processes, and leveraging data and technology. Implemented correctly, RevOps can break down silos and unify the efforts of different departments, resulting in a more streamlined and effective organization. 

The journey towards RevOps involves setting clear, measurable goals, encouraging open communication and team collaboration, and investing in the right technology. But remember, RevOps is not a one-time solution – it’s a continuous journey of learning and improvement. Regularly review your strategies, be open to feedback, and be willing to adapt to new insights and changes in the business landscape. Remember, in the rapidly evolving business world, the key to success lies in staying agile, continually improving, and always keeping an eye on your goal – maximizing revenue growth.

Get Started with Revenue Operations

Align sales, marketing, and customer success into a revenue-driving team for sustainable and repeatable results. Learn more about revenue operations or contact us today to get started.

The post Revenue Operations: Optimize Revenue and Efficiency appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

What is Lead Management?

Lead management is a methodology whereby marketing generates qualified leads, passes them seamlessly and efficiently to sales, and sales/marketing processes them through to close. It combines people, processes, and technology, a shared capability for marketing and sales.

Here’s how it works: marketing starts the conversation by bringing in potential folks interested in our offering. Then, like passing the creamer to their coffee buddy, they smoothly hand those potential leads over to sales. Next, sales and marketing work together, just like they’re stirring that coffee, to guide those leads to becoming our happy customers. It’s all about teamwork and using the right tools to make everything run as smoothly as your favorite latte. It’s not just about who’s on your team but also how you all work together and what tech you use.

Making Sense of Lead Management

In this digital age, every business, regardless of its size or sector, finds itself in a competitive whirlpool. Companies are constantly developing new strategies to hook their target market’s interest, transform prospects into leads, and, ideally, nurture those leads into loyal customers who become brand ambassadors. And this is where the magic of lead management shines. Through this post, we’ll get you up to speed on the ins and outs of lead management, its best practices, and the current trends shaping its future.

Critical Concepts in Lead Management

Did you know, according to HubSpot‘s 2022 sales stats report, 79% of marketing leads don’t make a purchase? The main culprit is a need for proper nurturing, which shows how pivotal it is to have a solid, efficient lead management process on your side.

Lead management isn’t rocket science, but it has a few key concepts you need to grasp to get the most out of it. We know it sounds a bit academic right now, but trust us, these are the building blocks you’ll need to master the art of turning leads into loyal customers. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and dig in, shall we?

1. Lead Generation:

First up on our list is ‘Catching Leads.’ Sounds like a fishing term, right? Well, it’s close to that. Lead generation is all about drawing in potential customers to your business. It’s like casting a wide net out into the sea, hoping to catch as many fish as possible. In this case, our sea is the market, and the fish are potential clients. Cast your net to attract and convert prospects into someone who has indicated an interest in your company’s product or service. Techniques can range from traditional outbound marketing methods, such as email marketing and telemarketing, to inbound strategies, such as content marketing, SEO, and social media engagement. For example, HubSpot reports that marketers prioritizing blogging efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI.

2. Lead Scoring:

Next on our agenda is ‘Scoring the Catch.’ This might sound like we’re judging a fishing competition, but it’s a bit more complex. We’re ranking the potential customers we’ve caught (remember the net?) based on how likely they are to become actual customers. It’s like sorting the fish from the dolphins – you only want to keep the ones suitable for your business. This process involves detective work, from traditional email marketing and phone calls to modern strategies like content marketing, SEO, and social media.

As a part of lead qualification, lead scoring assigns a value to each lead based on their behavior or interaction with your brand, professional information, and stage in the buying cycle. This scoring helps prioritize leads, enabling your sales team to focus on those most likely to convert into paying customers. According to Marketo, companies excelling at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost, highlighting the effectiveness of proper lead scoring.

3. Lead Nurturing:

We’re moving on to ‘Nurturing Your Leads’. Just like nurturing a plant, this is about taking care of the leads you’ve caught and scored. It’s about building relationships, understanding their needs, and gently nudging them to purchase. Think of it as a garden. You wouldn’t just plant a seed and walk away.

Similarly, you’ve got to put in the time and effort to help your leads grow into full-fledged customers. This nurturing process involves assigning a value to each lead based on their interaction with your brand, their professional info, and where they’re at in their buying journey. The weights help you prioritize your leads so your sales team can focus on the ones most likely to become paying customers. And guess what? According to Marketo, businesses that are great at nurturing leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. Now that’s worth nurturing for!

Nurturing builds relationships with potential customers, even if they’re not looking to buy your product or service. It’s about providing prospects with the information and answers to establish trust and preference for your company over time. According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost, pointing to the importance of maintaining continuous and meaningful communication with the leads.

4. Lead Conversion:

Finally, we’re at ‘Sealing the Deal,’ or as it’s formally known, ‘Lead Conversion.’ Converting leads is the grand finale, where all your hard work pays off. It’s all about turning those nurtured leads into actual customers who buy your product or service. But remember, this isn’t about forcing a decision. It’s about ensuring your potential customers feel understood, valued, and confident that they choose your company. As Forrester Research shows, businesses that nail the nurturing process generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. So, it’s worth building those relationships and keeping the conversation going with your leads. That, my friend, is the secret sauce to sealing the deal!

Generating revenue is the ultimate goal of the process – converting a prospective lead into a customer. Conversion strategies can be as diverse as the businesses they serve but often involve:

• A structured sales process.
• Personalized engagement.
• A value proposition that meets the unique needs of each lead

5. Lead Tracking:

And last but not least, we have ‘Keeping Tabs on Your Leads,’ or in fancy terms, ‘Lead Tracking’. Think of this as the GPS for your leads. It’s about knowing where your leads are in their journey, what interests them, and how they interact with your business. It’s like being a detective, following the clues and piecing together the bigger picture. It helps you understand what’s working and what’s not so you can tweak your strategies. After all, if the average conversion rate is often below 10%, as MarketingSherpa‘s B2B marketing benchmark report reveals, you’ll want to ensure you’re doing everything possible to boost those numbers. So, keep those detective glasses on and start tracking!

Lead tracking involves monitoring your leads’ source, behavior, and position in the sales funnel. Effective lead tracking can provide valuable insights, such as which marketing channels generate the most information and what factors influence a lead’s decision to convert. According to a report from CSO Insights, companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate.

6. Data Hygiene:

Lastly, we have ‘Keeping Your Data Clean,’ or as the pros call it, ‘Data Hygiene,’ making sure the data on your leads is accurate, up-to-date, and ready to be put to work. Think of it like a well-organized toolbox. You can work more efficiently and effectively when everything’s in its place and in good working order. According to CSO Insights, businesses with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate. So, keeping your data clean can pay off!

7. Content-Type:

The final piece of our lead management puzzle is ‘Serving Up the Right Content.’ Just like a chef whips up a dish to suit the diner’s taste, you’ve got to provide content that aligns with your leads’ interests and needs. And guess what? What you say, but so are how and when you say it. So, it’s about picking the right ingredients (the kind of content), the correct seasoning (the tone and style), and the right timing. This way, you can ensure your leads are getting a meal they’ll enjoy, remember, and return for more. According to Experian‘s 2022 data management benchmark report, 95% of organizations see negative impacts from poor data quality, like wasted resources and missed chances. So, ensuring you serve the right content is more than just a good idea; it’s critical to your lead management success. So, let’s get cooking, shall we?

Content is crucial in the lead management process, particularly in the lead generation and nurturing stages (top, middle, and bottom of the funnel). Using different types of content to attract, educate, engage, and convert leads is essential. (Want to learn more? Read this eBook regarding content.)

Here’s why the content type is significant:

• Attraction:

Now, let’s talk about the first part of serving the right content: ‘Attracting the Crowd.’ Picture this: You’re throwing a party and want to ensure people show up. So, you put out an invite that’s so exciting and enticing that it gets everyone’s attention. You need to create something exciting and valuable that draws people in. It could be a catchy blog post, an insightful infographic, or an engaging video. Remember, your goal here is to attract potential leads, so make sure your content is the party everyone wants to join!

• Educating:

Next in line is ‘Becoming the Teacher’. Once you’ve got people’s attention, it’s time to educate them by giving them the information they need to understand what you’re offering. Think of it like a class where you’re the teacher and your leads are the students. Your content is the lesson plan – it could be a detailed eBook, a comprehensive webinar, or an informative podcast. Your goal is to give your leads the knowledge they need to move closer to making a purchase. And remember, a good teacher makes learning fun, so make sure your content is not just informative but also entertaining!

• Engaging:

Then we come to ‘Getting the Conversation Started’. Now that your leads have learned about your offering engage them by starting a conversation, getting feedback, and building a relationship. Your content should be like a great conversation starter – a thought-provoking blog post, an interactive quiz, or a lively social media discussion. The goal is to involve your leads, make them feel heard, and build connections. So, get the conversation started and let your leads know you’re not just a business but a partner who’s there to help.

• Converting:

And finally, we have ‘Making the Sale,’ where all the hard work pays off. You attracted, educated, and engaged leads. Now, it’s time to convert them into customers. Your content here should be like a persuasive sales pitch – it could be a compelling case study, a powerful testimonial, or an irresistible offer. Your goal is to convince your leads that your product or service is the solution they’ve been looking for. So, make your pitch, show them the value you offer, and close the deal!

So there you have it! That’s how you serve the right content in your lead management process. From attracting to educating, engaging, and converting, each stage requires a specific type of content to guide your leads through their journey. And remember, always keep your content approachable, engaging, and relevant. That’s the recipe for lead management success!

Key Practices in Lead Management

So, we’ve reached the final stage of mastering our Lead Management journey! Let’s chat about best practices, or as I like to call them, ‘The Golden Rules.’ Like a seasoned chef has key techniques, you need some tried-and-true methods to ace your lead management game. So, buckle up, folks! Here’s what you’ve got to focus on:

1. Understand Your Audience:

We’re starting with the basics here. You’ve got to know who you’re talking to. It’s like speaking in a language your audience understands. Learn their likes, dislikes, and interests. Understanding what makes them will help you tailor your message to their needs and wants; voila, you’re already on the right track!

2. Be Consistent:

Just like your favorite TV series, consistency is vital. You can’t just disappear after one episode (or email). Keep the communication going; keep it consistent. It’s about being there for your audience so they know they can rely on you.

3. Provide Value:

Remember, selling your product or service is not just about selling it. It’s about providing value. It’s like when a friend gives you an excellent book recommendation. You’re grateful. That’s how your audience should feel. They should feel like every interaction with your brand is giving them something of value.

4. Analyze & Improve:

Remember to look back and check how you’re doing. It’s like reviewing your favorite recipe. Did it turn out great? Or does it need a little more salt? This way, you can always find ways to improve your strategy and keep those leads coming.

And that’s it, folks! These are your Golden Rules of Lead Management. Stick to them, and you’ll be cooking up a storm soon!

Trends Shaping Lead Management

Let’s talk about some game-changing trends that are shaking up the world of lead management.

1. AI and Automation:

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation have become increasingly crucial in lead management. From automated email campaigns to AI-driven analytics and predictive lead scoring, these technologies can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of lead management.

2. Personalization:

As per SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers in 2022 only engaged with marketing messages tailored to their interests. Therefore, personalizing communications and offerings based on a lead’s behavior, preferences, and position in the sales funnel can significantly increase conversion rates.

3. Omnichannel Engagement:

With the rise of digital platforms, customers interact with businesses through multiple channels. An integrated, omnichannel approach to lead management can ensure a consistent, positive experience for leads, regardless of their engagement channel.

4. Data Privacy Regulations:

With regulations like the GDPR and CCPA, businesses need to be more mindful of how they collect, store, and use lead data. Ensuring compliance with these regulations is becoming an essential aspect of lead management.

5. Social Selling:

As of 2022, 78% of salespeople who leveraged social media performed better than their peers (LinkedIn, 2022). Thus, integrating social media platforms into lead management strategies can be a game-changer for modern businesses.

Effective lead management is vital to the survival and growth of businesses in today’s competitive marketplace. By understanding the key concepts, implementing best practices, and keeping pace with trends, companies can generate more leads and convert them more efficiently, driving revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

Get Started with Lead Management

Ready to get started with lead management or improve your existing strategies? Learn more or contact us today.

The post Lead Management: Key Concepts, Practices, and Trends appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

The Power of FICO: Beyond the FICO Score 

While most people associate FICO with its renowned credit score, the conversation with Nikhil Behl unveils a broader scope of FICO’s influence. FICO not only provides credit scoring and decisioning, but also offers analytic software solutions that enable enterprises to make informed decisions and drive better outcomes. Through applied intelligence, FICO takes raw data, applies advanced analytics, derives insights, and translates these insights into operational decisions that transform industries. With a presence in more than 40 countries, FICO’s solutions touch people’s lives daily, protecting credit card transactions and empowering financial institutions to make critical decisions. 

Embracing Digital Transformation 

Behl’s perspective as a CMO with a background in various business roles offers a holistic view of marketing as a tool to drive business growth. He emphasizes three key aspects of his role: amplifying the brand, activating the organization, and accelerating results. Data and intelligence are paramount to achieving these goals in the digital age. FICO’s journey exemplifies how data-driven decision-making can redefine marketing strategies. 

1. Amplifying the Brand 

Data informs FICO’s approach to targeting audiences. By analyzing digital channels’ signals, FICO identified five distinct persona types to target, enabling them to tailor their messages more effectively. This data-driven targeting approach resulted in improved return on investment and revenue generation. 

2. Activating the Organization 

FICO’s data-driven strategy extends to engaging partners and enabling them to achieve their objectives effectively. The interconnectedness of data allows FICO to support partners while monitoring response rates and adjusting strategies accordingly. This synergy between data and relationships underscores the importance of both digital and interpersonal connections. 

3. Accelerating Results 

Data accelerates FICO’s path to results by informing decisions, refining targeting, and optimizing messages. Fueled by data insights, this dynamic process continually enhances FICO’s market effectiveness. However, Nikhil Behl acknowledges that while digital is a powerful tool, personal relationships remain invaluable. 

Empowering Financial Literacy Through Partnership 

Beyond its data-driven marketing endeavors, FICO partners with Chelsea Football Club to address a pressing issue: financial literacy. Recognizing the lack of financial understanding among young adults, FICO and Chelsea launched programs to educate teenagers and middle schoolers about basic personal finance concepts. This partnership aligns with FICO’s mission to drive financial inclusion and empowerment, as financial literacy is a cornerstone of a healthy economy. 

Getting Involved 

Behl calls upon individuals, parents, educators, and policymakers to support efforts to enhance financial literacy. Engaging in conversations about personal finance with children, advocating for financial education in schools, and encouraging elected officials to integrate financial literacy into curricula are powerful ways to contribute to this cause. 

Watch the full interview here: 

The conversation with Nikhil Behl reveals FICO’s profound commitment to data-driven marketing and societal betterment. By harnessing the power of data and applied intelligence, FICO revolutionizes its marketing strategies and takes strides toward a more financially informed society. This dialogue underscores the transformative potential of embracing data-driven decision-making and using it to create a positive impact on a global scale. 

Connect with Nikhil Behl on LinkedIn 

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn 

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’  

The post Unveiling Insights with Nikhil Behl: A Glimpse into FICO’s Data-Driven Marketing Strategy  appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

The Temptation of Data-Driven Marketing 

Norman Guadagno aptly describes performance marketing as a “drug” that marketers can easily become addicted to. Performance marketing, which relies heavily on data and analytics to drive business outcomes, offers quick and measurable results. However, Guadagno highlights the danger of becoming so consumed by data that marketers lose sight of other crucial aspects of marketing. 

The Hidden Dangers of Tunnel Vision 

In the race to analyze data and optimize campaigns, marketers may overlook non-data signals that could be valuable for shaping marketing strategies. Guadagno cautions against disregarding brand signals, customer emotions, and long-term investments that might not yield immediate data-driven results. He emphasizes that it’s essential to remain aware of the broader marketing landscape and not fixate solely on the dashboards and weekly metrics. 

Embracing AI for Holistic Insights 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a pivotal tool in the modern marketer’s toolkit. AI can sift through vast amounts of data to identify patterns and insights that might go unnoticed by human analysts. Guadagno suggests that AI, like GPT-3, can be harnessed to generate summaries across different departmental data sets, enabling marketers to unearth hidden connections and trends. This broader understanding can facilitate more informed decision-making and holistic strategies. 

The Role of Marketers in Cybersecurity 

Marketers should not underestimate the significance of cybersecurity in their role. As communication experts and brand custodians, marketers are often the primary communicators to the outside world. Consequently, they can inadvertently become attractive targets for cyber threats, such as social engineering attacks. Guadagno advises marketers to be mindful of security implications, systematically adopt AI tools, and involve legal and compliance teams when necessary. 

The Path to Becoming a CMO 

For aspiring CMOs, Guadagno offers valuable insights on the path to leadership. He encourages young marketing professionals to master one or two disciplines within marketing while gaining a broad understanding of the entire spectrum. CMOs should be well-versed in data analytics, technology, and sales operations. Additionally, Guadagno emphasizes the importance of recognizing when to delegate and relying on a strong team. 

Striking the Balance 

Ultimately, the key to success lies in balancing data-driven marketing and the human touch. While data is a powerful tool for optimization, it should not overshadow the importance of branding, customer emotions, and long-term strategies. Marketers must embrace AI as an ally in uncovering insights and prioritize cybersecurity awareness. By mastering various aspects of marketing, fostering a comprehensive understanding, and fostering cross-functional collaboration, marketers can navigate the evolving landscape with confidence. 

Watch the full interview here: 

Connect with Norman Guadagno – https://www.linkedin.com/in/normanguadagno/ 

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/ 

Learn more about The Pedowitz Group https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/ 

Get Jeff’s book ‘F the Funnel’ - https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/resources/f-the-funnel/ 

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’ – https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/resources/ai-revenue-architect/ 

The post Striking a Balance: The Evolving Role of Data-Driven Marketing appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

If you feel like you’re not fully leveraging your Pardot investment to its maximum potential, you’re not alone. Pardot offers a wide range of powerful marketing tools that can significantly impact your business. It’s like owning an iPhone but only utilizing a fraction of its capabilities.

In this article, we share 13 valuable tips on how to maximize your Pardot automation.

Before diving into the list of tips, it’s essential to establish three key foundational steps that will enable you to make the most of any Pardot recommendations.

Foundation #1: Data and Data Hygiene

• Your data needs to be clean. Nothing works in Pardot without clean data! 
• Fields and forms need to collect accurate, normalized data.
•  You need buy-in from the sales team so that Salesforce fields are complete and accurate.
• Make most fields required to ensure data integrity.
• You want data cleansing, daily record appending, and duplicate removal so your data is optimized for reporting at all times.
• Your company needs to put systems in place to make data hygiene happen.
• Hiring an experienced Pardot/ SF administrator is key to data integrity.

Foundation #2: Segmentation

• You want to build dynamic lists based on automation rules and/or values and automatically add contacts to lists.
• Segments can be built based on industry, interest, geography, product line, and more. 
• General lists get general messaging and generally, poor to average conversions and poor results.
• Be sure your forms ask for the required data fields and that you use them in automations for accurate segmentation.

Foundation #3: Use Pardot Funnel Reports for Sales Operations Review

Use the funnel report in your sales meetings and share all Pardot reports with the sales team weekly. The Pardot funnel report combined with Salesforce pipeline reports make for powerful insights. We suggest a weekly SOR meeting, which stands for Sales Operations Review. The pipeline funnel report in Pardot gives you a simple but excellent view as to which accounts have reached MQL status and which have an Opportunity. Salespersons can see at a high level what is moving through the funnel and view which accounts are at the opportunity stage. Every week, it’s easy to see stats such as what percentage of MQLs have hit Opportunity YTD. (Seeing this report weekly naturally focuses your team on using Pardot and Salesforce fully so that their deals are up-to-date and visible.)

Here are 13 tips from the TPG technology and strategy teams, for maximizing Pardot automations:

1. Hire a qualified Pardot marketing user or certified Pardot Administrator to fully maximize Pardot’s benefits. An easy mistake to make is to invest in Pardot and then fail to invest in hiring someone experienced and/or fail to get training for team members to maximize and use Pardot in your organization.  Some companies cannot afford to have this person in-house, so look for a Pardot contractor/consultant who can work with you part-time, every month. (There are good resources for marketing contractors such as The Pedowitz Group. Or, post a job on Upwork, LinkedIn, or Dice)
2. Use Salesforce Sync to allow for two-way communication between Salesforce and Pardot.
3. Nurture leads with thoughtful content and planning, using short- and long-term campaigns in Pardot using Salesforce Engagement Studio. Plan to review results and make tweaks to programs every 30 days to improve messaging and engagement. Set it and forget it is true, but only until a point. You don’t want to let engagement campaigns that are not working continue to run for too long.
4. Don’t forget to assign new prospects to a campaign AND to a salesperson. In SF Engagement Studio, you can assign MQLs to a queue, and when Salesforce resolves, the prospect can be assigned using the queue or SF assignment rules. Active assignment rules run & sync back to Pardot. SMBs typically set up an automation rule that sends an alert to a salesperson via email when a new prospect enters Prospect and is assigned to him/her.  (Pardot allows you to assign prospects via the existing Salesforce Assignment Rules in Salesforce easily.) Always remember to assign Pardot-created leads to both a campaign and a salesperson. In Salesforce Engagement Studio, you have the option to assign Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to a queue, and once Salesforce resolves the lead, you can assign them using either the queue or Salesforce assignment rules. It’s important to note that active assignment rules run and synchronize back to Pardot. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it’s common to set up an automation rule that triggers an email alert to the assigned salesperson when a new prospect enters the Prospect stage and gets assigned to them. Pardot easily allows for prospect assignment through the existing Salesforce Assignment Rules in Salesforce.
   • Remember, a Pardot record owner needs to map to a Salesforce user in Salesforce. If the owner is in Pardot but not in Salesforce, the lead will go nowhere and remain unassigned. It is crucial to remember that a Pardot record owner must be mapped to a corresponding Salesforce user in Salesforce. If the owner exists in Pardot but not in Salesforce, the lead will not be assigned to anyone and will remain unassigned, resulting in a potential loss of follow-up or engagement.
5. Use the Pardot Funnel (Sales Ops Funnel Report) each week and conduct a formal “SOR” review each week with your sales team. This handy report can be used with the usual Pipeline dashboards in Salesforce so that you can get a holistic view of leads and MQLs. Using the Pardot funnel report and campaign analyses = a detailed sales meeting.
6.  In Pardot, you can create dynamic content for forms and email content, allowing you to tailor the experience based on the prospects’ statuses or scoring. This feature proves to be time-saving as you can avoid building multiple emails or forms for each segment. Instead, using dynamic content, your Pardot builder can create a single form or email with customized content that dynamically adjusts based on the prospect’s characteristics.
7. Data Hygiene- Your data needs to be updated and has to be clean. Pristine, really.  Your prospect records need to be appended daily. Required fields and standardized drop -down drop-downkey to data being clean, less spelling errors, and data variations.
   • Connect your Pardot-Salesforce instance to a real-time or daily appending software like Hoovers Online, 6Sense, or Zoom Info.  Remove duplicates with Ringlead or other apps. Normalize and append data on day 1 so that your firmographic data is near perfect and your scoring/grading is accurate sooner.
8. Integrate intent software and know more. There are so many tools on the market now to measure ICP and intent.  Hire a Pardot Consultant to learn how to integrate intent software with Salesforce. To gain deeper insights and enhance your marketing efforts, consider integrating intent software into your strategy. With numerous tools available in the market today for measuring Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and intent, it’s essential to explore these options. Hiring a Pardot Consultant can provide valuable expertise in integrating intent software with Salesforce, allowing you to harness the power of intent data to refine your targeting and drive more effective marketing campaigns.
9. Recycle prospects who don’t respond to marketing in one of two ways: create a re-nurture series or send the prospect info in an alert to the sales team, for a new effort to use the phone or Outreach with personal messaging. The sales team can try using some type of personal invitation, phone call, a piece of special content, or a custom email. Especially if the firmographic score is good and/or the prospect has intent, don’t give up just yet.
10. Set up long-term nurtures for prospects and assess them every 60 days. Tweak and refine after 4-6 weeks of results and data. Resist the urge to change the cadence and messaging daily or weekly—give it time and use data to make a better decision on changes.
11. Track where leads come from correctly with Pardot. First-touch attribution is possible with Pardot and the Built-In AI Engine. Learn how to attribute paid media and paid social so you can see the winning sources for the best prospects who convert. The data inside the Engagement history dashboard is pushed into Pardot Einstein, Pardot’s built-in AI engine. You can gain access to scores and insights on the most engaged prospects and effective campaigns. Here’s how Pardot Einstein helps with identifying and scoring:
    1. For campaign insights: Optimize campaign assets and find new audiences. Einstein uses Machine Learning to find data related to engagement activity, content, and audience characteristics to offer marketers real-time insights on their running campaigns, including emails, landing pages, and marketing forms.  Your Guide to Optimising Salesforce Pardot: Maximise your Returns from B2B Marketing Automation – Salesforce Blog
    1. With Einstein attribution, you can identify which inbound marketing campaigns are most effective at generating sales pipelines. Einstein analyzes a collection of campaigns that influenced a sales opportunity to identify the most rewarding campaigns and touchpoints.
12. Revisit your lead scoring in Pardot.  Should you weigh intent and firmographic score more than website activity? Is a page view really worth 5 or 10 points anymore? Do email open rates matter anymore? Why or why not?
13. Add contacts automatically to lists using the list option, Add to List. Set up a simple “add to list,” so that certain prospects are added to specific lists.

In the screenshot above you can see there’s an add-to-list option when setting up prospect fields in the back-end as well as using those fields within forms to automatically add a prospect to a list.

Do you have a field such as product interest and ideally a prospect should become a member of the list upon choosing their interest? Did you know that that’s possible without setting up automation rules?  Just use values, not Automation Rules.

Find more Pardot tips: Become a Pardot Whiz With These Helpful Tips | Greenkey – Jen Kazin (greenkeydigital.com)

If you think you’d benefit from Pardot consulting with a 3 to 12-month engagement, contact our team today. Pardot support on-demand is a service you can get started with right now.

The post Using Pardot: Maximizing Your Marketing Automation appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

To delve deep into this transformative realm, Jeff Pedowitz and I co-hosted a power-packed Techconnectr webinar panel starring Jon Miller, CMO of Demandbase, Bryan Law, CMO of ZoomInfo, and Leslie Alore, GVP Growth Marketing at Ivanti that shed light on the potential of AI-powered ABM/ABX marketing. 

A World of Possibilities: The Rise of AI in B2B Marketing 

The webinar began with an introduction to how AI has captivated the attention of B2B marketing executives. The unexpected appearance of tools such as ChatGPT and other AI-powered marketing solutions has sparked interest and excitement, promising limitless potential for improving marketing efforts. Attendees were interested to learn about the optimization, benefits, and challenges of implementing AI in ABM and ABX techniques. 

Insights from Pioneers: Learning from the Best 

One of the webinar’s highlights was the opportunity to hear from industry pioneers who have successfully navigated the realm of AI-powerwebinar’sX marketing. The distinguished panelists, who included B2B ABM and tech marketing executives, were prepared for an open conversation. They presented their real-world experiences, problems, and victories using AI-powered solutions in their marketing initiatives. 

Jeff from the Pedowitz Group: Co-Host and Visionary 

Jeff, a prominent figure of the Pedowitz Group, was the event co-host. Jeff’s views as a B2B marketing visionary and his excellent questions and master management of the flow of the webinar were crucial in understanding the potential impact of AI on marketing strategy. His knowledge of guiding firms through digital transformations and leveraging AI for marketing provided delegates with tangible lessons to adopt in their organizations came through nicely. 

Navigating the AI-Powered Journey: Challenges and Cautions 

Like any new technology, AI has its own set of problems and warnings. The webinar discussed potential pitfalls and how to avoid them successfully. From data privacy concerns to striking the right balance between automation and human touch, the panelists provided valuable guidance to ensure the seamless integration of AI into ABM and ABX strategies. 

Unlocking the True Potential of AI: Optimizing Marketing Efforts 

The focus of the webinar was on maximizing the full potential of AI in B2B marketing. Participants learned how AI-powered technology may improve personalization, enable hyper-targeting, and create stronger consumer engagement. Thanks to artificial intelligence, marketing leaders now have the tools they need to discover and prioritize high-value accounts, predict customer behavior, and optimize content delivery for maximum impact. 

Conclusion: Embracing the AI-Powered Future of B2B Marketing 

The webinar on AI-powered ABM/ABX marketing was a game-changer for everyone who attended. As they say, knowledge is power, and the insights provided at the event enabled marketing leaders to embrace the AI-powered future confidently. Businesses can now unleash the full potential of AI to alter their B2B marketing strategy, armed with real-world experiences, success stories, and precautions to take. 

Finally, the integration of AI-powered technology has caused a seismic upheaval in the B2B marketing scene. The webinar provided a rare opportunity to hear about this disruptive sector from industry pioneers such as Jeff from the Pedowitz Group and other distinguished panelists. As the virtual event concluded, attendees were well-prepared to revolutionize their ABM and ABX strategies, utilizing the potential of AI to create personalized, powerful, and profitable marketing campaigns like never before. 

About the Author 

Bob Samuels is a visionary leader and an aficionado of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and B2B Lead Generation. With a wealth of experience under his belt, Bob serves as the driving force behind TechConnectr’s success, shaping the platform into a hub of best practices, knowledge, and innovation. 

Bob’s interview series, “Candid with Bob” and the “ABM Leaders’ Group,” have become cornerstones of TechConnectr’s success. 

The post Unleashing the Power of AI in B2B Marketing: A Webinar Roundup appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve at a breakneck speed, businesses across the globe are racing to leverage its potential to drive exponential sales growth. Jeff Pedowitz of the Pedowitz Group, author of the book “AI Revenue Architect: Building Your Time Machine for Exponential Sales Growth,” throws light on using AI to achieve predictable revenue growth. 

AI can act as a time machine, helping businesses retrieve, organize, and synthesize past data. Once a clear understanding of past patterns is achieved, AI can aid in making well-informed decisions for the future. However, it’s essential to remember that AI should be used as a tool to serve us and not master us. 

One may wonder if this revolutionary technology is reserved for specific types of businesses or sizes. The answer is a resounding no. From small businesses to massive corporations across industries, everyone can leverage AI’s power to their advantage. For example, Microsoft Copilot, set to launch next month, brings AI to everyday office applications, aiding with tasks such as building formulas in Excel and data analysis. This assistance will be highly beneficial even for individual entrepreneurs and small businesses. 

As exciting as it may seem, using AI comes with a certain level of risk, especially regarding data privacy and accuracy. It’s crucial to handle client data carefully, anonymize it before inputting it into public models like ChatGPT, and validate the synthesized information to ensure accuracy. As Ronald Reagan said, it’s about “trust but verify.” 

Implementing AI is not just about throwing data at it and expecting miracles. Businesses need to ensure the quality of the data fed into these systems. Basic business metrics like customer lifetime value, sales cycle length, pipeline coverage, and sales funnel conversions, among others, should be clearly understood and maintained. Once this is achieved, AI can effectively analyze this data, leading to better and faster decision-making over time. 

Moving beyond just the executives and decision-makers, there’s an opportunity for everyday employees to utilize AI. Jeff’s book describes the four pillars of building the ‘revenue time machine’: automating revenue processes, data improvement, personalizing the customer experience, and developing revenue streams. Adopting AI to automate everyday tasks can free up valuable time, allowing employees to focus more on customer engagement and strategic planning. 

Looking forward, the pace of AI innovation is expected to remain rapid. This rapid evolution is reminiscent of the advent of the internet in the ’90s and the smartphone revolution in 2007. While the fear of AI replacing jobs is common, the reality is that AI-savvy individuals will replace those resistant to this technological shift. The key is to start experimenting with AI tools, understand how they can be integrated into your business model, and set a plan to automate various aspects of the revenue model over the next six months. 

The world of AI is moving fast, and it’s time to jump on board, prioritizing areas, assessing risk and reward, and setting realistic goals to stay competitive. AI is not just the future, it’s the present, and its practical application can set businesses on the path of exponential growth.

The post Embracing AI: Unleashing Potential with the Revenue Time Machine appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

In this episode of CMO Insights, we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities associated with leveraging AI and localization for global e-commerce success. 

Unlocking New Markets 

Digital River, a leading e-commerce company, specializes in assisting brands in expanding their footprint and entering new international markets. By providing back-office payment solutions, managing compliance, and facilitating logistics, Digital River empowers brands to focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences without the hassle of navigating complex international markets. Ted Rogers, with his extensive experience at Digital River, sheds light on the pivotal role played by the company in enabling brands to successfully navigate the global e-commerce landscape. 

AI’s Impact on E-commerce Experiences 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an omnipresent term, and its potential impact on the e-commerce industry is staggering. The ability to meet consumer expectations with personalized experiences is paramount. While consumers may not be explicitly concerned about AI’s role in their e-commerce journey, they demand an experience that caters to their cultural nuances, preferred payment methods, and currencies. This is where AI can truly shine, elevating personalization and enhancing customer experiences. 

Enhancing Personalization with AI 

Conventional recommendation engines often fall short when it comes to delivering genuinely personalized product recommendations. However, AI has the power to revolutionize this aspect of e-commerce by comprehending individual preferences and providing recommendations that align with their specific needs and desires. By leveraging AI-powered algorithms, brands can transcend generic recommendations and offer highly personalized experiences that deeply resonate with consumers, transforming them from one-time buyers to loyal repeat customers. 

Navigating AI’s Challenges 

While AI holds immense promise for e-commerce, responsible and ethical implementation is crucial. Brands must exercise caution to ensure that AI is not utilized in ways that might be viewed as invasive or predatory. Prioritizing consumer privacy and fostering trust should be paramount. As AI capabilities expand, so do the associated risks posed by hackers and malicious actors. This creates an ongoing battle between those who utilize AI for positive purposes and those who seek to exploit it, underscoring the need for regulatory measures to safeguard consumers in this ever-evolving landscape. 

Localization and Tailored Experiences 

Expanding into new markets necessitates meticulous consideration of local regulations, compliance, tax codes, and logistical complexities. Hyper-localization is key, as brands must adapt their e-commerce experiences to cater to the unique preferences and expectations of consumers in different regions. A deep understanding of cultural nuances, payment methods, and fulfillment options is pivotal for success when entering new markets. 

The Direct-to-Consumer Paradigm 

The rise of direct-to-consumer (D2C) models has gained significant traction in recent years. Consumers now seek seamless online experiences that minimize reliance on interactions with salespersons. Brands must adapt by offering self-service options, comprehensive product information, and frictionless checkout processes. Placing the customer at the core of marketing strategies and delivering information in a manner that aligns with their preferences and purchasing behaviors is crucial for success in this new paradigm. 

Data-Driven Decision Making and Focus 

Emphasizing the importance of data-driven decision-making, it becomes essential to maximize the value of existing tools and platforms before introducing new ones. By concentrating on markets that offer the highest potential for success, brands can optimize their investments and expand strategically. Additionally, fostering a proactive and initiative-driven team cultivates a culture of innovation and action, enabling brands to seize opportunities and drive growth. 

Watch the full interview: 

The global e-commerce landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for brands aiming to broaden their horizons. By harnessing the power of AI and localization, brands can deliver personalized experiences, navigate complex international markets, and create seamless e-commerce journeys. To thrive in this dynamic realm, it is crucial to make data-driven decisions, implement AI responsibly, and place the customer at the center of marketing strategies. By embracing these principles, brands can unlock success in new markets and flourish in the ever-evolving world of global commerce. 

Connect with Ted Rogers – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedrogers/ 

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/  

Get Jeff’s book ‘AI Revenue Architect’: https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/resources/ai-revenue-architect/ 

The post Leveraging AI and Localization for Global E-commerce Success: Insights from Ted Rogers, CMO of Digital River appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

In the CMO Insights podcast, David Carrel, the Chief Marketing Officer of Thomson Reuters, discusses the company’s ongoing transformation and the role of marketing in driving this change. David shares insights into the challenges and opportunities that come with transforming a large, legacy organization into a content-driven technology company. 

A Journey Towards Integration and Innovation 

Thomson Reuters, with its workforce of 26,000 employees, embarked on a journey to integrate its diverse business units and operate as one cohesive entity. David emphasized that the transformation involved shifting from primarily a content producer to a technology focus. This shift required a change in mindset and a concerted effort to break down silos and foster collaboration across the organization. 

As the CMO, David highlighted his focus on creating a unified marketing group that operates centrally and with decentralized expertise in key areas. By bringing teams together and encouraging specialization, the marketing department aims to drive innovation and scale while aligning with the company’s broader transformation goals. 

Operating as a Technology Company 

David emphasized the importance of operating like a technology company to support Thomson Reuters’ transformation. This approach involves adopting agile processes, condensing timelines, and embracing ambiguity. The marketing team is moving quickly, leveraging video content, and exploring new ways to engage customers before official product launches. By adopting a technology-driven mindset, Thomson Reuters can maintain its legacy strengths while exploring new avenues for growth and customer engagement. 

Challenges and Excitement 

Undertaking such a significant transformation is not without its challenges. David acknowledged the need to balance speed with traditional operating methods, ensuring that necessary processes and quality checks are not compromised. Condensing timelines and embracing change also require a shift in mindset and may introduce ambiguity. However, David expressed his excitement for the challenges and how they energize the team. Being on the cutting edge of transformation drives passion, encourages innovative thinking, and fosters a culture of continuous improvement. 

Embracing a Culture of Innovation 

Reflecting on his experience at Amazon, David shared how leaning into uncertainty and taking risks can lead to groundbreaking results. He encouraged his team to embrace the unknown, make mistakes, and learn from them. This culture of innovation is fundamental to driving change and creating new growth opportunities. 

Thomson Reuters’ ongoing transformation journey highlights the vital role of marketing in driving change within an organization. As the CMO, David Carrel leads the charge by fostering collaboration, embracing technology, and instilling a culture of innovation. By operating as a content-driven technology company, Thomson Reuters is well-positioned to meet the evolving needs of its customers and drive sustainable growth. 

Watch the full interview here: 

As the business landscape continues to evolve, companies can draw inspiration from Thomson Reuters’ transformation journey. Organizations can successfully navigate change and create a brighter future by prioritizing integration, innovation, and customer-centric approaches. 

Connect with David Carrel – https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-carrel/ 

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffpedowitz/ 

Learn more about The Pedowitz Group https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/ 

Get Jeff’s book ‘F the Funnel’ - https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/resources/f-the-funnel/ 

The post Embracing Transformation: A Conversation with David Carrel, CMO of Thomson Reuters appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Understanding the Market and Differentiation 

Meagen emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs and pain points. By identifying the unique value proposition of the product or service, marketers can effectively differentiate themselves from competitors. In cybersecurity, competition is fierce, and articulating how Lacework stands out is crucial. Meagen highlights the significance of innovation and positioning the company against competitors to capture the audience’s attention. 

Modernizing Marketing in the Security Space 

Traditional marketing approaches can be monotonous and fail to engage the audience effectively. Meagen emphasizes the need for a fresh, consumer-centric perspective in cybersecurity marketing. By adopting a more human, informal approach, companies can create compelling content that resonates with their target audience. The goal is to stand out from the crowd and present cybersecurity in a more engaging and accessible manner. 

Capturing Attention in the Age of Short Attention Spans 

In today’s fast-paced world, people’s attention spans are dwindling. Meagen acknowledges the challenge of capturing attention through long-form content and highlights the importance of delivering information quickly and succinctly. Marketers must focus on providing solutions that solve customers’ problems while being easy to implement. Furthermore, leveraging the experiences and testimonials of satisfied customers can significantly enhance brand credibility. 

Targeted Marketing and Personalization 

With tightening budgets, Meagen suggests that marketers need to be more strategic and targeted in their approach. Account-based marketing tactics, direct mail campaigns, and intimate events with C-level executives can help build meaningful relationships and drive business outcomes. It’s crucial to go beyond generic content syndication and focus on personalized experiences tailored to the target audience’s specific needs. 

The Rebound of In-Person Events 

Meagen shares her observations on the rebound of in-person events post-pandemic. Vendors and buyers are returning to conferences, trade shows, and industry events. However, Meagen suggests that a shift towards more intimate settings, such as dinners and coffee meetings, might be preferred for meaningful conversations. Balancing the budget between digital channels and in-person events requires smart decision-making to maximize the return on investment. 

Assessing Technology and Embracing Innovation 

Meagen emphasizes the continuous evaluation of technology stacks and the importance of weeding out underperforming tools. With technological advancements and access to vast amounts of data, marketers should embrace innovation and leverage cutting-edge solutions to gain a competitive advantage. Trying new technologies can yield significant benefits, and being an early adopter can position a company ahead of its competitors. 

Effective marketing in a crowded cybersecurity market requires a deep understanding of customer needs, a clear differentiation strategy, and a modernized approach. Watch the full interview below! 

Connect with Meagen Eisenberg on LinkedIn.  

Connect with Jeff Pedowitz on LinkedIn.  

Listen to the CMO Insights podcast.  

Download a copy of Jeff’s book ‘F the Funnel’.  

The post Cutting Through the Clutter: How to Succeed in Cybersecurity Marketing in a Crowded Landscape appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

1. The Importance of Purpose: A clear sense of purpose is at the heart of Navy Federal’s marketing approach. As a credit union serving active-duty military personnel, veterans, and their families, Navy Federal’s mission is focused on putting its members first. By adopting a member-centric approach, Navy Federal Credit Union has become the largest credit union, serving 12.7 million members. 

2. Aligning Values and Building Relationships: Navy Federal Credit Union understands the significance of aligning its values with those of its members. While their core membership base consists of active-duty military personnel and veterans, they have garnered respect from individuals who may not be eligible to join but appreciate the mission of supporting those who have served. This alignment of values fosters trust and loyalty among their target audience. 
   
   Furthermore, Navy Federal recognizes that value extends beyond traditional factors like price and quality. They acknowledge the importance of minimizing stress and providing convenience to their members. By prioritizing efficiency and making it easy for members to engage with their services, Navy Federal creates an environment where members can focus on what truly matters to them. 

3. Operationalizing Purpose: Pam highlights how Navy Federal operationalizes its purpose-driven marketing approach. She emphasizes that the primary focus is always on serving the member and making decisions based on what is best for them. As the CMO, Piligian’s role is to tell Navy Federal’s story and serve as the growth engine by connecting with more eligible individuals and encouraging them to join. 
   
   Membership acquisition is a crucial aspect of Navy Federal’s marketing strategy. Once individuals become members, the focus shifts to cultivating engagement and advocacy. This involves providing superior products and services, as well as nurturing strong relationships through effective communication and encouraging participation in events and activities that align with their members’ interests. 

4. Challenges and Opportunities: While serving a specific demographic brings inherent advantages, it also presents unique challenges. Navy Federal faces the task of accurately identifying and engaging with veterans who have diverse backgrounds and experiences. Understanding this diverse group’s nuances and individual needs is critical to building meaningful relationships. 

5. The Changing Landscape: Navy Federal recognizes the importance of maintaining intimacy with its members as the digital landscape evolves. While digital banking has gained popularity, many members still seek a path to human interaction when necessary. As a result, Navy Federal offers multiple channels through which members can access services and receive support, whether through physical branches, online platforms, or phone support. This balanced approach enables Navy Federal to meet its members’ varying needs and preferences. 

6. Building the Right Team: Pam emphasizes the significance of building a team that aligns with the credit union’s culture and values. Cultivating a culture of doing what is right for the member and treating employees with respect and support enables Navy Federal to deliver exceptional service. By prioritizing employee satisfaction, they create an environment where employees are motivated to go above and beyond in serving the members. 

Navy Federal Credit Union’s success can be attributed to its purpose-driven marketing strategy. Navy Federal has established itself as a leading credit union by prioritizing member needs, aligning values, and fostering strong relationships. 

Watch the full interview here: 

Connect with Pam Piligian on LinkedIn. 

Connect with Jeff Pedowitz on LinkedIn. 

Listen to the CMO Insights podcast. 

Download a free copy of Jeff’s book ‘F the Funnel’. 

The post Building Stronger Relationships: How Navy Federal Credit Union Puts Members First appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

In the fast-paced world of private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC), CMOs carry extraordinary responsibility. Beyond the buzzwords and jargon, the role’s essence comes down to a powerful concept – driving revenue. And the secret weapon? Revenue marketing. Let’s dissect the CMO’s pivotal role and revenue marketing’s transformative power in value-driven companies.

CMOs in private equity or venture capital firms are in a unique position. Their key responsibility is to drive revenue and validate the returns on marketing investments. To unlock their full potential and demonstrate their worth to the owners, they must take the driver’s seat in revenue marketing.

The alignment of marketing strategies with the owner’s business objectives is vital. When the CMO and owners share an understanding of how marketing contributes to revenue growth and profitability, the result is a powerful partnership that increases the company’s value.

A crucial part of this alliance is active participation in the acquisition process. A team-oriented approach with the deal team is essential for a successful outcome. The CMO’s role is paramount in driving marketing due diligence and developing a robust acquisition marketing plan harmonizing with the owner’s strategic goals.

Revenue marketing should be the North Star guiding the creation and execution of marketing strategy. The focus should be on understanding the target audience and zeroing in on activities that bring in revenue. Adopting a customer-centric approach and using data-driven insights for decision-making puts the CMO on the path to success.

But here’s the catch – a brilliant strategy alone isn’t enough. Effectively measuring and communicating the marketing ROI is just as important. This means focusing on revenue-generating metrics and using quantitative and qualitative data to paint a complete picture. The result? Reports that bring marketing initiatives to life and resonate with key stakeholders, fostering credibility and trust.

Leading a private equity or venture capital-owned company brings its share of uncertainties and demands adaptability. CMOs must be resilient change managers, developing a culture of continuous improvement and clear communication that underlines the benefits of adaptability.

The recipe for long-term success in private equity or venture capital ownership requires CMOs to be proactive, strategic, and data-driven in their revenue marketing approach. Clear communication and collaboration with stakeholders are integral parts of this journey. Embracing revenue marketing principles is the cornerstone to navigating unique challenges and seizing opportunities. Remember, revenue marketing isn’t just a concept – it’s a game-changer for CMOs and their companies.

There’s a lot more depth to explore with this topic. Read our entire eBook.

The post Unleashing Revenue Marketing: The CMO’s Game-Changer in Private Equity appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Google has made it clear that GA4 is the way forward, with continuous improvements and updates in the pipeline. Take the leap, embrace GA4, and unlock a new world of data-driven possibilities. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the exciting features and benefits of GA4, helping you harness its power to gain valuable insights into your website’s performance. 

Understanding the Differences between Google Analytics and GA4 

Google Analytics (GA) UA (Universal Analytics) and GA4 (Google Analytics 4) are two versions of Google Analytics with significant distinctions in terms of data collection, reporting, and analysis. Let’s explore some of the key differences: 

1. Data Collection: GA UA utilizes cookies to track user behavior on a website, while GA4 adopts an event-based data model, offering enhanced flexibility in tracking user interactions across multiple platforms. 

2. Reporting: GA UA reports revolve around dimensions and metrics, which are pre-defined categories of data. On the other hand, GA4 reports are centered on events and parameters, which are user-defined actions and characteristics. 

3. User Identification: GA UA identifies users through a unique client ID associated with a browser or device. In contrast, GA4 employs a combination of an anonymous user ID and a Google Signals ID, utilizing machine learning to identify users across multiple devices. 

4. Machine Learning: GA4 leverages advanced machine learning techniques to analyze user behavior and provide insights into behavior patterns, while GA UA relies more on manual analysis. 

5. Data Retention: GA UA retains data for a default period of 26 months, whereas GA4 retains data for 14 months by default. 

6. Privacy: GA4 offers enhanced privacy controls, allowing users to opt out of data collection and delete their data, prioritizing user privacy. GA UA lacks these privacy features. 

Overall, GA4 is designed to provide a more comprehensive and flexible approach to tracking user behavior and generating insights while prioritizing user privacy. However, it may require additional setup and customization compared to GA UA. 

Migrating from Universal Analytics to GA4 

Are you ready to migrate from Universal Analytics to GA4? Here are eight tips to ensure a smooth and successful transition: 

1. Dual Setup: Run Universal Analytics and GA4 properties in parallel to ensure a seamless transition and avoid losing historical data. This allows you to compare data and validate GA4 setup before making the full switch. 

2. Goals & Conversions: Review your existing goals in Universal Analytics and set up equivalent conversions in GA4 to track the same KPIs and maintain consistency in reporting. 

3. Event Tracking: Evaluate your current event tracking in Universal Analytics and configure corresponding events in GA4. Take advantage of GA4’s enhanced measurement and additional event tracking capabilities. 

4. Custom Dimensions & Metrics: Identify custom dimensions and metrics used in Universal Analytics and recreate them as custom definitions in GA4 to preserve your unique data points. 

5. Filters & Views: Examine your Universal Analytics filters and views and apply similar configurations in GA4 using data streams and filters to maintain data accuracy and consistency. 

6. Audiences & Segments: Review your existing audience segments in Universal Analytics and create similar audiences in GA4 to continue targeting your most valuable users. 

7. Tracking Code: Update the tracking codes on your website or app to include GA4’s tracking ID (G-XXXX) and ensure accurate data collection. 

8. Google Tag Manager: If you’re using Google Tag Manager, update your tags to the new GA4 tags for a smooth transition. 

Managing Internal Traffic in GA4 

When it comes to GA4, managing internal traffic is a vital piece of the puzzle for accurate and reliable data. Whether you’re a GA4 newcomer or transitioning from Universal Analytics (UA), here’s what you need to know to keep things squeaky clean!  

1. Define Internal Traffic: Internal traffic encompasses all hits originating from your team or any group involved in your site’s development, maintenance, or frequent use. Think marketing folks, developers, QA testers, and the like. 

2. Create IP Filters: Filtering out internal traffic in GA4 can be done by creating IP filters. Head to ‘Data Settings’ -> ‘Data Filters’ in GA4, and create a new filter to exclude traffic from specific IP addresses. This method isn’t foolproof due to dynamic IP addresses and VPN usage. 

3. Use Debug Mode for Testing: Instead of prowling through your live site during testing, embrace GA4’s built-in debug mode. This nifty feature allows you to peek into real-time data without tainting your actual reports. 

4. Leverage Google Tag Manager (GTM): GTM comes to the rescue! Create a custom dimension within GTM that identifies internal traffic based on specific conditions like an IP address or a cookie value. Then, use this dimension in GA4 to bid farewell to internal traffic. 

GA4 Features

Gain insights into your website’s performance with GA4’s powerful features: 

• GA4 Measurement Settings
• GA4 Enhanced Measurement Feature
• GA4 Sessions
• GA4 Engaged Sessions
• GA4 Audiences
• GA4 Predictive Metrics
• GA4 Event Parameters
• GA4 UTM Parameters
• GA4 Default Channel Mapping
• GA4 Custom Dimensions
• GA4 Conversion Events
• GA4 Custom Audiences Based on User Behavior
• GA4 Live Debug
• GA4 Event-Based vs. Session-Based Tracking
• GA4 Reporting with Event Parameter Metrics
• GA4 Exploration Reports
• GA4 Looker Studio Reporting
• GA4 Landing Page Report in Looker Studio

GA4 Measurement Settings 

Track conversion events on your website or app more precisely using GA4’s Measurement Settings. Define and track custom conversion events that align with your business goals and focus on the user behavior that matters most. Access Measurement Settings in your GA4 account and unleash the full potential of conversion tracking. 

GA4 Enhanced Measurement Feature 

Say goodbye to manual event tagging with GA4’s Enhanced Measurement! Instead, let GA4 handle the heavy lifting for you. Enjoy automatic tracking for clicks, page views, video engagements, and more. With GA4, your focus can shift from collecting data to analyzing it. 

GA4 Sessions 

Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4 calculates sessions based on user interactions. For example, each time a user opens your website and proceeds to a new page by clicking a button, it counts as one session. However, if the same user returns after 30 minutes of inactivity, it is considered a new session. Engaged sessions, a feature unique to GA4, only count sessions where users spend a specific amount of time on your website or app. Gain insights into valuable sessions and user behavior with this distinction. 

GA4 Engaged Sessions 

Engaged Sessions is a fresh metric that has replaced the traditional “bounce rate” from Universal Analytics. The traditional bounce rate metric no longer applies in GA4, which adopts an event-based data model. Instead, we now have Engaged Sessions, a robust measure of user activity and interaction with your website or app. 

So, what exactly are Engaged Sessions? They quantify the number of sessions in which users actively engage with your digital platform. An engaged session is determined by meeting any of the following criteria: 

1. Session duration of 10 seconds or more. 

2. User-triggered conversion events during the session, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. 

3. User engagement with multiple screens or page views within a session. 

Engaged Sessions provide a deeper understanding of user engagement than the traditional bounce rate, which focuses solely on single-page sessions. Instead, GA4’s approach goes beyond superficial metrics to deliver a more meaningful measure of user interaction. 

To analyze user engagement effectively in GA4, consider the following key metrics: 

1. Engaged Sessions: This metric reflects the total number of sessions where users actively engaged with your website or app. It’s a tangible indicator of user involvement and interest. 

2. Engaged Sessions per User: By calculating the average number of engaged sessions per user within a specific time frame, you gain insights into the frequency and depth of user engagement. 

3. Engagement Rate: This percentage metric is calculated by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the total number of sessions and multiplying it by 100. It provides an overview of the proportion of sessions that qualify as engaged sessions. 

By prioritizing these engagement metrics, you unlock a wealth of information about user behavior on your website or app. You can optimize your content and user experience with these insights, delivering an exceptional digital journey. 

GA4 Audiences 

Master audiences in GA4 to maximize your analytics potential. You can precisely target your marketing efforts by segmenting and analyzing specific user groups based on behavior and demographics. Leverage GA4’s predictive audience feature to identify high-value prospects and make data-driven decisions. GA4 Audiences can propel your marketing campaigns to success. 

GA4 Predictive Metrics 

Unlock the potential of machine learning to gain profound insights into user behavior on your website or app. GA4’s Predictive Metrics feature helps you identify trends and patterns, allowing you to predict future user actions. Use Predictive Metrics to optimize your marketing strategy based on a better understanding of how users are likely to interact with your site or app. You can access Predictive Metrics in your GA4 account’s navigation menu. 

GA4 Event Parameters 

Event parameters are crucial in GA4, allowing you to gather detailed data about user interactions and events on your website or app. To ensure you make the most of this powerful feature, here are some expert tips to guide you: 

1. Plan Your Parameters: Identify the fundamental user interactions and events important to your business. Once you have a clear understanding of what you want to track, define the appropriate event parameters in GA4. This strategic planning will enable you to collect granular data that yields valuable insights. 

2. Match Dimensions: It’s essential to establish consistency between the custom dimensions you set up in GA4 and the corresponding variables in Google Tag Manager (GTM). By aligning these dimensions, you ensure your data collection remains accurate and coherent. 

3. Use Consistent Naming: Adopting a consistent naming convention for your event parameters and custom dimensions across GA4 and GTM makes data management and analysis a breeze. With standardized naming practices, you’ll navigate your data more efficiently and gain clearer insights. 

4. Test & Validate: Before rolling out any changes, take advantage of GTM’s Preview mode and GA4’s DebugView. These tools allow you to test and validate your event tracking setup, ensuring that your data collection is precise and error-free. By catching any discrepancies early on, you can maintain the integrity of your data. 

5. Monitor & Optimize: Don’t forget to regularly review your event parameters and custom dimensions in both GA4 and GTM. Continuously monitor their performance to ensure they provide the insights you need. Fine-tune your setup and optimize it according to evolving business requirements. This ongoing refinement is the key to driving impactful marketing analytics. 

By following these expert tips, you’ll tap into the full potential of event parameters in GA4 and GTM, enabling you to generate comprehensive and accurate reports. 

GA4 UTM Parameters 

UTM parameters are tags added to your URLs to track the performance of your marketing campaigns in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Five essential UTM parameters are at your disposal: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content. 

Let’s explore three effective ways to leverage UTM parameters for better insights and informed decision-making: 

1. Analyze Traffic Sources: Consistently use utm_source (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Google) and utm_medium (e.g., organic, paid, referral) to identify the platforms and marketing channels that generate the most traffic, engagement, and conversions. This knowledge empowers you to optimize your marketing efforts and allocate resources effectively. 

2. Track Campaign Performance: Utilize utm_campaign to measure the success of your marketing campaigns (e.g., SummerSale, ProductLaunch, Webinar). Monitoring the performance of each campaign enables you to refine your strategies and allocate resources based on actual results. Say goodbye to guesswork and hello to data-driven decisions. 

3. Compare Ad Creatives: Add utm_content to your URLs (e.g., ImageA, VideoB, TextC) to understand which ad creatives resonate best with your audience. By analyzing and comparing the performance of different creatives, you can fine-tune your ad strategy and maximize your ROI. 

Remember, consistency is key! Maintain a standardized naming convention for your UTM parameters to ensure accurate and reliable data in GA4. Train your data to work in your favor.  

GA4 Default Channel Mapping 

With GA4, you get the fantastic advantage of automatic UTM parameter recognition and default channel mapping. This means that GA4 can effortlessly identify UTM parameters and map them to default channels like Organic Search, Paid Search, Social, and Email. However, it’s crucial to use UTM parameters correctly to make the most of this feature and avoid unassigned traffic in your reports.  

Here are three expert tips to ensure precise channel mapping and bid farewell to unassigned traffic: 

1. Be Consistent: Stick to a standardized naming convention for your UTM parameters. By keeping your utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign consistently labeled, GA4 will flawlessly recognize and map your traffic sources. The result? Spotless, enlightening data to boost your marketing efforts! 

2. Validate Your Parameters: Before launching your campaigns, take a moment to double-check your UTM parameters. When mapping traffic, typos, errors, or inconsistencies can throw GA4 off its game. So, a quick but careful parameter validation can save you from the clutches of unassigned traffic. 

3. Customize Default Channel Groupings: GA4’s default channel groupings are fabulous but might not perfectly align with your unique marketing channels. Fear not! You can craft custom channel groupings that mirror your specific marketing endeavors. This way, you ensure precise tracking and attribution that suit your needs. 

By wielding these tips like a seasoned pro, you’ll bid adieu to unassigned traffic and unlock valuable insights from your GA4 marketing analytics!  

GA4 Custom Dimensions 

Custom Dimensions are user-defined metrics that will take your analytics game to the next level. Here are three creative ways to make the most of them: 

1. Track User Roles: Create a Custom Dimension to monitor user roles like admin, subscriber, or guest. Segment your audience based on their level of access, analyze their behavior, and optimize your website accordingly. 

2. Capture Content Categories: Gain deeper insights into your audience’s interests by creating a Custom Dimension to classify your content into categories like tutorials, news, or reviews. Analyze the performance of each category and plan your content strategy accordingly. 

3. Monitor A/B Test Variants: When running A/B tests, use a Custom Dimension to track which variant (e.g., A, B, or C) each user sees. By analyzing the performance of each variant, you’ll make data-driven decisions to improve your website’s user experience. 

GA4 Conversion Events 

In GA4, events represent various user interactions on your website or app. They help you understand how users engage with your digital properties. On the other hand, conversion events are specific high-value actions that directly contribute to your business objectives. These actions can be anything from a completed purchase to a sign-up for your newsletter. 

Here are the steps to mark events as conversions in the GA4 interface, empowering you with valuable insights: 

1. Assess Your Events: Begin by reviewing the existing events tracked in GA4. Identify the ones that hold significant value for your business objectives. These high-value events should be marked as conversions. 

2. Navigate to GA4 Conversions: Within your GA4 property, head to the ‘Configure’ tab and select ‘Conversions.’ This section displays your current conversion events, providing an overview of your tracking setup. 

3. Mark Events as Conversions: To designate an event as a conversion, simply click on the ‘New conversion event’ button. Next, enter the event name you wish to track as a conversion. Once added, GA4 will start tracking the event as a conversion, providing you with valuable data. 

4. Verify Conversions: After marking events as conversions, verifying that they are being accurately tracked is essential. Utilize GA4’s DebugView or real-time report to ensure that your conversion events are captured precisely, giving you confidence in the integrity of your data. 

5. Optimize & Monitor: A crucial aspect of conversion tracking is regular review and optimization. Keep a close eye on your conversion events and monitor their performance. This enables you to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and optimize your strategies based on the insights gained from conversion tracking. 

By marking high-value events as conversions in GA4, you gain a deeper understanding of user behavior and the impact of your marketing efforts on your business objectives. This valuable knowledge allows you to make data-driven decisions that align with your goals and drive your business forward. 

GA4 Custom Audiences Based on User Behavior 

Take your marketing campaigns to the next level by creating custom audiences in GA4. By targeting specific user groups with tailored marketing messages, you can enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns. Head to the Audience Builder in GA4 and set conditions based on user behavior, such as pages visited or events triggered, to create your custom audience. 

GA4 Live Debug 

Are you struggling with event tracking or user behavior in GA4? Use the Live Debug feature to troubleshoot issues in real-time and ensure accurate tracking. With Live Debug, you can see which events are firing on your website or app and identify any errors or obstacles hindering precise tracking. Access Live Debug in your GA4 account’s Debug View option to start troubleshooting and get your tracking on the right track. 

GA4 Event-Based vs. Session-Based Tracking 

Understanding the differences between event-based and session-based tracking in Google Analytics 4 is crucial for optimizing your marketing efforts. Here are the key differences between event-based and session-based tracking in GA4: 

1. Data Collection: Session-based tracking focuses on user sessions and page views, while event-based tracking captures individual user interactions with your website or app, such as button clicks, video plays, or form submissions. This detailed data provides a comprehensive understanding of user behavior. 

2. Flexibility: Event-based tracking offers greater flexibility, allowing you to track a wide range of user interactions. In contrast, session-based tracking is limited to pre-defined metrics like bounce rate and session duration. 

3. User-Centricity: GA4’s event-based tracking takes a user-centric approach, providing deeper insights into user behavior and engagement. It lets you understand how users interact with your website or app individually. Session-based tracking, on the other hand, focuses more on analyzing website usage patterns as a whole. 

4. Real-Time Data: Event-based tracking provides real-time data, enabling you to react quickly to changes in user behavior. It allows you to make timely adjustments to your marketing strategies. Session-based tracking is better suited for analyzing historical data and identifying long-term trends. 

5. Customization: Event-based tracking allows customization by creating custom events tailored to your specific marketing objectives. This flexibility enables you to align your analytics precisely with your unique goals. Session-based tracking relies on standard metrics provided by GA4. 

Now that we understand the differences let’s discuss how you can leverage these insights: 

• Implement event-based tracking to optimize user actions such as form submissions or product purchases. By closely monitoring these actions, you can identify areas for improvement and enhance your conversion rates. 
• Use session-based tracking to analyze overall website usage patterns, identify potential areas for enhancement, and evaluate the effectiveness of site-wide changes. 
• Combine event-based and session-based tracking to comprehensively understand your users’ behavior and create tailored marketing strategies. 

GA4 Reporting with Event Parameter Metrics 

By tracking event parameter metrics, you can take your reporting to a new level of detail and gain valuable insights for your business. To make the most of event parameter metrics in GA4, follow these expert tips: 

1. Define Your Metrics: Identify the key user interactions and events you want to track. Plan out the event parameter metrics that will provide the most valuable insights for your business objectives. This step sets the foundation for effective reporting.  

2. Align GTM & GA4: It’s crucial to ensure that the event parameter metrics and custom definitions you set up in GA4 align with the corresponding variables in GTM. This alignment guarantees consistency and accuracy in your data collection process. A synchronized setup is the key to reliable reporting. 

3. Consistent Naming Conventions: Adopting consistent naming conventions for your event parameter metrics across GA4 and GTM is essential. This practice simplifies data management and analysis, making navigating and understanding your metrics easier. A well-organized setup is the backbone of efficient reporting.  

4. Test & Validate: Before implementing your event tracking setup, take advantage of GTM’s Preview mode and GA4’s DebugView. Testing and validating your setup ensure that everything works as intended and data is collected accurately. This step is crucial for ironing out any discrepancies. A thorough testing phase guarantees reliable data collection.  

5. Review & Optimize: Regularly review your event parameter metrics and custom definitions in GA4 and GTM. Ensure that they are providing the insights you need to make informed decisions. Continuously optimize your setup to enhance your marketing analytics. Embrace a cycle of improvement to stay ahead of the game.  

Following these expert tips will unlock the full potential of event parameter metrics in GA4 and GTM. As a result, your reporting will be more comprehensive and accurate, empowering you to make data-driven decisions that drive success. 

GA4 Exploration Reports 

Did you know that GA4’s Exploration reports allow you to build custom, ad-hoc data visualizations? Dive deep into analysis and uncover valuable insights that may not be immediately apparent. Leverage the power of Exploration reports to gain a comprehensive understanding of your data. 

GA4 Looker Studio Reporting 

In the world of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Looker Studio, compatibility challenges may arise when striving for complete reporting. Here are the top tips for planning and setting up your reporting to achieve outstanding outcomes: 

1. Assess Your Reporting Needs: Define your business objectives, key performance indicators (KPIs), and the specific insights you want to extract from your reports. This evaluation will help you determine which reporting tool best suits your unique requirements. 

2. Understand Compatibility: It’s essential to recognize that GA4 and Looker Studio may not offer seamless compatibility right out of the box. To access the complete range of GA4 data within Looker Studio, be prepared to integrate a robust big data or big query tool, such as Google BigQuery. This integration will unlock the full potential of your reporting capabilities. 

3. Choose the Right Big Data Tool: Evaluate different big data or big query tools available in the market. Look for a tool that aligns with your reporting needs and seamlessly integrates with both GA4 and Looker Studio. This careful selection will ensure a smooth and effective integration process. 

4. Optimize Your Data Schema: When integrating a big data tool, optimizing your GA4 data schema for use in Looker Studio is crucial. This step will enable you to access and analyze your data meaningfully and efficiently, empowering you to derive actionable insights. 

5. Leverage Custom Metrics & Dimensions: Take advantage of custom metrics and dimensions in GA4 to capture specific data points relevant to your business. Ensure that these custom parameters are seamlessly integrated and available within Looker Studio. This comprehensive approach will enrich your reporting and enable you to gain deeper insights. 

6. Continuously Monitor & Optimize: Regularly review your data setup and reporting outcomes to ensure they align with your business objectives. Monitor the performance of your integrated solution and make continuous optimizations to enhance your marketing analytics capabilities. 

By following these expert tips, you can overcome the compatibility challenges between GA4 and Looker Studio, resulting in comprehensive reports that drive valuable insights and facilitate better decision-making. 

GA4 Landing Page Report in Looker Studio 

GA4 integrated into Looker Studio will empower you to create a comprehensive landing page report that reveals vital insights and fuels data-driven decision-making. Get ready to optimize your landing pages, enhance user experience, and boost conversions! 

Key Metrics to Focus On: 

1. Pageviews: Gain an overview of the traffic volume on each landing page by tracking the total number of views. 

2. Unique Visitors: Understand the reach of your landing pages by monitoring the number of unique users visiting each page. 

3. Bounce Rate: Uncover the proportion of users who leave your site without engaging further, providing insight into the effectiveness of your landing pages. 

4. Average Time on Page: Measure user engagement and content relevance by calculating users’ average duration on each landing page. 

5. Conversion Rate: Evaluate the percentage of users who successfully complete a desired action after landing on a page, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. 

6. Top Traffic Sources: Identify the marketing channels driving the most traffic to each landing page, enabling you to focus on the most effective sources. 

Steps to Create the Report in Looker Studio: 

1. Connect GA4 to Looker: Establish a seamless connection between your GA4 account and Looker Studio to ensure easy access to GA4 data within the Looker platform. 

2. Create a New LookML Model: Within Looker Studio, kickstart your landing page report by creating a new LookML model tailored to your specific needs. Define the relevant dimensions and measures based on the key metrics mentioned above. 

3. Filter Data Using URL Pattern: Use LookML filters to narrow down your dataset and focus specifically on the landing pages with a specific URL pattern you want to analyze. 

4. Visualize the Data: Leverage Looker Studio’s powerful data visualization capabilities to transform raw data into impactful graphs and charts. Customize visualization types, colors, and labels to enhance the report’s readability and comprehension. 

5. Assemble the Report: Bring together your visualizations and data tables into a cohesive dashboard that offers an at-a-glance view of your landing page’s performance. This consolidated report will be a valuable resource for quick and informed decision-making. 

6. Schedule Report Delivery: Set up automated report delivery to your team via email or any preferred communication channel, ensuring regular access to up-to-date insights. 

Get Expert GA4 Support 

Are you still using Google Analytics UA? Our expert SEOs are here to help you upgrade to Google Analytics 4! With new features like cross-device and event-based tracking, you’ll get a more comprehensive view of your website’s performance. Reach out today to get started. 

The post Unleashing the Power of GA4: A Comprehensive Guide to Google Analytics 4 appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, companies must constantly evolve to stay ahead of the curve. The integration of AI-powered technologies in content operations is proving to be a game-changer for organizations looking to manage their content supply chain efficiently. In a recent interview, Ed Breault, CMO at Aprimo, shared his insights on how the company is leveraging AI, the importance of radical transparency, and advice for fellow CMOs navigating the rapidly evolving landscape. 

1. Aprimo, an AI-powered content operations platform, aims to help marketers manage the entire content supply chain by combining people, processes, systems, and data. 

2. To adapt to the rapidly evolving AI landscape, CMOs should lean in, adopt, and embrace new technologies, using them as tools for growth and advancement. 

3. Radical transparency, exemplified through accessible OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and communication channels, fosters a culture of collaboration and connection within an organization. 

4. AI should be viewed as a co-pilot or support system, augmenting human capabilities rather than as a threat to job security. 

5. Staying uncomfortable and embracing change are key to personal and professional growth, allowing individuals to push their boundaries and achieve more continuously. 

Watch the full interview here: 

The insights shared by Ed Breault provide a valuable perspective on the role of AI in content operations and its potential to transform the marketing landscape. By embracing new technologies, fostering a culture of radical transparency, and continually pushing personal and professional boundaries, individuals and organizations alike can thrive in an ever-changing business environment. As we move forward, we must view AI as a co-pilot that enhances human capabilities, ultimately enabling us to focus on what truly makes us human and unlocking new avenues for growth and success. 

Connect with Ed Breault on LinkedIn.

Connect with Jeff Pedowitz on LinkedIn.

Listen to the CMO Insights podcast.

Download a free copy of Jeff’s book ‘F the Funnel’.

The post The New Era of Content Operations: AI as the Ultimate Wingman for Marketers appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Identifying your ICP streamlines your marketing efforts, making them more focused and cost-efficient and significantly improving the potential for sales conversions and long-term customer loyalty by aligning your products or services with the needs of your most profitable potential customers. Let’s dive into this a bit.

At its core, the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) precisely characterizes your most valuable customers, guiding your brand, marketing, sales, and budgeting strategies. By identifying and targeting your ideal customer, you can optimize resource allocation, streamline messaging, and align sales and marketing on a single, focused target customer.

Identifying your organization’s ICP is a crucial part of a successful marketing strategy, as it helps the marketing team focus their efforts on the most promising potential customers. Once you, as a marketing leader, have identified your ICP, there are several ways you might alter your marketing strategy to take advantage of that data:

1. Personalization of Marketing Materials: Marketing messages can be tailored to speak directly to the ICP’s needs, wants, and pain points. This can include creating content or messaging that addresses the ICP’s specific challenges, using language that resonates with them, and featuring imagery that reflects their demographics or industry.
2. Segmentation: The ICP helps you segment the broader market, allowing for more targeted and efficient marketing efforts. For example, you might concentrate on specific geographical areas, industry classifications, or business sizes where your ICP is most prevalent.
3. Product Development: ICP data can guide product development efforts, ensuring that your product features align with the needs and wants of the ICP. Understanding a smaller market segment, like that within your ICP, helps you guide pricing and packaging decisions.
4. Channel Selection: ICP data can inform where to focus marketing efforts. You can prioritize channels where your potential customers are most likely to consume certain media or be active on specific social media platforms.
5. Sales and Marketing Alignment: Marketing and sales can work together to ensure they’re targeting the same ICP, creating awareness and interest, and closing the deal. Precise ICP data can help sales prioritize their outreach and tailor their sales pitches, just as it helps marketing craft the right messaging, positioning, and value proposition.
6. Customer Success and Retention: Understanding the ICP can help inform strategies for customer retention and success. In general, knowing your ICP narrows your focus to the specific needs of a particular target, which also applies to your current customers. For example, you can stay informed of industry trends that affect your current customers, allowing you to be proactive with their needs. 
7. Lead Scoring: With a clearly defined ICP, marketing teams can refine their lead scoring models, which helps you identify (and spend valuable resources on) only the highest quality leads.
8. Forecasting and Planning: A well-defined ICP can improve the accuracy of sales forecasts and inform strategic planning. It can help predict which markets to enter, where to allocate resources, and what growth might look like in the future. Essentially, it is a far more refined look at your addressable market.

By using the ICP to inform or pivot your marketing strategy, you increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your team’s efforts, leading to higher conversion rates, improved customer satisfaction, and better business outcomes.

The post From ICP to ROI: Turning Ideal Customer Profiles into Actionable Marketing Strategies appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

There’s no better example than Custom Data Object (CDO) record services. These infinitely handy little helpers allow a beleaguered admin or power user like yourself to make light work of mountains of data. Eloqua is a beautiful and flexible platform integration tool, so that CDO record services could lend themselves well to many different use cases.

Here, we’ll focus specifically on how CDOs can be integrated with Salesforce using the Salesforce integration app and how you can use CDO record services to remove records that have been deleted on the Salesforce side.

Let’s jump in!

Related: Want expert Eloqua help with this or anything else?

3…2…1…CDOs! (You thought we were going to say Contacts, didn’t you?)

We’ll work specifically with Salesforce object data for today’s purposes. Eloqua’s Salesforce integration app will let you import from any standard or custom object within Salesforce.

Our use case will import records from a Salesforce custom Label Tag object. Still, because this data isn’t inherent to the contact and we need multiple Label Tag records per Eloqua contact, we don’t want to send this data to the Eloqua contact record. These label records will also be used for segmentation, so we’ll need them to be connected to the contact. This makes it a perfect use case for importing to an Eloqua CDO.

But what happens when someone deletes a record in Salesforce? We’ll need a way not only to import the labels and connect them to Eloqua contacts but also to delete the labels if they’re removed in Salesforce. No one wants outdated and inaccurate data gumming up the works, right?

To get this process up and running, you’ll need to create an Eloqua CDO to house the imported Salesforce label data (You can check out Oracle’s instructions on creating a CDO here). On the CDO, it will be essential to create a checkbox field (called ours Deleted in Salesforce) that the integration app will check if a label record has been deleted in Salesforce.

Note: If you need more than one CDO record per contact, as we do with this use case, keep in mind that your Unique Code Field will need something other than your email address. For our purposes, we’ll be using the SFDC Label Record ID.

Next, you’ll need to open up the Salesforce integration app. You can do this by:

1. Going to Settings.

2. Choosing Apps under Platform Extensions.

3. And clicking on the Salesforce Integration app.

You’ll need to create two imports, one for importing label records and the other for importing only deleted label records. You can do this by:

1. Opening up the app settings.

2. Clicking on Imports.

3. Clicking Add Import.

Once the Add Import dialogue opens up, you’ll want to:

1. Give the import a descriptive name, like Get – Labels.
2. Choose the Salesforce object you want to import from (for our use case, this was a Salesforce custom object called Label Tag, but you can choose whatever object you’d like).
3. Choose the Eloqua object you want to import (Hint: this will be the CDO you created earlier).
4. Click Create Import.
5. At this point, the import is saved, and another set of options will open up. Next, you can add any SOQL filters you might need (Need info on creating a SOQL query? You can find that here.).
6. Map the Salesforce data to the fields on your Eloqua CDO. Note that you can include some related objects in your import. For example, in our use case, an email address isn’t available on the Label Tag object that we’re directly connected to, but it is available on the related Contact object.
7. Set the import rules and add any post-processing you’d like.
8. Finally, you’ll want to set up CDO Linking by checking the checkbox, setting the Eloqua Entity to link CDO records to Contacts, and mapping the CDO email address field to the Contact email address field.

Next, you’ll want to repeat the import creation process, but this time we’ll call the import something like Get – Labels for Deletion. For this import, you’ll connect to the exact Salesforce and Eloqua objects as you did previously, but this time you’ll need to toggle on the Import Only Deleted Records setting.

The mapping for this second import is much simpler because we’ll remove these records from Eloqua. For our use case, we only mapped the unique identifier, the email address, and most importantly, we used a text mapping for the Deleted in Salesforce checkbox field that will set it to True. You can see how we did that here:

This is one of the most critical steps for the overall process, because having the Deleted in Salesforce field checked is how our program can tell which records to remove.

Better Data Integrity with CDO Record Services

Next, we’ll head over to Orchestration to create our program. You can do this by going to the top navigation and select Programs from the Orchestration dropdown.

From here, choose the card that says Create a Custom Object Program. Once the program canvas opens, give it a name, and then drag a Listener step and a Delete Custom Object Record step onto the canvas. Finally, drag the connector line from the Listener to the action step and save the program. Don’t worry about adding any sources to the Listener from the program canvas… we’ll be doing that from the CDO. When you’re done, your program canvas should look something like this:

Now that you’ve created a container (CDO) for your data, a way to transport it from Salesforce to Eloqua (integration imports), and the program that will remove records, let’s talk about how we will manage the data with CDO record services.

Navigate to the CDO you created earlier, click the Custom Object dropdown menu at the top right, and select Custom Object Record Services.

Once the Manage Services dialogue opens, you’ll have two options: Set up services for new data that’s been added to the CDO or for existing data that’s been modified. You’ll want to set up services for both of these options, which will account for someone making an error in Salesforce, adding a label, and then immediately deleting it. This will keep you from importing and storing new records that have already been deleted in Salesforce (We here at TPG are big fans of covering all our bases).

Let’s start with New Data. You can click the dropdown arrow to the left of New Data and select Edit Service Actions.

Next, you’ll want to add a processing step by clicking the Add Processing Steps button at the bottom right of the Edit Service Actions dialogue.

Adding processing steps will allow you to define conditional parameters to ensure this data is processed properly. In this case, we can add options such as Subscribe to Email, Unsubscribe, or Add to a Shared List. For this exercise, you’ll want to choose Add to Step in Program (you can also add a description for the processing step if you’d like) and click Add.

Let’s go further and edit the processing steps for what we might need.

First, you get another chance to add a description to this step. Next, you’ll choose Contacts or Custom Object Records to define the entity type. Go ahead and choose Custom Object Records since that’s what we’re working with today.

Next, you’ll need to set any conditional parameters. For our use case, we’re sending records to the same program every time, so you can choose Constant and then choose the name of the program you created earlier (Hint: most of the time, the program name will show up automatically).

Finally, you can determine the circumstances or conditions under which CDO records get sent to the program. Here, you can see that we’ve selected the Only if the following Condition is met toggle and indicated that the Deleted in Salesforce field value must be equal to True.

Once you’ve done this, you can click Save and Close and then Close to get back to the Manage Services window. From here, you can repeat the above process exactly to create another service for Modified Data.

Finally, you’ll need to enable each of the services, which you can do by clicking on the dropdown arrow next to both New Data or Modified Data and choosing Enable Custom Object Record Service.

Once you’ve enabled the service, you’ll see that the icon next to it is no longer gray.

Et Voila! Now you have a fully automated process to import the data you need and delete what you don’t. Keep in mind that we only covered one use case. CDOs can help you manage all sorts of different data so you can save your contact fields for when they’re indispensable. And CDO record services make it easy to ensure that your CDO data stays clean.

CDO record services are a powerful, versatile tool for segmenting and managing any data record from Salesforce. Once you take the time to get familiar with it, you’ll find it indispensable.

Note: one of the best use cases for this process is to import and manage SFDC Campaign Members. This has yet to be possible due to an issue where deleted campaign members could only be imported if the related SFDC contact or lead was also deleted (which is not ideal for obvious reasons). As of January 2023, Oracle has indicated that they’ve found a workaround for this, and it will be available in an upcoming but not-yet-determined release. You can read the Topliners thread on this here.

The post CDO Record Services Fuel Effective Eloqua-Salesforce Integration appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Data cleansing is a common challenge for most marketers today, and it can impact every aspect of your job including segmentation, lead scoring, reporting, and building great campaigns.

How can you solve the issue of dirty data in an automated fashion without monopolizing your entire day?

The answer? Eloqua lookup tables and update rules!

These are great tools that automate data cleansing as new contacts or field values enter the system.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how to cleanse your Country data, but you can apply similar logic to almost any field within your database. Let’s get started!

Related: Get expert Eloqua consulting – our team’s ready!

How to normalize fields in your Eloqua instance

Normalize The Country Field

First, you’ll need to export your entire database with the Country and State/Province fields included in your export view. Once the file is exported, use pivot tables to determine how many different variations of the Country value for United States are currently in your database. Repeat this step for the State/Province values. These “dirty” values will be needed when creating the Data Cleansing File.

CREATE A DATA CLEANSING FILE

The next step is to create an Excel file that will contain all “dirty” values in one column and the normalized values in the next column over (same row). In the example provided below, the left column includes several “dirty” values used for United States while the right column shows the “normalized” value. We’re going to replace dirty (existing) values with the normalized (new) value. You can use the same process for any other field you want to clean in your database.

In the step-by-step guide that follows, we’ll use these values to create a lookup table that stores the clean and dirty values as well as an update rule that will reference it in order to to replace the dirty values.

An update rule is a data tool used for data cleansing and normalization of Contact, Account, or Custom Object fields.

A lookup table is simply a list of two columns of values, one column for values to perform the lookup on, and one for values that will be used to replace the original values.

CREATE A LOOKUP TABLE:

1. In Eloqua, go to Audience > Tools > Data Tools

2. Click the Data Tools menu, and then click New Lookup Table.

3. Enter an appropriate Display Name such as Normalize Country.
4. Enter an appropriate description (optional).
5. Enter a Lookup Value Column Name. This is the name of the column of field values that you are replacing, for example, Country.
6. Enter a Replacement Value Column Name. This is the name of the column of field values that will replace the original field values, for example, Normalized Country.

7. Click Save (which, in case you have trouble finding it, is waaaaaay down at the bottom right of the screen).

Once you’ve saved your lookup table, you can add values to the lookup table manually by entering the lookup value and the replacement value, and then clicking Add.

You can also upload entries from an existing file by going to Manage Entries > Upload Lookup Table Entries. A new Upload Wizard screen will open.

8. Give the upload a name, for example Country Data Clean Up, then click Next.
9. Select the file you want to upload and click Upload and Preview Data then click Next.
10. Make sure the Source fields (which are your Excel headings) match your Target Fields, then click Next.

11. Click Finish.
12. Click Save.

CREATE AN UPDATE RULE TO USE THE CREATED LOOKUP TABLE:

1. In Eloqua, go to Audience > Tools > Data Tools as you did when creating your lookup table.
2. This time, choose New Update Rule Set from the Data Tools menu.

3. Enter an appropriate Update Rule Set Name, such as Normalize Contact Country.

4. Select Contacts as the Entity Type.
5. Click Add Update Rule.

6. Click the Select a field to update field to open the Contact Field Search window, and then search for the contact field that you want to normalize.
7. Select the field and then click OK.
8. From the Select an update action list, select Overwrite value from Lookup Table Field.
9. Make sure that the field that you are normalizing is selected in the Select a lookup field list.
   Note: This will perform the lookup on a different field than it is replacing. This will retain the original field.
10. Click the Select a lookup table field to open the Lookup Table Search window, and then search for your created lookup table.

11. Select the lookup table and click OK.
12. Select Overwrite if lookup value not found to set a static value if the lookup value is not found in the lookup table. We have left this unchecked.
13. Click Apply, and then click Save.

Now you’ve built all the pieces needed to create the program to automate this process. Let’s walk through how to use Program Canvas functionality to get it done!

Program Canvas

Program Canvas is the simple drag-and-drop functionality that allows you to transform data in real-time. With Program Canvas, you can build programs that automate cumbersome data cleansing tasks (It simplifies other Eloqua best practice functionality too!).

Previously, you would have used Program Builder to achieve these workflow automation goals. However, Program Canvas offers you the flexibility of Program Builder and some additional benefits:

• Improve your speed-to-lead time by using CRM cloud apps for integration instead of external calls.
• Maintain a cleaner contact database by easily integrating the Contact Washing Machine app with your programs.
• A new listener architecture that triggers program actions in real time based on lead score changes or new contact creation.
• Integration with the Oracle Marketing AppCloud so you can easily sync data from external systems with Oracle Eloqua.
• An improved user interface, making it easier to quickly build your programs.

Build an EloQua DATA CLEANSING Program with Program Canvas

1. Navigate to Orchestration, then click Programs.

2. For the purposes of this exercise, you’ll need to choose Create a Contact Program, but it’s important to note that you can also create Custom Object Programs as well.
3. If your organization has templates built, you can choose one of those or start with a blank contact program.
4. Give your program a name by double-clicking on Untitled Program at the top of the canvas.

5. The left pane shows the program steps available to you. By default, popular steps are shown, but if you’d like to view all the available steps, click the arrow next to the Program Steps heading.

6. Choose the type of contact entry point you’d like to use for your program and drag it onto the canvas. Listeners are great if you need immediate processing from a specific source like a form or a CDO, while segments are better if you want to pull in contacts based on specific criteria.

Note: You can’t add sources to a feeder from the canvas—you can only view them there. Also, if you choose a segment, know that they only re-evaluate once a day.

7. Add an Update Rule step. Once you’ve added this step to your canvas, double click on it to configure it by giving it a name (optional) and choosing the update rule from the dropdown menu.

8. Add a wait step at the end of the program for testing purposes. This is incredibly helpful for confirming that your program is working as expected and can be useful if you need to troubleshoot it down the line. Once you’ve confirmed the program is working, you can either remove the wait step or just shorten it.
9. After you’ve configured and connected all the required steps, you can click Save.
10. Activate your program.

Making the Complex Simple

Eloqua’s data tools offer you incredibly flexible ways to automate time-consuming stuff, and it’s handier than ever now with integration apps that connect to key platforms like Salesforce.

The first step to mastering it, however, is learning how to cleanse your existing data properly. The steps in this article should get you over that hurdle with no problem.

Want more? Check out our Eloqua getting started blog or see how our Eloqua consulting can help!

The post Eloqua Data Cleanup Basics appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Why?

Well, if you aren’t flexible, quick on your feet, and comfortable working in fast-moving conditions….you’re probably not going to get too far.

It was just a little while ago that I walked you through the transition from Salesforce Classic to Lightning. It was a wholesale re-imagining of the Salesforce experience with a ton of user improvements.

Among them were a couple of automation-enabling functions: Process Builder and Workflow Rules. Process Builder, specifically, gave users the ability to use straightforward “If/Then” logic to add automation triggers to their Salesforce environment. You could automate a range of events from “Quick Actions” to “Send Custom Notifications” to Updating a Field” and more, all based on a triggering event meeting pre-defined criteria.

Essentially, it simplified automation for the less technically-minded of us. Alas, the EoL (End of Life) deadline for Process Builder and Workflow Rules is fast approaching. Sometime in the latter part of next year, Salesforce will begin blocking the ability to create new workflow rules and processes.

It’s full speed ahead for their automation-enabling replacement called Flow. What makes it so special that it’s worth forcing this transition over?

Let’s get into that!

Feel the Flow

Remember that the idea behind Process Builder was to make automation accessible by simplifying the updating of current or child records.

Flows, on the other hand, is perfect for automating complex business processes and manual data entry. One straightforward example is using Flow Builder to create a Flow screen to assist users in creating tickets on an Account page.

As Salesforce continues to upgrade and refine Flow, they’re essentially laying the groundwork for a completely declarative (i.e. no coding required!) solution that can be practically as useful as coding. One key aspect to this is the versatility of the process.

Flows can be triggered through the following methods:

• Screen flows:  These require user input and are launched as an action or embedded on a Lightning page.
• Scheduled-triggered flows: These background flows are timed to help manage batches of records 
• Auto-launched flows: These subflows are triggered from Process Builder or even by code
• Record-triggered flows: When a record updates or is created that meets the criteria, it can launch a flow 
• Platform event-triggered flows: When an event message is received, it triggers this flow to run in the background.

All of these work together to produce a host of benefits both to admins and the organizations they run Salesforce instances for:

• Time-consuming and repetitive tasks that eat at admin time are a thing of the past.
• There is much less need to spend resources on specialist developers as so much can be done in this declarative application without coding expertise.
• You can automate data storage management by setting triggers to delete batches of “old” customer data that are no longer relevant.
• The overall ROI increases as you can easily create, edit, delete records, send emails, get input from users, and generate outbound messages.

Sounds awesome, right?

For many admins and organizations, however, there’s just one little catch…

Related: Unlock the full value of your tech stack

What about my existing automation?

As Process Builder / Workflow Rules functionality has been around for a few years now, it’s likely that you’ve built up quite the pile of workflow rules that you depend upon every single day for making your Salesforce run properly. The steady approach of 2023 and the sunsetting of these functions might be anxiety-inducing, but there’s no need to worry.

First, Salesforce has excellent documentation to prepare you for everything you need to know.

It also walks you through using their Migrate to Flow tool within your Salesforce instance. This is your first stop on the Modern Salesforce Express. While it doesn’t auto-convert processes – yet – that functionality is coming soon.

In the meantime, it might be a good idea to circle back around to your earliest automation and see if it’s worth keeping in its current form. Remember that Process Builder was always limited to one object that you started with. Once you have the triggering object, you can only use child objects in relation to the current object, and actions are evaluated strictly in the order in which they appear in Process Builder.

In short, complex actions were never on the table, so it’s worth auditing your existing processes to see if they are better off rebuilt as a complex automation that encompasses multiple elements and can be refined for years to come.

Yes, you can still edit and activate existing workflow rules and processes for the foreseeable future, but the inability to create net new ones will only become more inefficient and limiting to your organization with each passing month. Get ahead of the deadline!

Today is a great day to start building new automation in Flow, but if you’d like a little extra support – or even just a resource to collaborate and share ideas with – we have dialed-in Salesforce Sales Cloud experts who’d love to talk!

The post Why Salesforce Flow is a Critical Step Forward appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Given the ever-increasing thousands of options that claim to answer your marketing challenges, is it realistic to think that any one article will know the exact configuration of tools that are ideal for your organization’s personnel, budget, and customer base?

Of course not.

Any effective guide will suggest that you begin with an assessment or audit of what you have on hand, then maybe consult an expert or two. Honestly, I wouldn’t be too upset if you stopped right at one of those two steps in terms of your journey to a stronger tech stack.

It is worth noting, however, there’s another facet to making your martech stack optimal that a lot of organizations overlook, and it may be one of the most important to consider…

Pillars of Support

Let’s back up a sec and make sure we’re operating from a common frame of reference. When it comes to the architecture of your martech apparatus, what are the distinct areas that must work in concert with each other? I think you’d get most CMOs and the leaders working below them to cite the technology and relevant data off the top of their heads.

If you gave them another few seconds, they might snap their fingers and exclaim “Oh, yeah…can’t forget about the people/personnel!”.  All three of those are quite relevant, indeed.

There’s a fourth pillar, if you will, that matters just as much if not more than the other three: Process.

It’s so obvious, in fact, that marketing leaders often overlook it as a source of immense potential when it comes to transforming and optimizing your tech stack. The fact is, however, the quality of processes that surround the other three “pillars” largely determines their success.

Again, there’s no magic bullet prescription for processes that work across every organization. There are, however, a ton of best practices to help inform your approach. It simply depends on which “typical” martech stack-related objectives you’re specifically trying to achieve. Once you have clarity on what those are, you are ready to act upon the best practices we’ll cover in this article.

Take the Lead

We’ve already defined data as a critical pillar of this process. Organizations – even those relatively in the same tier of impact and revenue – have wildly varying levels of maturity when it comes to truly analyzing their customer data in real-time and letting it inform a customer-centric outlook.

There’s little data of more importance to sales and marketing organizations, however, than leads. Lead generation, as a concept, may not be as popular (or effective) as it once was thought to be, but lead management and how it integrates with your CRM is critical to the success of your sales and marketing teams’ efforts to drive revenue.

We’ve done a super in-depth dive on successful lead management, and you should definitely read it from top to bottom. But before you do that, be sure that you’ve asked and answered essential lead management questions lately such as:

• Have you defined your lead sources and thresholds?
• Are you revising these definitions as market headwinds dictate?
• What level of activity qualifies as a lead?

Knowing where your leads come from, how you categorize them, and how you want to handle your data should inform what lead management tools and processes you use….not the other way around. Even if you have tools already in place, it’s not too late to consider if they’re serving you best in this capacity.

This extends to CRM integration as well. Odds are you already have a host of complimentary intent data, chatbot, and data enrichment solutions meant to flow together seamlessly with your CRM. The reality is that the integration of these are negatively impacted by messy, inefficient processes.

That, in turn, impacts the potency of your ABX, ROI on your tech stack, and overall pipeline.

Think of it this way: Highly-regarded homes are always described as “well-built”. The tools the builder used to construct it aren’t described at all.

Take the time to get these processes right.

The Customer is Always….

…Evolving! Thus, having a tech stack that automates and manages your relationship is must-have.

Whether it’s customer data management (CDM), customer relationship management (CRM), customer intelligence platforms (CIP), or a customer experience platform (CXP) that encompasses them all and more, there are no shortage of tools to shape the way you engage customers.

The tools, however, are just one part of the puzzle. Your customer engagement process must be defined not just by your strategy, but also your resources available to support said strategy.

You’re going to have access to a considerable amount of customer data, but can your customers trust you to use it safely and responsibly? A customer-centric approach would ensure that your data is primarily used for personalization. This would allow you to drive repeat business, brand loyalty/advocacy, and provide relevant market research with a ton of value.

What does that look like, however, in terms of a strategy? Again, we have to remember to ask the right questions as early as possible:

• Is your sales team reliant on automation and AI insights, or are they motivated by personal relationships and institutional knowledge?
• Do you have the right personnel to conduct proper data analysis and glean actionable insights?
• And now for the $1 million question: How mature is your organization when it comes to ABX (account-based experience)?

No surprise here, but we have a guide to help you with that too.

All About ABX

The point is, there are a rather large number of vendors who would like to help your company improve its account data, identify unknown prospects, predict intent to buy, automate targeted advertising, and more – even if you think you’re already supporting ABX/ABM.

The best process for most organizations is to opt for the phased approach. Start by intentionally building out your ICPs (ideal customer profiles) and updating the buying center personas within those ICPs. That informs the customer journey, and it allows you to craft touchpoints and content for each step of that journey.

This prepares you to work in more advanced ABX concepts like predictive analytics, attribution tools, and advertising automation software. You may already have some of these tools, but think about how integrated they are (or aren’t). Consider that your sales and marketing teams are using them completely differently as well, and you’ll need to align these groups to get max value from the tech stack already in use.

Putting it all Together

When it comes to marketing, it’s important to define your processes and make sure that you are using the most effective tools for gathering lead data and managing lead generation. This means employing a variety of techniques like lead management software, data collection tools, and automated lead scoring to make sure you are delivering relevant, high-quality leads to your sales team.

In addition, incorporating strategies like account-based marketing can help you reach the right decision-makers more quickly so that your leads don’t get lost in the shuffle or get turned off by irrelevant messaging. By taking the time to carefully assess your marketing processes and utilizing the best tools available, you can ensure that your lead generation efforts are both effective and efficient.

To start, it’s important to assess your marketing goals.

• What do you want to achieve with your marketing tactics?
• Is improved brand recognition or more website traffic more important?
• Do you need help attracting new customers or retaining existing ones?

The right marketing tools will be based on these goals and what stage you’re at in your marketing journey.

Next, think about which integrations are essential to support your marketing efforts. Do you work with other businesses that would benefit from one centralized system? Considering all possible integrations will help ensure that any technology platform you select provides the support you need.

Ultimately, this planning informs your processes, and it makes or breaks your tech stack implementation.

Of course, if that still seems overwhelming for your organization… our tech stack services are one of our most popular for a reason. We’re happy to chat and help you get this right!

The post The Secret Ingredient to Supercharging Your Tech Stack appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

In the game, someone names a thing, such as “pineapple on pizza!” and everyone else says if they love it or hate it. No in-between, no waffling … you have to go with your gut reaction. (Yes, there’s also a board game version, for those who know!)

Eloqua typically inspires similar strong reactions from marketing operations folks.

Despite its reputation, I’m here to tell you something as one of TPG’s resident Eloqua experts: This platform has an exciting future – and it’s still underrated as a marketing automation platform (MAP).

Why?

Click here to jump to a particular topic: Best customization | Four advantages | How to get more

Or, start with its reputation in the marketplace:

Eloqua’s lackluster reputation? Not accurate!

Oracle did this to themselves, to be fair.  Expectations were high when they bought Eloqua in 2012 for $871 million, but their investments slowed significantly as the decade wore on. The platform developed a reputation as something that wasn’t going to be updated.

Since 2020, they’ve really picked things up and have put a lot of work into the tool, including a Salesforce integration app that is far superior to the old way. That took significant development!

And it continues to this day. One advancement is Advanced Intelligence (no fluke it’s abbreviated “AI”) that might be comparable to Salesforce’s Einstein capabilities.

This is a real effort to help marketers be better marketers with predictable capabilities such as “will this subject line be successful?” or send time optimization.

Another is Eloqua’s focus on account-based marketing. A lot of other tools don’t allow you to look at the engagement of all the contacts within an account and present that as a score at the account level. It’s usually at the lead or contact level.

All this points to one fact: they’re planning on keeping Eloqua in the conversation as an industry leader for enterprise-level marketing automation.

Eloqua gives the best customization

The sheer amount of capabilities this platform offers well-resourced marketing teams is a major selling point, but as with all technology, this can be a blessing or a curse.

Blessing: There may not be a better MAP in the market for adapting to a business need.

Curse: Realizing that potential can be cumbersome without the right talent / consulting agency backing your team’s continued development.

This is why it’s a platform that truly embraces the term “enterprise-grade” and really isn’t for smaller companies. Proper investment can unlock so much within the tool, but you’ll need the resources in place to truly realize the value and make sure it’s set up the way your particular company needs it.

Four reasons I enjoy Eloqua:

These are speaking from personal experience, but these are some of the reasons why a company might consider this platform vs. other strong options on the market.

And as a shameless plug: We here at The Pedowitz Group work with all of them – and we’re platform-agnostic, so we’re never beholden to just one tool. I love that I can recommend for or against a platform based on what’s best for the client!

Now, why I think Eloqua has some advantages:

Custom data objects

In other platforms, they may either not have custom data objections as an option… or it’s quite difficult to write to them or add / remove data. In these cases, you often need an API to access the custom data.

With Eloqua, it’s just like another database table and can stuff your information in there for use in places such as dynamic content or with different custom integrations you may have in place.

Multiple CRMs? No problem!

Say you’re in a global enterprise with multiple instances of a CRM (often, we’re talking about Salesforce, though not always). I’ve worked with a client who has four.

Yes, you can integrate all of those instances into a single instance of Eloqua.

You can’t do that with any other marketing automation platform (at the time of the writing)!

This is one of those features that really cements the platform as enterprise-grade because it’s not uncommon to see different / multiple CRMs across business units and regions.

Having a MAP that meets all of the business’ requirements across these units / regions can be quite difficult to achieve, but it is massively impactful!

Far simpler than you’d think

Marketers tend to think of Eloqua as this behemoth of a tool sometimes. But there are email, landing page, and form tools that are quite easy to use.

One of the selling points other platforms offer is their ease of integration, but to be candid, integration is only ever a small piece of how you’d use any MAP. Your campaigns, underlying processes, data flows, and customer-facing content are all what you’ll spend far more time with!

Something I believe applies to most tech in your stack: You can always pay people to do the hard parts (like an integration or platform upgrade) … but it’s most important the day-to-day use is as easy as possible.

Marketers aren’t necessarily engineers, and they shouldn’t have to be.

Eloqua is up there in terms of ease of use!

Drag and Drop + Flexibility

Any modern tool makes it easy to get things done, right? Eloqua does that with its upgraded E10 interface and drag-and-drop functionality and flexibility within a given program.

I’ll let colleague Ann Cloutier take it from here:

“Many other platforms aren’t smooth in this operation, which really matters if you’re a power user who’s building and optimizing on a regular basis.

In addition, having worked with many of those said platforms, what really jumps out at me is how many options I have within a given campaign. I can easily (and quickly) trigger the integration to the CRM, remove from a campaign, insert a wait step, or alter a user’s progression onward.

This may sound simple, but it’s not in some other common tools.”

Privacy

I’ve noticed industries such as healthcare and financial services can often have higher rates of Eloqua adoption, and I think one of the reasons why is because this platform might be better than any other at preference management and privacy.

It can be something that falls to the back of the to-do list (and stays there), but for any global organization that’s serious about it, there are advanced GDPR capabilities. It’ss just a matter of bringing them to life for your customers!

Yep, we’re Eloqua experts (and more)

One of the things I love about The Pedowitz Group is we’re a partner with many of the major platforms – Eloqua included. But we’re not forced to sell a particular platform, because we’re platform-agnostic and my job as a consultant is to always do what’s best for the client.

Oracle is continuing to invest, and the platform continues to rival or outperform other enterprise-grade MAPs (marketing automation platforms) available on the market. But like any piece of your tech stack, it’s up to you on driving its full potential and value for the company.

We’ve worked with the tool since 2012 and continue optimizing it for leading clients today.

And our team of Eloqua experts (yes, including me!) is ready to help.

Want to keep reading? Try our getting started guide and data cleanup how-to.

The post Eloqua is more alive than ever before appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

“Listen, we have all of these marketing tech platforms and tools we’re paying for. Honestly, we’re probably spending a whole bunch of money that we shouldn’t be spending. We’ve got stuff everywhere. I don’t even know who uses this, or who owns that.

Let’s do a comprehensive inventory exercise and see if we’re actually using this stuff. If not, just get rid of it!”

At The Pedowitz Group, we’re not immune to this either. Due diligence is always done around budgeting time, and we don’t want to waste precious budget allotments any more than your organization’s marketing leaders do. The fact is, CMOs are still spending a full quarter of their budgets just on technology.

I realized some time ago, however, that there’s sometimes a fallacy in that line of thinking: Products that might seem redundant or unnecessary are often just underutilized.

That means your tech stack – the same one that you’re agonizing over and under orders to trim by any means necessary – probably has some hidden value that you just haven’t realized.

We should probably talk about that.

Related: tech stack audit questions you should be asking right now

The Redundancy Fallacy

A perfect example of this involves a client we worked with not too long ago. They wanted us to help them audit their tech stack to see what was “needed” and “not needed”.

In this case, the client was using two different survey platform tools. The conventional thinking was “Why have both? One is used for external NPS (net promoter score) surveys and the other for more internal and anonymous surveys. Surely, we wouldn’t want to mix and match the data, right?”

Well…..not exactly. Upon further examination, we realized that a lot of their data confusion was because the implementation of one survey tool wasn’t integrated with their existing MAP systems. They also didn’t have a clear vision for what they wanted to do with surveys in the first place.

In short, they were focused on solutions rather than capabilities, and this is an area that a lot of companies struggle with.

Don’t sleep on features

Another client had two similar social media platforms, but both were being used in very different capacities.

• One provided robust customer data via “social listening”.
• The other was a comprehensive posting tool with good “per post” metrics.

The client wanted to scrap one of the platforms to save roughly $10,000 in annual license fees.

That’s the immediate obvious benefit, but upon further examination, we helped determine they could yield an additional $50,000-$100,000 in revenue if both tools were implemented correctly and worked with each other efficiently.  

Just like many cars are now sold with stickers that identify total cost of ownership (which factors in gas, maintenance, etc.), companies looking to audit their tech stack must look beyond the upfront price of a platform when determining value.

Even more importantly, clients purchase tech and they don’t necessarily keep up with the features or other add-ons that a vendor includes in the platform or service. Salesforce is a great example of this as they are constantly releasing new features and functionality. Understanding that a feature exists and then developing the strategy to best utilize that feature can give a customer an immediate boost in the ROI of that platform or service.

Related: Assess your tech stack right now – it’s ungated, too!

Data Collection and Integration

The inability of a platform to deliver maximum results may be a product of how it was implemented and integrated into existing technology. Improving data quality and availability may drastically increase the functionality and better leverage the features already available in a platform. Data quality and availability drastically impact most tools that have a workflow or reporting feature.

It may be a drastic example, but imagine having a robust MAP with orchestration capabilities that is not integrated at all with your CRM. 

How will it know what is going on to make the most accurate decisions on how to engage with customers?

Everyone gets this for the MAP and CRM situation but I have often seen clients that have only a small subset of data in their data warehouse and then very limited fields exposed to their BI (business intelligence) or data visualization platform. That is certainly not setting up your data tools for success.

We see this often when it comes to organizational structure getting in the way of getting the most out of tools. Different teams have different visions for the tool. In a typical use case, the sales team wants to be able to sell, quote and track better – all while building more opportunities. The marketing team is focused on leads, engagement, and attribution of their efforts against revenue.

Once you look at the organization as a whole, however, the cracks in integration begin to show. Now, we see emails siloed in Salesforce or Marketo that only one team has visibility into. Why don’t customer success teams have integration with both sales and marketing? Why aren’t emails, NPS surveys, etc. properly being triggered with the appropriate action across these teams?

The answer in most cases is that these organizations don’t know how much they don’t know. A lot of platform “fails” are simply failures to understand how best to utilize and integrate the tech in an efficient and cross-functional way.

Instead, many organizations are a loose collection of individual business units operating as separate entities within that particular enterprise. This leads to the enterprise questioning why they’re spending so much on so many different platforms, leading to a culling and forced adoption of a single solution that isn’t ideal for the disparate needs of sales, marketing, and customer success.

That means just one thing: trading short-term cost savings for long-term pain of inefficiency, support resources, and operational friction – all of which usually cost more than an annual platform license fee.

It takes a village

Technology rarely runs itself and requires no maintenance. The responsibility to evaluate and maintain platforms is critical for ensuring they continue to deliver value. Simply making it someone’s job to “own and manage” a platform and ensuring they are properly trained may make a huge difference in how well that platform can satisfy critical business needs.

These are only a few very specific examples but a more complete audit of a platform or the entire architecture uncovers various other scenarios that inhibit the functionality of platforms and the value perceived from having that technology as part of their stack.

We have an entire evaluation method for understanding what technology aligns with the business goals and capabilities to support those goals to find the opportunities for improving the usage of existing technology and for making the best selection of new platforms or services to augment the stack.

Interested? Our marketing technology consulting services may be of interest!

The post Hiding in Plain Sight: Discovering New Value From Your Tech Stack appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

For marketers, this is an especially acute issue as organizations often look to cull headcount from all teams outside of their revenue-producing stalwarts. We know all too well the struggle to prove to leadership that we not only deserve a seat at the revenue table, but also a hand on the wheel to steer the direction of the company.

What if, however, the framing of this phenomenon is all wrong, and the challenges facing marketing talent are just opportunities to remake your corporate culture to better position your organization and your marketing teams for success?

What if this is the ideal point to evaluate your team culture and what it means for current and prospective marketing talent?

The Roadblocks of the Traditional Marketing Organization

In a recent large-scale discussion executed in partnership with Adobe, some eye-opening insights came from the marketing talent participants speaking to the shifting landscape they deal with:

• Only 33% of participants in this discussion believed they have the right skills or roles needed for marketing to make a revenue difference. Put another way, a full two-thirds of marketing talent simply believes they’re not set up to succeed to making a measurable and attributable impact on the bottom line.

• To speak to that concern with even more detail, we learned that 71% of CMOs now have a quota and are assigned some level of revenue accountability. 63% of the marketers surveyed say they are under high pressure to deliver growth, yet only 53% are moderate confident or worse that they’ll meet these targets.

• The pandemic-driven shift to digital and event experiences were identified as primary reasons why companies cannot hire and train employees fast enough. Despite the landscape being digital-first or digital-only for years now, organizations are still playing catch-up when it comes to adapting the employee experience.

• “Team culture” is largely perceived as stale due to two fundamental shifts in the market: 1) Marketing is expected to directly contribute to growth and revenue, instead of the traditional metrics of brand and mindshare.  2) Customer expectations have changed in this new digital-first/only world.

Is it any wonder that so much churn and uncertainty is rampant in the modern marketing world?

Enter Gen Z

If you’re still laying these seismic shifts at the feet of those pesky “millennials”, it’s time to freshen up your references. It’s Gen Z (born 1997 or later) and their preferences that are driving the remote-first and digital-first landscape where hitting growth and revenue targets is far from a sure thing.

By 2025, they’ll comprise 27% of the worldwide workforce. By 2030, that number will grow to 33%. The priorities of this group differ greatly from their predecessors, naturally. In a recent Yahoo survey, 42% make work-life balance, remote flexibility and flexible vacation time their main priorities when looking for a job.

Another recent Gen Z survey indicated that a whopping 80% of participants wanted mental health days at work – an understandable consequence of the previously-referenced pressure to deliver concrete results. But we’re not talking a monolithic, mindless group of slackers that are begging for more breaks. They have a fundamentally modern and streamlined view of what a marketing organization culture should look like.

In the Adobe/Pedowitz Group discussion, ideas included:

• Blocking out a couple of hours each day for brainstorming and team problem-solving workshops. Even in a culture increasingly favoring remote work, Gen Z marketing talent highly values collaboration and mutual investment in achieving goals.
• Minimizing asynchronous communication such as direct messaging apps like Teams and Slack, as this style of communication can often be disruptive and inefficient. Additionally, emails should be dealt with in dedicated blocks rather than stopping current workflow to address them.
• Meeting-heavy organizations should implement 20 or 45-minute meeting times (replacing the 30 minute or 1 hour meeting, respectively) to give space to absorb a meeting along with time to transition to the next.
• Giving leadership two options to requests to manage expectations: 1) This is what the team can do with resources on-hand or 2) This is what they can do if they had a larger headcount.

Even as organizations scramble to figure out how to adapt smart, productive workplace tweaks like these, they face one final sobering statistic: According to a recent LinkedIn survey, 25% of Gen Z respondents hoped or planned to leave their employers within the next six months.

Gulp.

Missing Links

Now that you have a good idea of what younger marketing talent truly wants, let’s talk about how to best set the team as a whole up to succeed in this constantly-shifting landscape. For modern marketing orgs, there are key needs that must be addressed across the range of roles/positions on the team:

• Customer centricity – The perspective for all strategic and tactical decisions should be centered upon the best interests of your customers.

• Data analysis – Your organization can buy the most expensive analytics tech stacks in the world, but if someone doesn’t know how to clean it up, analyze and create actionable insights, it won’t do any good.

• Agility – Whether it’s an Agile work environment or another methodology, you have to identify the best cadences for your team because things move so quickly.

• Technology-savvy – It may sound rudimentary, but as revenue and marketing tech tools evolve quickly, so to must the training and re-training of your talent to allow them to fully leverage these platforms.

• Obsessed over online/digital behavior – Marketing receives tons of data in any given multichannel distribution of content and engagement. to sift through. Being able to understand how that all works together, then being able to tweak that as close to real time as possible is a critical skill for the fast-moving environment of today.

Speaking of data, we’ve given you a lot to consider as you consider the challenges of attracting, retaining and engaging modern marketing talent in the face of “The Great Resignation”. It may seem overwhelming when trying to apply this to your current talent and company culture.

To that end, we’re here to talk you through whatever roadblocks you face. In fact, we’re offering a free 30-minute strategy (not sales) call with one of our digital strategists who know what it takes to make this work for your organization. Let’s do this together.

The post Modernize Your Marketing Structures to Nurture Growth appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

In a humbling example, we took a look at our own tech stack recently and noticed that a segment of the records in our current database weren’t viable. We’d been wasting money for unnecessary capacity and the opportunity to maintain those records … only to find out they were actually costing us money instead of helping to drive revenue!

A long overdue audit of a key piece of revenue technology, or RevTech, revealed what was likely the biggest difference maker we could make when it came to ROI on our tech spend and impact to pipeline.

When was the last time you audited your tech stack? Not just marketing and sales, but all that relates to these systems.

Take it a step further: When was the time before that? (Do you regularly check your entire stack?)

If you cocked an eyebrow or tilted your head sideways slightly, this blog is for you. Let’s dig into a handful of questions you can start asking today to uncover potential wasted budget, critical data gaps, or ways to strengthen your teams.

But first…

Why this matters: Revenue impact

In our RevOps report conducted with Ascend2, we found that only 13% of respondents said technology optimization at their company was “excellent.”

How’s this impact revenue, you ask?

1. 25% of those surveyed said missing / inadequate tech is a top challenge to improving their customers’ experience
2. Nearly 1/3 cited this is a key need for better communication between teams – and creating a unified view of the customer
3. We saw a 3x response rate of “excellent” for companies in growth mode

In other research by Ascend2 and Anteriad, they found 61% of marketers said their tech stack was “too complex.”

In short, if you want to provide a better customer experience, understand them better, and drive stronger cross-functional collaboration …

…then you need to curate your tech stack!

Related: Get a quick-hitting audit of yours … right now.

Question 1: What value are we getting?

This is different than identifying and measuring a given technology’s ROI. Quite simply, is the system successfully serving the purpose you got it for?

You’d be amazed at how often the answer is “no.” But the reasons for this can be many, ranging from new org structures to a company buying the right tech for the right problem, but not having it implemented properly.

We see it all the time with our clients, who keep adding and doing more and more, but finally realize they’re overwhelmed with platforms to manage – with many of those platforms not doing everything they could be (even if they were bought for the right reason).

One way to begin categorizing

Start by identifying every platform you have, and place each into one of the following uses:

• Improve Customer Centricity
• Support Revenue Growth
• Enable Operational Excellence

Only select one per platform. If you’re unsure, go with your gut or take a team vote. This can be useful in seeing where a gap in your stack may be, or where you might have too much bloat.

For example, perhaps you have a technology that automates some critical reporting for the team, saving them dozens of hours since they don’t have to engage in manual reporting. That’s enabling operational excellence.

But if you have two tools used by different parts of the business that do this same function, perhaps you’ve identified a redundancy, which means – drumroll, please – potential cost savings! We actually go deeper in our audits with multiple sub-categories, but this is a great starting point.

Are you actually using all it has to offer?

Too often, this is an emphatic “no!” But if you’re paying for the tool, shouldn’t you be using everything you can?

Often in audits, we find it’s not a matter of desire, but either a lack of understanding of all that’s fully available or a combination of lack of time + competing priorities that prevent teams from maximizing their tech use.

If you’re unsure about how you’re using your tech, you’re not alone – it’s actually quite common! Engaging with an independent expert can provide a roadmap to getting these answers and identifying potential wins – without making any major changes.

Additionally, it can stop wasteful spending on new platforms when you have paid-for tech that offers the same capabilities you’re seeking to fulfill elsewhere. Remember that an investment in comprehensive training on key tools can pay dividends many times over.

How would we measure ROI?

For some tech, it will be difficult to show data-driven ROI. A great example could be a data warehouse, or even your CRM!

It’s hard to say how a CRM contributed dollars to revenue, but what we focus on in our audits is if this tech is doing its intended job to the best of its ability. Also: Could we be getting more from it in other areas of the business?

In the case of a data warehouse, you may need to centralize data for a multitude of reasons and so it enables some operational excellence – even if the tie to revenue is difficult to express.

Question 2: Who uses it?

Just because you’re paying for seven seats doesn’t mean seven people are using the tool.

What’s the true level of adoption in your company – and what are gaps that are leaving gains on the table?

For teams that work together: Are they using the same tools, or are disparate systems operating in a siloed environment?

Even if a tool itself is vital, you may be paying for access that isn’t needed (such as too many seats / licenses), or it may be misused in parts of the business.

Question 3: What’s on the market now?

Considering everything you do on a day-to-day basis, it’s easy to miss the market’s evolution. Sometimes, there really is a better alternative to what you’re using that was released fairly recently.

• Conversational marketing?
• Intent data?
• Automated outreach?
• Sales enablement?
• Scheduling software?

The list goes on and on. There’s more options now than there has ever been – it’s a buyer’s market, so glancing at options my end up saving you budget.

Question 4: How is it currently integrated with our stack?

There are two ways to approach this, and both are important.

The first is looking at data. How does data flow between a particular system or become enhanced / changed when it passes into others?

For example, does your intent data platform provide an input into lead scores, or does your conversational marketing platform actively enhance lead records when data is matched?

The second is process. How do key processes funnel through a given piece of technology? How vital is that touchpoint?

A common one is lead management, which can touch MAP and CRM but also pull in from data enrichment providers, intent data, etc.

One caveat:

Not all tech modifies data, but it can impact different processes. For example, a tool like Slack or MS Teams can serve its primary purpose without any other integrations – others in your stack (like an audience research tool) could be the same.

Can you improve this, and what would that cost?

We see countless examples of poorly-integrated technology hindering teams from doing all they can to move the revenue needle. And it’s not just MAPs and CRMs, though those are still common (believe it or not) – it’s anything from data providers to analytics that need a once-over to fully enable them.

But since you may not be using the full gamut of available options, it’s fair to ask: If you fully optimize, will you (or other teams) actually use it?

And what will the cost be to realize those gains?

Understanding these gaps (and what’s worth investing in) is key to determining just how valuable a piece of technology is to your business.

Question 5: What would happen to the customer experience if we got rid of this?

Perhaps the most customer-centric question you can ask!

Think about it: If you’re a prospect or customer and this technology was gone tomorrow, how would they be impacted?

And as a follow-up … how easily could you fill any gaps this tech leaves in the person’s experience?

For example, let’s say you use a chatbot on your site. What would happen if you got rid of it?

Potentially nothing. Or – based on your analytics – potentially a lot of great customer service that leads to happier customers (and thus, higher retention).

But also, how would the organization be impacted?

Remember those categories at the beginning?

• Improve Customer Centricity
• Support Revenue Growth
• Enable Operational Excellence

Those last two can be impacted by streamlined internal processes, less tech strain, etc. Even if the customer won’t see the impact of a piece of tech being removed, would this make it harder (or easier) for your teams to be able to serve that customer?

One example: Project management tools. Customers won’t interface with it, but your teams may be far more organized and better aligned from using it!

How do we want our CX to evolve?

This is a core question we ask clients when auditing.

A client may want to be more personalized in communications. As a result, we’ll need to centralize data to make informed decisions, likely add a predictive platform or rules engine, and then integrate data into the various systems already in place.”

The natural follow-up leads to questions about what the right tech may be and if you have that in place.

Since an architecture / tech stack is part of multiple pillars (People, Process, Tech, Strategy), then a deficiency is any one of those prevents the full value being realized. This means that sure, the tech isn’t providing its maximum value, but the tech itself isn’t to blame and could in fact provide more value with other improvements in the business.

Question 6: How easily could we replace it?

Typically, if the tech is providing value, is easy to use, and provides an absolute must for either the customer or the team, you aren’t asking this question.

You should anyway, even if only as a beneficial thought exercise.

Don’t get me wrong: The cost associated with the time, resources, and headaches of migrating onto a new platform can be significant.

But too often, we see teams overestimate that cost. Unless you’re overhauling a core system such as a CRM, the pain may be far less than you anticipate (it’s also a great topic to ask a competing vendor).

Even if you don’t have the appetite (or resources!) for a change right now, it’s still worth asking the question and identifying what your particular pains might be. It’s possible that what you discover will be invaluable, even if it’s in a future fiscal year.

The great part? This is a Friday afternoon, my-brain-is-fried type of activity. Just type in “platform x competitors” and see what pops up on sites like G2 Crowd, TrustRadius, etc.

Question 7: What’s the opportunity cost of keeping this technology?

Every leader is working within a set of constraints: budget, people, etc.

If you discover something in your tech stack may not be providing the value you’re hoping, run with that thought a step further:

If you get rid of the tech, what could you do with that money?

For example, let’s say your team piloted ABM. It didn’t move the needle, maybe because you didn’t have the sales and marketing alignment needed (or you never read this handy primer, but I digress).

Could you ditch your intent data platform? Could you replace a couple of functionalities with something far cheaper?

This is just one example, but you can imagine the potential cost savings if 2-4 technologies are identified as more replaceable than you once realized!

What to do right now

If it’s been awhile, you’re overdue to start your tech stack audit! Here’s a few suggestions:

• Gather a spreadsheet together collating what technologies are used, their cost, renewal dates, who uses them, and what they’re integrated with
• Once finished, grab time with key stakeholders to review each technology. It may be a long meeting, so prep attendees accordingly (or schedule 1-on-1s with them to go through the document)
• Keep this question front-and-center: What changes can we make that are best for our customer?

Need a helping hand? Try our technology consulting services!

The post 7 Critical Questions To Ask When Auditing Your Tech Stack appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

I want to not only tell you why, but also how consulting itself continues to evolve because of how buyers just like you have evolved in your expectations (which is why we’ve made this acquisition).

And make sure to learn more about our creative agency services capabilities while you’re here!

How buying has evolved 

People buy when they’re going to buy, and there’s far less you can do about it than you used to. 

That’s been well-established by research from Gartner and Deloitte and by nearly any salesperson in today’s market.

But, how has that changed?  

Yes, customers will do research on their own time, in their own way, with sources you may never know of (#DarkFunnel, anyone?). A Slack chat, a closed community, a Reddit thread, an in-person meet-up, a WhatsApp thread … the list goes on. But that’s only one piece of this puzzle.  

There’s also a timing component as more companies move to a center of excellence model that better incorporates feedback from cross-functional departments. For example, IT, customer success, and finance have great input into sales and marketing decisions! 

And that means it takes longer for many B2B buyers to get to the finish line, even as they have more of the information in their hands before you ever know they’re interested. 

And finally, we’ve lived in an economy of convenience for quite some time. The easier something is, the more likely it is to lead to a positive outcome.

This is true for anything from online purchases to website load times, how easy it is to park at a restaurant to selecting the next Youtube video you’re watching. 

A few other trends worth briefly mentioning: 

1. Privacy. Sure, I may be researching you, but I don’t necessarily want you to know it. 

2. Skepticism. More information than ever means a need for a stronger information filter than ever, and savvy users know this. 

3. Engagement. People want to be entertained while they research. Make them laugh, inspire wonder, or provide that “ah-ha!” moment and you’ve jumped to the front of the consideration line. 

4. Research habits. We trust peers and people with similar sensibilities more than we trust online reviews and algorithms. It’s why the “TikTok generation” is looking on TikTok before Google for answers or recommendations, and why we turn to Slack channels as final confirmations before actually filling out a contact us form. 

All of this has setup something interesting that’s highlighted by two market inefficiencies we see in our consulting world: 

How the market has failed 

Buyers continue to be disappointed in many ways, but in this context I want to talk about two ways in the B2B sales, marketing, and RevOps spaces. 

The first is from the over-proliferation of tech. 

If you’ve seen the Scott Brinker supergraphic or perhaps G2 Crowd’s take on the landscape, it’s a massive amount of offerings. Even as economic pressures and M&As have their effect and will force some innovation / contraction of the market, it’s still too much. 

There’s a lot of tech promising a lot of things that simply aren’t going to fix core issues many companies have. For example, an intent data platform won’t better enable sales / marketing to understand and align around an ideal customer – yet this continues to destroy many ABM initiatives, even in leading companies.

The second is fragmentation. 

Think of your typical responsibilities. How many platforms, websites, processes …. things … are you engaged with on a daily basis? 

How does that change over the course of a month? A quarter? Or since 6 months ago? 

Every day is an onslaught of competition for our limited brain power, time, and energy. And we all have things outside of work that we focus on and may be more meaningful, from family, church, community, hobbies, and more.

And yet. 

How many times have we tried an all-in-one solution, only to see why specialization can be so attractive? 

• An SEO agency may offer PPC services, but may only be adequate instead of best-in-class because they aren’t as devoted to PPC’s intricacies. 
• A RevOps consultant may understand some aspects of account-based marketing, but may not have the sales-side or tech-side expertise to fully enable the program 
• A high-level consultant may be able to talk strategy all day, but then once they’ve left the client a PPT roadmap, they’re done – no need to get into the nitty-gritty of driving that change  

There’s a struggle between convenience / time vs. expertise at play for companies. 

But buyers demand (rightfully so) both, and nothing less is acceptable when we can order food to be delivered with just a few taps on our phone, much less move money between banks or connect with a doctor. 

How does this relate to our big announcement, you ask? 

How TPG is meeting this evolution 

This acquisition of BizMark means we now offer a full suite of creative services in addition to the ways we work – such as staff augmentation, ongoing managed services, and transformative initiatives that span entire enterprises. If you’ve met Ed Gillespie or any of his team, you know how good they are and why they command such respect across the industry. 

If you haven’t, you have truly missed out, and I recommend learning more about this amazing team!

In short, we now offer a much broader scope of services than we previously did, all under one (remote) roof. 

But every team, including BizMark, is specialized in what they do and understands more than the average user. It’s why companies have chosen us since 2007 and why we’ve been able to drive well over $25 Billion in realized revenue for them.

Our technology teams, our strategists, our people who can drive broad change or dig into the tiniest of technical details – all of them have proven they can drive business outcomes that positively impact the bottom line. 

Strategy + execution + proven results = convenience + excellence. 

And that’s why we are growing, because our clients demand greater convenience with no interruption of service, strategic, and tactical excellence – and Bizmark is the perfect partner who shares these ideals. 

Have questions? Want to know more? Curious about how we can help you? Here is the best way to get in touch, but I try to stay on top of my LinkedIn inbox as well and welcome your conversations. 

Thanks for reading, and a special thank you to our clients who continue to trust us with their business. We can’t wait to provide even more value!

The post Why we acquired BizMark CT, LLC (hint: consulting is evolving) appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

So, what is the big deal about Revenue Operations and why does it make such a difference?

Related: Truly embracing revenue operations

It all boils down to 5 key areas:

Alignment

The first key is the most important to understanding the very concept of RevOps, and that’s alignment. Simply put, Revenue Operations must involve the strategic alignment of an organization’s sales, marketing and customer success functions operating in lockstep with a customer-centric focus to collectively produce repeatable revenue. If that sounds too jargon-y, you could boil it down to an even shorter five-word phrase:

Revenue is now a team sport.

It’s simply too important to only leave responsibility to it up to a sales team that is likely not your first point of contact with customers. Similarly, revenue goals are too important to put the responsibility solely in the hands of a marketing team that’s not involved with closing deals. It’s also too big for customer success or customer experience experts in your organization to manage.

Each of these functions has distinct touchpoints and perspectives of your customers. Left to their own devices, these “moneymaking” teams will ultimately work harder, not smarter. It’s unavoidable when you consider the inefficiencies of different customer personas, different processes and the challenges of proper revenue attribution.

This seems like an obvious point, and yet in a recent survey of large enterprises, (links to report landing page) only 29% have fully aligned their sales, marketing and customer experience teams. Promisingly, 69% are working toward full alignment, but they simply aren’t there yet.

But why does that matter? Because respondents overwhelmingly indicated that misalignment between these teams led to missed opportunities for revenue (55%), wasted time (59%) and poor customer experience (59%).

These are very real consequences that many enterprises are suffering through as they try to hit increasingly ambitious revenue goals with limited resources and personnel to get it done.

Sound familiar?

Related: We help with this through our RevOps consulting services

Maximizing opportunities with data-driven decisions

Most of these teams individually would likely consider themselves as “data-driven”. They all have access to dashboards for their automation and reporting tools. Each has KPIs they are responsible for meeting or exceedingly on a yearly or quarterly basis. Yet, many times these teams are unaware of each other’s datasets, unaware of operational data from the perspective of finance or both.

In the same survey, just 61% of overall respondents said they have insight into data from finance that allows them to make better decisions about driving revenue.

Remember that RevOps maturity – involving all three functions aligned around a customer-centric perspective wasn’t widespread among survey respondents. When you focus in on the respondents that are RevOps-identifying, however, that 61% percent number begins to skyrocket:

•  78% of fully aligned teams said they have insight.
• 75% of those identifying as “far above revenue goals” said they have insight.
• 76% of best-in-class CX companies said they have insight.

If you’re thinking of each of those as circles in a Venn diagram, they virtually overlap with each other. That’s not a coincidence!

Customer success via better customer experience (CX)

The alignment aspect of RevOps is critical, but just as critical is what your moneymaking teams are aligning around: The customer journey. While there is a general awareness of the traditional sales funnel, it’s rare for enterprises to have all these teams in lockstep to making every tactical decision with customers at the heart of it. Customers in a digital-first landscape have a plethora of options, and the main differentiating factor is what they feel you can offer them in terms of customer experience.

That’s why it’s so curious that only a paltry 18% of survey respondents rate their customer experience as “best-in-class”. Once we use our handy “zoom” function to dive deeper into RevOps-identifying organizations, the story changes again.

A much more considerable 45% of firms that identified as “achieving far above revenue goals” rate their customer experience as “best-in-class”. 41% of firms that are fully aligned internally rate the same.

Data and Technology

Our fourth key is an obvious, yet elusive one. When looking at the general pool of survey respondents, only 10% rated the optimization of their technology as “excellent”. That’s a tremendous inefficiency wherein 9 out of 10 large enterprises are not properly utilizing their sales and marketing tech stacks.

Forget about trying to make the business case for new tools in the quest to drive revenue…they haven’t even earned the trust of senior leadership on the tools they have!

For RevOps-enabled enterprises, however, that figure jumps to 33%. There’s a clear advantage in being able to align around a singular customer-centric vision throughout your organization, then leveraging your entire tech stack with that one all-important focus.

Related: Our MarTech consulting services

Employee Experience

The final key has truly grown in importance during the current phenomenon colloquially known as “The Great Resignation”. With enterprise talent at such a premium, companies have to shore up any weaknesses when it comes to talent acquisition, development and retention.

The primary challenges to achieving this, according to survey respondents, were budget constraints (38%), poor employee experience (33%), and lack of understanding of new skills required (32%). RevOps-enabled enterprises, on the other hand, cited lack of flexibility with remote/office employees as their #1 challenge.

Their RevOps maturity means they have a more engaged and invested workforce free to focus on driving revenue rather than commonplace career concerns. From alignment to customer experience and beyond, the RevOps difference is tangible, and it could make or break your organization’s revenue goals.

Want all of this for yourself?

Our revenue operations consulting services can make it happen!

The post 5 Key Ways Revenue Operations Makes A Difference appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

I tell them that we need the whole village in order to develop a cohesive experience for a customer or prospect. In fact, many underlying processes and cross-team collaborations must be in place before this can truly have a chance to be as successful as possible.

But I agree: the name Account-Based Marketing doesn’t give that impression.

On LinkedIn, I asked my network if Account-Based Marketing should be renamed. The results were mixed.

So I asked for alternatives, which were … also mixed!

I’ve taken the liberty of summarizing the pros and cons of a name change in this blog. Is there something better we should be calling it? Is ABX (Account-Based Experience) preferred?

6 Alternatives:

1. Account-Based Strategy (ABS) – Fits, but we’d have to talk about our ABS all day
2. Account-Based Selling (ABS) – Same acronym problem, but it might appeal to BizDev teams more
3. Account-Based Experience (ABX) – Demandbase really wants us to adopt this term
4. Account-Based Everything (ABX) – Not sure where this originated, but it sounds like the kitchen sink
5. Account-Centric Experiences (ACEs) – Right concept, wrong vibe?
6. Account-Based Engagement (ABE) – I like this one, because after all… Customer Experience.

Core Concepts to Consider

It might help us to review ABM’s core concepts, which I call the three “TIONs” are… communication, personalization and orchestration.

• Tion #1 – Communication is more than a cliche. It’s about silo-busting. It’s about marketing communicating what they know about account activity and Sales communicating what information accounts need.
• Tion #2 – Personalization is about investing the time and money to speak to key contacts at key accounts in a personal way – addressing their pain points, solving their problems and helping them succeed.
• Tion #3 – Orchestration is about delivering seamless account experiences. Everyone knows their part and script, so accounts get the right message in the right channel at the right time.

I doubt anyone wants to change ABM to “Account-Based TIONs”… but we’d definitely get the top spot in Google 😉

The TION’s are an ideal, but reality looks more disjointed in most organizations. Sales and Marketing have individual strategies for customer engagement. They either deliberately or inadvertently compete with each other for overall impact on revenue. Each tends to value their own customer touchpoints as the most important. But anytime one arm acts without the other, the customer/account experience suffers.

This problem often occurs when organizations haven’t met the full criteria for ABM readiness but think the tech is all they need. As I’ve described before, a focus on tech can prevent companies from focusing on the account experience. To address this problem, I created a checklist for “full” ABM readiness (which you can grab for yourself – it’ll trigger a bot): 

Beyond the choices in tools and tactics, ABM requires successfully engaging across the organization to meet account-level needs. That means all contacts need to receive cohesive, coordinated communications. It may seem cliché, but strive for the “right message to the right person at the right time in the right channel.” This cannot happen without great data, planning and coordination.

Let’s Make a Decision

What do you say we stop the madness and let American Building Maintenance have their budget back? 

I like “ABE” because it covers the core concepts, but my vote has to go to ABX.

Vendors like 6Sense and Demandbase are starting to put real money to be included in ABX search terms, so it has the best chance of traction as market leaders use it more in their everyday conversations.

Regardless, that dirty “Marketing” word has to be replaced so companies like my clients can engage their Sales teams more readily from the get-go while they adopt this core strategy. Marketing can’t do this alone – a common myth that’s sunk many initiatives!

Thankfully, it seems like Account-Based Experience is gaining traction as a no. 2 option, though the market’s still figuring it out:

What do we say to nay-sayers?

Let me repeat: ABM is NOT just another point solution executed by marketing. 

ABM is an account-centric form of demand generation for use in expanding the customer base and cultivating net-new clients. But that’s not just Marketing’s job – it takes the whole village! Marketing may have been on point for customer experience in the past, but now everyone must get on board.

As organizations project the life-time value of key accounts, they are realizing they cannot maximize results by continuing to deliver siloed marketing and sales experiences. Successful organizations see ABX as a methodology for working across silos to satisfy the rapidly changing needs of new and existing key accounts.

ABX is not about business-as-usual with an account focus, it’s about organizing to meet customer needs at every level and every stage.

Join me in going full-on ABX. Want to get more from your strategy? View our consulting service options, we’d love to work with you!

And so long ABM … it’s been nice working with you!

The post What’s in a (ABM) Name? Call It This Instead. appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Fast forward to the present, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. In a post-pandemic world, the M&A landscape looks different than it has in the past, with a substantial portion of businesses being digitized. So, how do you wrap your head around this supercharged mergers and acquisition landscape?

Most importantly, how does this affect revenue operations? 

Let’s talk about that, shall we?

How Has COVID19 Spurred Record-Breaking M&As?

All over the world, M&A activity rose to unprecedented levels in 2021, reaching a record-breaking $5.1 trillion globally. Investors are now seeing a clear path to recovery, and businesses are looking at a future beyond the pandemic. Both sponsors and corporates alike feel very good about the environment in 2022 and are pursuing opportunities aggressively before the market inevitably corrects itself.

This means they’re looking to get ahead of the curb, utilizing this opportunity to add capabilities and grow by buying out or merging with businesses that may not have fared as well throughout the pandemic.

This also means that the businesses themselves are looking very different that in the past. More and more companies are operating remotely, which spurred the need for organizations to optimize their digital processes for both B2B and B2C operations. We discussed this at length in our Digital Transformation revenue growth primer. 

What Role Can Revenue Operations Play When Companies Merge?

Whenever companies merge there’s typically a massive amount of data, strategies, marketing efforts, and other operations. Revenue operations (and the RevOps team) essentially takes an end-to-end approach to managing these pillars and makes them more of a holistic, centralized hub.

Think of a revenue operations team as a group dedicated to merging sales, customer success operations, and marketing efforts.  When companies merge, committing to a revenue operations team allows to overall objective to be more strategic about their marketing effort and sales decisions.

Revenue operations also focus on bottom-line growth and scaling activities, so they collaborate closely with the sales, customer support, and marketing departments of both parties to ensure that bottom line is met. This in turn also allows the RevOps team to take notes on employee retention and satisfaction.

Related: Read how to embrace revenue operations

How Do You Address Organizational Structure and Operational Gaps?

Organizing for growth means you’re going to be integrating both parties in such a way that they can work synergistically. Operational gaps need to be filled for the merger to be successful, and there will almost always be at least one operational gap between two companies as no business works in the same fashion. This generally involves integrating teams together and some departments assuming a larger share of responsibility, but there are cases where two formerly independent companies can still operate separately. This is especially true for mergers where the product lines might be wildly different, requiring different technical expertise, sales, and marketing knowledge to keep driving the pipeline forward. 

Prior to finalizing the merger or acquisition, make sure both parties have a very clear outline of the organizational structure. That way they can be reviewed, and discussions can be made about how to successfully integrate everything so that there are no operational gaps.

Related: Grab this talent bundle

How Do You Address the Customer’s New Identity Post-Merger?

Most-merger and acquisition branding strategies often vary to a certain to degree, but a fundamental component that all successful M&As utilize is consistent, ongoing and open channel communications with all stakeholders. It’s quite common for a company to not even think about branding until the merger or acquisition is completed. 

Make sure all stakeholders are involved in the planning process for branding post-merger. There should be discussions in the very beginning talks about branding identity. A successful new brand identity can have a synergistic effect, capitalizing on the benefits and weight both brand names bring to the table.

But, if not properly planned out before the merger or acquisition is finalized, you’re left with not only a confusing set of product and service branding issues for the companies involved, but also for the customers themselves.

How Do You Sustain Lead Quality and Ensure the Pipeline Stays Strong?

Maintaining lead quality is critical during the post-merger or acquisition period. The salesforce often has relationships, regions, and strategies that work very well with their target leads. Bringing two companies together can be a great way to get additional products and services in front of quality leads, but only if the process is handled carefully.

For example, say there’s a company that has a certain product line that is similar, but not identical to an organization they’re recently merged with. Now, both of these companies previously had a sales rep in the same region, and they’re both now afforded access to both companies’ products lines.

Which one should be able to make sale to that customer? In most cases, you should leave your sales and marketing efforts in the hands of the person or group that had previously established the leads and relationships, but there are always exceptions.

As with most things involved with M&As, plan your pipeline strategy ahead of time.

Related: Get it right with our lead management consulting

What Key Areas Should You Focus on During M&A Activity?

Of course, M&A activity can get complicated, especially when you don’t have good, clear communication and a defined set of key points you should be honing in on in order to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Here are a few steps to focus on during a merger or acquisition:

1. Keep an eye on your financial health and liquidity – Before entering any transaction, you should have had a thorough financial check to ensure you’ve got the liquidity to successfully carry of the transaction. Since COVID19, many organizations have redirected their focus away from loss statements and profits in favor of liquidity. Once appropriate liquidity has been determined, then determine whether your capital structure is capable of handling the additional stress.

• Have a transition team with clear visibility – You want to make sure you’ve got a team put together that has the skills and experience necessary to oversee and assess the transitionary process, forecast how it’s performing, and navigate that process with care. Having a team together that’s focused on specific aspects of the merger and acquisition will help keep the overarching objective clear and help integrate the two organizational structures.

• Define success factors – When strategizing merger and acquisition activity, closely observe your strategic position as well as your future goals. That means getting a clear understanding of exactly what you’re trying to gain from the whole process. Are you wanting to increase your market share? Do you want to enter new markets? Do you want new intellectual capital or products? All things to consider.

Mergers and Acquisitions can be an excellent opportunity for growth, and M&A activity post-pandemic shows that investors are seeing M&As as an opportunity more than ever before. With careful planning and a high-quality revenue operations team to help everything integrate successfully, you could be well on your way to a successful M&A venture.

For more information, download our M&A panel discussion with a group of trusted thought leaders and industry experts.

Or, look into more great content on our Resources page!

The post Revenue Growth In Mergers and Acquisitions appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Another buzzword has taken the B2B industry by storm. To be fair, Revenue Operations has been in play for many years…it’s only been recently that organizations wanting real revenue growth are looking at this initiative differently.

In fact, 75% of the highest growth companies in the world will deploy a RevOps model by 2025. (Gartner, 2021)

So, let’s dig into what it is, what it isn’t, and how it evolves what you’re doing already. And be sure to read this blog on five ways RevOps can drive positive impact and grab this free charter that’ll help you get moving!

Click to jump to a section:

What Is It? | What It Is Not | A Comparison vs. Marketing Operations | Examining Core Functions | Organizational Structure

What is a Revenue Operations Function?

Revenue Operations (RevOps) delivers one view of the customer. At its simplest level, RevOps is the end-to-end business process of driving predictable revenue through a collaboration of marketing, sales, and customer success functions.

A successful Revenue Operations team establishes one view of the customer and delivers visibility across the entire revenue team, improve efficiency across the revenue process, drive revenue predictability, and achieve revenue growth.

Like a marketing operations function, when folks initially hear the term revenue operations, efficiency tends to be driving factor assumed as the best outcome for a revenue operations team. While efficiency is important, it is the central view of the customer that drives repeatable, predictable, and scalable revenue. You are creating the digital revenue engine.

Note how we define RevOps as a multi-functional organization. This is fundamental to defining RevOps team. This is not a collaboration. This is a team structure. It is a center of excellence.

Collaboration is the easy path, but it’s not true alignment. You cannot have RevOps team members reporting to different leaders. RevOps requires structural change with a single leader. We’ll talk more about structural change later in this blog.

If this sounds like something you’d like, here’s our obligatory note that our revenue operations consulting drives the changes you’ll need to make.

But … knowing what it isn’t won’t prevent you from falling into some common traps:

What Revenue Operations is Not

Because RevOps is a buzzword, you’re probably going to see multiple iterations of teams across the B2B industry. Here are some scenarios we have seen that we believe are NOT true RevOps teams:

Sales operations, rebranded as revenue operations.

If your RevOps team is sales-function-centric, it’s not a true RevOps team. Silos still exist between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. You will not have one true view of the customer.

Sales enablement is also not revenue operations, nor is it a part of revenue operations. The folks over at ShowPad said it best – sales operations handles the logistics of team organization to drive plans forward, and sales enablement uses those logistics to put plans into action.

Don’t confuse the two!

Sales and marketing announce they are aligned.

Unfortunately, saying you are aligned and being in alignment are two very different things. We’re in 2022, and the lack of sales and marketing alignment we continue to see is stunning.

But sales and marketing alone cannot drive revenue.

Companies that are passionate about diving revenue through customer relationships are realizing they must reorganize all operational functions that interact with the customer. This typically includes sales, marketing, and customer success, but it can also include support and partner channels as well.

The Business Case for Revenue Operations

Now that we have a better handle on what a Revenue Operations team is and is not, let’s look at what the impact this team can have on an organization. The good news is that Revenue Operations done right has shown to provide outstanding results for organizations who invest in this function.

Let’s look at some statistics from trusted sources:

• 19% faster revenue growth (Forrester, 2019)
• 100% to 200% increases in digital marketing ROI (Boston Consulting Group, 2020)
• 10% to 20% increases in sales productivity (Boston Consulting Group, 2020)
• Avoid losing 20-30% of their revenue to operational inefficiencies (IDC, 2016)
• 10% increases in lead acceptance (Boston Consulting Group, 2020)
• 15% to 20% increases in internal customer satisfaction (Boston Consulting Group, 2020)
• 15% higher profitability (Forrester, 2019)
• Centralizing GTMs and creating agile operating models have a domino effect which can achieve a 20%+ ROI in sales (McKinsey, 2020)

Qualitative Viewpoints

Statistics are always a great start, but here are additional real-world quotes from revenue operations leaders as to why they have this critical function:

One source of data truth

When marketing, sales and customer success are three different functions, it’s easy to have different sets of reports and numbers for similar KPIs. With a centralized RevOps function, that friction goes away:

“Whatever data is presented is going to be a single set of data. So, if you’re presenting a number, you’re not going to have two different groups pulling two different reports and getting two different sets of data. The consistency and the accuracy is great.”

Kira Mondrus-Moyal, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, Tricentis

Neutral and Objective data / reports

We’ve all been there. We present a set of reports or an analysis that makes our team look like rock stars…only to find out during the meeting, that these numbers are easily proven false by another operations team.

Everyone has their view of the data to sway the numbers to their favor.

“I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’m running this independent. I don’t care if marketing is right or if sales is right. I’m running this with a hat of doing the best for the company that I can, and it doesn’t matter where I report.”

Ruben Varela, Vice President Business Systems, Veracode

This adds an additional level of credibility and objectivity to analysis. The RevOps team basically becomes the “Switzerland” of data and analytics. Nothing is skewed, all data is aligned, all definitions are aligned. As Kira Mondrus-Moyal told us:

“The thing I loved the most is, there was an extra level of credibility. And what I mean by that is that when I would get up and present numbers, and if anybody had a question, I had this centralized operations function to back up the data that really had no skin in the game.”

Your centralized team can create one view of the customer.

There are so many technologies available today that promise the ability to see, understand, follow and engage your customer. So much so, the average number of technologies per organization is 137 and organizations are churning through 30% of those applications year over year (Blissfully, 2020).

All for that single view of the customer.

With a RevOps team, you can reduce tech bloat and focus on things that matter – like revenue growth.

“As long as the different customer facing parts of a company have different goals, you will not be able to create a cohesive customer experience. One of the biggest benefits in combining the operations functions is to be able to have an eye on both sides of the business and to create unity.  Ultimately, this pays off for the customer and for the business.”

Alex D. Simoes, VP of Revenue Operations, Cut+Dry

While the benefits and performance improvements are impressive, it’s still an emerging concept that many organizations are trying to wrap their head around. In fact, most don’t have RevOps:

MOPs vs RevOps

Many of our readers may be familiar with the concept of marketing operations, but how does it relate to revenue operations?

The simplest explanation is this:

• Marketing operations is a function-specific view of how marketing can drive revenue
• RevOps is a multi-functional, company holistic view of how revenue can best be driven.

While it might be tempting to skip straight to a RevOps org structure, check to make sure your marketing operations function is as strong as other functions coming into the center of excellence. Avoid losing the marketing operations voice in comparison to sales operations and customer success operations, which may be more established in your organization.

Revenue today is a TEAM sport and marketing is a player. RevOps orchestrates that team, the plays, and the analysis of the outcomes.

There is a logical maturity path from marketing operations to revenue operations. Marketing operations needs to be strategic to successfully join the RevOps team. A non-strategic marketing operations team is not strong enough to support multi-functional revenue growth.

Let’s review the differences between these types of teams:

The mission of a Regular Marketing Operations group is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing through people, process, technology, and data so that marketing can achieve operational goals. This type of marketing operations organization is typically more reactive in terms of strategy creation but serves a core function for marketing.

In contrast, the mission for a Strategic Marketing Operations group is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing through people, process, technology, and data so that marketing can achieve strategic goals including driving revenue and growth, enabling digital transformation, and leading customer centricity.

Finally, Revenue Operations is a segment of Strategic Marketing Operations that combines sales, marketing, and customer success operations into a single team and across the full customer life cycle.  The purpose is to drive growth through operational efficiency and keep all teams accountable to revenue.

This holistic approach is designed to break down silos between departments and creates one line of sight to the customer.

Related: No matter what, your teams need the right tech. Get it with our martech consulting.

The Functions of a Revenue Operations Team

When we examine the three main teams that create a RevOps team, we see overlap in their roles and responsibilities. One of the benefits of a RevOps team is the removal of duplications. Most operations teams are responsible for the following:

1. Technology management
2. Data management
3. Training and education
4. Process management
5. Reporting and analytics

In fact, those are the specific functions we outline for marketing operations. Similarly, you will see the same functions in sales operations with some differentiation.

Sales Operations

• CRM UX design, deployment, and management. In addition to management, the sales operations team heavily focuses on the ease of use of the tool in terms of permissions, page views, design, UI etc. to make it as easy as possible for sellers to leverage the system.
• Training and education as they pertain to onboarding new hires to processes. I want to state here that this does not include Sales Enablement. Sales Enablement is a different branch that goes beyond the scope of sales operations, they coach and develop sellers to meet company selling standards.
• Compensation management is probably the largest difference between sales and marketing operations. Sales operations is not just responsible for their own proof of compensation as a team, but responsible for the entire sales force – quota administration, goal setting, forecasting, commission calculations. This puts a lot of power in the hands of sales operations and that power is not something easily relinquished to another team.

Customer Success Operations

Customer success operations (CS Ops) shares many of the same functions as sales and marketing operations. Your usual suspects of an operations team apply here – tech administration, vendor, data and process management, reporting/analytics and training.

Here are some functions that are unique:

• CS Ops teams collect and analyze customer feedback. Whether it’s from a call center or customer success engagements, your CS Ops team will be gathering real-time feedback from your customers. This data helps to identify at-risk customers as well as identify customer pains and challenges that can be operationalized by sales and marketing.
• Training customer facing CSMs. Like sales operations, the CS Ops team has an entire workforce of customer facing personnel. Training includes keeping up to date on documentation processes, customer escalation paths and adhering to optimized workflows for better customer experiences.
• Forecasting cross-sell and upsell opportunities. The CS Ops team is uniquely positioned to gather the right data for customer retention. They are laser focused on expanding the lifetime customer value to your firm. Gathering this type of data helps customer success managers understand which customers have opportunity for expansion.

While each function has their own set of unique tasks and activities, we do see plenty of overlap.

Sales and marketing operations jointly own lead management processing.

Marketing and customer success operations both craft messages and engage with customers digitally.

Sales and customer success operations share account hierarchy, assignment and forecasting responsibilities.

Related: Five ways RevOps impacts your business

Organizational Structure Maturity Path

Creating a revenue operations team will cause high amounts of disruption to your business. Most organizations don’t jump directly into a centralized revenue operations team for a few reasons:

1. Centralizing operations pulls away power from the individual functions
   1. The scope of aligning technology, data and processes feels like a climb up Mount Everest.
      1. Individual functions are not ready to collaborate
      2. Lack of executive advocacy (not just buy-in!) slows down the change process.

In a report from Lean Data in 2019, only 17% of RevOps functions are centralized. The vast majority are not centralized or quasi-formalized:

A stepped approach to developing a revenue operations team allows for the cultural, political, and technical challenges to be solves overtime.

Here is a real-world example of a financial services organization’s progression from good to better to best in terms of revenue operations business impact.

Good:

Our initial organizational structure establishes sales and marketing functions under a CRO with a dotted line to a RevOps Center of Excellence.

What this allows the organization to do is to centralize data-driven decision making and technology management, while not introducing so much disruption that it stalls adoption. It’s also the most cost-effective as there is not as many positions to fill or initiatives to start at the same time.

At the same time, the slow roll also means slower time to value and minimal impact on customer experience and revenue.

Better:

The difference in the “better” organizational structure focuses on folding in customer success operations as opposed to just sales and marketing organizations. Now, we have all three key functions centralized, with still a dotted line to a RevOps center of excellence. We still see some operational siloes, but the time to value will faster. Change disruption is higher and so is the investment.

Best

Finally, we see the optimal structure. In this structure we have removed the Revenue Operations COE and moved all customer-facing operations to a central function. We will see higher time to value with optimal customer experiences supported by seamless integrated operations. High fives all around, you’ve climbed the mountain to the peak!

The Bottom Line: Revenue Operations Is A Journey

Revenue Operations, like Revenue Marketing, is a journey. The result yields dividends in return on investment, but the road to structural collaboration isn’t for the faint of heart.

Marketing cannot lead this initiative.

There needs to be a joint effort across sales, marketing and customer success lead by an executive who is proactivity advocating for the function, rather than passively approving.

Are you moving towards this model in your own organization?

If not, you may be leaving opportunity on the table.

Want to talk through this? We can help!

The post How To Embrace Revenue Operations appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Digital transformation, however, is more than a trend. It’s an urgent imperative that is separating the winners from the losers. But what is it?

Simply put, digital transformation involves the use of technology to change how an organization conducts business. Let’s look at a few definitions:

MIT Sloan Management Review defines digital transformation as adapting to digital market trends. It can be as straightforward as automating a manual task or as complex as establishing an entirely new operating model. Regardless of scope and scale, digital transformation is intended to reduce the friction of buying for customers, which drives revenue and growth for the business.

The Harvard Business Review breaks digital transformation down into four areas, which all boil down into one, a top-down non-siloed culture where CMOs collaborate with CIOs to drive the corporate-wide goals of increased revenues, improved sales figures, and a better customer experience.

• Technology – The latest and greatest marketing technologies are only worth the money you spend on them if your organization’s culture has the technological drive and expertise to integrate it with existing systems. In other words, a CMO might covet all the bells and whistles of the newest CRM or customer interface, but without the infrastructure to support it, it’s useless

• Data – CMOs might not carry the official title of data scientists, but one might argue that they were the original corporate data analysts. A CMO wants to learn everything they can about their customers, competitors, and trends, and for that, they need data

However way defined, digital transformation is highly effective for revenue growth. And as we saw in the 2020 pandemic, it was not only a growth factor, but it was also a lifeline for businesses to survive.

New: The Revenue Operations Report

The Pandemic Accelerant

In early 2020, the world was blindsided by the deadliest pandemic in a century. The COVID-19 pandemic devastated our world in more ways than we can count. However, if there’s a single silver lining in the volatile storm cloud, it’s that thanks to digital business technologies, society found a way to function, despite global lockdowns.

Pre-COVID, 87 percent of business leaders agreed that digitization was a priority. However, only 15 percent of companies said they were digitally savvy. Moreover, 67 percent said that if they didn’t change their focus to digital by 2020, they would fail to remain competitive.

They were right, but perhaps not for the reasons they thought.

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that future-proofing should have happened in the past. Within six months of the start of the pandemic, digitally mature companies’ valuations soared by 23 percent. The least digitally mature companies saw their valuations rise by just 7 percent.

As consumers are conducting more online business, so are companies. The crisis accelerated digital transformation adoption by three years. Today, organizations are three times more likely to say that at least 80 percent of their interactions with customers are digital.

(One could also argue this has spurred so many mergers and acqusitions in a quest to achieve more revenue growth)

We’ve all seen how digitization can make or break businesses, consider the recent performance of the following retailers:

Digital Transformation and Digital Maturity

Not all digital transformation is created equal. As seen in the example retailers above, a level of digital maturity is paramount to not only revenue growth, but business survival. Digital maturity is a gradual process that provides the tools to help businesses navigate the future. Or, to put it more simply, or perhaps too simply, digital transformation is reactive while digital maturity is proactive.

That’s not to say that digital transformation is short-sighted. Technology is the foundation of digital transformation (although it takes much more than tech). Let’s look at an example of digital transformation without digital maturity:

Your CRM streamlines the sales funnel and enhances the process for both buyers and sellers. And because most CRMs are usually cloud-based and require little to no enterprise-level hardware, agility and resilience are built-in. Your sales team is able to work in real time with customer and pipeline data, creating efficiencies in the selling process. Still, using a CRM doesn’t make a company digitally mature.

Moving beyond the CRM, perhaps your marketing department might use a marketing automation platform while your sales department uses a CRM. If each platform is siloed and not integrated with each other, you’ve got more problems than efficiencies. Sure, both necessary parts of a digital transformation and customer centricity, but as siloes they impede essential collaboration without an integration plan.

(Now image this scenario, but with tech for sales enablement, intent data, chatbots, data enrichment, and much more being shared (or at least, interacted with) between the teams. No wonder companies struggle!)

Digital maturity is holistic. Deloitte describes five dimensions that indicate digital maturity:

• Customer experience – is your company communicating with customers on their preferred channels? Are customers happy with their user experiences?
• Strategy – Using technology to increase the competitive advantage and create a business strategy
• Technology – Managing data in a way that benefits both the customer and the company
• Operations – Enhancing business effectiveness, delivery, and efficiency through digital technologies
• Organization and culture – Developing a top-down organizational culture with the talent and support needed to achieve digital maturity. This should include ongoing reskilling and coaching

Related: Our sales and marketing tech consulting services bring a lot of unity!

In most cases, digital maturity is organization wide. In some cases, however, the term can be applied to individual silos within an organization. For example, a marketing department that meets Deloitte’s criteria might qualify as digitally mature…but that is not enough for successful transformation.

The correlation between digital maturity and business performance has never been more obvious. And it’s become more imperative in the aftermath of a global pandemic that further separated the digital vanguards from the digital dinosaurs. In almost every case, the companies that performed well in 2020 had strong digital capabilities, and those that failed did not.

There are countless companies lingering in the middle, and their future viability hinges in large part on their ability to advance and maximize their digital strategies. A growing majority tend to agree.

The foot-dragging of the past has quickly given way to rising urgency.

How To Approach Transformation

While adopting a digital transformation falls under the purview of IT departments, the main goals of digitizing an organization are to improve the customer experience and increase sales or growth. Therefore, marketing is crucial for digital transformation and why CMOs and CIOs are increasing collaborating between the two functions.

All too often, organizations turn to their CIO to manage their digital transformation. While that does seem logical, it represents old thinking. Sure, CIOs have the technical know-how to explain what will and won’t work with the existing architecture. And, of course, they are ultimately the people responsible for the logistical side of the transformation.

However, asking a CIO to make all the digital transformation decisions is like asking a mechanic to make all the car purchasing decisions for you. Odds are, the mechanic will find you a good car, but will the car suit your needs? Does it have the seating and cargo capacity you need? Will it drive far enough on a single tank of gas or electrical charge? Do you like the looks, the color, and the car’s features?

Ideally, your mechanic should be involved in the buying process, but since you’re the primary user, it’s up to you to specify the parameters you need. It’s the same with a digital transformation. A company’s marketing department should collaborate and even lead every step along the way.

Why marketing should be the key driver of digital transformation

Marketing teams have been using technology tools to transform customer-facing activities – including lead, campaign, and content management, to name a few – since the mid-2000s. Along with a growing wealth of online information and resources, these activities accelerated the shift from sales-driven interactions to customer-driven experiences.

Customers are now doing their own research, making their own decisions, and completing their own buying cycle with little or no involvement from a sales team. And COVID-19 ground traditional activities like sales meetings, presentations, conferences, and trade shows to a halt.

The pandemic will subside, but we’re putting these stakes in the ground: The old way of conducting business will never come back. Customer engagements and experiences will remain almost entirely online. And the organizations that haven’t already transformed will need to catch up quickly.

But it will require more than technology. And that’s where most companies get it wrong.

Too often, organizations operate under the false premise that digital transformation can be purchased and installed. But it requires sweeping cultural changes – in addition to the right set of tools – that begin with a new mindset and greater cross-functional collaboration.

Ultimately, digital transformation is about creating new ways of engaging customers and conducting business. Regardless of the tools employed, this can’t be achieved with a “legacy” mindset. Operational silos must be broken down, new processes must be engineered, and all customer-facing teams must work in lockstep to improve the end-to-end buying experience.

What happens when “legacy” mindsets persist?

Marketing teams remain laser-focused on attracting new customers and earning more revenue from existing customers. Sales teams continue to sell in traditional ways, despite their decreased influence over the buying cycle. Neither side has visibility of what the other is doing. Technology investments and processes remain splintered. And the end result is a disconnected, incongruent customer experience that limits revenue and growth success. 

Change is difficult, especially when divergent personalities, agendas, and measurement criteria are involved. That’s why proactive change management – stemming from the highest levels of a company down to each customer-facing team – is so vital for successful digital transformation.

Establishing a proactive, cross-functional, customer-centric approach

While digital transformation should never be confined to a single department, it often starts with the marketing team. In addition to being early adopters of customer-facing technologies, marketing has an unprecedented view of the buyer journey and a unique ability to influence it.

With guidance from upper management and collaboration with their peers in sales and service, marketing leaders will need to invest in the right tools and create the right strategies and processes to maximize those tools. Equally important are the mindset and cultural changes that will be necessary to achieve the desired outcomes.

Marketing will need to lead that change to be successful.

Revenue Marketing Fuels Digital Transformation

We have talked about the four stages of revenue marketing many times within this blog which include: traditional marketing, lead generation, demand generation and revenue marketing.

Digital transformation is the foundation of revenue marketing. It accelerates customer centricity and it allows for marketers to take revenue accountability, transformation marketing from a cost center to a revenue center.

Revenue marketing means complete culture change. Instead of leads, the focus is on obtaining quality leads with high conversion rates. A revenue focus may not de-silo an organization, but it will put the two departments that are most directly tied to growth on the same team.

Related: Our revenue operations consulting services

Success Factors to Keep in Mind

Marketers who transform their businesses do so with five major areas in mind. They do not merely add a new ingredient to the mix, they overhaul the menu. This means clearly articulating your vision, purpose, and direction with total transparency: Why you are taking on this transformation, what you need to do to make it happen, and how you and your team intend to do it all must be defined up front and communicated often.

Hallmarks of a successful approach look like this:

Strategy Obsessed

Strategy Obsessed Single-minded, unapologetic, and intense. These organizations are preoccupied with strategy and disciplined enough to drive it at every step of their process. They ingest a steady diet of top-quality thinking and meaningfully interpreted data to shape strategy that reflects a sophisticated worldview with depth and comprehensiveness.

Remarkable people with epic leadership to guide them

Our epic leaders need to be empowered to drive change in the organization, which means that they will need executive support to hold people accountable for new behaviors.

In addition, the leaders need to know what skills they have to work with. We have found that a lack of clarity around what roles are needed and what responsibilities need to be covered creates total havoc on an organization.

Once the strategy is clear and executive leadership has determined the course of action, a careful assessment of what skills you have already and what skills you will need is in order. So often we hear turmoil and even voluntary attrition because people don’t know what is coming and what it means for them.

You can get ahead of that with careful planning and complete transparency in communication as to why, what, and how you will make changes to your business.

Process Orienteers

Implementing any new strategy and technology inevitably means that new processes must be created or re-engineered, and people will need to learn them. This will have a ripple effect, sometimes vibrating through organizations at significantly disruptive wavelengths. Planning for this means cross-functional collaboration and education planning, as well as executive agreement to hold people accountable for new behaviors.

A few key processes that need to be considered are program planning, lead management, and data management.

Customer Casanova

A substantial shift towards obsessing about customer behavior, what it’s telling us, and what we can do to engage them more effectively. With our digital binoculars, we can now see so much more of our customer’s behaviors, all of which we need to catalogue and leverage for strategic advantage.

Successful organizations woo their customers and engage them at every turn. They are intensely interested in them because they know relevance is key to successful customer engagement. People in buying groups want to feel like you know what they want and need.

If you miss the mark, they’ll ignore you. Miss the mark repeatedly, you’ll be shut out.

To be relevant, you need to talk about them, not your products or solutions. You need to talk to them about their problems and their business challenges. And to stand out, you need to teach them about their business.

Technologeprenuer:

Implementation of new technologies that support the strategic direction of the organization as a whole and for Sales. Note that implementation alone isn’t enough to get us where we need to be in terms of reporting and analytics, so these systems must be integrated and not floating out there on their own.

Of course, technology is critical to transformation, again, often the catalyst. Once you have your backbone technologies in place, staying aware of what is available in the market is key to staying connected to your customers.

To learn more about these hallmarks of success and how to influence change, check out our revenue marketing kit for full guides, change management infographics, books and more!

When and where to get help

Leveraging external consultants and establishing a Revenue Marketing Center of Excellence (CoE) can help reconcile technology resources, reform longstanding processes, and reinforce a customer-centric mindset. They can help apply new technologies to produce actionable, data-driven insights. And they can help align marketing, sales, and service teams to deliver a proactive, cross-functional buying experience for customers that stimulates business revenue and growth.

In the end, digital transformation cannot be achieved with technology alone. It requires an entirely new mindset, a shift in organizational culture, and dedicated change management to ensure “legacy” behaviors don’t persist.

There’s a good chance you already have the tools you need. Now it’s a matter of transforming your business to get the most out of them. 

To learn how your marketing team can become an influential driver of digital transformation, schedule a call with one of our revenue marketing experts.

The post Let’s Talk About Revenue Growth Through Digital Transformation appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

The modern marketing leader is laser-focused on revenue impact. To achieve that goal, you need to identify the quickest, most direct path to get there.

Think about it: Marketing generates qualified leads OR creates well-educated buyers within identified targets through demand generation or account-based marketing activities. Then, key contacts in a company’s buying center are identified and surrounded by sales and marketing in a joint effort, leading to productive conversations that drive sales.

As a part of this process, you must know at any given moment what’s in your marketing pipeline, what will convert to sales, and the estimated revenue.

You should also know which lead sources to impact the pipeline best. That could be in terms of the most valuable leads (the ones with the highest value and probability to close), the places your ideal customer spend their time, and more.

But how can you ensure any identified targets receive the best customer experience possible?

An effective lead management process. (We help with full pipeline optimization, by the way)

Having a good framework allows you to:

• Increase revenue
• Decrease cost of sales; close/win more opportunities
• Retain more customers
• Invest ONLY in activities that generate real value for the business
• Have COMPLETE alignment between sales and marketing
• Know lead conversion metrics by level from end to end
• Follow up with an interested prospect quickly
• Enhance the customers’ experience when they are engaging with your organization

Want to evolve your lead management? Grab a free copy of F The Funnel (opens in a new tab) for a new way of thinking – we’ll touch on this towards the end of this article, too.

So, ready to dive in? Click to jump to a stage:

The Business Case | Define SQLs | Define Stages | Automate | Document Flow | Optimize Scoring | Establish SLAs | Map Past The Sale

The business case for why lead management is so important

First, let’s level set on what lead management is, to ensure we’re talking about the same process:

Lead management is a methodology whereby marketing generates qualified leads, passes them seamlessly and efficiently to sales, and sales/marketing processes them through to close. It combines people, processes, and technology, a shared capability for marketing and sales.

Your lead management process paves the way for Sales and Marketing to create an efficient and effective revenue machine. Organizations with mature lead management processes gain the following benefits:

• Increased revenue via average deal size or month/annual recurring revenue
• Expedite the sales qualification process
• Expedite average opportunity to close
• Follow up with buying-interest level prospects quickly
• Have a central view of the customer across all customer-facing functions
• Make it easier for buy-ready leads to engage with your sellers

A strong lead management process will get you these results, and much more. Marketo found  that “aligned organizations had 67% higher conversion rates and their leads generated over 209% more revenue.”

We’ve seen aligned processes lead to tens of millions in realized revenue firsthand.

Marketing and sales won’t thrive without the other – and it takes an effective process to help it happen!

Two very important caveats to know before reading:

#1 – There are seven key stages to master, each building upon the other. A single, poorly-managed stage creates a domino effect on the other stages, causing them to suffer and leaving revenue on the table.

If you read through this and identify an early step that really could use work, that’s your starting point. Any other later stage will be less effective until you tackle the earlier stages.

#2 -This is doomed to fail if you don’t have executive buy-in. You need proper top-down accountability and investment throughout each stage, especially as you continue to evolve and transform your organization.

Marketing can’t simply have a CRM report showing Sales follow-up rates. All this does is drive a wedge between the two teams. If the C-level isn’t driving needed change, showing the requisite patience, and holding both teams accountable, the company suffers.

Stage 1: Reach agreement on the definition of a qualified or sales-ready lead

Initially, marketing and sales must agree on what makes a sales-qualified lead (SQL). Having these definitions ensures only high-quality leads are passed to sales.

A SQL is someone who demonstrates a pre-determined “fit” and buying readiness based on measurable demographic and behavioral attributes that sales and marketing agree on:

• Demographic attributes include the contact name, phone number, and email address.
• Behavioral attributes include a demonstrated interest or need, web page visits, high-value form fills, inbound engagement, and so on.

All too often, however, Marketing works with one definition while Sales has an entirely different baseline.

Both need to agree on what a sales-ready lead is so that Marketing will pass only usable leads to Sales, which helps Sales as they don’t have to filter through junk to get to what they should be acting on.

Related: Know your numbers. Invest wisely in your marketing operations

Alignment results in value. To earn value, you must work hard together in the same room and hash out what is and is not a sales-ready lead, defined by demographic and behavioral attributes.

Some examples may include the following:

Creating the sales-ready lead definition

So how does a company create this unified definition? Sales and Marketing must come together in the same room and discuss it.

• Marketing can facilitate the discussion on the value of common lead definitions and provide proof points, value statements, and examples of digital body language and demographics.
• In return, Sales can provide Marketing with information about what they are trying to sell and how they are trying to sell it.

Working together, Sales and Marketing develop and validate a sales-ready lead’s definition (or definitions), leading to greater SQLs as sales focus their efforts on the highest-quality leads.

These definitions should be reviewed quarterly and updated with critical stakeholders as needed, then baked into the technology CRM, ensuring all stakeholders use them consistently.

Barriers and Accelerators

There are several barriers to accomplishing these goals. Getting Sales and Marketing to work together in the same room can be difficult, not to mention getting Sales and Marketing to agree on behavioral data that matters.

Whether or not Marketing can capture the behavioral/demographic data that Sales wants is also tricky.

In addition, implementing the new sales-ready lead definition will be challenging. There will be differences of opinion between different marketing stakeholders, and some stakeholders won’t hold people accountable for doing something with a qualified lead. Both teams need to be educated on the new definition of a lead and what they do with it.

Here are some accelerators to overcome these barriers:

• A desire and a strong business case for change (to see Marketing contribute to the Sales pipeline).
• Executive support from Marketing to focus on the quality of sales-ready leads over quantity.
• Executive support from Sales to act on qualified leads passed over from Marketing.

As long as there’s an agreement between Sales and Marketing on the new definition of a sales-ready lead, and as long as executives hold people accountable for new behaviors, you will achieve success and drive more SQLs.

Stage 2: Seek agreement on labels and definitions of customer acquisition/retention statuses

In your CRM, you’ll rely on statuses to determine success. Having an agreed-upon set of definitions enables seamless lead funnel management, captures the lead lifecycle in a common language everyone understands and allows you to predict revenue based on the pipeline.

A lead becomes “sales-ready” through a series of stages – a funnel that should be common between Sales and Marketing:

You’ve already defined your sales-qualified lead, but there are other stages. Marketing and Sales must find common ground here to work together efficiently.

Sample lead stage definitions include:

• Raw: You have an IP address but cannot connect it to an actual person.
• Inquiry: You have captured an email through engagement (they have made themselves known).
• Engagement: The lead is doing something.
• Sales Ready Lead (a.k.a. Marketing Qualified Lead): The lead has shown enough interest (activity) to be marketing qualified or has filled out a “Contact Us” form and meets your established demographic minimum.
• Sales Accepted Lead: Sales has accepted the lead from Marketing and agrees to review it within an established amount of time (for example, 24 hours).
• Sales Qualified Lead: A lead is recognized by sales as having a viable need and is qualified by Sales. Sales can also reject and recycle leads.
• Opportunity: This is an opportunity with a revenue value. Link the opportunity to the primary contact.
• Rejected: This lead is non-targeted. It will never be a customer. The Rejected Reason field must be filled out.
• Recycled: The lead does not meet sales criteria and is sent back to marketing for re-work.

There is a difference between A stage and A status.

• Stages represent an executive level view of the common funnel and broadly represent where and how a customer is engaging with your company. Think top, middle and lower part of the funnel (or early, middle and late stage of a given loop buying cycle).
• Statuses are the detailed operational views of where and how a customer is interacting with your company. These are represented in the technology (both marketing automation and CRM).

It is the lead statuses that bring the marketing automation platform and the CRM together. Otherwise, the systems are fighting each other.

Now that systems are aligned, Marketing and Sales have visibility on the follow-up actions needed on leads (rejecting, recycling, and so on).

A specific value is now assigned to a sales-qualified lead.

This value is built into your marketing automation platform, which triggers the status change and kicks the qualified lead over to Sales.

This system provides a wealth of value to Sales and Marketing and the Executive team. Not only is there more transparency between all teams, but there is also a common language between the teams and predictability of lead flow. Sales and Marketing can work more efficiently and effectively, and productivity increases while budget management gets easier.

It might still be challenging to sell the value of a funnel with lead stages and statuses that are common between Sales and Marketing. Here is a suggested plan of action:

• Understand the current sales funnel definitions and use.
• Review existing marketing stages, CRM statuses, and the state of one common funnel.
• Determine the gap between the two.
• Meet with key stakeholders to share what was learned and take feedback.
• Create one common funnel.
• Gain agreement with key stakeholders.
• Implement with/in process and technology.

Related: Our lead management consulting brings all teams together to make this happen

Stage 3: Optimize prospect process flow using automation

Using automation to optimize your prospect process creates a defined flow for what happens to a lead upon acquisition. This ensures that no lead is left behind and the prospect/customer has a positive experience.

It used to be that marketing automation was enough. And it’s still highly relevant – but not on its own.

Advances in technology have led to the ability to have a stronger customer experience – and more robust database. These tech options help you fill the gaps of the necessary fields needed to build a “complete” picture of a given lead – or even an entire company, giving you a more robust lead process flow.

These technologies include:

• Data enrichment – ZoomInfo, InsideView, Clearbit
• Sales orchestration – SalesLoft, Outreach, Chorus.ai
• Data intent / ABX platforms – 6Sense, Demandbase, Terminus
• Conversational marketing – Drift, Intercom

These are only a few examples of the many technologies that have added complexity to the back end of lead processing.

Are they necessary?

Maybe.

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish!

Related: Tech stack audit questions you should be asking today

But don’t forget the “basics”

Marketing automation, when done well, helps you engage prospects and customers:

• New, hot leads are presented with relevant cross-channel content via email, mobile, web, and social channels
• Warm leads are encouraged to re-engage with your company and ideally turn into a hot lead
• Cold or un-engaged leads can be sent content they may find interesting, which could bring them towards the warm stage

The problem is we continue to see – yes, even today, while you’re reading – marketing automation platforms with a ton of bad data, processes, and campaigns that undermine marketing efforts.

Your CRM helps you identify current customers, lead or accounts owners and assigns ownership to the appropriate salesperson. It also holds opportunity data that can be used to identify where the contact is within your operational funnel.

Note a contact could be for net-new or existing accounts. How these are treated in your system will differ, especially as you consider how to market to net-new vs. existing customers.

Related: Our marketing technology services take out any guesswork (and non-optimal integrations)

Stage 4: Confirm/document lead routing

Confirming and documenting lead routing ensures any given lead is automatically sent to the appropriate person when the prospect meets particular qualification criteria.

Lead processing begins with the source of the lead. When considering lead processing, you must consider your best lead sources. Lead sources include social (for example, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook), webcasts, tradeshows, sales sourced, and so on.

Lead processing is the flow by which a lead enters your system and becomes known to your marketing automation process, following through MAP and CRM until it is closed/won. This process needs to be documented and includes all the technology systems contributing data to the contact/account. Ideally, all of these technologies are integrated to make the processing faster.

Lead processing matters because it clearly defines what will happen when a qualified lead arrives in your MAP. It helps marketing understand which lead sources are better than others in sourcing leads. It also ensures a fluid process when leads are passed over to sales and back to marketing.

Routing vs. Processing

Lead processing is the flow by which a lead enters your system and flows through your technology. This process needs to be documented and include all the technology systems contributing data to the contact/account.

Ideally, all of these technologies are integrated to make the processing faster. Simply put: Many still aren’t.

Lead routing is the automated process by which we assign system-qualified leads to the right salesperson (by geography, product sales, and so on). Automating lead routing ensures that the prospect is followed up promptly by the right person.

The value of lead processing and routing for Sales is they receive high-quality leads promptly, giving them higher conversion rates and improving first-call quality. For Marketing, the value is found in the automation, timeliness, efficiency, and effectiveness of lead processing and routing.

They’ll be able to nurture leads that sales will want to follow up on with relevant content and experiences, which should lead to higher conversion rates from SRL to Opportunity.

Marketing’s productivity will increase, as will their ability to transparently track their output.

The routing itself

Many companies have a round-robin approach with leads, while others leverage campaign parameters to designate a given lead to the right salesperson.

If necessary, you can put “stopgaps” in place in the distribution of leads to slow down the routing process (for example, a manager receives all of the leads and then distributes them). However, not having a fast-track option prevents truly hot leads from getting straight to Sales.

World-class characteristics

Lead processing begins with the source of the lead. Consider this: what are your best lead sources? They could come from your social platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook), webcasts, organic or paid searches, your website, customer referrals, tradeshows, campaigns, or third-party placements.

Wherever they come from, they should be given a specific naming convention. For example, a lead source from a tradeshow could be named “2022_TradeShowName_LeadManagementProduct.”

Note the moments when a lead is looped back into Marketing for nurturing. This entire process and all of the technologies involved should be documented so everyone (Sales and Marketing) understands the lifecycle of a lead.

Here is a roadmap to developing your lead processing and routing management process:

1. Map your current lead flow by lead source and look for inefficiencies in the following five areas (remember to collaborate with Sales!):
   • Use of technology
   • The actual route of the lead
   • Who does what with the lead along each stage of the route?
   • How long the lead stays in each stage
   • Data/intelligence being passed with the leads
2. Once you have gathered this information, begin to modify your current lead processing to eliminate inefficiencies. Again, remember to collaborate with Sales!
3. Work with sales to understand and determine the rules for routing the lead to the appropriate salesperson.
4. Ensure the technology supports optimal lead processing and optimal lead routing.
5. Ensure the SLA supports the goals and required actions for lead processing and routing actions.

Throughout the planning and development phase, and especially as you enact your revamped lead processing and routing plan, it is vital to maintain open communication between Marketing and Sales.

If Marketing and Sales are both clearly educated on the new process, buy-in will be easy, and adoption will be quick.

Stage 5: Optimize prospect/customer scoring for automation

While often the focus of everyone interested in lead management, lead scoring is only part of the process. It can also auto-qualify leads based on digital behavior and demographic information.

As a reminder: Lead scoring is a methodology used to rank prospects against a scale representing the perceived value each lead represents to the organization. The resulting score determines which leads a sales or inside sales associate will engage in order of priority.

You determine what counts – for instance, downloading a white paper or watching a particular webinar would increase a person’s lead score.

This focuses sales attention on leads the organization deems most valuable, ensuring that unqualified leads or leads with low value are not sent to sales, which means they’ll know any lead you send them is worth their time!

This is a vital process … so much so that if this is done poorly, it undermines everything else. But lead scoring is also only one part of a winning lead management process.

Lead Scoring Determines What’s Ready For Sales Attention

In stage 1, you defined what “ready for sales” actually means. Here, you build the process that automates it.

Remember, a qualified lead is defined using a combination of digital behavior and demographic information. We assign a numerical value to specific actions (visits to the website, downloads of an asset, etc.) that a customer or prospect takes throughout their engagement with you, coupled with key demographic information. Lead scoring is built to qualify leads based on these criteria.

When the sum of their scores meets a pre-determined threshold, the lead is considered sales-ready (or marketing-qualified) and is passed over to Sales for follow-up.

(re)Build Your Lead Scoring Model

Do this with key Sales staff in a 1-2 hour working session. Keep the lead scoring model simple at first. As you begin to pass leads to sales, collect feedback from Sales on the quality of the leads.

You will want to adjust scoring if too many unqualified leads get through (suggesting that your algorithm is too loose) or if not enough leads are getting through (implying that your algorithm is too rigid).

As you build out your scoring model with your Sales partners, be sure to cover the following questions:

• Which demographic variables are most important to your Sales team?
• What demographic attributes are most common in closed-won deals?
• Which behaviors represent buying interest?
• Which behaviors should be weighted highest?
• Do any behaviors indicate negative buying interest?
• Can you classify your behaviors into buying stages (early, mid or late-stage buying activity)?

Here’s three additional items to consider:

Identify the behaviors that make a good lead.

What behaviors indicate purchasing intent? (Spoiler: just because someone has opened your email does not mean they want to buy anything!)

Web activity, email engagement, webinar attendance, and tradeshow engagement; are all examples of activities that, when looked at holistically, may paint a picture of someone who is ready to buy. Work with your sales team to identify the most relevant activities and give those the highest score value.

If you’re scoring web visits, analyze how you apply those scores.

Not all webpages are created equal!

A pricing page represents stronger buying intent for a visitor than a homepage visit. Identify some key pages that are worth more and identify any pages that you may want to exclude from scoring (a careers page, for example).

Don’t be afraid to iterate.

Once you get your scoring set up, monitor it closely. Is it performing how you expected? Are the leads you call ‘Qualified’ going on to close deals? Are sales satisfied with the quantity and quality of leads you are sharing? It may take some tweaks to get to a point where you are pleased with your model.

You’ll notice that an underlying assumption for each of these tips is that you are communicating with your sales team. Sales and marketing alignment is a critical element when establishing your scoring model!

It’s also essential to use one lead-scoring model across the entire organization. You can customize the model for a business unit or product as needed, but there should only be one lead-scoring model that everyone can refer to.

Once you have created your model, it’s time to test and verify your new lead-scoring design. We often suggest that our clients run a small pilot of sample leads through scenario tests with a newly designed lead scoring program.

• Example 1: Existing closed/won customers
• Example 2: Existing closed/lost opportunities/contacts
• Example 3: Leads that were unqualified by Sales

Ask yourself this key question – Would these leads have been assessed correctly by our new scoring model?

If the answer is yes, it’s time to move forward with the next steps. Build out new lead scoring campaigns and if you have an algorithm in place, retire old scoring campaigns. Reset your lead scores (demographic and behavioral), re-score demographic information, and then monitor your new scoring programs for the next four weeks.

Four weeks after launching your new model, reassess.

Ask Sales for feedback. Verify your design through a pilot test. (Are qualified leads meeting the MQL threshold? Are the right leads qualifying for scores? Are they where they are supposed to be in the funnel?) Finally, update your scoring model.

Scoring is an iterative process. Your model should be reviewed, at a minimum, every quarter. As your lead quality and volume stabilize, you can push that back to every six months.

To reiterate, while lead scoring is not the entirety of the lead management process, it is an integral part. Good lead scoring increases Sales’ efficiency and effectiveness, Marketing’s effectiveness and helps bring Marketing and Sales into tighter alignment. World-class lead scoring is:

1. Reflective of the definition of a sales-ready lead.
2. Created by Marketing and Sales.
3. Inclusive of digital body language (behavioral data).
4. Limited to one lead scoring model with customization for a business unit, ABM or product as needed.
5. An iterative process.

Stage 6: Establish and document a comprehensive Service-Level Agreement

A Service-Level Agreement (SLA) is a document that captures the roles and responsibilities of sales and marketing throughout the lead management process. It’s implemented to achieve better understanding and alignment between the teams.

Both sales and marketing must commit to following the SLA to make the lead management process work. It will need to be put into place, monitored, and revised based on results.

Ultimately, the SLA is intended to assign joint accountability to sales and marketing for generated leads and prevent lead funnel decay.

Components

Documenting roles and responsibilities is the easy part. It basically says, as a Marketer, I’ll do this to help generate high-quality leads for the business. As a Salesperson, I agree to do this to manage the high-quality leads we receive and work them to close.

In many cases, it’s a simple table:

World-class SLAs map out the lead management process so everyone involved knows exactly what they should do.

The other critical element: Time

How much time Sales has to accept a qualified lead once it has been kicked over from Marketing is a must-have for any SLA.

Usually, give 24-48 hours for a salesperson to accept a lead. This is just Sales saying, “Yes, I see this lead, and I agree to work it.” They would then need to change the disposition of the lead status in CRM to “Accepted Lead” or whatever language you use to indicate this has happened (we have used “Sales-Accepted Lead (SAL)” before).

If the SLA says they have 48 hours to disposition a new lead, and nothing happens in CRM to indicate that Sales have noticed the lead, we will send an auto alert to the salesperson – a reminder. If nothing happens within another 24 hours, we send another auto alert, with an escalation copying their boss. If nothing happens in another 24 hours, we reassign the lead.

That is a typical example of a lead processing agreement that must be included in the SLA. It ensures that Sales are actually working the leads that Marketing is generating. And we know that the leads are qualified based on the fact that we developed the definition of a qualified lead together and that we built the scoring algorithm to support that definition.

To help you visualize what that SLA looks like across the funnel, we’ve provided a high-level sample below:

As you can see, the SLA is involved at every stage of the life of the lead. The SLA provides enormous value to Sales and Marketing as it aligns them. The SLA clarifies roles and expectations, providing a standard process and language that allows the Marketing and Sales machines to work together as a joined unit.

Tips to implementing an SLA in your environment

In order to sell the benefits of SLAs, create a presentation with the value to present to your company.

• Meet with key stakeholders to show them proof points.
• Ask for feedback, and create continuous visibility through meetings and dashboards.
• Finally, create, communicate and sign the Service Level Agreement. Remember to review and revise the SLA quarterly.

There are, of course, potential barriers for implementing this.

Sales might not agree to any implementation, or Sales might not agree to the terms of marketing’s ideal SLA. It’s important to get Sales leadership on board with your plan to create and implement an SLA before moving forward.

Key takeaway: Include sales in the SLA design process!

Another potential barrier is accountability on both sides to the terms of the Service Level Agreement. Again, it is crucial for sales and marketing leadership to be on board with the SLA plan and to be educated on the terms of the agreement so that they can hold their staff members accountable.

Key takeaway: SLA adherence can be measured in the systems. Check adherence often, and be sure the sales team knows that you can zero in on the specific sales people who are not following process. Transparency is a motivator!

Stage 7: Establish the Foundation for Customer Management Analytics – from Acquisition to Advocacy

If we broaden the definition of lead management to define a Customer Journey Map process (for example, the Loop), then lead management becomes defined as a process methodology.

In other words, a company attracts, acquires, and nurtures prospects until qualified to be passed to sales, and where sales is held accountable for processing those prospects through to close.

This is where a lead management model such as below comes in handy. Welcome to The Loop:

Marketing now interacts with customers during their many stages of product adoption and value recognition, encourages loyalty and advocacy, and ultimately nurtures them back into a new buying cycle and re-qualifies them for sales engagement.

The components of the process remain the same, but additional stages beyond the first deal close are included.

Characteristics of Lead Management (Customer Acquisition)

Let’s put lead management in perspective. Lead management supports new business generation. It also brings your customers, people, process, and technology together to produce a sales-ready lead that converts at the highest possible rate into an opportunity and a closed deal.

From a people perspective, effective lead management is characterized by a tight working relationship between Marketing and Sales. From envisioning what will resonate with prospects to effective lead processing, Sales and Marketing play pivotal roles.

The model’s left side speaks to the process by which we acquire new individuals and manage their journey through our engagement process. If we do this correctly, with the right messages, we will create a fluid experience for the prospect and optimize outcomes for the company.

Characteristics of Customer Management (Customer Expansion)

Now let’s look at customer management or expanding the current business relationship. The model’s right side represents Customer management, which is also a process specific to upselling and cross-selling current customers.

Customer management is still the practice of synergizing people, processes, and technology, but in this case, to optimize the customer experience with your company so that they will be inclined to give you more business.

In addition to Sales and Marketing, other key stakeholders include customer service, operations, IT – any functional area interacting with the customer as they onboard, adopt, and realize value. Careful planning, orchestration, and functional alignment are necessary to create a singular view of the customer and improve the quality of the customer experience.

From the customer’s perspective, customer management creates the feeling that your business is easy to work with, buy from, and interested in helping them solve their business problems. As a partner to your customers, your goal is to help them optimize outcomes no matter who they’re working with. 

Engaging With Our Customers/Prospects

So, how do we engage with our customers at every stage of their journey?

A prospect becomes qualified through a series of buying stages. Use these stages to map out your customer journey stages and definitions in your lead management process and identify critical points that make the most sense to nurture.

• Should someone reach out on LinkedIn?
• Is an email with a relevant piece of content worthwhile?
• Do you have an assessment they can take to learn more?

These are just some examples!

Shift to viewing the funnel from the buyer’s perspective … with a few key considerations.

The Loop more accurately reflects the entire product/service related engagement between a customer or prospect and their vendor/supplier/provider.

• The model aligns all functions of the organization around optimizing the customer experience.
• It more closely aligns marketing with sales and support and their relationships with customers.
• It also incorporates customer status fields to reflect when a prospect has become a customer. This puts more structure around program planning and campaign planning for specific solutions and cross-sell/upsell opportunities.

Who in your marketing operations team owns the journey and is responsible for updating it?

Knowing your maturity level gives you the knowledge to improve and adjust your marketing strategy.

As you reflect on where your organization is, here’s a summary of the stages:

Ready to improve your lead management?

It’s not easy, but it absolutely can be done! Get started with one of these options:

• Get even deeper by building a strong marketing center of excellence
• Read more into our methodology for lead management, The Loop
• Fortify your process with our lead management consulting!

The post 7 Key Stages For Successful Lead Management appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

But, there’s a big problem. Because AEM is so comprehensive and flexible, the learning curve
for new users is huge.

The road to AEM success is usually fraught with avoidable rookie mistakes, frequently underused features and endless pages of confusing Adobe documentation. This guide is your fast track to AEM success.

Read on to get:

• An introduction to key AEM features from our seasoned AEM experts (which is actionable and easy to understand)
• Pro tips that help you get acclimated to AEM faster and avoid common mistakes
• Real-world examples of use cases to help you determine how and when to use features
• Step-by-step tactical instructions to perform common AEM author processes

Don’t have time to go through this beginner’s guide now? (It’s quite in-depth!)

• Ultimate Beginner’s Guide: Everything you need to jump-start your knowledge of AEM 
• Seeing Content From Both Sides: A look at how to produce content your site visitors will love and respond to 
• Becoming a Content Speed Demon: Remove barriers from your development process! 

Click to jump to a section:

Environments | Application Consoles | User Interface (UI) | Icon Glossary | Building Blocks | Site Structure | SEO-Friendly URL | Authoring | Assets | Tags | Next Steps

Let’s get started, there’s lots to learn!

Environments

The first step to working effectively in AEM is to understand the types of environments. You can
think of environments like different levels within AEM. Each environment has different functions
and log-in portals. You’ll use different environments for developing, testing, staging and
publishing content.

The first step to working effectively in AEM is to understand the types of environments. You can think of environments like different levels within AEM. Each environment has different functions and log-in portals. You’ll use different environments for developing, testing, staging and publishing content.

Why is this a critical first step? Without a clear understanding of environments, authors tend to:

• Work inefficiently
• Accidentally push content live that’s still in testing and development
• Not effectively troubleshoot common AEM challenges

The three standard environments are: Development, Stage and Production

You’ll have access to different environments based on your role. But, you still need to be familiar with each environment to work efficiently and avoid costly mistakes.

How to use each environment

In each environment, there are at least two instances: Author and Publish.

Frequently Asked Question: If I use the “Publish” instance in the Development or Stage environment, will I push the update live?

No. Publishing in Development or Stage environments won’t push updates live. It will only push the update to that environment’s Publisher instance. Once the content is in Publisher, you can share a link with people who don’t have access to the system. You can make the instance password protected if needed.

You’ll only push an update live in the Publisher instance of the Production environment.

Using Author and Publish instances in each environment

Here’s an example of how to use these three environments and Author and Publish to create a digital experience:

Development Environment

Author instance: Let’s say your team wants to develop a new carousel component for a product landing page redesign. The developer will create, unit-test and receive approval from their local host environment. Then, they’ll release the enhancements in the Development environment and validate the code. Now, as an author, you’ll use the Author instance to build the content using the new feature. Even though your dev team has already validated the code, check for any functionality discrepancies. If there are any, immediately call them out.

Publish instance: When you’re ready for review and initial approval of that content, you’ll move the content to the Publish instance by publishing the page. You’ll then be able to provide a link to the page on the development site for review and testing purposes.

Staging Environment

Author instance: After passing tests in Dev, your team will then migrate the code/content in Staging. Be sure to stress-test all elements so you can identify anything that seems “off” and alert all relevant team members immediately.

Publish instance: When you’re ready for another round of review and approval, you’ll move the content to the Publish instance. If you’re receiving approval from non-AEM users, this is your final approval before moving the content to Production. Be sure to receive a chat or email with approval to continue moving ahead.

Production Environment (Live)

Author instance: Now, your team will use the Author instance in Production to validate code enhancements are working as expected. Then you can begin staging your content in Production. Confirm all new content has replicated exactly from Stage and you have approvals (if needed).

Publish instance: Then, you’ll push the content live by publishing. After publishing, navigate to your website and validate everything is working as expected across various browsers and devices. Then notify your team once the updates are live. Even if all the previous checks passed both dev and author validation, your broader team will want to perform final confirmation on the live site.

Pro Tip #1: Ensure consistency between environments

Testing and consistency are two critical components of every successful development release. Failing to maintain 1:1 content consistency across the environments is a common mistake. It’s inefficient both for developers trying to create code and marketers who are trying to obtain approval for new campaign initiatives.

You need to be consistent to make sure your whole team is testing new enhancements in Development and Stage environments that are as close to the Production version as possible. That will help you avoid delays and mistakes before pushing content live.

Pro Tip #2: Bypass Dispatcher for troubleshooting

If someone sends you a publisher URL for troubleshooting, you need to be able to quickly identify which environment is causing the issue. You can determine the environment by referencing the URL. Dispatcher is a caching tool that improves web page delivery for end-users.

You can bypass the Dispatcher by appending a “?” to the Publisher URL to verify if a web page is experiencing unwanted caching instead of an actual error.

Pro Tip #3: Replicating or packaging authored content

To release new content, you have to manually replicate or package any new content across the necessary environments.

Application Consoles

Within AEM’s application, there are nine main consoles available from global navigation. Your accessibility to all consoles is dependent on user permissions and/or licensing.

As a beginner author, you will most frequently use the two most common consoles – Sites and Assets.

But it’s important to be familiar with all nine consoles so you can work most efficiently and work towards fully leveraging AEM’s capabilities.

Sites – This is the Content Management System (CMS) where you build website hierarchies using different content elements. One major advantage of AEM is that it’s extremely agile. With AEM Sites, you can launch new content at the speed your market demands. Website content is the anchor of most brands’ success. Become familiar with this console first and master it.

Assets – The Assets console is your traditional digital asset manager (DAM). It has powerful “out-of-the-box” features to upload, edit and manage assets to use across your multi-channel experiences. Assets include images, videos, documents, templates and content fragments. This console also has add-on features, like Dynamic Media and Brand Portal, that accelerate collaboration across your creative and technical teams and vendors. Along with Sites, you’ll use this console the most, especially as a beginner author.

Projects – Use this console to correlate different types of information to a “Project” so you can be more organized, productive and streamlined. Information in a project might include assets, experiences, links, description, team, landing pages, emails, workflows, launches and tasks.

Experience Fragments – With this console, you can create innovative digital experiences that transcend across your different marketing channels — not just your website. Imagine being able to deliver consistent brand messaging across channels without relying on numerous platforms and teams to support and execute your customer journey. AEM Experience Fragments makes this possible by allowing you to create repeating blocks of structured content with different variations for different channels.

Forms – This console provides a centralized portal for users to create, manage and publish dynamic forms for web and mobile devices. Data collection through forms is an extremely powerful tool for marketers to obtain first-party intelligence of their audience. The kind of data that can influence strategic, bottom-line-driving decisions. AEM Forms integrates with back-end processes to handle data in meaningful ways.

Screens – The Screens console allows you to leverage your digital experiences for in-store or in-venue jumbo screens. You might use Screens if you create content for in-person interactions (e.g. brick-and-mortar merchandising displays). Repurpose digital experiences like these to maximize their value.

Personalization – Use this console to create dynamic content experiences and deliver the right content at the right time on the right channel. With AEM Personalization, you can use known information, like ideal personas, targeted end-users or behavioral interactions, to design personalized experiences. Then, use rules to dictate the process flows to execute.

Commerce – Integrate an eCommerce system into the Commerce console to pull product data into AEM. Then, create personalized B2C shopping experiences based on contextual information. AEM Commerce also supports real-time management of product information, shopping cart, discount promotions, check-out experiences and more.

Communities – Use the Communities console to manage gated community sites and promote end-user engagement around an area of interest or expertise. You might use this console to develop relationships with site visitors through blogs, forums, file sharing, tag mentions or scoring.

User Interface (UI)

AEM has two user interfaces, Classic UI and Touch UI.

• Classic UI is a legacy version that AEM won’t support in future versions.
• Touch UI works with both touch and desktop devices, and you’ll notice similar themes featured across the Experience Cloud solution landscape.

Touch UI allows you to use the latest AEM innovations and sets you up for success when you migrate to AEM Cloud.  Throughout this guide, we’ll cover topics supported by version 6.4 and up using Touch UI.

Need help switching to Touch UI?

Adobe has removed most of the Classic UI documentation from their online resources. If you’re currently using Classic UI, you can find basic handling information within the AEM 6.2 Sites Authoring User Guide.

That being said, it’s critical that you transition to Touch UI to fully leverage the capabilities of AEM and set your team up for success in the future. Need expert help? Check out our AEM consulting.

Icon Glossary

We’ve built an image glossary to fast-track your acclimation to AEM! Click here to grab it for yourself.

Pro Tip: Be very cautious when deleting content

Once you’ve looked over the glossary, I want to call attention to this fact: there is no recycling bin or archive icon!

Once you delete content, it’s really gone. You’ll only be able to get it back through some expensive development time, so when I say be very cautious, I mean it! I’ve seen clients spend countless hours trying to recover something important that was accidentally deleted and nobody wins in this scenario.

Building Blocks

These will be frequently-used and knowing these will only help you learn the language of Adobe Experience Manager!

Components

Components are configurable elements used to build content. These can be either out-of-the-box Core Components or custom ones that you build using your development resources. We highly recommend using Core Components for the following benefits:

• Cuts costs and inefficiencies. Components are fundamental to using AEM. Custom components require expensive development time to develop, test and maintain. Core components are out-of-the-box and available for immediate use. They often meet all the needs of users without any customizations needed.
• Allows you to use the most innovative components. AEM enables you to create the most innovative digital experiences more efficiently and at scale. Core Components are already-tested Adobe proprietary tools to help you get the most out of this platform. 
• Sets you up for long-term success on AEM Cloud. When you migrate to AEM Cloud, Core Components will automatically update to new versions as they’re released. No more development time spent constantly updating fundamental components to make sure they’re compatible with the new version.

The standardized categories of core components include Templating, Page Authoring, Container, Form, and Commerce.

Templating

• Navigation: Display a site navigation menu
• Language Navigation: Display a language switcher
• Breadcrumb: Display a breadcrumb navigation

Page Authoring

• Title: Display a page heading
• Text: Display a rich text paragraph
• Image: Display an image asset
• Button: Display a button or anchor button
• Teaser: Link an image or text
• Download: Display an asset for download
• List: Display a list of pages
• Experience Fragment: Display an experience fragment
• Content Fragment: Display a content fragment asset
• CF List: Display a list of content fragments
• Embed: Embed a third-party widget
• PDF Viewer: Embed a PDF Viewer widget to display Document Cloud PDF’s
• Progress Bar: Display a progress indicator
• Social Sharing: Add social sharing links
• Separator: Display a section divider

Container

• Container: Group and layout components
• Carousel: Cycle through content panels
• Tabs: Switchable content panels
• Accordion: Toggle panels of related content

Form

• Form Container: Group and layout form components
• Form Text: Display an input field
• Form Options: Display different options to choose from
• Form Hidden: Hidden form component
• Form Button: Display a form button

Commerce

• Product: Display a commerce product data
• Product Teaser: Display commerce product teaser
• Product Carousel: Display commerce product carousel
• Related Products: Display commerce-related products
• Product List: Display commerce products
• Search: Display product search results
• Featured Category: Display a list of categories

Related: Want more AEM tips and tricks? Try this blog!

Page Templates

With Page Templates, certain Roles (e.g. Admin, Developer, Template Author and Author) can create and edit content templates that other users must abide by. Page Templates help enforce content governance, but one of the advantages of AEM is that you get to decide how flexible or rigid you make these templates.

A more flexible template is right for you if:

• Your team includes experienced authors with a keen design eye. You need design experience as well as an understanding of AEM to create effective content experiences with a very flexible template.
• You need to be more agile and adjust your design on pages based on performance. More flexible templates allow authors to immediately make changes that could impact the customer experience and results, like moving the location of a call-to-action.
• You need scalability. Your platform is frequently launching new sites that all use the same core functionality.
• You have resources to anticipate future needs and develop a scalable content architecture.
• You’re willing to endure the upfront cost for long-term savings and benefit.
• You’d rather use development resources for creating innovations rather than making minor adjustments based on performance, new solution launches or new marketing tactics.

A more rigid template is right for you if:

• Your team doesn’t include experienced authors or authors with design experience.
• You want to promote consistent branding knowing that users can’t stray away from guidelines (since the rigid template doesn’t allow it).
• Your design and layout don’t frequently change. You might release new products, but how you promote that offering doesn’t change often.
• You have high author turnover. Or, you have many different markets using the same system and don’t have time for extensive onboarding.
• When branding requirements change, you’d rather rely on development for the “fool-proof” fix instead of relying on authors to edit templates.

A template that’s mildly flexible and mildly rigid is right for you if:

• Your marketing department likes to push boundaries to engage with audiences in different ways, but still needs guidelines to be “on brand.”
• You’re constantly evaluating metrics and recommending UX tweaks to improve performance but you still need to abide by strict brand guidelines.
• You have mixed skilled authors and provide proper onboarding and documentation.
• You’re a global brand. You need to be consistent but adhere to localization requirements.
• You prefer compounded small changes for anticipating future state. But, you’re not willing to completely overhaul the system.

Pro Tip: Become familiar with Roles

When creating a new template, there are a few different Roles necessary to orchestrate this process. These Roles include an Admin, Developer, Template Author and Author. Want more information on Roles? Reference Adobe’s documentation on Page Templates.

Experience Fragments versus Content Fragments

Beginner authors often confuse content and experience fragments. Content Fragments are a powerful tool that helps create consistent content experiences more efficiently. They’re also wildly underused!

Here’s a breakdown of the differences between Experience Fragments and Content Fragments and how to best use them.

Pro Tip: Use structural Content Fragments

There are two types of content fragments — simple and structural fragments. You can’t customize simple fragments — they’re out-of-the-box and have very limited features. In contrast, with a structural content fragment, you make it easier for authors to input content. This is the method we recommend for more customization and consistency.

Ready to create a structural content fragment? You need to create a content fragment model. Click here to skip ahead to the Assets section for step-by-step directions.

Site Structure

To create an intuitive user experience, all websites should follow a similar page hierarchy, like this outline:

Pro Tip #1: Reorder your pages in your navigation by editing your site structure

In most circumstances, your navigation will pull in from your site structure. AEM will automatically order your pages for you in the order that you created them. If you need to reorder pages, then you need to drag and drop that page within the tree site structure.

For example, you might need to reorder pages if you add a new product page and you want this page to be the first menu item.

Pro Tip #2: Make broad configurations at the root node page so the descendant pages inherit the edit

To maintain the site structure and make any updates or edits, you need to first consider the site hierarchy.

When you’re making global edits, start by finding the root node page where that information is located. You need to find the root node page and make the change there so your edit appears across all applicable pages, not just one page you’re editing. 

A global edit might include updating a logo, header or footer or enabling GDPR settings. This information is going to be in different locations based on your template and developer customizations. If you’re unsure where the information is located, start by searching through the highest nodes.

Once you make the edit to the parent page, the edit will cascade to all descendant pages.

Note: Most developers don’t lock global settings. So, you could break the inheritance of a setting from a parent page to a descendant page and just update a descendant page. If you don’t see your global edit appearing on the homepage, then you likely broke the inheritance and only updated a descendant page.

You need to update the parent or the root node page for the global edit to apply.

Pro Tip #3: Follow this simple process to easily manage images in the system

Make sure your folder structure in Assets mimics your site’s structure. That way you can easily manage images. You’ll stay streamlined across your author team by avoiding duplicate images and disorganization.

SEO-friendly URL

The page or asset structure defines URLs. Here’s how to adhere to SEO best practices so users can easily locate your content.

When creating a new page, authors will follow the prompts from the Create Page wizard. Once you select a template, you’re required to add a Title that displays in the browser tab.

Then, you’ll add in the Name field to create the page path. If you don’t add anything in this field, AEM will generate the field based on the Title with all lowercase and hyphens instead of spaces. URLs should be human-readable, meaning that anyone should be able to identify the content without viewing the page.

Do & Don’t SEO URL example:

Men’s Waffle-Knit Tee Product Page URL structure

• Do: https://www.companyname.com/en/products/mens/waffle-knit-tee.html
• Don’t: https://www.companyname.com/EN/Products/Mens_Cateogry/sku-TE8308KR.html

Authoring

Sites Action Toolbar

Here’s how to fast-track your familiarity with this toolbar and avoid common mistakes.

• Create – used to create a new element.
• Edit – opens a page in Edit mode.
• Properties – prompts the page properties configurations.
• Lock – locks a page while working but only the same user can unlock it.
• Copy – used to replicate an existing element (“1” will be appended to the original name).
• Move – either move or rename an existing page – this will move child pages as well (unpublish before this action).
• Quick Publish – this feature will publish the page or new edits.
• Manage Publication – used to manage publication (publish or unpublish) multiple pages or schedule deployments for a later date and time.
• Delete – remove a page from the site (unpublish before this action).

Creating a New Page

Step 1: Navigate to the desired parent element within the site’s structure.

Step 2: Either select the blue “Create” button in the upper-right corner or click directly on the parent’s thumbnail. That will prompt the full toolbar menu and you’ll select the first option labeled “Create.” 

Step 3: Then click “Page” to initiate the Create Page wizard.

Step 4: From the Template step, choose your desired template then select “Next” to progress to the Properties setup.

Step 5: Add SEO Title and Name fields. From Properties, add the required Title field that will display in the browser tab. The Name field isn’t required but we recommend adding it for SEO.

Reference the SEO-friendly URL section of this guide for more tips.

Pro Tip: How to create a new page fast… even without documentation

If your instance is lacking documentation or direction, start by crawling the site to identify similar page layouts. Then, within Sites, locate the existing page through the URL structure. Click on the thumbnail to see which template was used.

You have two options to create the new page depending on how closely the existing page should resemble the new page:

1) Copy that page and swap the content

— OR —

2) Use the same template to start building from scratch

That will ensure you have full access to the desired functionality within that given template.

Related read: Key differences between a DXP and CMS to know

Adding Content

Step 1: Locate the page. Navigate the tree structure in Sites then click the thumbnail image and select Edit in the upper toolbar. This will open the page in a new tab within the browser. Unless the page is locked, it will be ready for editing.

Step 2: Locate an empty parsys. Find the placeholder text “Drag components here.” (Or you can select an existing component and click the plus sign icon within the action toolbar. That will insert a new component directly above it.)

You can drag and drop a component from the left-side panel. Alternatively, you can select the plus sign icon (the Insert Component dialog) to display the full list of components available within that section.

Step 3: Create a container. When creating a new section of content, you want to first use a container as the parent element to nest components within. With grouped elements, you avoid having to copy and paste one element at a time.

Plus, grouping elements in a container makes it easier to follow guidelines, like margin requirements.

Creating Containers Pro Tip:

Leave extra parsys between each section and subsection to avoid nesting unwanted elements. This also makes it easier to add new content later on.

A common mistake among beginner authors is they end up nesting containers together. That’s disorganized and it could break guidelines and impact UX. Make sure to validate proper nesting by hovering over parent elements and ensuring there isn’t any overlapping.

Step 4: Add the component and configure. Once you add a component within the container, then you can configure the element. To add content, use the configuration dialog. Configurations will vary depending on requirements, but you can open the dialog by hovering and clicking on an element.

Then, select the wrench icon from the action toolbar. Update the configurations available within the dialog (reviewing every tab). Then click on the checkmark to save or the “X” to cancel without saving.

Layout Container

Layout Containers are an underutilized secret weapon. It allows us to create innovative designs with a business’s existing assets WITHOUT development time.

Here are two pro tips to best use this little-known AEM Core Component:

Work in sections by adding a parent container

Once you have a parent container, you can nest other containers to create more intricate layouts to display your content. A parent container will also provide greater flexibility to maintain optimal rendering across any viewports. To create a parent container, use either the Layout Container or Container from the Core Component library.

Adding containers side by side

First, enable Layout mode by selecting the double-sided arrow on the component’s action toolbar. Then adjust the margins to reduce the size. If you want to add two containers side by side, then add another sibling component and adjust the size ensuring the combined width doesn’t exceed the max-width.

Want more information on AEM’s responsive layout? Click here.

Responsiveness

Responsiveness is a feature you can use when:

• Responsiveness isn’t ideal AND
• You need to serve the content to end-users right now

But, this shouldn’t replace front-end development with media queries. This feature is helpful, but it won’t provide the precision achieved through development efforts.

Demo example: Fixing mobile responsiveness

If a page with Core Components isn’t rendering with optimal responsiveness, use the device emulator to adjust content for various viewports. In the image above, the 33/66 container wasn’t stacking automatically in mobile.

So, the author used the emulator to specify the container widths for tablet and mobile devices. You can do this in three easy steps:

1. Select the emulator icon from the menu
2. Select each container element and choose the layout feature from the action toolbar
3. Drag the sides to define the ideal width

Responsiveness Tip: Don’t use this feature to rearrange content

The Responsiveness feature does not support rearranging content at various viewports. If you use the emulator mode to move or remove an element, then this change will affect all devices.

Previewing a Page

After configuring a section, make sure to preview the page before publishing to ensure your layout is matching what you’re seeing in edit mode. We recommend you preview frequently while you’re editing to avoid layout issues.

Here’s how to preview:

Select the Page Information icon in the upper left menu to display the flyout menu then click “View as Published.”

— OR —

You can access preview mode by appending the parameter “?wcmmode=disabled” to your author URL.

Page Properties 

Page Properties handles page-level configurations that are not visible on a page. You might use Page Properties to:

• Add a vanity URL
• Add metadata through tags and a description
• Hide the page in the navigation

How to view Page Properties:

You can view Page Properties from the tree structure of the Sites consoles OR within edit mode by clicking the Page Information menu then selecting “Open Properties.”

Page Properties configurations will differ depending on templates. As an author, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the various features to better inform your decisions when working without defined processes.

Page Properties Pro Tip: Keep it simple

First, test all Page Property options in lower environments before moving to production. If all options perform the same function, then evaluate the best end-user experience. Does one implementation provide a more streamlined experience?

Simplicity is also key for maintaining complex author environments that might not have documentation to support every function. Make sure you’re testing, evaluating, documenting and communicating across involved teams to develop processes that will improve efficiencies.

Page Activation

Once you’ve thoroughly tested and obtained approval, your page is ready for activation.

Step 1: Using the Page Information menu, select “Publish Page” and follow the activation wizard. You’ll activate the page as well as all references on the page.

Step 2: Then use your environment’s publisher link to display the final version of the published content.

Always keep in mind: Activating a page in production will push your page and all references live.

You can deactivate a page by selecting “Unpublish Page” from the Page Information menu or the Manage Publication within the Sites console.

Page Activation Pro Tip #1: Initiating the approval workflow

Some users will not have permission to publish content directly. When that’s the case, these authors can use the Manage Publication action to initiate the approval workflow.

Page Activation Pro Tip #2: Clear your cache

If you’ve activated a page and you’re still seeing old content displayed, your first step to troubleshoot should be to clear your cache. That often does the trick.

Page Activation Pro Tip #3: Re-publishing

The page auto-saves any edits you make, but you have to re-publish to serve saved edits to end-users.

Versions

With every activation launch, you create a new version of the page and edits automatically save.

If you want to revert to an older version…

1. Select the page thumbnail from the tree.
2. Then toggle the side panel and select “Timeline.” This will display the page history and any versions created.
3. Click the “Revert to this Version” button to restore that content.

But, be careful relying on this feature too heavily.

Every system will have different settings on how many versions you can store. And, every activation will automatically create another.

Versions Pro Tip: How to avoid overriding important versions To avoid overriding important versions, use “View as Published” to evaluate your page in lower environments instead of reviewing directly within Publisher. You can also try delaying activation until after your page has been thoroughly unit tested in Author and is ready for the next steps. 

Related read: The advantages of choosing AEM as a cloud service

Assets

Assets is a digital asset manager (DAM) housed within AEM’s application. With this console, you can store, edit and manage assets including images, videos, documents, content fragments and more. The Assets console has advanced collaboration capabilities so you can leverage content quickly across omnichannel experiences.

When navigating Assets, make sure you’re viewing this console using Card View mode (select the view menu icon directly right of the blue Create button).

That’s compared to the Sites console, which uses Column View mode. In Assets, many of the essential features are only available through Card View mode. It’s commonly missed because you have to manually shift view modes.

Key Features

Collection – allows users to categorize similar assets — by location, commonalities or user selection — for organizational purposes. This feature streamlines accessibility for repeated usage by the user network (authors, creative, marketers, dev, etc.)

Metadata – allows you to add relevant information about an image for search engine optimization.

Tagging – use Tagging to classify assets for internal or external organization. For internal purposes, you can assign tags for search filtering within the system. For external purposes, you can use tags for displaying dynamic content that appeals to an audiences’ profile.

Renditions – use this feature to create different “cuts” of an asset for ideal rendering across different areas of your site.

Renditions example: Let’s say you feature a recent press release on your home page with a small thumbnail, headline and intro copy. End-users click the call to action and are redirected to the page displaying the same image as a banner. Depending on where the image is displaying, you could use a different rendition of that image for the banner versus the call to action.

Versions – use Versions to restore an image to a previous state before edits within the system. Testing not working as expected? Reverting to an old design due to timing constraints? Simply revert to the saved version.

Helpful resource: Want to review a mega-list of supported file types in Assets? Click here.

Assets Action Toolbar

Familiarize yourself with this toolbar to fast-track your success within the Assets console.

• Create – create a new workflow, folder, file or content fragment
• Share Link – share an asset or folder URL with other users
• Download – download the asset to your local machine
• Checkout – lock asset to other users while you are making changes
• Properties – asset metadata schema (customizable)
• Edit – basic asset editor features (rotate, crop)
• Annotate – make comments on assets
• Manage Tags – add tags
• To Collection – to group assets for sharing with users
• Copy – create a copy of an asset or folder (“1” will be appended to the original name)
• Move – used to remove or rename an asset (unpublish before this action)
• Quick Publish – to publish the asset
• Manage Publication – used to manage publication (publish or unpublish) multiple assets within a defined scope or schedule deployments for a later date and time
• Delete – remove asset or folder (unpublish before this action)

Asset Organization 

Establish folder organization early on and remain consistent to ensure automation continues to function properly.

As a starting point, mimic your Assets folder structure after the corresponding site. So, you should have a root folder representing the site followed by a country/language folder and broken down by landing and sub-page folders.

Separate commonly referenced files, such as icons, logos, product images, videos and PDFs, in individual folders with a sibling relationship to the landing page folders.

Did you inherit a mature system without any historic documentation on Asset organization? Here’s what to do.

It’s common for authors to inherit a mature system without any historic documentation of why/how processes were originally set up. As an author in these situations, you must become a system detective.

Start by examining existing functionality that’s working so you can replicate the implementation. Authors are like the front line of defense. You might not have the skills to identify complex backend processes that are seemingly working counterintuitively against your efforts. But, it’s imperative to gain a deep understanding of how they interact with the system at each roadblock. With this detective work, you’ll become your team’s leading expert.

Follow these file naming best practices. (Without them, broken images are more likely and files are harder to search for.)

File naming best practices

• Use dashes instead of spaces
• Clearly label the asset for searching
• Use all lowercase letters
• Avoid using any special characters (except for dashes or underscores)

Unpermitted characters for naming conventions

Here’s a space-separated list:

File:  * / : [ \ ] | # % { } ? &

Folder:  * / : [ \ ] | # % { } ? ” . ^ ; + & t

• Do: companyname-transparent-header-logo.png
• Don’t: Screen shot_2021-01-01.png

Use Tags to easily search assets, itemize results into collections, and leverage Adobe Sensei through smart tagging. Add tags through Properties on the Basic tab or by selecting Manage Tags from the toolbar. From either configuration, you can apply multiple tags using the tag browser.

Need more direction on how to create tags? Skip to the Tags section of this guide.

Use Collections to collaborate with other users and create, edit and share assets. Define these groupings through static or dynamic categorizing depending on your business requirements.

Create a new collection in these three steps:

1. Access the Collections folder from the Assets console global navigation then click create.
2. From the Create Collection wizard, configure the required Collection Title.
3. Determine if the collection should be public or grant access to specific user roles.

Collections Pro Tip:

For static references, manually select the asset(s), click the To Collection feature from the toolbar and assign them to their corresponding collection.

The Profiles feature also allows for Asset organization. We won’t cover that here because it’s pretty advanced. Want to learn about it? Check out Adobe’s documentation. 

Search and Filtering Assets

You can search through the various consoles. You can also access assets through the left-side panel toggle icon using the Filter option.

Filter automatically prompts the filter properties from the search menu. Filter properties include saved searches, folder directories, files or folders, file type, file size, last modified, status, orientation, style, insights, Adobe Stock and UGC.

Content Fragment Models

three steps to enable and configure content fragment models:

Step 1: Make sure this feature is enabled in Configuration Browser.

Step 2: Now, make sure it’s applied to your Assets folder. To complete this, an Admin must navigate to Tools > General then open the Configuration Browser tile. From here, select the blue Create button in the upper right and enter your desired Title to correspond with your new configuration. Then choose the “Content Fragment Models” option. Click Create to save the configurations.

Step 3: Choose your content fragment model configuration. Start by selecting the global navigation and clicking Assets. Choose Files then navigate to your desired folder. Select the folder by hovering and clicking on the thumbnail until the checkmark overlay appears and click Properties from the toolbar (or by using the (p) keyboard shortcut).

From the folder’s properties, select the Cloud Services tab and choose your content fragment models configuration that you created in the previous step. Click “Save & Close” to complete.

Here are four steps to creating a new content fragment model:

Step 1: Select the global navigation then click on the Tools icon then select Assets from the left-side menu. This will prompt the Assets menu.

Step 2: Select the Content Fragments Models tile then choose the configuration folder.

Step 3: Click on the blue Create button and specify the required Title (and description if necessary) and click Create again to open the editor.

Step 4: Once you’ve completed the schema, save and exit the editor then publish the model from the console toolbar menu.

Content Fragment Model Pro Tip: Know your available data types

You need to know your available data types before creating your model so that you can consider limitations. Planning for limitations and business requirements in advance is a lot more effective and efficient than reacting to issues as they arise during the build process. Check out this section of Adobe’s documentation[7]  to get familiar with available data types.

Creating a Content Fragment

Once you’ve created your model, saved and published it, here’s how to create a content fragment in five simple steps:

Step 1: Navigate back to Assets > Files from the global navigation. Select the folder that you configured in Step 2 of the model enablement process above.

Step 2: Click the blue Create button and select the Content Fragment option.

Step 3: From the New Content Fragment wizard, choose the model that you created. Then click Next and specify the required Title. Select Create to complete the process and open the editor.

Step 4: Within the editor, you can input the data and create any variations of the content by selecting the Create Variation button from the left-side panel. Once you’ve made all changes, click Save to complete. Publish the fragment from the Assets console toolbar using the Quick Publish option.

Ready to learn more advanced capabilities of content fragments? Explore these topics in AEM’s documentation:

• Variations
• Associated Content
• Metadata
• Delete Considerations
• Translation Projects

Tags

Don’t underestimate the power of tags. This feature is extremely helpful for system organization and usability. And, it’s also key in creating dynamic content that appeals to your audience.

You can create tags as metadata under Tools > General using the Tags folder.

A Namespace is a similar concept to a folder. Create a Namespace to represent a site. Then, you use Tags to organize the tag hierarchy.

Example: Navigating Namespaces and Tags

Under your site’s namespace, you could have Products as your parent tag with Apparel and Home Goods as its direct children elements. Any descendants of a child further identify a specific item.

In the Apparel example, Shirt, Hat and Pants illustrate the Product tag’s structure. Use Tags to classify both pages and assets. Create tags within Properties of the element.

Pro Tip: Use Adobe’s Sensei for AI

With this tool, you can train your system to recognize similar items and automatically classify them.

Your Next Steps

With this guide, you should now be able to:

• Create new pages
• Configure pages
• Preview and activate content
• Create Content Fragment Models & Content Fragments
• Create Experience Fragments for promoting channel agonistic content
• Organize Site and Asset structure according to best practices
• Understand when and how to use out-of-the-box components
• Navigate Touch UI
• Understand the key features of Assets
• Best practices for asset management
• Create and use tags for categorizing content

Now, put all that you learned into action so you can create consistent, innovative digital content experiences faster. Save this guide and come back to it often to make sure you’re best using AEM and avoiding common mistakes.

Need expert help managing AEM or migrating to the cloud? Our AEM consulting team is happy to work with you / your teams!

The post Getting Started With Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

George Santayana

In July of 1881, President James Garfield was shot as he walked through a Washington D.C. train station. The Civil War veteran was well-liked by the citizens of the country he had led for just four months prior to this incident. His devoted constituents followed his health obsessively after the assassination attempt, hoping for salvation.

• Newspapers shared details about the innovative young inventor named Alexander Graham Bell who deployed a newly-constructed metal detector to aid in the search for the bullet.
• They marveled at the ingenuity of Naval Engineers who attempted to comfort the president in the blistering heat of summer with another first: a rudimentary air conditioning system.
• They revered the dedication of the president’s doctor and found hope in his reports of the president’s improving condition.

Nonetheless, Garfield died in mid-September, and the country mourned bitterly.

Garfield’s death was less the result of the bullet that punctured his abdomen, and more a failure of the conditions under which he was treated. Modern medicine as we know was still in its formative stage – for instance, doctors were convinced that extracting the bullet was the right method. But they introduced new germs, and their outdated sanitation methods allowed for infection.

In the end, Garfield would’ve lived if the bullet was left in.

As we’ll see later, it’s a good analogy for what many marketers face today, as they watch their own seemingly robust initiatives wither away. Marketing executives invest in a new kind of technology, often considered to be a silver bullet.

However, similar to Garfield’s myopic doctors, Marketing teams miss the big picture or are undercut by an outdated process.

They focus only on the bullet (a new piece of technology or a process implementation) producing minimal, if any results that impact the business… let alone revenue. Before we consider the failures that parallel the death of a president– and the death of the digital marketing shift– let’s consider why this shift continues to happen today.

The Driving Force Is The Customer (Of Course)

Not surprising anyone, customer behavior has driven our necessary transformation.

We, you, and marketers as a whole have known this for over a decade.

In 2009, in the midst of the worst economy in many years, Corporate Executive Board (CEB) set out to understand why some sales reps were successfully selling while others were losing ground and not reaching quotes by miles. In conducting their research, the team found that B2B consumer buying behavior has changed dramatically, and that successful sales people were adapting to this new dynamic of the complex sale.

This meticulous research was published in 2011 in The Challenger Sale, disrupting sales and marketing organizations everywhere as they found that consumers are nearly 60 percent of the way through the buying cycle before ever contacting a vendor or supplier. Since 2011, nearly all of the big analysts firms have conducted their own research to confirm this finding.

As it turns out, in today’s market buyers are at least 60 percent, with some analysts finding the position closer to 90 percent. This was a fundamental and formative shift in buying behavior.

And it’s remained permanent.

It is not unreasonable to expect that buyers today have nearly made up their minds before they even talk to us. Typically in the B2B space, it’s buying groups making a purchasing decision instead of a singular decision maker. These groups are often cross-functional (ideally like a center of excellence), all infusing their own perspective into the purchasing decision.

It’s wrong to consider it a conversation. It’s an investigation.

Customers research exhaustively.

And they’ll know you before you know them.

What your brand ‘says’ to your buyers before you even know who they are is of paramount importance. Surrendering control (or even participation) in the early buying process still scares some executives, even as the market has dramatically shifted to be far more customer-centric.

An example? The shift towards greater user privacy amidst the use of browser cookies.

Thousands of marketing organizations have changed their customer engagement strategy, looking for ways to re-tip the scales in their favor. Today, the adoption and optimization of new technology, ranging from intent data to conversational marketing (and all built upon CRM, MAP, and data enrichment at minimum) and any number of plug-in technologies give us digital binoculars.

We can watch a consumer’s online behavior, and shape the way they perceive us, evaluate our competitors, and make purchasing decisions. We collect that digital behavior, and make inferences about their likelihood to buy from us, when they might do so and how to present our brand at the right time with the right message.

Insights from our inspection through a metaphorical microscope create a voracious appetite for more. More data. More insights. More tech. More of anything that will put us in front of the investigative consumer earlier, or steer the conversation in our favor. For this, today’s marketer must become more digitally literate. Investments in our people become critical or crippling if we fail to focus on development and mastery of new skills and knowledge.

At the same time, CEOs are demanding that marketing leaders demonstrate how their craft contributes to revenue in a meaningful way. This pressure from the top is forcing CMOs to take a closer look at their strategy, people, processes and operations, engagement strategies, investment in technologies and tactical, operational, and revenue performance metrics.

Five Ways To Fail

Just like President Garfield’s death, there’s a multitude of reasons that contribute to company’s marketing failing to truly make an impact. Is your organization guilty of any … or all … of these?

Sophistication

Garfield was shot just as modern medicine as we know it today took shape. His doctors weren’t the self-taught barbers and apothecaries of decades prior. But buoyed with a false sense of their own capabilities, their miscalculations were lethal. Old-school doctors implemented an approach to sanitation they deemed “good enough,” and when it failed (because a tool or finger that “looks” clean really isn’t), they wrote off the method.

Likewise for Marketers:

So many companies come to us with a “good enough” marketing strategy, but it rarely accounts for the unseen microorganisms that infect a modern marketing initiative.

Historically, marketing planning centers around budgeting: what tech to invest in, which events are running again, how much money for advertising, how much for slicks and other thought leadership materials, can we open staff positions (and why), and so on. We gnash about over these details, then divvy up our budget accordingly.

But in today’s marketing environment, we need to scrutinize every investment for return. Yes, some channels might be more difficult (or impossible, in the case of #DarkFunnel) to measure, but that doesn’t mean measurement is a complete waste of time.

Also: What’s the business strategy? How will our company grow in the year ahead? And how do the sales and marketing strategies align to these goals – and revenue numbers?

There’s a good reason revenue operations has become popular in the marketing and sales spaces – and that’s because RevOps is a sophisticated, multi-function capacity oriented around revenue and the processes that drive it. But it requires the right sophistication to make it hum, or you’ll risk running into even more roadblocks than perhaps you already do.

Lack Of Customer Focus

Another potentially lethal germ (metaphorically) is the failure to account for how your customers buy in a different way today than they did even five years ago.

Sure, they’re online and doing tons of research before you ever know it. There’s communities of people everywhere talking about relevant topics to your business that you simply can’t track. And between video, TikTok, etc. there’s more content than ever to be consumed.

This is for everyone, by the way – B2B and B2C.

“So, what?” you may ask.

A marketing strategy can’t be siloed anymore. In fact, marketing’s in a unique position to lead the organizational strategy in more ways than ever before, especially since they’re able to contextualize the information from other teams and seek out buyers where they are. This is especially true with the sheer amount of content / information available at a person’s fingertips on a daily basis.

This means more strategic partnerships at all levels of the organization. And not just in sales, by the way … finance, IT, customer support, etc.

Did a lead become a sale? Okay, great … but did they enjoy the onboarding process? Will they stick around for years and stay loyal, and can you influence that?

Because you must ensure the business (not just a department or two) is truly putting the customer first.

Application of technology

Related: Questions to ask while auditing your tech stack

Alexander Graham Bell promised that his induction-based metal detector would find the bullet. It would have. Later tests proved unequivocally the technology worked.

But reasons for the failure became clear in hindsight: The presiding doctor insisted on scanning the wrong side, while the newly invented metal-coil mattress upon which Garfield lay rendered the technology useless.

For anyone customer-facing, you know about the insane amount of tech available today. In 2022, it’s nearly 10,000 per the now-infamous Scott Brinker supergraphic. Every couple of years, the amount of options in the marketplace dramatically increases.

We frequently work with clients who purchase promising technology to solve a problem. (Shameless plug: Our sales and marketing tech consulting services are the trick)

It’s just which kind … what was once CRMs and marketing automation platforms is now intent data, sales enablement, and content experiences. In a few years, who knows?

However, we (still!) often see companies buying these technologies without really knowing what they are buying them for, how they can support their marketing strategy, or even how to use them to get the most out of them.

Further, in many cases implementing the technologies will need to involve IT – you know, that often-underappreciated team who’s the backbone of most things that use electricity in your organization? It’s still, appallingly, still a new relationship for many marketing teams and therefore, new stakeholders to influence.

So … the questions still need answers:

What are you going to do with the new technology? How are we going to use it? Who needs to be a part of the decision to buy? How are we going to integrate it with our existing technologies? What skills will we need to run it? What processes need to be created to support them?

(That last question is often overlooked, by the way.)

In most cases, it’s these items orbiting the technology that account for the failure, such as an inability to get the right skillsets developed on the team or an inability to truly build the right integrations to the rest of your stack – and yet technology takes the fall.

Process

For President Garfield, naval engineers created air conditioning and entire new train track was laid for a railcar fitted with a waterbed to reduce the effects of travel– but none of those efforts affected the outcome.

The president’s head doctor refused to be questioned, while the rest of the team bickered over options. The anarchy of his treatment was so extreme that it factored into the trial of Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, He told the court in his own defense: “The doctors killed him, I just shot him.” (The facts didn’t help Guiteau’s defense. He paid for that shot with a guilty verdict, and his life).

Likewise for Marketers:

Inadequate processes continue to gum up the works of savvy marketers. Inefficient lead management can tank even the best multi-channel campaigns, especially if suddenly sales think they’re calling sales-ready leads when really the lead just wanted to read your interesting report (hi, broken lead scoring!).

Suddenly, marketing’s ability to impact revenue? Gone.

If data isn’t flowing properly, you’ll have incomplete leads, a database that’s irritating to use, and inefficient sales processes that can slow engagement with those leads who are sales-ready.

Bad customer experience for prospects, and annoyed salespeople. What could possibly go wrong?!

And yet … these are happening with greater and greater frequency, because as teams try to navigate new tech needs, evolving customer demands (and digital behaviors), and blending science and art together to create a worthwhile customer experience, they continue to be hindered by bad internal processes.

Adoption of a technology uproots existing processes, undermines customer engagement strategies, annoys key staff and forces a new strategy. But all too often, plans move ahead with major chunks missing, and these holes become viruses that propagate, spread, and ultimately wound or kill the initial vision.

In the end, Marketing loses credibility.

Again.

Business Outcomes

A missing question: Will a given investment (in training, new headcount, tech, process change, etc.) result in positive return? And how will that be measured?

You’d think this happens often. It doesn’t. And it’s why, when we work with teams, we walk through value mapping exercises to understand how an engagement will drive towards those business outcomes.

Because any investment you make should align to key business objectives – but too often, we see this neglected, even when enterprises have robust processes to examine each team’s business cases for new investment.

That’s because there’s often a lack of accountability to track down that ROI – or, worse, unrealistic expectations that never could’ve been met in the first place.

Seven Success Characteristics

If you’re looking to transform your organization, then we’ve found there’s a handful of common traits in successful overhauls that generate positive revenue impact.

Obsessed with strategy

Single-minded, unapologetic, and intense. These organizations are preoccupied with strategy, and disciplined enough to drive it at every step of their process.

Staff … and not just leaders … ingest a steady diet of top-quality thinking and meaningfully-interpreted data to shape strategy that reflects a sophisticated worldview with depth and comprehensiveness. You can spot these strategy-obsessed teams by the elements they bake into their journeys:

Identify and engage executive stakeholders into a new marketing strategy.

Why does this matter? The essence of change is often a power struggle– the old versus the new, the new versus the ‘other new.’ No longer does this change conveniently contain itself to a single department, it usually encompasses several disparate units. To foster cohesion and accountability, one must start at the top. You need partners to make this happen, to grease the wheels and ensure for example that Sales shares your funnel, and your campaigns integrate with them.

Assess organizational and operational readiness.

When we are hired to help a company transform their sales or marketing function, this is the first thing we want to know about.

Specifically, we ask:

• Is the organization capable of handling change?
• Do they have a demonstrated track record of doing so?
• Is there a business need that everyone is aware of that is necessitating a change in strategy?
• In terms of operational readiness, has a budget been formally allocated?
• Is the technology foundation in place?
• How mature are the processes today and how receptive are people to changing those processes
• Structure follows strategy, so what’s the status on, say, support for marketing and sales alignment with the new strategy?

We might even use a survey tool to get additional insights within the organization and really discover how people feel about key areas that will impact the effort.

Partnerships

While we think of this as driving change within Marketing, new partnerships must be forged across functions– IT, sales, R&D and nearly every other functional area on your org chart. These functions also have to change with Marketing and work at higher levels of collaboration than ever before.

They, too, have to implement new processes, and drive accountability for new behaviors into their organizations. If transformation is designed as something for Marketing only, it will stay and die in Marketing only and fall short of business transformation.

Alignment

Specifically, there’s a strong desire by both Marketing and Sales to have greater alignment to achieve business objectives. One of the things that we often see that slows down transformation more than just about anything else is a lack of alignment between these two groups. Lead management is the easiest example, although there are many areas of alignment to consider.

As we’ve noted in our steps to successful lead management, sales must come to the table to discuss the definition of a qualified lead. They must agree to lead stages that will be used in CRM. They must agree to hold sales people accountable for using the CRM and accepting leads or sending them back to Marketing in a given timeframe.

In short, they have to agree to be partners, to accept that Marketing really does own that front 70 percent (or more) of the typical buying cycle, and agree to lead hand-offs to ensure timely follow up and commit to doing their part working a well-qualified lead to close.

On the other side, Marketing must agree to find, nurture, and qualify leads that contribute to the sales funnel. Marketing must have shared ownership of revenue goals, and be prepared to reflect the sales strategy in the marketing strategy. If both parties aren’t willing to commit to these things, at a minimum progress will be slow and likely painful.

This is but one example, of course, and it’s not only between sales and marketing (even if it’s the most common). Partnerships with other teams within the organization are crucial for driving the entirety of the business forward.

(Actual) Executive support

Leaders need to be empowered to drive change in the organization, which means that they will need executive support to hold people accountable for new behaviors.

In addition, leaders do need to know what they have to work with. We have found havoc creating from a lack of clarity around what roles are needed and what responsibilities need to be covered. Once the strategy is clear and executive leadership has determined the course of action, a careful assessment of what skills you have already and what skills you will need is in order. So often, we hear turmoil and even voluntary attrition because people don’t know what is coming and what it means for them.

You can get ahead of that with careful planning and complete transparency in communication as to why, what and how you will make changes to your business.

You will also need to conduct a careful evaluation of which people you will need to execute your vision for the future. Should you find that you do not have the skills in house, a plan to acquire those skills must be accounted for. Staff get very antsy around who is going to to do what in this new environment. It is important to define roles and responsibilities early and communicate that as quickly as possible to team members to diffuse any upheaval.

Process Orientation

Implementing any new strategy and technology inevitably means that new processes have to be created or re-engineered, and people will need to learn them. This will have a ripple effect, sometimes vibrating through organizations at significantly disruptive wavelengths. Planning for this means cross-functional collaboration and education planning, as well as executive agreement to hold people accountable for new behaviors. A few key processes that need to be considered are program planning, lead management and data management.

Something we often see is program management that is not aligned to the business strategy. Program management is the part of sales and marketing alignment that actually executes against the requirement of a joint planning process. You must have a process in place, or develop a process to have Sales and Marketing get together at the beginning of the fiscal year and discuss the sales strategy. Then work together to plan out which programs will be executed by Marketing throughout the year in support of the sales priorities.

The process definition ensures that it happens consistently globally or across P&Ls, etc. In support of those program plans, campaign management process has to be defined and documented. Campaigns can take two weeks to six months to deploy without a clearly defined process for execution. Campaign strategy can be all over the board if a well documented campaign design and development plan is missing.

And more scary: ineffective campaigns will be repeated over and over again if there is not a process for monitoring and either eliminating or optimizing effective or ineffective campaigns.

In our technology-driven world, certain processes can be quite automated (such as lead management), but the right processes and governance over data must be in place to allow this to happen. Otherwise, you’re simply setting up more headaches and fires your teams will have to put out – instead of focusing on more revenue-forward initiatives.

Customer Obsession

Depending on your business, Sales can be resistant to actually focusing on the customer. It has never happened, nor will it ever, that we’ve meet a sales leader or salesperson who says that they are not focused on the customer.

But in reality, most sales people default to hard core selling. In “The Challenger Sale” research, what CEB found was that the most effective sales person (consistently exceeds quotas among other things) was, in fact, the one who challenged customers’ thinking and taught them about an unrecognized problem that they have.

This tough love is the kind of customer focus we are talking about. It is cultural within your organization. Every function, every facet of the business is laser-focused on providing value to the customer. How each group demonstrates that varies, obviously. But this culture is the most likely to succeed in transforming the business of marketing.

Related: Who’s involved in knowing your customer? More than you might think

Realistic Technology Assumptions

Earlier, we said technology alone isn’t a strategy, nor is it a solution. However, it can be a catalyst.

Once you know your “core” tech stack, stay open to new ideas on ways to improve. You may find a new technology that can actually enhance what you do know (and sometimes for less).

And do explore what tech is truly needed – and how it will integrate with current tech – to enable new functionality. For example, if you’re looking into account-based marketing initiatives, it’ll be far easier to have a strong intent data platform, but that might not be all you’re looking for. An upgraded scheduling software, sales outreach tools, and ability to scale 1-to-1 content experiences might also be necessary to truly do it well.

Know your impact

Although it’s tough to measure everything, there are some impacts you can measure. For instance, are booked calls from your site increasing – and leading to closed-won deals at a stronger clip than before?

What about content? It’s still king, even if there’s more of it than ever before. Is yours resonating? What is, and what isn’t (and what should you do with content that’s not influencing positive outcomes)?

And of course … is marketing impacting revenue? Without an answer, CMOs risk losing the credibility needed at the executive level, something Dr. Debbie Qaqish digs into in her book From Backroom To Boardroom.

Accountability continues to be underrated, but it truly impacts everything – from sales follow-up to marketing spend. Even though it’s harder than ever, thanks to greater user privacy and more channels than ever, there are still ways to measure financial impact – and this will open new doors for long-term success.

What are you trying to accomplish with your business transformation?

We often see three major results areas: Tactical, operational and financial.

Tactical measures are specific to marketing activities that you do to drive leads into the business. Historically, marketing organizations have not been very good at following these leads through your process. We encourage our clients to think of all of these lead sources in the same way you would a personal investment portfolio. Which investments are yielding the greatest return? Which investments do you consider long term investments rather than short term wins?

Operational measures are designed to measure incremental wins to process improvement, marketing efficiencies, and execution of business strategy. Operational measures are the pieces of the transformation that actually drive change. Process reengineering, new knowledge and skills, adoption of new technologies and tools, new organizational structure or a new go to market strategy– all of these things are considered operational changes to Marketing, all of which need to be defined, quantified, and measured.

To ensure adoption into the organization, operational measures must be specific, measurable, achievable, results driven and confined to a specific timeline. Failure to identify operational metrics will inhibit organizational transformation without question.

Transparent Communication

Many clients get excited about the ideas presented here. New tech! Strategies! Change! And of course, revenue impact!

But we’ve been tuned out when we share a timelessly unsexy truth: The single most critical factor in making a new business initiative successful is communication.

When you reach the point where you are discussing new roles and responsibilities, it is likely that word is out that change is coming. This is disruptive to a culture, but in a good way, not a bad one. In the bad scenario, whispers over cube walls prompt people to panic. The stable ones worry about where they fit, the dynamic ones grow skeptical quickly if the change appears to stall. A spooked workforce is an ineffective one, and eventually it will calcify into a resistance to change of any sort.

Leaders become vocal, efforts are undermined. It’s lethal. Irreversible. Impossible to surmount, and when we encounter it– no brilliant strategy or well-laid plan can break through it.

The antidote is transparency.

Be clear about the strategy, why you are making a change, what has to happen in order to achieve the goals you set forth, and how you plan to move the needle. Be clear about the roles that you will need to support the new efforts and what new responsibilities are going to be required to meet objectives. While this sounds like an odd place to start, remember that change is about people. People change first individually, and then together they become a department changes, and momentum carries that into organizational change. This will not happen overnight, but it’s the good kind of viral sharing that amounts to success.

Also: Remember to share your wins as a team and celebrate. Change is hard, transformation moreso, but in the end it will be worth it!

And if you need a helping hand, we’ve done this for companies just like yours. See some results now.

The post Why Marketing Transformations Fail appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

If you peruse marketing LinkedIn, you’ll see opinions across the board on this topic. Some well-respected people swear that gates are evil – others think it’s unnecessary.

As a marketer myself, I asked myself … am I missing something? Do I understand the pros-and-cons of each as much as I think I do?

And so: This article will try to avoid convincing you what to do.

(If you want my opinion, I dove into it in a podcast appearance. Don’t listen until you’ve read, though!)

Instead, the goal is that you’ll be more informed to make your own decisions and adjust your go-to-market strategies.

And a friendly reminder: content is not just a blog or webpage, but is anything a prospect / customer could consume. That’s video, podcast, infographic, embedded image, etc.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Why gate at all? | The case for ungating | The case for gated content | What about psychology? | Identifying some myths | Healthy questions to ask | Conclusions

Why do we gate content to begin with?

This fundamental question seems silly to even ask, right?

You put up a request (typically a form of some sort) to gain a person’s information and indicated interest in a given topic, and in exchange for their email and other information, you provide content they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else – often eBooks, PDFs, infographics, video courses, etc.

This is an overly-simplified version, but really there’s one central goal: Identify people who might eventually be good for sales activity, and hopefully, revenue.

So, a rephrasing of the title could be “is this necessary anymore?” After all, marketing out eBooks is so 2000-and-late, right? (#SorryNotSorry)

As you consider what content to leverage (if any) to ask for a prospect’s email address, keep in mind we’re discussing the concepts of each position. It’s up to you to determine if ungating everything vs. more things vs. nothing else is best for your business.

Executive summary

For those who need to bounce, here’s a few of the headlines!

The case for ungating

Most companies have a majority of their items as ungated, but they don’t ungate all of it. And their best content is typically what’s found behind some sort of form.

So, why ungate your content?

More people can read it

Seems simple, right? But there’s more to it!

Gated content will get visitors to a page who don’t fill out the form … and thus, people who don’t read what you’ve worked hard to produce. This also can provide a negative customer experience for people who got a classic case of wrong-content-at-the-wrong-time, making them less likely to interact with you in the future.

On the flip side, ungated allows you to build your brand in a more positive light, because as prospects / customers read your content, they’ll associate positive experiences with your company name and logo. Keep pumping out authoritative content on topics your audience cares about, and they’ll start to remember your name.

That infographic, PDF, or blog with your logo stamped on it means something, and it means more in a person’s hands!

Silvio Perez over at Metadata.io provides this example to drive home the point:

“If your primary goal is to have your content consumed so you can educate and create demand within your industry then ungated is hands down mathematically superior. 

Ungated: A $1,000 ad spend @ $5 cost per click, assuming a 20% consumption rate, equates to 40 people reading the content.

That’s a $25 cost per consumption

Gated: A $1,000 ad spend @ $5 CPC, assuming a 10% conversion rate + a 40% consumption rate post-download, equates to 8 peope readin the content.

That’s a $125 cost per consumption.

So even assuming a lower completion rate (which isn’t true) from ungated content, it’s still cheaper to get people to consume all your content – which allows you to educate the market and create demand.”

And if people aren’t signing up for a demo or booking a meeting?

“Marketing content is typically meant to educate. If people aren’t willing to say ‘call me’ then potentially we haven’t convinced the user we’re worth their time just yet, “ said Angela Earl in this podcast (7:00 mark).

SEO benefits

Gated content doesn’t help – that’s because Googlebot, which is what Google uses to learn what your content is, won’t fill out the form to grab your assets.

Thus, gated content won’t move the needle on helping this or other pages rank.

Ungated content can be fully-parsed by Google (and others, like Bing or Duckduckgo) and served to any user its relevant to. But it also helps other pages through internal linking and being topically related to other important content across your site. 

Related: We deleted ½ our site to provide better content – learn why (and how)

Distribution

As folks like Ross Simmonds say often, “Create once. Distribute forever.”

Ungated content is easy to remix and get into other channels:

• Social channels
• Community forums, such as Quora, Reddit, and Medium
• Youtube videos
• Having the author add more via LinkedIn articles, personal blog, or other places they’re involved
• Paid advertising
• Email (#StillUndefeated)

Since your content is already open to the public, remixing or slicing and dicing it into other pieces makes it far more reusable because you have nothing you’re holding back. 

This has an added bonus of getting your brand into places where you can’t track. For instance, if a summary image from a blog of yours is shared in a marketing Reddit forum, you likely won’t know – but the readers in this community will know of you!

If it takes more and more touchpoints to get a customer, ungating allows you more options to support the marketing reality of simultaneously allowing your brand and content to be in more places while embracing the reality that you can’t track everything.

More complete customer story

As Nick Bennett notes, his team has used their tech stack in such a way:

“We’ve closed deals because we can see what prospects were reading on our site – and our site is entirely ungated.

For example, in one recent case (a closed-won deal) our persona map showed someone in our database with a company and exactly what they were reading. It allowed us to accelerate the opportunity way quicker than our typical deal cycle, because we could provide content related to their demonstrated pain points and focusing only on those.”

Nick Bennett, Alyce

With ungated content, you can invite a prospect to check it out for themselves and simply point them in the right direction, without the need to email over lengthy PDFs or try to get them to click a link in an email to download something. 

A key consideration? Your tech stack.

Simply having intent data, if you’re lucky enough to have it, isn’t enough. You also need the right tools in place to better tie it together.

I asked Nick and Silvio what they’d recommend:

• A sales enablement tool, like Outreach or SalesLoft
• A CRM / MAP database you’re confident in. Dirty data = more anonymous website visits.
• Content tracking software, like Seismic or Highspot
• Cohesion between sales and marketing. Marketing’s looking at this data more often, but can help sales identify the right pieces to put together for more effective outreach

Related: Audit your stack and get more from it with our platform-agnostic martech consulting!

Build remarketing

As cookieless advertising continues to impact advertiser’s ability to provide on-point advertising, you may be thinking “isn’t this negatively impacted?”

Yes, to a degree. But that doesn’t mean you can’t remarket, right?

After all, the tracking pixels are still installed, and even with ad blocking extensions, people surf while logged into their social media all the time (and you’re being watched when that happens).

Content that’s read / visited can build your audiences, especially when they have SEO value and can be more easily distributed. This means larger paid audiences who you can serve more content to related to their demonstrated interests.

Nurture emails unneeded?

With a heavy reliance on remarketing, you can also ramp down on needing email sequences to nurture leads along to a true sales-ready lead status.

This also removes two risks:

1. Unsubscribes. Unwanted email to a person who just wanted your eBook? A person may unsubscribe … cutting off people from further communications when they’re more ready to buy.
2. Email privacy. As more activity is blocked (such as open rates), you’re less reliant on people clicking a link in your email to indicate interest.

It’s more customer-centric

Simply put, which does your customer want? A form, or no form?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The case for having gated content

If you’ve gotten this far and are prepared to rip away all of your forms, bots, etc., pump the brakes! Because there’s very good reasons to continue gating.

Let’s take a look at the pro-gate side of things:

Identify (more) higher-interest visitors

A prospect who willingly provides their contact information is obviously more interested than someone you don’t know about!

They may be in the market for a product or service you offer, or they might simply find the content interesting enough to warrant a download. Either way, you know who they are as a person.

Demand generation requires demand, and who better than people willingly saying “Hey, you have my interest?”

First-party data is (still) king. Especially with privacy concerns.

With ABM-centric approaches, sales and marketing are looking at an account in its entirety. With less-reliable cookies and a greater emphasis on user privacy, first-party data’s importance has only grown.

This means you need people’s information. And intent data can only get you so far, because while you can track what contacts are doing, that’s only if they’re matched to a record in your database.

Consider this: Your team pulls in 20 key contacts in a target account into your CRM. One of those navigates to your site through an ad or from a Google search, reads some of your content, and leaves.

Your data platforms will show an anonymous website visit unless you have some way of tying that uncookied web visit to a record in your database.

A form removes much of that concern with a market-approved way of going about it, because a prospect who grabs your content willingly volunteers that information.

Progressive profiling reduces friction

Casey Cheshire, founding of Cheshire Impact and author of Marketing Automation Unleashed: The Strategic Path For B2B Growth, says “Marketing automation allows you to use Progressive Profiling on your forms. Asking a few questions each time, building a robust profile on your leads without incurring the massive form friction everyone is talking about.”

If you employ chatbots, you can do something similar using conditional logic, provided you have your mapping into your CRM or MAP in place.

Many companies can still get this wrong today, because they may ask the wrong questions … or simply ask too many of them.

The key? Ask people for information you otherwise can’t get somewhere. From data providers, you can get plenty! But with one question and one information (like an email) that links a person’s answer to their contact record, you can have a low-friction experience + gain additional insight into the user.

Database = More options

• Have an amazing newsletter your audience cares about?
• Want sales to know who to talk to via lead scoring?
• Desire to provide more personalized experiences with your content?

You need to know who people are. That’s your database, of course.

And you need leads in said database. Having more opportunities for people to be in that database only helps, and having content that inspires people to provide their information makes this happen more quickly.

Remember, first-party data matters. You can’t score up people from anonymized activity, which often can show up in account-level views from intent data unless you have a matched contact record from your CRM or MAP.

How’s Your Attribution?

In true revenue marketing fashion, without pipeline accountability, you’ll lose executive buy-in. No matter how your content is presented, it ultimately has to generate revenue.

• Many teams continue to measure progress with pipeline metrics such as MQLs/AQLs, SALs, SQLs, and opportunities
• And many revenue-accountable executives understand these metrics quite well.

In many companies, marketing is on the defensive for their budget. If this resonates, you need ammunition to defend your budget – and having a growing database based on marketing’s efforts is the fuel you need.

Guess what? That’s leads!

With known challenges to attribution (think terms like “dark web” and “marketing-influenced” for example), creating a true multi-touch model is challenging at best and nigh impossible at worst.

Untracked touchpoints will happen in any customer journey, for any industry. But what you can have are more on-road points that allow you to better understand the customer and what’s driving pipeline – and gated assets absolutely provide that.

Why Fix What Works?

Ross Simmonds posted some thoughts in early 2022 that ring true:

“The old way of gating content might not work as well as it did in 2018. You know… The idea of putting ALL of the value behind a form with 5 or 6 fields for your prospect to fill out. That might not work that well in a world where content has become common and most brands struggle to create content that actually differs from the market.”

Ross Simmonds, on LinkedIn

Think about it: Considering the amount of companies who do gate content, one would think that they’d stop if this didn’t work, right? What people don’t fill out are long, arduous forms that ask unnecessary information.

As Casey Cheshire said, “Forms are a barter.  If they’re not working then you’re asking for more than you’re giving. This doesn’t mean remove all the forms.  It means stop being selfish and create content that actually helps your buyer.”

Gated content still works. And, is it really that hard for people to fill out a field or two (especially when they can also have that autofilled by their browser)?

Here’s the trick:

“The new way of gating content is giving away so much value prior to asking for a bit of information – People WANT to submit their info because they’re convinced you’re going to deliver more value,” says Simmonds.

This puts the onus on the company to ensure that any content that is gated is…

• Worth the price of a person’s information (which isn’t cheap, by the way)
• Value they can’t get anywhere else
• Is something they’ll actually read or use

Or as my colleague Mark Palony once said, “the value of your content is not nearly as great to your target market as it is to you.”

If you provide the value, then yes, people will still come to what you’ve built.

Does Psychology Support One vs. The Other?

As a marketer, it’s my job to understand my target audience’s preferences, interests, and thoughts. In other words, I regret not taking that Psychology 101 class in college.

My assumption as I began writing this article is that if I pay for something (in this case, my information), I’m more likely to find it valuable.

To wit:

• In 2017, researchers determined that wine tastes better if you think it costs more.
• And in this article, and experiment of people paying what they wanted showed people will typically pay something – even if they could get it for free.
• The BBC has even more research cited in this article.

In fact, as Shelle M. Santana, assistant professor at Harvard Business said, “If you can nudge people into a more communal relationship, they have a higher willingness to pay.”

But it’s not so clear-cut.

For instance, Dan Arialy found people were split between two chocolates that had a price – one offered for a penny, the other (a more expensive brand) for 26 cents.

But when each price was dropped by one cent, people overwhelmingly chose the free chocolate.

And in this Marketing Science (an academic journal) article, it’s said “people do not simply subtract costs from benefits but instead they perceive the benefits associated with free products as higher.”

The takeaway? People overvalue free stuff.

Much of this research is related to consumer products, but it’s worth remembering people who are choosing to download / read content are also consumers at heart. In fact, they’re consuming your content!

It comes back to value.

How will your target audience value the content you’re providing? And this gets to something content creators have to really think through: Are you providing something that can’t be found anywhere else?

Other questions to ask:

• If everything is free, is it really valuable?
• If the gated asset has a cost, does it become more valued since it’s different than the ungated, “free” content? Or less valued?
• Can you build a community that’s more willing to “pay” for what you’re offering?

No matter if your content is gated or ungated, you still must provide value.

But it is worth noting that if a person pays a price (their information) to read, the expectation of what “good” value is will be undoubtedly higher.

Myths

There’s plenty of opinions floating around, but some may not be fully accurate. Let’s take a look at a few.

Ungated is cheaper

How? 

Let’s say you spend $1,000, and get 500 people to consume your content as opposed to 5 leads. Which was better?

The problem is this argument is it isn’t comparing apples to apples. Yes, everyone who visited actually saw the content for ungated, but now you’re measuring cost per interaction.

With gated, it’s more straightforward – it’s a cost per lead.

This simple explanation isn’t accurate because the same metrics aren’t applied.

What is accurate is to say that you get far more exposure / consumption with the content for ungated. But there are scenarios where it could actually be more expensive to reacquire users via remarketing if you aren’t able to more sufficiently target them.

Gated = Only hidden behind a barrier

“Wait, didn’t you specify this in the beginning that a gate was, in fact, a barrier?” Not quite!

What I wrote was “You put up a request (typically as a form) for a person’s information…”

Let’s say you have an amazing, 4,000+ word piece on a topic your target audience really cares about. You’ve spent tens of hours making it perfect.

What if something comes up and they can’t read it?

You can offer that same, ungated content in a PDF and have it sent to their inbox. This way, they get to choose what they want, and you haven’t hidden the content at all.

Chances are, if a marketer wants to ungate everything, they’re engaging in this tactic as well.

Want an example? Head over to our marketing operations blog – wait for the bot to see this in action 🙂

Ungated just gives away everything for free

This is wrong on a few accounts.

First, if you take the time to properly brand everything you’re putting out there (your logo on anything downloadable, well-maintained YouTube channel for embedded videos, etc.) then you’ll ensure the next time a reader takes a glance, they know its from you.

Second, with website tags, it’s easy to build remarketing audiences (and, for that matter, score up accounts – even if it’s unknown who the person is) and thus have a natural follow-up.

Finally, if a person decides to spend some of their time reading your content, didn’t they just choose to spend something? (And if time is money…)

Ungated = can’t build a database

“If you’re running ungated content you can still build your database, you just don’t want to lead with hiding the content behind a gate,” says Silvio Perez.

For instance, newsletter signups are a common (and underrated) way of engaging visitors, and can highlight your most interested potential buyers.

“In my opinion, you’ll also build a much higher quality database with this approach as people are willingly signing up to your newsletter vs being forced in order to receive the content they want.”

GDPR and / or CCPA prevent the use of gated content

Not true at all!

You can still ask for people’s information, as long as you have the necessary measures in place to remove their information should they ask for it. Make sure your privacy policy is up-to-date, opt-out requests are responded to and handled promptly, and consent is clearly-defined.

Do your homework, and you should be fine.

Ungated assets Can’t be measured

Not true!

Working backwards, you’ll need to know that your previous baselines will be different, especially since you’ll be relying on lagging indicators. This blog by Tory Kindlick highlights a few:

• Lead conversion rate. Those people who do become leads will be higher quality – so while your raw volume of leads will go down, the conversion rate should increase – especially as buyers consume more of your content.
• Velocity. With more access to content, sales cycles should become shorter. You’ll need to view the changes in time to close in the aggregate for this, but it’s a metric you’re likely already eyeing anyway, right?

For operational-level metrics, there’s a few easy ways to gauge what’s working:

• Blogs / Static content: Use scroll depth (measurable through website tags or through a tool like HotJar or Crazy Egg) and time on page to get a sense of what’s grabbing people’s attention.
• Videos: Minutes watched is an accepted standard, and % watched is a better way to look at the same data to see if the video is capturing attention – or where it’s falling short
• Ads: You should be advertising your content, and seeing clickthrough rates on those ads should also provide additional data on what your target audience cares most about

Healthy questions to ask yourself (or your team)

These can be applied to individual pieces of content, or to your philosophy as a whole.

Can we have a strong view of users? Or put another way: Does your tech stack allow you to pull together people’s activity into some sort of a cohesive view? Or will it end up being a bunch of anonymous activity?

Can this be repackaged in a nicer way that’ll encourage people to read? It’s entirely possible your ungated content isn’t getting read. Check scroll depth on heatmapping software, Google Analytics data for time on page / engagement metrics, etc. to get a better understanding of it a piece of content truly resonates.

Do people still download a given piece of content? If not, there’s no reason for it to sit there! Re-use it elsewhere, by taking pieces and updating other content, turning it into its own blog (with PDF format available), or something else.

Is my lead management mature? No matter what you do, having engaged prospects in your pipeline is ineffective on your revenue if leads get lost or if sales and marketing aren’t in sync.

How’s our content distribution? If you have a well-developed process for getting content to “live” in other places your ideal customer spends time (think forums, Youtube, LinkedIn posts, podcasts, etc.) then you can much more easily adopt an ungating strategy.

Without this, however, you’ll likely suffer or need to ramp up paid distribution.

What’s our CTA? And how long’s our sales cycle? If you’re a software-as-a-service company driving product trials, your needs vary greatly from a financial services firm. Same goes for an eCommerce retailer vs. a manufacturer.

What you want prospects to do matters greatly. I’ve noticed companies in the SaaS space adopting some ungated content strategies, and I can see why: They’re trying to get people more engaged and excited about demoing their platform. If the product doesn’t sell, the company fails, and so educating the market (and thus, creating demand) is at a premium.

For others, it’s a higher barrier to get that initial phone call or email address with a clear indication of “Hey, let’s do business.” And it might require significantly more investment in the sales cycle.

Knowing these for your company can influence whether gated assets are more important to your pipeline.

Who’s telling you do to something (ungate vs. gated)? …and are they trying to sell you something?

You’ll see it on both sides, but it’s always worth remembering to consider a person’s motives (even if they truly believe in what they’re prescribing)!

So, now what?

If you want my biased opinion, listen to this podcast where I talked about this in-depth.

The point of this article is to explore the argument for each side of what can often be a hotly-contested marketing debate. And the best answer for what’s right for you likely lies in your tech stack, ability to scale, and possibly what your core beliefs are about how people in your target audience interact with content.

But no matter which side you’re on, here’s a few takeaways I learned:

Tech matters. So does budget. Knowing what’s possible vs. knowing what’s probable within the scope of your budget matters.

• Are you a company that wants to pursue ABM, but sales and marketing aren’t working terribly well together?
• Do you want to ungate more content, but will not have budget to have the technology to track (or have the time/expertise to act upon what you’re tracking) how people engage?
• Is your organization built in such a way that adopting significantly-different processes and tech will cost more political capital than it’s worth?

These are real questions with real implications.

If you’re considering ungating everything, consider the costs. It’s fair to say more companies gate something on their site, if only because this strategy has been around for a long time vs. intent data being relatively newer.

But to take advantage of what ungating can offer, you need the right infrastructure in place. This might require some additional costs and training – for example, a combination of 6Sense + Seismic + Clearbit + your MAP working together to provide a holistic view of the customer.

Audit your content. No matter if it’s gated or ungated, whatever your customers and prospects are consuming has to be worth their time. That means you should gauge any piece of content through the lens of “is this valuable to my target audience?”

Be honest. Chances are, there’s something that isn’t. And it represents an opportunity to improve what you’re offering.

Look at your analytics in various platforms to see what resonates on your website, through paid ads, in emails, and even what’s seen most often in closed-won deals (where applicable).

Every touchpoint matters. And we, as marketers, must be fanatical about providing on-point interactions no matter how a person finds us.

Both sides have arguments. And lots of passion. Hi, LinkedIn, share this and inspire some conversation? 🙂

But seriously, I went into this thinking there was a clear winner. And now, I’m far more informed about other ways of marketing (and changes on this very website have been made because of them).

Now that you’re more informed, what changes can / should you make to your content to provide a better experience? If you need help with that, well, you’re in the right place.

The post Examining The Debate Of Ungating vs. Gating Content appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

As a consultant, this has been a fairly regular occurrence with my clients. I used to make glossaries of customer-specific acronyms because every business had its own. Over the years, I’ve found there are a few (okay, way more than a few) that are standard across organizations – and this is my list so you’re not stuck wondering what they are!

Click to jump to a section:

Channels & Campaigns | Compliance | Concepts & Models | Lead Management | Metrics | Time | Technology | Web | General Business

Channels & Campaigns

Compliance & Deliverability

Concepts & Models

Finance / Purchasing

Lead Management (Sales & Marketing Alignment)

Related: Read about key stages of effective lead management

Want to start applying winning marketing principles into your strategy and tactics?

Our introduction to revenue marketing is for you!

Metrics

Related: Our marketing KPIs course – it’s free!

Time

Technology

Want to get more from your tech stack? Check out our martech consulting.

Have enough trouble keeping up? We can help! Learn about our Marketing Operations services.

Web

General Business

WHEW! What a list!

We’ll try to keep this list updated as we come across more acronyms!

What are we missing? Let me know on LinkedIn or send us a note!

You may also enjoy our Resources hub filled with blogs and more on a variety of major topics, or online marketing training with Revenue Marketing University!

The post A Massive List of Sales and Marketing Acronyms appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

People Performance Report

Use this report anytime you want to group and view people by any number of characteristics. By default, this report is grouped by Created At month, but don’t let that fool you! With a few simple changes, this report is KEY to understanding what is happening to the People in your database. 

Within the Setup tab, you can easily:

• Manipulate the time frame from which to pull data.
• Group People by Person/Company/Opportunity Attributes or by Segmentations.
• Add Opportunity Columns to further understand each person’s contribution. Once added, you can easily move these columns around within your report or remove them completely.
• Use Custom Columns to further filter the metrics in your report. These use Smart Lists already created in your Database to populate unique columns in your report. Great tool if you’re looking to break down your People Performance Report annually, quarterly, etc. to see trends over time.

The Smart List tab lets you filter by additional attributes (ie Customers, Prospects, Exclusion Lists, etc.).

After you’ve made sure you have all the bells and whistles, check out the Report tab to view the results. See something interesting? Click on any row to Drill-Down to any attribute. Pro tip: If you don’t see the Drill Down report open in a new tab, you may have pop-ups disabled.

Like what you see? Set up a New Report Subscription so you can receive a copy of the report emailed to you and/or your colleagues on a regular basis.

Company Web Activity Report

For companies working to implement an Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, knowing which companies in their region are visiting your company’s website is invaluable. The Company Web Activity Report can tell them just that!

Set up several reports that send out daily or weekly to regional owners, giving them full visibility into their area’s activity. This report shows you which companies are visiting your website, either by known or anonymous visitors.

• Setup your Activity Source to generate a report on Known People, Anonymous Visitors (including ISPs), or Anonymous Visitors (not including ISPs).
• Set the timeframe of your report (Last 7 days if you’re sending weekly or last 24 hours if sending daily).
• If you have Segmentations created for specific sales regions, you can easily filter by Segmentations in the Smart List tab. 

Once your report generates, setup a New Report Subscription to send to each regional stakeholder at a regular cadence.

Program Performance Report

Assuming your channels, progression statuses (including successes), and cost tags are properly configured across your instance, the Program Performance Report is a great tool to add to your regular reporting toolkit. See how your programs are performing, which programs are bringing in new names, and how many people achieved a certain status in each program all in one view.

Columns include Program Name, Channel, Total Members, New Names, Successes, Total Cost, Cost per Member, Cost per New Name, and Cost per Success.

Customize your report further in the Setup tab by adding Tags and Period Cost filters.

In the Report tab, you can view your report and sort by any column to see exactly how your programs are performing compared to each other. For example, maybe you want to see which programs are bringing in the most New Names. You can easily see this by clicking on the New Names column and selecting “Sort Descending”.

For even more powerful capabilities, export your report to excel and take it from there!

Additional Reporting Features

• Custom Columns: Add additional columns to your report
• Drill-Down: Get more details on a specific row
• Smart Lists in Reports: Include/exclude leads
• Report Subscriptions: Stay on top of your database health and share with stakeholders

Need help getting the right reports in place, or doing more with Marketo? Check out our consulting services or Marketo courses!

The post 3 Marketo reports every user should utilize appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

There’s a lot of pressure to ensure you maximize this investment, but without proper planning, strategy, and execution, you won’t get the ROI you’re looking for.

Let’s jump in!

Our experts are always ready to help – learn more about our Eloqua consulting options!

Start With Topliners

Topliners was originally just for Eloqua, but Oracle eventually combined multiple support networks in one place. If you aren’t apart of the Eloqua section, go ahead and change that here (and you may find some other areas relevant to your tech stack!).

Within Topliners, there are a few areas worth calling out:

• Eloqua System Status – This is great resource to check when Eloqua may be acting funny and you’re unsure if there is a bug at work or if the problem is you. This group is great about giving updates on known issues as they occur and that they are working on fixes.
• Best Practices Documentation
• Glossary of key terms so you can “speak” the language faster
• Your area User Group – This is great way to get connected to other Eloqua users in your area. There usually are gatherings for networking and learning about new features or hearing customer case studies.
• AppCloud – This area is great when looking for plugins that fit well with Eloqua
• Oracle University – Check this out here.

There’s plenty more, but these are great starting points.

Now that you have a community and the right help documentation, let’s talk strategy.

Strategy

Plan this out in four areas: Data, Campaigns, Lead Management Process, and Metrics. These won’t be specific to Eloqua, but the underlying concepts, when done well, ensure long-term success in your instance.

Data

If you’ve inherited your instance, or are migrating into Eloqua from another platform, the best thing you can do is clean up your database.

Removing all duplicate / outdated data, lists, reports, etc. is only going to make life easier. Block off a significant amount of time for this, because you’ll want to be thorough.

Next, no matter if it’s a new instance or an older dataset you’re working with, check your sync with your CRM and other systems. Make sure fields are standardized and that you have accurate mapping to other systems, naming conventions are established for accurate (and easily searchable) filenames, etc.

This goes for utm parameters from inbound marketing efforts, as well!

You can leverage Eloqua’s contact washing machine for some of this – more on that in this blog.

Be sure to document everything – you’ll need it for one day when you’re promoted and somebody else fills your role!

Last, map out how data is enriched. What system(s) or data sources are you pulling from, and what fields are they updating (if any)? Now’s also a good time to identify if any changes are needed, as well.

Related: Nail your Eloqua data cleanup basics

Campaigns

What’s your campaign launch process?

Without a clear, direct answer, things can get messy. Sending emails and launching campaigns without a goal is the marketing equivalent of wandering down a back road … you might stumble upon something, but you most likely won’t get anywhere you need to be.

Have the following questions answered:

• Who should get this campaign?
• Is a segment in place for it?
• Who needs to approve this?
• What part of the customer journey does this fit into – and do the calls to action match that intent?

Familiarize yourself with Eloqua’s testing capabilities, as well – for both programs and campaigns.

Lead Management

The oldie-but-a-goodie phrase “sales and marketing alignment” comes into play here, and for good reason. Underlying lead management best practices will either support or destroy what you’re building in Eloqua, so before you start building and sending campaigns, now’s the time for a refresh.

When was the last time you spoke with your Sales team? Do you know what leads they love receiving, and what’s not been as great of a fit? Are alerts you’ll send in order, or are there ways to improve?

It’s also the perfect time to talk lead scoring. What actions do closed-won deals typically contain? Do both sales and marketing agree on demographics, firmogrpahics, etc. of qualified leads?

Eloqua’s sales tools may or may not also be a consideration of discussion here, depending on what else your team(s) use.

Related: What does a good lead management process look like?

Metrics

What are your key measures of success? Make sure these are documented so you can A/B test against them and continue improving.

Within Eloqua, you’ll be relying on Insight for reports and dashboards. Oracle has a primer on it here.

Now, Start Building

Once you have your strategic ducks in a row and have begun familiarizing yourself with the platform, it’s time to build! Here’s where I recommend starting:

Build your lead scoring model

Start from scratch with this, and base it on the previous conversations you’ve had with sales. Setup a quarterly reminder to look over this along with your key sales leaders to ensure you’re on the same page at all times.

Design your preference center

Make it easy for users to indicate their preferred level(s) of communication – or to opt out entirely if they so desire. Oracle provides a starting point, and you can read more about it here.

create a welcome program

If you’ve ever had an email from a company and immediately wondered who it was, you’re not alone – but this welcome program will prevent it from happening with prospects and customers.

Create a program to route new leads through a series of emails introducing them to your company and educating them as to why they should care and resources to help them do more.

Be sure to read over some email best practices for tips and tricks.

Grab the campaign starter pack

We’ve packaged some of our favorite templates into one starter pack – click here to grab them and streamline your campaign buildouts!

Keep Building

Once you’re up and running, engage with other users in the Topliners community and on LinkedIn, and monitor your initial campaign(s) to see what’s working and what isn’t.

Make sure you’re fully-leveraging tools such as the contact washing machine, and that your data is flowing both into and out of Eloqua the way you intend.

Want to scale up, get a helping hand, optimize, integrate, or implement winning solutions? Our Eloqua consulting services boast 400+ successful engagements across large-scale projects and organizations, and we’re happy to learn how we can help you!

The post Getting started with Eloqua: Practical tips from the experts appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

As a marketer who happens to be admin over the chatbots on this website you’re currently reading, it bothers me.

Why?

Because I think chatbots have a number of ways to enhance a user’s experience.

But a lot of teams fail to take a customer-centric approach with their strategy, and what happens is … well, a lot of ubiquitous complaining on LinkedIn about how bad chatbots are.

So, I wanted to dive in. Why do so many companies get it wrong? Is it possible I’m doing it wrong, too?

Let’s get started by defining the scope:

Chatbots aren’t found only on the website.

Many brands leverage chatbot tech in their social media, for example. From LinkedIn conversation ads to Facebook messenger, the chatbot experience is much more engrained in customer-facing touchpoints than it ever has been before.

For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll focus upon website chatbots. That’s because a bot in social media is limited in its scope and will often be used for customer service-type of inquiries.

I try to do far more on our site, as does anyone thinking through a conversational marketing strategy … so I want to stick to on-site experiences for the purposes of this read.

Common Errors Companies Make

I’ve seen them, you’ve seen them, it’s hard to unsee them… which may be why they sometimes draw ire on LinkedIn.

The repeat

Commonly found with companies just getting started, the same bot fires on many pages of your website. Often called a “catch-all bot” or something similar … but it’s never been updated, often due to a lack of time investment.

Why it fails: Just like any customer journey demands, different parts of your site / content have different uses. One size here does not fit all customer expectations or needs.

The pushy sales bot

“HeY cAn YoU bOoK a CaLl NoW?” said the bot on the homepage.

Nope.

Just because I’m reading your content doesn’t mean I’m ready to book a call. If I’m reading a case study or a services page, maybe it’s worth the ask.

• For a blog or a low-level gated asset? Nah.
• Your “About us” page? No.
• Anything resembling informational content (which, by definition, doesn’t demonstrate buying intent?) No!

Conversational marketing is just like any other marketing or sales process. If it seeks to add value to the user, it has a much stronger chance of doing well.

The security guard

Sure, I’ll help you, as long as your problem fits one of my three programmed questions and you don’t actually have a problem at all.

The only use of these bots is to prevent a company’s teams to answer queries.

What people said

I ran a poll on LinkedIn (I know, I’m sorry…) that asked how people felt about chatbots. The very non-scientific results were that 45% said “They’re occasionally helpful” while another 23% indicated “There was 1 time it was good.”

To learn more, I reached out to some of the respondents asking why they voted they way they did. Two folks gave me thought-provoking answers I wanted to share:

1.) Debbie Schwake, Diamond Client Marketing Leader at Accenture (and representing the “occasionally helpful” vote), told me:

“Bad user experience examples would include automated chatbots that send you in a circular reference as they try to fit you into a prescribed set of topics. When chatbots are a strategy, we’re going for an outcome. Chatbot = let’s set a conversion goal of X% of all chat. Now, you’ll consider what happens when people use chat, and work toward improving the outcomes over time.”

I love this.

Too often, this is seen as a simple tactic, just another piece of martech in an ever-expanding sea of technology integrations and touchpoints. When thought of as its own strategy, suddenly each touchpoint becomes more paramount!

And trying to fit a user’s experience, which is never linear (with two customer journeys often looking quite different), into such an experience fails the user. There’s ways to enable more freedom within the bots, which we’ll touch on in the next section.

2.) Julian Hooks, Principal, SEO at Asurion was one of the “1 time it was good” votes. His reasoning:

“Chatbot canned responses typically just funnel people to a resource section or FAQs. When I engage with a chat it’s to speak with a human, because the info isn’t easily accessible on the website!”

His suggestion? “Keep it subtle – if I need you, I’ll click it. I don’t like chime sounds or large popups.”

More on that chime sound in a moment, but he’s right about generic links to resources – and it gets back to a lack of investment and personalization.

Your bot should be giving tailor-made recommendations based on the content / page that’s being viewed, not generic links that are plastered all over your header and footer as a primary CTA.

Five ways we try to embrace a customer-centric mindset:

Blogs

If you’re reading content, you might enjoy something related. So, our bots try to suggest related content (primarily blogs) and invite your continued engagement.

We’ll add a link to a gated asset as well, but the blogs already have links to these so it’s not a real surprise to the user.

Also: The bot doesn’t fire immediately. Let them start reading! You can typically do this either by adjusting Time (seconds spent on the page – remember to factor in page load times into this) or Scroll Depth on your back end. I use a setting such as “Time on page is greater than 14 seconds.”

You can experiment with more or less, but remember than many readers will scan your content, so you don’t want to wait too long to have the suggestions fire (but if you have solid calls to action strewn throughout your in-depth content, you can try 20-24 seconds).

A second method

If you have an in-depth article, your reader may not want to look through it all … or at least, right now. Use your bot to let them know “Hey, do you want this in-depth blog in PDF form?” and then you can get an email address + allow your reader to keep the content in their inbox.

Want an example? Check out our blog on marketing operations and wait for the bot!

Gated assets

When prospective customers engage with gated content, the bot is triggered by a button click on the page, and then asks for an email address and other info we’re hoping to get.

Here’s where it adds value: If we know who you are, the conditional logic will avoid asking questions you don’t need to answer, such as “What’s your first name?”

Once it gives a confirmation message, it immediately asks how it can add more value – either through additional content, inviting the user to learn more about us, or closing the conversation.

Bonus: For high-value assets, we can leverage intent data to add an additional layer of logic. For example, if a company is in our ideal customer profile, we can invite them to schedule a call or check out our services post-confirmation message.

Double-bonus: If they don’t want to schedule a call, I offer a cringe-worthy Dad joke as the alternative. I mean, if that’s not adding value, what is?!

Turn off the chime

This is worth testing on your own site, of course, but when we looked at having the little “ding!” sound on vs. off, we didn’t see much difference in terms of bot engagement.

When you think about it, it makes sense: If someone is truly engaging with your content, they’ll see the bot pop up – no ding necessary. If they’ve opened another tab, they don’t need a ding to remind them you exist (and the “you have new messages” that fires in the page tab shows regardless).

Services pages

This is where it can get tricky, because in a cookieless advertising world, it’s not necessarily as easy to target by number of visits.

I say this because ideally, a person’s first visit to a services page is likely not the strongest buying intent.

A repeat visitor? Absolutely.

So, what to do here? At worst, there is obviously some (even if minor) interest in your product / service, so starting with a bot that streamlines the process of finding more information and/or setting up a call is beneficial.

Even better: Segment by site visits or higher-value segments imported from your MAP, CRM, intent data platform, etc. and build a similar experience for each, but with welcome messages that make it obvious it’s a more personalized bot for them. For example, if I was segmenting by industry on our lead management consulting page, my welcome message could say “We work with companies just like yours! Want to see proof?” and a yes response takes them to a case study that’s appropriate.

(Note in this example you’d need to build one bot, then copy it multiple times, once per industry, so you can personalize which case study you’re linking to!)

Homepage

If somebody visits your homepage, they’ve come because either A) they looked up who you are by name, or B) they don’t know who you are at all and are just checking you out.

Either way, they’re looking for something.

Your bot should help them find it. Or a human, if that’s what they need. You may need some complexity with the options available, and that’s okay! Take your time and keep in mind this may be their first impression of your company.

Other tips / tricks

1. Make sure you use conditional logic. For example, if a person fits into a particular target industry, use conditional logic to serve them a message pointing to content related to that industry!
2. Target lists. If you’re properly synced to a CRM or MAP, leverage lists to build more targeted experiences that supersede some of your other bots, such as what may show on a Case Study or Resources page.
3. Keep opening messages short, sweet, and to the point. It can only show a limited number of characters, and nothing says “I don’t have my stuff together” like a truncated sentence or incomplete thought.
4. Delay your bot loading until the page is finished (h/t to Mark Palony for this callout). Make sure your readers actually have a chance to understand what the page is about, even if you want to fire the bot immediately! A simple to do this is to set your bot tag to “window loaded” in your tag manager.
5. Make it easy to get a human. Always.

But wait … is this working?

I can wax poetic all blog long, but what’s the point if I can’t prove its efficacy? That’s where revenue influence comes in. If I’m a revenue marketer, I should start here anyway, right?

Our bots have influenced over $200K in marketing pipeline over the past six months.

They’ve also booked over a dozen sales meetings and brought in tens of thousands in revenue for some of our training classes after people chatted us with their questions. (This realized revenue is aside from other impacted deals)

There’re also operational impacts:

• Dozens of signups for our newsletter
• Account managers given a heads-up when current or recent customers engage with our content (and they’re identified)
• Sales team able to easily identify higher-quality leads as leads feed into our lead scoring models

With added emphasis on first-party data importance, your bots can also provide additional data on web visitors / prospects which can assist with ABM activities as well. For example, you can see how target accounts are interacting with your site (in a separate way from your intent data, giving you two methods of tracking).

In many ways, your bots are oriented towards influencing pipeline. They can book calls, but I would be cautious in projecting clearly-sourced revenue from booked calls. Knowing which bots to use and where on the site you use them should allow you to manage expectations of its impact.

One important caveat:

Most people are likely going to ignore your on-site bots.

The simple fact is that many people don’t want to interact with them. It’s what you, I, and others see on LinkedIn, in countless marketing articles, etc.

So don’t be surprised if you bots have low engagement rates (Full disclosure: Our bots, when those that are fulfilling a gated asset request are filtered out, have an average engagement rate around 0.5%).

As long as you’re actively seeking to serve your user / customer well, those who want to engage will find it valuable – and that’s only a good thing!

So, what now?

Hopefully, you have a few ideas percolating on how to improve your customer experience with on-site chatbots. Write it down and make it happen before it disappears!

Then, get to testing. Put a couple of ideas to work, and ensure you block time at least once a month (for 1-2 hours) to optimize based on data you see within your bot platform.

And if you’re curious, we partner with Drift and use it on our own site, and I’m happy to answer your questions over on LinkedIn.

You may also enjoy the following:

• MarTech stack consulting that makes all of your tech work together (and eliminates waste)
• Our blogs on inbound marketing and knowing your customer journey better

The post Can chatbots actually HELP users? appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Today, running that same set of numbers takes a modern computer a few minutes. With the exponential increase in the ability to handle and process information, NASA can do more sophisticated work with higher accuracy and put their talent to work on much more significant challenges.

In marketing, we’re able to do the same thing. We have volumes of data on our customers and their behavior made comprehensible by algorithms and computing.

But setting up systems to drive marketing efficiency, collecting data on what’s working and what’s next, and constantly using that insight to increase effectiveness is the task of a very elite team.

They are the rocket scientists of your organization.

They are marketing operations: a crucial part of revenue operations, but a team unto itself that’s well worth thinking through.

Are you ready?

To answer this, let’s discuss the elements you need to produce a world-class marketing operations team. With this team in place, your marketing function will evolve into a revenue-generating center of excellence. I first published a whitepaper on this in 2018, and you can regard this as an update on those thoughts (with much more added in!).

Goodbye to being seen as a cost center or a department that’s always secondary to others … hello revenue!

To fully realize the value of Marketing Operations, let’s dive deep … click to jump to a particular section!

1. Understand the Definition of Marketing Operations (and the three areas they really impact)
   1. Enable Digital Transformation
   2. Improve Business Accountability
   3. Lead Customer Centricity
2. What Stage Are You? The Marketing Operations Maturity Model
3. Know (And Communicate) Its Value To Key Stakeholders
   1. The CMO
   2. The CFO
   3. Sales
   4. Other Executives
   5. Sell Its Value
4. Develop Team Structure
5. Identify Key Roles and Find Talent
6. Establish Team Goals and Strategy

Buckle up, or maybe block some time on your calendar. We’re about to dive in and examine this from all angles.

Get more: Think through your team(s) with this ungated talent bundle or grab this ungated marketing operations bundle to apply what you’ll learn from this article

What A Strategic Marketing Operations (MOPs) Function Is

At the highest level, MOPs teams work across functions within and outside marketing to focus relentlessly on improving marketing efforts. They are simultaneously tamers of complexity and infusers of sophistication who transform not just marketing departments but entire organizations.

At its core, marketing operations is a team of people skilled in marketing technology; Software as a Service (SaaS); data management; vendor management; process innovation and optimization; and metrics, reporting, and analysis. They provide the infrastructure, processes, and reporting that power revenue marketing.

Frequently, this group also manages the training and education services for marketing. It must be an expert in technical execution and enforcement of best practices governance, ensuring a cohesive customer experience of the brand through all outbound and inbound campaigns.

This definition can seem broad because, well … it is!

We’ve seen roles and responsibilities vary widely from company to company who have invested in a marketing operations function. The most significant factor in this variation is a company’s Revenue Marketing maturity.

What’s Driven This Need

If you’ve been near marketing, you’ve seen the technologies available explode (cue the obligatory Scott Brinker supergraphic reference, right?).

Nearly overnight, conferences focused solely on MarTech sprung up and have become must-see events. The job market exploded, and top talent was already poached pre-COVID.

Add in a shift towards greater financial accountability, tremendous pressure on companies to transform into providing more customer-centric experiences, and battling legacy thinking and processes that marketing is the “make it pretty” department, and you have a clear need for any company looking to lead.

In addition, B2B customers now require a B2C experience – after all, B2B buyers are B2C somewhere else! Our experiences as consumers across the digital landscape drive our expectations, forcing many companies to rethink how they engage customers and embrace that totally overused-but-still-valid term … digital transformation.

Facing a Talent crunch?

So is nearly everyone who needs marketing ops help!

Go ahead and get everything in our (ungated!) talent bundle. Click that link and get help thinking through hiring, job descriptions, org charts, interviews, and more.

And if you have a talent gap, an option to consider is outsourcing. You avoid going through HR’s hiring processes and battling for budget, get a practicing expert to function on your team, and have reduced risk with a full-time outsourced role vs. hiring a headcount.

With a couple of solutions in-hand, let’s talk more about your current state:

Think about your current marketing department.

Who, within it, is most likely to be able to answer these questions:

• What kind of data do we have, and what does it mean?
•  What was the most effective money we spent this year?
•  How do we invest more that way?

Many executives struggle to identify someone who can answer one of these questions, let alone all three.

Typically, the answers are held across different people on different teams. And the problem is that those people need to come together with their pieces to see the big picture.

Marketing operations is like a special forces team.

It’s an elite cadre of people charged with looking at all efforts and making them more efficient and effective. MOPs is a centralized function, the source of data and insights for leadership decision-making, and the basis for marketing productivity, agility, and accountability.

They cross all roles, uniting the work of marketing.

Within the charter of a MOPs team, we’d expect to see three areas of intense focus:

• Enabling digital transformation
•  Adopting business accountability by driving revenue and growth
•  Leading customer centricity.

These three areas are essential for MOPs because they are transcendent. Not only do they cross many areas, but they also bleed out of marketing into other units. This cross-functional nature makes digital transformation, business accountability, and customer centricity harder to tackle.

But it’s worth it because these three areas also make the most significant impact.

Enabling Digital Transformation

Marketing operations’ most important role is strategically stewarding data; typically, that also means technology. While technology tends to be the first concept organizations think about for digital transformation, it’s not the only hallmark to examine for successful change.

We’re looking for a MOPs team to engrain marketing technology into the enterprise and use insights to drive revenue. More work is made possible by moving connections deeper into the organization, and more data is captured. Then, the data gets mined for applied insights and pays off in increased revenue. And over a relatively short period, the technologies become ingrained.

It’s a lot like the shift that happened when we stopped doing complex math by hand and turned the tasks over to computers. In the 1960s, it would take a team of people three months to calculate a launch trajectory for a NASA space flight. Today that work takes a few minutes or less.

Most organizations can access volumes of information, but it takes leadership from MOPs to make sense of it and find transformative insights within the data.

It sounds obvious, but you begin to understand the complexity when you try to pull it off. A favorite example of this at the moment is intent data. We can get more insight than ever about what prospects are likely to do. But it has two big strings attached:

1. Getting this data requires specific expertise, and it’s expensive to attain.
2.  Once you have it, you need to know what to do with it.

A strategic marketing operations team tackles these problems. When the unit is deeply ingrained in your organization, they dig deep for data. They integrate it with platforms to amplify insights with other data in other systems and strategically work with vendors on the outside to curate a stunning array of insights. From there, it’s all about action.

Like a great connector, MOPs gives insights to the right teams – often sales – who can act on it and turn it into conversion points to drive revenue.

Related: Key questions to ask about your tech stack

Business Accountability To Drive Growth

Marketing organizations traditionally have to fight for budget, especially if you have not transformed into a revenue marketing organization.

That’s because when you and your executive team hand money off to marketing, it can sometimes be an act of faith. You know the money makes an impact…somehow. But you’ve got little more than logo-emblazoned swag to show results for the investment.

Marketing operations should include an element of financial accountability, so that every dollar invested in marketing has a forecasted return. Year over year, budgets are geared to the activities that build revenue, and your ability to see what those activities are is how you build your case for budget and growth.

Over time there’s an ironclad, undeniable benefit to this approach: marketing’s value is demonstrated in finite detail.

• Business case: fortified.
• Investments: returned.
• Future requests: granted.
• Your role in revenue: undeniable!

Leading Customer Centricity

Marketing operations put one question at the heart of every activity: “how does this serve our customer(s)?”

This question supports two key elements: a customer profile/buyer persona and a customer journey. And the answer is a blend of art and science.

Buyer personas clearly describe what levers you must pull to engage your customer.

The customer journey describes the sequence of pulling the levers to lead to a sale. It helps you identify which behaviors or data points indicate a prospect isn’t right to buy, so you stop directing effort at converting them.

Answering the call to put the customer at the heart of all activities is partially in the realm of a tech geek to mine data and technology. And it’s a yet-to-be-recognized art form in that it takes much creativity to orchestrate a process that humanizes data and gives it a personalized element that engages your prospect.

Much like directors move us with stunning films, painters inspire us with beautiful colors, and musicians stir us with incredible music … marketing needs to create and connect with customers.

Related: What about revenue operations?

The Marketing Operations Maturity Model

Now that we have a broad definition, let’s figure out where your team might fall in maturity. Over 15+ years, we’ve seen a gradual evolution in marketing operations teams. While you may not have a formal team, pay attention to the markers of each maturity stage – you may be surprised at what capabilities your organization already possesses!

Stage 1: Unaware

I call this the “OMG” stage. Disparate groups perform uncoordinated tasks with no central vision or leadership – effectively, the entire marketing organization is siloed.

Company go-to-market strategies might be centered on products rather than customers. The tech stack is relatively basic, but gathered data doesn’t lead to action.

These days, you will find few companies that fall into this stage, but in the mid-2010s, it was far more rampant.

Stage 2: Efficient / Effective

In this stage, there’s an acknowledgment of the need to develop marketing operations, but not necessarily the commitment or budget. Typically, a team member dedicates most of their time to optimizing various tech investments, but they’re often on their own.

Some best practices might emerge, foundational reporting is created, and a standard operating procedure for selecting, implementing, and integrating systems/tech is in place.

The perceived value of this group revolves around automating previously-manual processes with technology, providing clean data, and insights into metrics.

Stage 3: Get Revenue

Doing the right things characterizes this stage. The MO function is imperative to driving marketing as an economic engine that’s both efficient and effective.

A formal budget is in place to support its function, with a dedicated leader who’s strategic and tying efforts to financial outcomes and key business objectives.

The tech stack is sophisticated, with the team feeling it is just a little behind (if at all) the general marketing curve, and there’s a forward-thinking roadmap.

However, the team is still functionally a silo. They primarily focus on marketing needs, which creates problems with other parts of the business.

Stage 4: Customer Centric

Now, the team is instrumental in operationalizing marketing accountability and driving transformational business activities. It’s a source of data and insights that allow marketing to forecast its impact on revenue + drive customer insights, and even lead those conversations on what the customer wants.

The MarTech stack is fully-integrated and optimized, and each tech has an answer to the question of “how does this serve the customer?”

But even still, there’s more to be gained.

Stage 5: Next Generation

a.k.a. the “one customer line of sight across the business” stage.

Marketing operations works with other teams, such as customer operations, and reports to the same leader. The trend towards revenue operations highlights this evolution, where sales, marketing, and even customer service roll up to the same leader, who’s often in the C-suite.

There’s an equal focus (and investment) on customer acquisition and customer expansion. Multiple teams lean on the same view across any part of the tech stack for a holistic view of the customer. Responses can be nearly in real-time to changing customer demands due to reliable, trusted data.

At this stage, the marketing operations team is likely part of a high-functioning RevOps model, but that’s not always the case.

The True Value(s) of Marketing Operations

If you want to jump to a particular section, here’s how MOPs brings value to the CMO, CFO, Sales, and Other Executives.

The Value To The CMO

A fundamental flaw in typical CMO thinking has a big impact on performance. As they try to lead the charge to transform marketing from a cost center to a revenue center, they have been trying to make this change by applying right-brained thinking to a left-brained problem.

This is probably why few CMOs report any long-term financial metrics. The moment technology invaded our world as consumers, and as marketers, the need for left-brained thinking became apparent. Yet, for many CMOs, their first foray into the technical and revenue accountability world was implemented with a different mindset and skill set.

The lucky CMO now has a second chance. The strategic marketing operations team can provide the required left-brained competencies and the mindset and skill set for technology, marketing, and business acumen. Some people call these left-brained marketers (LBMs) marketing technologists; others call them data scientists.

The LBM combines general marketing skills, business acumen, and deep technical and data analysis skills. Working in a marketing operations structure, the LBM is dedicated to technology (integration and optimization), data (understanding and producing shareable and consumable insights), and process optimization.

Companies with highly functional MOPs teams also demonstrate more revenue contribution than those without. The melding of technology, data, marketing, and analytics allows the CMO to understand how marketing efforts impact the pipeline and closed business. Any CMO who can produce credible revenue numbers and also forecast marketing’s impact on revenue is supported by a highly effective MO team.

Because of the group’s focus on data collection and analysis, the CMO has access to all the numbers to run marketing like a business. This kind of CMO runs a profit-and-loss statement and evaluates every expenditure to ensure the highest return. They also use data to figure out where and how to apply limited resources to optimize marketing ROI.

Without a highly-functional MOPs team, none of these business processes would be possible.

Once the CMO begins to produce credible revenue and growth, marketing gains credibility with the entire executive team. The CMO is perceived to be an equal and becomes more actively involved in the formation of company-wide strategies.

The Chief Marketing Officer has gained a voice and a seat at the table.

The Value To The CFO

• More business predictability
• More control

Historically, the CFO would rather stand in a cold shower tearing up $100 bills than sit down and talk about marketing budgets; at least they are sure they know where that money is going. The rise of the marketing operations team is making the CFO do the happy dance as they enjoy, for the first time, transparency in the marketing P&L statement.

As the MOPs function continues to mature, it enables tangible and credible marketing results as measured in pipeline and revenue. Not only can marketers describe past performance, but they can also now forecast future performance. This transparency and data-driven process allow the CMO to understand and work with marketing numbers to better impact company performance.

Finally, the CMO has more control over a huge budget and can weigh the outcomes.

The Value To Sales

• More revenue and quota attainment
• More competitive sales team

It’s no secret that marketing and sales have a checkered past. For too long, each group lived and worked separately with no reason to work together. Once marketing began to embrace marketing automation tools, and customers started becoming digital, marketing began engaging with sales. Unfortunately, this engagement often yielded poor results. Reasons included marketing not understanding sales and sales not understanding the new digital possibilities.

One stimulating effect of a strategic MOPs team is how they create highly beneficial and synergistic relationships with sales. It goes back to the right-brain versus left-brain approach. Salespeople are very black-and-white and driven by one primary metric: quota. The sales team is the ultimate winner when the MOPs team uses data to analyze current processes and then uses technology to implement those improvements.

The sales team can be more competitive and win more deals by providing real-time customer information to sales. Sales productivity improves, and quota attainment also enhances. All of this is possible in partnership with a strategic marketing operations group.

Related: Optimize your pipeline. Drive needed alignment. All with our lead management consulting services.

The Value To Other Executives

• A new tool for driving company growth
• A way to respond to the digital economy and the customer

The rise of marketing operations is crucial in enlightening the executive team on the possibilities of using marketing as a new revenue and growth tool. As marketing operations embrace technology, data, and analysis to achieve business objectives, marketing becomes a driver of revenue and company growth.

Executives are consumed with how to do business in the digital economy and with a customer who is now in firm control. Technology has changed both our personal lives and our professional practices to the extent that what worked in the past for executives only works in this engagement economy.
The MOPs team is sitting on top of a world of customer data that can be mined and analyzed to produce key customer insights

for better decision-making. No executive likes to make critical business decisions without data, and while gut instinct may work in some cases, given the speed of business today, real-time data is needed. This is the ultimate role of the MOPs team, and they may have the most significant impact on the future of the business.

Selling Its Value

As you work to build out an effective and strategic MOPs team, you will need to enlighten many key stakeholders.

The strategic MOPs team works across disciplines, and getting other groups’ buy-in and nurturing relationships is critical. Take the time to examine who needs to be a part of your empire-building and then be ready to educate them.

Your stakeholders are willing to partner if you can be clear about what’s in it for them. Use the information here and from other sources to build your case

The strategic marketing operations team creates benefits in many ways and across many parts of your organization.

Your Marketing Operations Structure

Marketing Charter

Before we dive into structure, let’s talk about intent. As a leader in your marketing organization, you need to set the intent of this Rockstar team. Establish a charter and your structure will follow.

Here are a few examples of charter statements we’ve seen over the years:

“To take a holistic and single-threaded approach to optimize technology, process and data across the entire customer life cycle to drive revenue and growth.”

Alex Simoes, RevOps Pioneer

• “Optimize marketing effectiveness with leading-edge technology, optimized process, clean and current data, and rigorous analysis.”
• “With digital transformation as the foundation, to build a unified operational capability that improves revenue performance through one line of sight to the customer.”

“Our charter is to enable the marketing team to achieve our overall goals. And our goals are—all around—creating pipeline and delivering on our revenue contribution.”   

Kira Mondrus-Moyal, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, Tricentis

Can we talk about org structure now? I need to start hiring!

With your charter articulated, you can now begin to focus on structure. Your first goal is to centralize the management of technology, process, data and marketing analytics to make your revenue generation efforts more efficient, effective, transparent and accountable.

To do this, you’ll need to collect a number of responsibilities in this unit. Typically, many of these already exist across your organization:

• MarTech strategy, selection, integration and optimization
• Vendor management
• Data management, governance and optimization
• Process engineering and optimization
• Measurement, analytics and reporting
• Project management, training and education
• Change management
• Campaign execution and content operations

All MO groups are a function of the unique needs of their company. We see many configurations, and there is no right or wrong. What is important is to be intentional in the structure and to ensure the structure meets marketing’s strategic demands to achieve the company’s measurable growth objectives.

Below is the most basic of organizational charts commonly-seen in a stage two marketing operation:

Related: Read how to build a modern marketing team for success

Identify Key Roles and Find Talent

Okay, you made it. Let’s talk about roles and talent. At its very core, your marketing operations team needs the following roles:

Director OR VP of Marketing Operations. Find a change-loving marketing “ninja” who is comfortable with technology, building consensus, and has a business and process mindset. It’s important to be at home with revenue accountability, finance, and reporting as well as the creative pursuits that marketing is more typically known for.

Finding someone with this balance is generally very difficult!

Reporting to the VP of MO are key functions led by:

• Director of Marketing Operations
• Marketing Automation Manager
• VP of Analytics
• Senior Analyst, Marketing Collaboration

Completing The Team

Completing your team is the next challenge, and this is your hiring priority list:

• Technologist: someone who can set the direction, lead governance and integration initiatives. They also take on vendor management.
• Data whiz: this could be a data scientist, or someone well versed in reporting and analytics.
• Process Engineer: Outsource this to someone high level who can step in and lead change through the transition.
• Trainer: Another role right for outsourcing, since the skills span different systems and your vendor support is the best bet for quality instruction.
• Project manager: borrow a good project manager from your IT function until the team has need for a full-timer.

THE RISE OF THE REVENUE ANALYST

I’ve rarely seen this role on a marketing operations team. It seems to fall on the VP or CMO to figure this out (on top of everything else they’re responsible for).

My premise is that if a marketing ops team had a dedicated revenue analyst, marketing would overachieve their number. Let’s look at two key elements for this proposed role:

Sales background

The focus of the revenue analyst is to optimize not just marketing performance in general, but a specific number. That number might be the contribution to the pipeline or closed business in terms of percentage and dollars.

It would not be a number of MQLs. With this focus, I suggest this role needs a sales background and needs to be intimate with how a sales funnel works.

Deep knowledge of customer lifecycle

Next, the revenue analyst needs to be an opportunity spotter.

Translation: she uses data to continuously examine the entire customer lifecycle from acquisition to expansion to advocacy (think an infinity loop) and determines the best opportunities where marketing can invest and get the greatest return.

With a deep analytical acumen that is passionately applied to spot the best ROI opportunities, the revenue analyst is poised to optimize MarTech for its ultimate purpose – making marketing accountable for revenue.

Clearly, marketing has other responsibilities such as customer engagement. My argument is that the revenue analyst can only drive optimal revenue results based on a deep understanding of the customer.

In this sense, the revenue analyst role is a potential two-for-one win.

Finding Talent

As frustrating as talent acquisition may be, there are only a few ways to approach it. There are no shortcuts, and there are really four main strategies to get your team up and running as fast as possible:

1. Rent the talent and hit the ground running.
2. Hire outside experience and hit the ground running.
3. Transfer talent from within and develop.
4. Hire young professionals and develop.

The Need To Be More

Marketing operations is a capability. If someone leaves the organization, the capability does not. It is driven by strategy and operationalized through people, process, data and technology.

It delivers a business result.

This is why it is CRUCIAL to invest in knowledge management for your marketing operations team. Talent is hard to find and harder to keep. Without documentation to help with transitions, you’ll find yourself in a cycle of reboots without any tangible results!

Goals and Strategy

With a team in place or on the rise, it’s important to clearly set their direction. This becomes the most important role for leaders at the top of an organization.

We typically see the following five demands drive organizational change and the need for MOPs, so they are a good place to start with chartering your team.

1. Increased need for marketing efficiency and organizational agility
2. Changes to meet customer behavior, market conditions and business direction are too slow
3. Revenue, margin, profit and market share need to improve.
4. Marketing is not valued and seen as a cost center instead of a business, with formalized best practices, processes, infrastructure and reporting
5. Data to make market, customer, and product/service decisions that create value for customers and shareholders must be better leveraged.

Addressing these questions means a focus on six key areas (which happen to align to the pillars of revenue marketing), each with questions to consider while setting goals.

Strategy

In the earliest days of a MOPs initiative, there’s some necessary navel gazing to understand where to start within your organization.

• How willing / ready is your company and leadership?
• Do sales and marketing work seamlessly together? Or is it a fractured relationship?
• Is your marketing team “in the know” on what product teams are doing, and is there a strong working relationship between teams with good, proactive communication?

People

This pertains to anyone in marketing, who’s aligned with marketing, and the organizational structure around marketing. Especially because members of this team are so hard to hire, part of this conversation might be

• What skills does your team need – and what needs to be done to get them (through new talent or training existing talent)?
• For every group that interacts with the customer (at any point!), who’s the stakeholder(s) in each you need to work with to build greater alignment?
• How can / should marketing lead your focus on customer experience?

Process

This is typically the first area that can be addressed, as marketing has more influence in this area.

• Are campaigns / programs well-oriented to what you see in the market? To what product managers, etc. see in the market?
• How confident are you in your data? What about as it flows between systems, such as a marketing automation platform and your CRM? Who controls what data is deemed “best” in your organization … and how does this impact you?
• Is your lead management process excellent? Or does marketing feel there is significant lead leakage in the pipeline?
• Who governs processes and enforces agreed-upon standards? (This is very important!)

Technology

If you don’t have the right technology, you cannot fully embrace a true customer-focused approach! In our Revenue Marketing Index, we found 82% of CMOs it’s important to be fluent in understanding tech from a strategic perspective to fully enhance demand generation efforts to better impact revenue.

• Does your current technology allow you to provide personal, targeted experiences for customers both now and two years from now?
• What does the marketing team own? This impacts your ability to lead in this area and may tie in with “people” above.
• Are you fully leveraging what your current tech is capable of? Do you know how to find out?
• Do you have regular meetings to review your tech stack and ensure it is updated, data is flowing, and processes are being enforced?

Related: Our technology consulting services optimize your current stack and save you money

Customer

This really gets to the heart of your customer journey from initial engagement to post-purchase nurturing.

Really, it gets to the core of the sales / marketing relationship and how well each works with the other on the entire customer lifecycle.

Who owns the customer? What about after they become a customer … how to you continue to invest in the relationship? What are their expectations?

For more on this topic, dive into updating your customer journey.

Results

None of your marketing matters with measurable impact – and none of the impact matters unless you can trace it to revenue for the business. Focusing on repeatable, scalable, and predictable processes and outcomes only strengthens this area.

• What is the one customer metric that equates to financial value?

This allows you to anchor reporting efforts around a central theme that will resonate with key stakeholders (and build more marketing credibility within your organization).

Get Started + Next Steps

Now that you understand how to realize its full value, it’s time to something about it! Here’s a few next steps:

• Dig into this (ungated) strategic bundle of documents to help you do even more.
• I’ve written a book on this very topic! From Backroom To Boardroom has so much more as a deep-dive into marketing operations and how it not just earns a seat at the revenue table, but also how to build on its success

And you can always look into our marketing operations consulting services if you want to drive key changes throughout your organization for revenue impact.

The post Drive Greater Value With Your Marketing Operations appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

We’ve got a few suggestions.

You need to think about this thoroughly before you take any action. Think about which emails you plan to migrate. While you’re at it, think about email and landing page templates, forms, programs, and campaigns. Just because something exists in your current platform doesn’t mean it should move to your new platform.

Don’t forget to consider all the platforms you are migrating to Pardot. Are there also forms from other sources and/or from other CRMs that need to be migrated as well?

You cannot just copy and paste everything from one platform to another – especially if you have hundreds of landing pages and emails. You need to map out what you want to move over and how you are going to move it over to the new platform.

Related: Read about getting started in Pardot with these best practices

Data

Focus on your data first by developing or modifying a standardized data dictionary. This dictionary should include fields that need to be moved into the new system and what fields that will be excluded so you may reference them for other purposes in the future.

This is a nice check to see which fields you’re missing and what needs to be added.

You want to have fields from your marketing automation and your CRM. In addition, any other sources of data should be included in this data dictionary that are relevant to marketing and sales. You want to include:

• Field name
• Length
• Type
• Its purpose
• Values
• Other relevant data / context that you feel is important

Another key element to note is whether the field should live in Pardot only or if it will need to sync to your CRM. If the field does need to sync, make sure you have access and document the CRM field name so you have that available to you when establishing the field sync.

Related: Our Pardot dictionary

Creative/Assets

Next, it’s time to dig into your inventory. Create a matrix (I suggest Excel) so you can track what the assets are and where they’re located.

In this matrix, include a column to Migrate/Don’t Migrate. Check for the following:

Emails

In your matrix, list the name of the emails you want to migrate, their location in the previous system, whether it is part of a program/campaign and if it is a marketing or operational email. Also note any emails that are autoresponders or that you’ll want to use in a nurture program.

Pro tip: a Pardot gotcha that one might run into when migrating between systems is autoresponder emails. Any email used in a nurture program will need to be built as its own email template – most other emails will be built as list emails in Pardot.

Landing pages

In your matrix, you’ll want to list the name of the page, its location in the previous system, whether there is a form associated with it and any other relevant details associated with your landing pages including the URL, images, and any relevant thank you content you want displayed (upon form completion).

Also, consider whether your landing pages and emails are responsively built. If they’re not, why bring them over?

Pro tip: Pardot forms allow you to display thank you content upon form completion. This means you may not have to migrate an additional landing page into Pardot!

Instead, save the body copy from that thank you landing page and plug it into the thank you content in the form wizard so it’s one less landing page you to worry about! Of course, if you prefer to keep the thank you landing pages over the form thank you content route, that’s perfectly fine too.

Forms

When migrating forms, there are a handful of key pieces you will want to capture in your matrix. Form name and fields are the more obvious items, but don’t forget…

• Field API names
• Field types (if it’s a dropdown or radio button, don’t forget to include the values needed)
• Is it required or optional?
• Does it use progressive profiling or any dependent fields?

All those are important items needed for your migration. Also, note if there are any actions the form should take once its successfully submitted – for example, is the person added to a CRM campaign or a list if they successfully complete the form?

Maybe you want to send them and autoresponder email or notify a user. Is your form using any styling? What do you want the submit button text to say?

All of these are important considerations when building out a form post-migration.

Segmentation (Static vs. dynamic vs. test)

There are three kinds of lists you’ll need to make sure you’re tracking in your migration matrix:

Static lists are pretty straightforward. You’ll need to document the name of the list, any associated field values needed for that list, and of course make sure you include email address as Pardot primarily uses email address as the unique identifier.

Alternatively, you can use CRM ID as the unique identifier when loading static lists, but email address should still be included in that scenario.

Dynamic lists are a bit more complicated.

First and foremost, understand that list numbers might not match exactly what’s in your system today – but they should be very close. Different marketing automation platforms and CRMs handle data … well … differently.

This means there will rarely be an exact 1:1 match between systems. Also remember, until all your data is synced into Pardot, dynamic lists won’t be able to populate the expected prospects fully.

Once you understand that, the task of collecting all needed information can begin. You’ll need your list name, match type details (match all/match any), and the actual criteria you’ll be using to setup the dynamic list.

Much like static lists, test lists are quite simple. You’ll want to track your test list name, and at a minimum have the email address for everyone who should be included.

If you plan to use customization (hopefully the answer is yes), it’s also a good idea to make sure folks in your test list have values for common customizations, such as first name, so they can properly test the asset customizations upon receipt.

Pro tip: while unlikely you’ll reach this cap, it’s important to note test lists can only contain up to 100 people. So, make sure your test list is under that limit or you’ll need to create multiples for what might have previously been a single test list.

Images/Content Files

Arguably the most important image you want to account for is your logo. Be sure to note any image that you’ll need to use in your day-to-day emails and landing pages, including social images, or regularly used icons, as well as any you plan to host natively in Pardot (such as whitepapers, brochures, and infographics).

Templates (Email/Landing Page Templates)

Consider whether old templates need to be migrated over, or if you’d rather build from scratch.

Migrating from one system to another often causes problems with coding, which ultimately impacts rendering. As with any marketing automation platform, you want to do things that are repeatable and scalable as opposed to building custom HTML every time. (Don’t confine yourself because you want to do things a certain way!)

And if you haven’t done so already, make sure you build responsive templates to accommodate for the often used mobile-driven audience.

Pro tip: If you are curious how your email templates render in Pardot, there is a cool and easy way to test it! Pardot is one of the few platforms that offers render testing to their customers at no additional cost.

Simply click on the Testing tab after you’ve completed your template build, scroll down to the bottom, and select the +New Render button then checkout all the renders Pardot displays for your convenience.

Dynamic Content

This is content that changes depending on who the customer is. For example, anyone who has industry=retail is going to see a different email banner than people who have industry=marketing.

You’ll want to include your dynamic content in your creative asset matrix. Include the content, content type and how you’ve segmented this. Keep in mind, Pardot only allows each piece of dynamic content to be segmented by a single field, prospect score or prospect grade – so there is no all/any functionality here.

Campaigns/Programs

In bringing these over, think about the goals each campaigns is meant to achieve.

Are there nurtures you want to reproduce and replicate? Do you have program templates for events, webinars or newsletters?

Get the general purpose and document the flow of steps so you can match it as closely as possible in the new tool.

• Are any of these associated with campaigns in your CRM and do they need to migrate together?
• Is it a highly personalized program using dynamic content?
• Or is it a static program using the same content for everyone?

Be sure to focus on any connected campaigns, as well. If you’re using them, you’ll need to map your Pardot campaigns to your CRM campaigns. They essentially become one in the same with connected campaigns, so you very well might not have any Pardot only campaigns, and that’s not a bad thing!

Connected campaigns create greater alignment between Pardot and your CRM, so definitely consider that when factoring your campaigns as part of your migration process.

Pro tip: All prospects require a campaign association when first imported into Pardot – think of it as their Pardot Source campaign. Be prepared with this information when doing any list imports.

Related: Syncing Pardot lists to Salesforce campaigns

Workflows

Workflows are a little tricky because they are typically unique to an instance, so it’s important to document them for migration.

Consider what you are trying to achieve with a given workflow. It’s not about the individual steps; it’s about the end result. More than likely, you’re not going to get a carbon copy of your old workflow on the new platform, but with thorough documentation, you can build something close enough to create a seamless transition.

Database/Prospects

You’ve determined everything you need to migrate your assets, but what about your database?

The most important thing to do before moving your database into Pardot is to scrub, scrub, scrub. Ensure you remove any junk, duplicates, or information you no longer need.

Depending on how you set your Pardot up, you may sync all your prospects from your CRM. If this is the case, the same idea applies – make sure you’re regularly reviewing your data to keep it clean in your new instance.

The last thing you want is a shiny new Pardot instance with muddied data!

Tracking Compliance

This includes do not email.

Be sure when you’re moving prospects from your old instance to your new, you’re capturing everyone who was marked as do not email as well as brining over any and all compliance (GDPR, CAN-SPAM, etc.). You do not want to get slapped with fines or inadvertently blacklist yourself by emailing the wrong folks!

Finishing Thoughts

One of the most important things to manage during a major transition is change. You’re making a major move from one platform to another. You need to make sure your people are on board with the move and are ready to adopt and use the new platform.

You’ll need to provide your people with training in the new platform so that they will feel confident completing their day to day tasks (such as our Pardot Foundations class). If you carefully and thoughtfully plan your transition, moving from your old system to Pardot will be a success!

And don’t forget about lead management: how you handle lead processing and the handoff process to sales. Every platform tackles this topic in its own way and Pardot is no different. Strategize and document what you currently have in place so that migrating this process is smoother!

Ready to nail this migration? Our expert Pardot consulting can help!

The post Pardot Migration: Migrate Like A Boss And Avoid Common Errors appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

If you’re looking to transform your marketing team from being regarded as the “make it pretty” department to a revenue-generating machine, you’re in the right place! Revenue marketing drives a change in culture that sets your team(s) up to succeed and get the respect you deserve.

Initially developed by Partner and Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Debbie Qaqish in 2010 (here is her original book on the subject!), the concept of Revenue Marketing goes beyond what traditional lead generation or demand generation strategies encompass.

Click to jump to a section, or click here to get this article in PDF format.

Definition | The Four Marketing Stages | How Revenue Marketing Is Different | Six Key Areas | Get Started | Next Steps

What Is Revenue Marketing?

Revenue marketing is a holistic approach that helps marketers prove a return on marketing investment, create optimal customer experiences, and compete in the digital world. It drives a culture where marketing aligns with revenue – instead of being seen as a necessary cost center.

If you’re a marketing leader, this is a must-have – or you risk never getting the seat the revenue table you deserve.

This happens as marketing:

• Drops sales-ready leads into the top of the funnel
• Accelerates sales opportunities though the funnel
• Measures marketing based on contribution to pipeline and revenue
• Transforms marketing from a cost center to a revenue center

The Four Stages of the Revenue Marketing Journey

You’ve heard of each stage (except, perhaps, the last one!) and likely talk about it often in your own marketing:

• Traditional Marketing
• Lead Generation
• Demand Generation
• Revenue Marketing

The revenue marketing model elevates your team into a full-on revenue-crushing marketing machine. At each step of the journey, you must know the common challenges and solutions hundreds of companies have worked through.

You may find parts of different stages that resonate with where you currently are … that’s normal!

Traditional Marketing

Others view marketing as the “make it pretty” team. You’re always on the defensive with your budget, and it’s next to impossible to increase it.

Customer experience revolves around whatever events you’re hosting or new products are launching. Personas are usually barebones in scope and largely ignored by most within the organization.

Metrics are often tactics-based, such as “# of webinar attendees” or “# of conference leads for sales to follow up on.”

What’s most likely missing? A robust lead management process. You’ve created leads, but then they’re out of your hands … and that doesn’t add up.

Working WITH sales and helping build relationships with prospects requires both sales and marketing efforts.

Lead Generation

In this stage, marketing thinks sales often ignores their leads. Sales thinks marketing leads aren’t worth the time and effort. And there needs to be more visibility/accountability as to what happens to these leads.

There’s often a need for clearly-defined customer profiles for marketing to work with and the ability to provide personal experiences to customers and prospects alike.

Metrics often focus on lead volume and customer engagement (such as unsubscribe or open rate). And the CMO / VP (if there’s even one dedicated to marketing) needs to quickly identify marketing’s contribution to the bottom line, making defense of its budget difficult every quarter.

The primary challenge? It’s still lead management! But in this stage, it’s about more than building an effective process and enforcing it with buy-in from multiple parts of the company.

Demand Generation

Moving lead gen to demand gen involves plenty of strategy, so it’s not the most straightforward task!

Here, you’re focused on marketing’s contribution to revenue. However, there often needs to be more clarity between sales and marketing regarding this very attribution.

Other common challenges here are:

• Developing a robust content operation focused on what customers are truly looking for (at any stage of the buying cycle)
•  Having defined primary and secondary Ideal Customer Profile(s)
•  CMO’s ability to forecast marketing’s impact moving forward based on available data

Typically, our clients have needed to hone in on what customers want by working more closely with sales for their feedback and input. You’re also likely proving some value from marketing to the bottom line … but there are often ways to improve this measurement (and make it easier / replicable).

Revenue Marketing

Few organizations would classify themselves here. If you’re reading this and the following description fits you, congratulations on reaching marketing nirvana!

Revenue generated by marketing is attributed correctly, and methods (such as marketing automation, outbound nurtures, or landing page development) are predictable, scalable, and repeatable across the team in the following ways:

Predictable: When your CMO or VP of Marketing walks into a senior management team meeting, they come with two different reports: a report showing marketing’s revenue contribution over the past month, quarter, or year, and a forecast for the upcoming period.

Scalable: Campaigns, reporting, content development, and attribution are all done similarly across any vertical, business unit, or product group. Anything new has a ready-made base from which to build.

Repeatable: Processes for success are documented so that any new hire can quickly pick up processes and begin contributing to the revenue machine.

How Is Revenue Marketing Better?

Key areas are enhanced to provide exceptional insight:

Sales and marketing alignment

Marketing can pass all the leads possible over the sales, but if sales thinks they’re crap, it doesn’t matter.

Gaining necessary buy-in from multiple levels of the organization – from sales to executives, customer support to IT – are must-haves if marketing’s efforts are to be best realized into revenue.

If your initial thought was “Yeah, but…” then you’re not alone. In fact, this is typically the single-greatest roadblock to progress (yes, even today). Start optimizing pipeline processes and you’ll be amazed at its impact.

Note this is a precursor to establishing a revenue operations practice within your organization – more on the topic in this getting started with RevOps article.

Revenue is Now a marketing KPI

A majority of marketing teams have quarterly / annual bonuses and performance tied to leads generated. A revenue marketer knows that’s an empty metric on its own.

With the right alignment within the company or business unit, marketing should feel comfortable signing up for a specific revenue number that’s tied to closed-won sales opportunities.

Think about it … which is more likely to get executive buy-in and resonate with all areas of the business?

• “Marketing should drive 30 MQLs a week with a > 30% conversion rate to SQL status”
• “Marketing drives $5M in revenue and influenced $10M more”

The first is far more common, but the second keeps focus on the one ultimate goal everyone should care about: Revenue!

But what about attribution challenges?

Marketing-sourced revenue is becoming obsolete, especially with just how much can’t be seen in a typical buyer’s journey.

You may need to re-think how you’re tracking marketing’s contributions. For example, are you using a last-click model that your CRM automatically applies from particular lead sources?

If so, you might be struggling to capture marketing’s true impact.

A trend has been emerging of adopting more account-based marketing metrics, such as account engagement. Curious to learn more? Start with our ABM primer and then send us your questions!

Customer, Not Product, Focus

Typical demand generation drives interest in a given product or service. However, this falls into common traps of a product-focused company that doesn’t put the customer first.

Now, revenue marketing obviously involves driving demand … after all, if you can’t create interest in what you do, you won’t last very long!

But typically, hyper-focusing on demand leads to the question: “How do we create greater demand for this product / service?”

Instead, the question should always be: “What do our customers want, and how can we deliver it so they become more willing to spend and stay with us?”

Enter: The RM6 methodology

Revenue marketing is holistic, focusing on processes, people, tech, and aligning them all to the customer for results.

We have leveraged this method with hundreds of clients to date, and invite you to try this yourself!

Start Your Revenue Marketing Transformation

Our own Kevin Joyce chronicled the journey towards becoming a full-fledged revenue marketer in his post on a modern marketing team structure. Here’s a few high points:

The increasing importance of customer experience (CX) requires us to transform marketing.

Jerry Gregoire, chief information officer at Dell, once said: “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” The “next” is upon us, and CX is the primary battleground of today. 

Is the customer experience at your firm sufficient to motivate a marketing transformation? Consider these examples of customer experience driving change:

• Vinyl shifted to CDs, then to iPods and now to Spotify, Pandora and Songza. The product is the same, music, but the customer experience is much different and driving the change.
• Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are replaced by Netflix, iTunes, HBO Now, and Amazon Prime. Same product, different customer experience.
• Are you hailing a yellow cab, or scheduling an Uber or Lyft? I’ll wager you have tried the latter two and possibly not at all the former!
• Have your tried using an Amazon Dash button at home to order laundry detergent?
• Have you pre-ordered and prepaid for your Starbucks beverage so you can breeze in, skip the line and be sipping in seconds?
• And how about those iPads at every table in some airport restaurants replacing the wait staff? The food is the same (sadly), but the customer experience is certainly different.

Related: How do you maximize your marketing operations?

The internet changed the way people buy and how they want to engage with companies. The buyer’s journey changed, too: if we adapt marketing faster than our competitors we can gain market share.

But responding to pressures from prospects isn’t the only impetus to transform marketing.

Sales wants effective marketing engagement with their funnel.

There are various conflicting statistics about how much of the buying journey is over before the buyer wants to engage with sales, most of them suggesting in excess of 50%. One thing is for sure: buyers are increasingly engaging with us through marketing’s digital channels when they are in the awareness, research, consideration and evaluation buying stages.

These channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google and your website. Sales knows they can benefit from knowing exactly how and when a prospect engaged. What content did they view? What ad did they respond to?

Furthermore, if a prospect is not ready for sales engagement, reps want to be able to advise marketing how to nurture that individual. Perhaps they want marketing to engage with several large strategic accounts and help the sales reps penetrate deeper and broader (a.k.a. Account Based Marketing).

It’s not a new concept, but we now have technology and marketing channels that make these activities much more measurable and cost effective.

Marketing teams want to know their efforts make a difference.

Marketers know buyer behavior shifts and evolves. They know there are new channels and technologies to help.

Marketers want to transform from lead generation and demand generation to a modern marketing approach that engages prospects and customers. They know more CEOs are insisting marketing demonstrate a strong ROI.

Most marketing management I meet understand the old marketing structures with silos will not work in a world where prospects interact through several channels for a single business transaction.

So, how do you embrace these three realities?

It starts with having the right team in place … but it’s not as easy as it sounds. So, get your revenue marketing strategy jumpstarted with a modernized org structure to best enable your team to succeed.

Streamline your tech

Tech promises so many solutions, and yet provides so much heartbreak.

Start by auditing your tech stack with these questions to identify some technologies you can outright remove or further optimize.

So, What Now?

“…to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.”

― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People

Now that you’ve been introduced to revenue marketing, it’s time to do something with it and start accelerating your career, your marketing, and / or your team!

1. Grab this revenue marketing kit – it’s ungated!
2. Learn how we can help here.
3. Assess your own organization! Try it now.

The post What is Revenue Marketing? The key to earning a seat at the revenue table. appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Enter this Marketo guide to getting started and help anyone start strong (and if you need more, our online training is the perfect resource for you).

I’ll also address some common problems towards the end!

Getting Up To Speed

Learn terminology

As with any new platform, you need to become well-versed in its language. Yes, I know you’re just getting started, but reading over Adobe’s documentation will only help you “speak” it better as you dive into the platform and network with other Marketo users.

Use the Help Marketo Gives You

Marketo provides you with a library of sample programs. If you’ve got Marketo administrative privileges, you can import these sample programs and put in the right content for your needs. This way, you have the best practices out of the box and can focus on your assets.

Also make use of the Marketo Community, which is full of educational videos and documentation, ideas for using features, and suggestions for the product roadmap. Remember, there’s a vast community of your peers who can answer questions and help you learn quickly.

Start Small when building

You can’t build a fully-fledged marketing automation engine overnight. Pick a pilot program, whether it’s a nurture drip with 4 emails spaced 1-2 weeks apart, or a webinar invitation + delivery and follow up.

Use this as a model. Make sure you’ve used email best practices with well-designed landing pages and then leverage the data to improve.

If your first attempt goes well, you can clone it and build from it instead of starting from scratch!

Scrub Your Database

This cannot be emphasized enough … if you’ve inherited a database, any bad data issues are now yours – and will plague your efforts from now until you take care of them!

Go into the Database tab in Marketo. See those System Smartlists? Start there.

First, check out your Possible Duplicates. If there aren’t too many, that’s a good start. Focus on de-duplicating these (if you’re using Marketo synced to Salesforce.com, I recommend de-duping in Salesforce instead of through Marketo) – use the Auto Merge tool if necessary.

Next, create some data management smart lists to help you see where you need to standardize and normalize data. Find out where the dirty data is coming from and nip that in the bud first, so you don’t have more coming in. Using pick lists on your forms, where possible, is a best practice.

Once you’ve done some cleaning, you’ll be familiar enough with your data to know what the next easiest cleaning task is. Data management and cleanliness is an ongoing practice, so don’t think you can do it only once. That said, once your database is clean, you can institute practices that keep it clean.

Check Your Sync(s)

Chances are, Marketo’s working with another system …. or five …. or ten. Many of these will be systems feeding into Marketo, so save those for last.

Start with all systems, such as your CRM, where Marketo is pushing information out to another. This could be a one-way or bi-directional sync, but since you’re A common system? Salesforce, and we have that covered in this integration blog.

Understand how data flows in and out of your system and what the most important fields are (especially for marketing and sales, but possibly other teams such as customer service). This will only help you as you interface with the entire ecosystem.

Be Patient

I frequently tell those I’m working with, “You don’t walk out of a foreign language class fluent on the second day.”

Pace yourself, determine you will learn one new thing every week or two, and make a commitment to yourself by learning about the next big thing in marketing: marketing automation. You not only increase your value to your current job, you increase your value as a marketer in the greater ecosphere of marketing professionals.

Realize that you’ve been learning new things your entire life, and by investing a little time each day (or week), you’re learning to reach the targets you have today more efficiently. A little time spent learning marketing automation today will mean a lot less manual work in the future. The result is you’ll be yourself more efficient and more able to reach your company, department, and personal goals.

Build the right reports

You can build plenty, but if they’re unusuable (or ad-hoc) then are you truly creating something that’s repeatable and scalable? Your time’s more valuable than that!

Fortunately, we have the blog for you – three must-have Marketo reports.

Problems Starting Out

These are some of the most common I hear from those just getting started in the field. If you want more troubleshooting help for intermediate-level issues, read this blog.

I need to start nurturing NOW!

That might be true, but without a plan you won’t get very far. Think of it this way: you have fairly new leads and older leads. Start there. Plan two programs, one that will nurture existing leads (not yet customers) and one that will nurture your fairly new (and incoming in near future) leads. That’s it, just two.

The first one might be four emails spaced two weeks apart each, so your program will run for eight weeks. Don’t talk about your products, a mistake many of those new to marketing automation make. It’s a little like walking into a bar, walking up to someone you don’t know, and saying “Hey, want to get married???”

It might work occasionally, but more likely not!

Instead, focus on the problems that people who purchase your product are facing, and the types of questions they’re asking. The second email can talk about what they’re doing to answer those questions (again, not your product, but the things they’re considering to progress towards a solution). Make sure all four emails have campaign messaging that focuses on problem solving from your prospect’s point of view, not yours. It’s all about them.

Once people start responding to what you have to say, you can introduce them to information they might be interested in further down the funnel, but start by getting to know them a little bit, and show them you understand their concerns.

Sales isn’t sure which leads to prioritize

Consider starting with lead scoring. The problem is that there is no discrimination between a lead who is ready to talk to sales and one who’s just starting to look for a solution. You need to help sales distinguish between the two.

Lead scoring is easy to implement, but the planning is the part that requires thought.

First, consider all the ways in which a lead might engage with your website, team, materials or company.

• Are they downloading white papers or case studies from your website?
• Attending webinars?
• Visiting certain web pages?
• Going to luncheon meetings?

Find the ways in which they are interacting with you and sort these different methods of engagement into high value (shows a lot of sales interest, like asking for pricing), medium value (attended an hour-long webinar), or low value (clicked in an email, which shows they’re doing something at least, but isn’t a lot of effort). Once you’ve sorted these into high, medium and low, assign points – maybe 5, 3 and 1, or 10, 5 and 1. Don’t worry too much about the exact values to start.

Next, communicate with sales. Do they agree on the high, medium and low values you assigned? Once you have agreement with sales, implement your pilot scoring. Let sales know it’s a pilot and their feedback is important. For better results, enlist a sales rep who wants to work with you, or someone in sales operations, to collect comments and come back to you in 30 or 60 days with feedback.

Lead scoring is not a set-it-and-forget-it process, but one you’ll need to keep revisiting and adjusting over time…but at least you’ll have started somewhere!

Related: Know the steps of strong lead management

Marketing passes leads to sales, but we don’t know what happens to them

Start with your lead lifecycle.

Define the different stages of your funnel, from the time you first get an email address through to a closed/won opportunity. Name the different stages, and then define those stages.

Sales and Marketing alignment is crucial here; make sure you have agreement regarding the definitions of lead stages: that a lead is still in marketing and not ready for sales; when it is sales-ready; when it was sales-ready, but sales says it isn’t really ready and needs to go back to marketing?

Define your lead funnel and the detours that leads might take off your success path. Once you have a design and agreement, use Marketo smart campaigns to move leads from marketing to sales and, if necessary, back again to marketing when they need to be recycled. By clearly defining your lead management process, you’ll align sales and marketing and the next question will be “what next?”

And when you get to that “what’s next,” you can expand and enhance each of the different areas covered in this series to get the most out of your Marketo experience.

Want more? Check out our Marketo training or learn about our Marketo consulting services!

The post Getting starting in Marketo: Practical tips for beginners appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

I’m going to speak in terms seasoned AEM users will know, so if you’re new to the platform or maybe don’t quite have a grasp of everything, grab the guide first and bookmark this page for later!

Need a helping hand? Our AEM consulting services are for you!

Pro Tip #1: Ensure consistency between environments

Testing and consistency are two critical components of every successful development release. Failing to maintain 1:1 content consistency across the environments is a common mistake. It’s inefficient both for developers trying to create code and marketers who are trying to obtain approval for new campaign initiatives.

You need to be consistent to make sure your whole team is testing new enhancements in Development and Stage environments that are as close to the Production version as possible. That will help you avoid delays and mistakes before pushing content live.

#2: Bypass Dispatcher for troubleshooting

If someone sends you a publisher URL for troubleshooting, you need to be able to quickly identify which environment is causing the issue – and you can do this by referencing the URL.

Dispatcher is a caching tool that improves web page delivery for end-users. You can bypass the Dispatcher by appending a “?” to the Publisher URL to verify if a web page is experiencing unwanted caching instead of an actual error.

#3: Page template flexibility

You can have templates that are quite flexible, very rigid, or somewhere in between. Here’s a few key notes to consider when developing this crucial building block:

A more flexible template is right for you if:

• Your team includes experienced authors with a keen design eye. You need design experience as well as an understanding of AEM to create effective content experiences with a very flexible template.
• You need to be more agile and adjust your design on pages based on performance. More flexible templates allow authors to immediately make changes that could impact the customer experience and results, like moving the location of a call-to-action.

A more rigid template is right for you if:

• Your team doesn’t include experienced authors or authors with design experience.
• You want to promote consistent branding knowing that users can’t stray away from guidelines (since the rigid template doesn’t allow it).
• Your design and layout don’t frequently change. You might release new products, but how you promote that offering doesn’t change often.

A template that’s mildly flexible and mildly rigid is right for you if:

• Your marketing department likes to push boundaries to engage with audiences in different ways, but still needs guidelines to be “on brand.”
• You’re constantly evaluating metrics and recommending UX tweaks to improve performance but you still need to abide by strict brand guidelines.

Make sure to understand roles!

When creating a new template, there are a few different Roles necessary to orchestrate this process. These Roles include an Admin, Developer, Template Author and Author. Want more information on Roles? Reference Adobe’s documentation on Page Templates.

#4: Use structural Content Fragments

There are two types of content fragments — simple and structural fragments. You can’t customize simple fragments — they’re out-of-the-box and have very limited features.

In contrast, with a structural content fragment, you make it easier for authors to input content. This is the method we recommend for more customization and consistency, but we find it’s often underutilized!

Know your available data types

When creating your content fragment model, you’ll need to know your available data types to accurately assess limitations.

Planning for limitations and business requirements in advance is a lot more effective and efficient than reacting to issues as they arise during the build process. Check out this section of Adobe’s documentation to get familiar with available data types.

#5: Reorder your pages in your navigation by editing your site structure

In most circumstances, your navigation will pull in from your site structure. AEM will automatically order your pages for you in the order that you created them.

If you need to reorder pages, then you need to drag and drop that page within the tree site structure. For example, you might need to reorder pages if you add a new product page and you want this page to be the first menu item.

#6: Don’t overcomplicate image storage

Make sure your folder structure in Assets mimics your site’s structure! That way you can easily manage images. You’ll stay streamlined across your author team by avoiding duplicate images and disorganization.

For example, if I have a page with a page URL of /products/industrial/product-x, then I should store those product images in a folder that’s a sub-folder within products and the “industrial” folder in the Digital Asset Manager (DAM).

This way, it’s far easier to find images in the future when going into your DAM and make it easy for other authors to know where to upload an image in the future!

#7: Work in sections on a page by adding a parent container

Once you have a parent container, you can nest other containers to create more intricate layouts to display your content.

A parent container will also provide greater flexibility to maintain optimal rendering across any viewports. To create a parent container, use either the Layout Container or Container from the Core Component library.

#8: Adding containers side by side

First, enable Layout mode by selecting the double-sided arrow on the component’s action toolbar. Then adjust the margins to reduce the size.

If you want to add two containers side by side, then add another sibling component and adjust the size ensuring the combined width doesn’t exceed the max-width.

#9: Initiating the approval workflow

Some users will not have permission to publish content directly. When that’s the case, these authors can use the Manage Publication action to initiate the approval workflow.

If you’re an approver, make sure you check on a daily basis any changes that are in the queue!

#10: Clear your cache

If you’ve activated a page but you’re seeing old content displayed, your first step to troubleshoot should be to clear your cache.

You’ll find that often does the trick!

#11: Avoid overriding important versions

Use “View as Published” to evaluate your page in lower environments instead of reviewing directly within Publisher. You can also try delaying activation until after your page has been thoroughly tested in Author and is ready for the next step.

This can prevent an accidental overwrite or saving a page in a state you didn’t want it!

#12: Use Adobe’s Sensei for AI

With this tool, you can train your system to recognize similar items and automatically classify them. Learn more about Adobe Sensei for AI.

Want even more?

• Ask us about how we can consult on your instance to help you get more
• Read about available cloud services options

The post 12 AEM Tips To Get More Done And Waste Less Time appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

I continuously work with clients with lousy marketing automation habits, and as their consultant, I am responsible for telling them to STOP doing them. I hate to say ‘no,’ ‘don’t,’ or ‘stop’ to a client, but I also need to help them get the most from their invested platform.

I polled our entire group of Revenue Engineers at The Pedowitz Group and asked, “What do your clients need to STOP doing?” I was going to compile a Top 10 of the most cringe-worthy items, but after receiving more than 25 responses, it became clear that everything needed to stay.

Although long, this is a vitally important list! These poor habits have led to wasted potential revenue for so many companies … and they’re costing you, too, if you’re guilty.

Feeling guilty? Try an online course and level up your skills so you get more out of your marketing automation platform!

Bad marketing automation habits you have to STOP:

1. Using impersonal communication. Marketing automation platforms are designed to use personalization to increase response rates.
2. Failing to analyze your metrics. If you don’t review, you can never improve.
3. Failing to clean your data. MAPs won’t work well if your data is dirty.
4. Using No-Reply as your email return address. If you want your message delivered to an inbox you need to optimize, first up is removing those no-reply addresses.
5. Asking for more than 4 fields on a form. Remember, conversion is the goal. Less is more.
6. Doing A/B tests and NOT learning from the results. What’s the point of testing if you don’t have time blocked on your calendar to review the results and make improvements?
7. Forgetting to clean up the text version of your email. If someone sees it, shouldn’t it look good?
8. Using ‘cutesy’ language for your unsubscribe button at the bottom of the page. Be honest and straightforward; if they want out, let them go.
9. Sending emails to everyone in your database because a new asset has been created. Opt for relevant and segmented messages to get better return.
10. Putting too many CTAs in an email or landing page. Drive to conversion, again, less is more.
11. Having too many images in your emails. You want balance, both from a design and deliverability perspective.
12. Trying to put proprietary fonts into emails/landing pages. Use web-safe fonts so that everyone sees them and doesn’t receive funky results you didn’t test for.
13. Blindly uploading and sending to list purchases. Seriously, do we have to explain this one?
14. Sending daily emails to leads. Set a communications limit. People don’t want to be spammed.
15. Putting full site navigation into your emails or landing pages. Again, this is about conversion. Drive to a simple, clear goal that a reader can understand in just a couple of seconds.
16. Batch and blasting. Start with relevant, segmented, well-reasoned communications and you’ll see strong results.
17. Writing novels in your emails. Who wants to read War and Peace on their iPhone? Keep it short, sweet and to the point.
18. Leaving important links and CTA at the bottom of the email. Three words: Above. The. Fold. You want the important stuff where people look first.
19. Unorganized folder structures in your tool. Tidy MAPs lead to better reporting.
20. Using non-responsive emails and landing pages. Who isn’t reading on a mobile device these days?
21. Having Marketing and Sales silos. One team, one goal, no ignored leads who are engaging with your content. Marketing and Sales UNITE!
22. Ignoring the stack. Your existing technologies may work better together (i.e. Google Analytics, Omniture and your MAP). The modern marketer embraces the technology and its integrations, instead of pretending it works best in silos.
23. Ignoring mobile rendering and responsive design. It’s necessary for your audience, no matter if it’s B2B or B2C. Again, who doesn’t read on a mobile device? Your messages should reflect that.
24. Losing leads through nurturing by not developing a seamless end-to-end strategy. Have a plan for lead management and nurturing, don’t hope for the best.
25. Treating lead management like a one-way street. Let the conversation flow between sales and marketing. “One team, one goal,” … say it with me!
26. Automating inefficient processes or no process. This only magnifies the inefficiency and doesn’t magically make marketing better. Eliminate the things that bring no return and focus on what will.
27. Failing to configure SPF/DKIM. These are critical setup steps for seamless deliverability.
28. Going wider than 650px wide in your email. Emails should be optimized for delivery. This is the beginning, not the end of that quest.

STOP these marketing automation bad habits and start following best practices! You invested in a technology that is capable of great things, but you have to configure it, organize it and use it properly to get the most out of it.

Are you guilty of any of these? It’s okay … we’ve seen all of these (and more). The good news is, now you can make improvements and continue building the best habits possible within your marketing automation efforts.

But you should read on about nine myths of marketing automation all the same…

If you like this content, you may also enjoy our practical guides to starting with Marketo, Eloqua, and Pardot.

The post 28 bad marketing automation habits appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Although the actual implementation won’t take place in full until 2023, the scramble to adjust is on and no marketing organization wants to be dead last – especially as other leading browsers such as Firefox and Safari have already made privacy-centric moves.

So, what do you need to know about cookieless advertising and, really, its impact on your entire marketing efforts? Let’s dive in, and special thanks to my colleague Caleb Rule for his insights added throughout this article.

Click to jump to a section:

• Short-term wins
  • Audit your data
  • Map (or update) your customer journey
  • Focus on utm parameters
  • Harmonize KPIs
• Long-term considerations
  • Focus (more) on the journey
  • Audience segmentation and discovery
  • Email: It never died!
  • Cull and improve content
  • Embrace video
  • Develop lead management
  • Embrace chatbots, but do it well
  • Know how ABM is impacted

Let’s level-set: What this actually means

For marketers like us, unfortunately, it means losing the ability to easily record user preferences, retargeting ads, tracking and attributing leads, and more for a particularly wide swath of your site visitors and prospective customers.

It doesn’t mean, however, that the digital conversation is over. Smart marketers understand the opportunity this presents to leap ahead of the pack by embracing first-party data opportunities, and we want to make sure that you’re in that group as well.

Losing cookies mean we no longer have the ability to facilitate a number of marketing functions in the manner we’ve become accustomed to:

• Retargeting ads and continuing the content conversation when someone who previously interacted comes back. Without third-party data, we risk restarting the conversation from the starting point every time a prospect engages with us. This will result in a stagnant customer journey that goes nowhere.
• Keeping an item in an ecommerce shopping cart from a previous visit and retargeting to remind an anonymous user to provide information and complete a purchase.
• Smart forms that auto-populate with information collected from elsewhere.
• Understanding trends and gaining insights around top-of-funnel prospects who haven’t yet engaged deeply enough to be known to our marketing efforts.
• Accessing demographic data such as age, location, or web history to better target web-based ads. We’ll still have this option in places like Google Ads, but reliance on them could become trickier as the data becomes more suspect over time.

What To Do: Short-Term Wins

Knowing where to start with this issue is tricky, so here are four areas to jump on immediately before third-party data is gone for good:

#1: Audit first-party data to create an inventory

It’s likely that expertise about your first-party versus third-party data usage lies within the purview of a few individuals who have the specific details. However, usage of that data drives strategies far more widely across sales and marketing, so step one becomes an inventory and audit of what you’re collecting and how you’re currently
using it.

Here’s a quick start guide on how to do this and a graphic below for a template to get you started.

Identify tools that use data, either first party or third party (overlap between the two is expected). We jump start the list with common ones below but also consider any MarTech tools, especially those integrated with CRM or social media. Another place to look for third- party data users is any process that involves collecting data, like a web form.

In the second column, capture teams and team members that manage tools. For a typical organization, we expect to see a different name or team in each box. This becomes the list of people who need to cooperate on driving change.

In the third column, list others who rely on data for the tool. For example, often the owner of a CRM exists somewhere in the IT department; but the power users of data from a CRM are more likely to be grouped in sales and marketing.

In the last column, capture how data is being used. Some of the questions to answer here:

• What types of interaction history and forms are we tracking?
• What kind of KPI information are we tracking, like time spent on webpages?
• Do we understand where conversions and interactions are happening on our site?

With this audit in-hand, you’ll be able to build the framework for a sustainable, repeatable process so nobody gets left behind internally.

#2: Map The Customer Journey

Personas, customer experience and buyers’ journeys … it’s the gnarly knot of processes that marketers perennially struggle to get their arms around. It’s a topic that sounds so simple, but its one of the most sophisticated and comprehensive processes to understand who your customer is – and what they want.

We’ve talked a lot about customer journeys, including an improved model in the past. But if you’re reading this now, here’s how to get the process right:

Step 1: Revisit personas or ideal customer profiles. If it’s been a while since you last updated yours, now is absolutely the time to make it happen.

Step 2: Check in on persona performance. You should have a map of what prospects are coming to your website for, where they are coming from, and where they go once they land in your digital backyard. Third-party data provides much more visibility on the efficacy of these processes, so it is worth investing the time now and
taking advantage of insights that will soon evaporate.

Step 3: Focus on the remarketing stages. We know data in this critical area is going to dry up, so rather than risk getting overwhelmed by the entire customer experience process, focus on efforts to recapture attention and continue conversations. Focus on the efficacy of content and also the strategies that work to get attention, engage, tailor experiences and especially personalize them on your website.

Related: See why we deleted 1/2 our website because of a content audit

#3: Focus on the ability to collect first-party data With UTMs

I can’t say this loud enough: UTMs will be the new way to pixel.

Many companies are still elementary in their use of tools that will replace cookies. Now is the time to make the switch and develop the expertise to use the tools that are quickly becoming the new normal!

Teams that aren’t currently using these tools will need to adapt processes around the new ones, and that will take a significant shift. Adding these new elements will hobble the efforts of several teams as they struggle with both the basics, as well as a more sophisticated future.

#4: Stop over-segmenting your marketing and harmonize your KPIs

Marketing efforts are frequently disjointed across teams, something that might surface if you complete the Data Audit and Inventory suggested above. The result is that multiple people chase the same goals but do so in a way that is siloed. This has worked up to this point because we’ve been able to use third-party data to glue these activities together and provide a cohesive look at these disparate efforts. However, this will be problematic moving ahead.

Here’s an example:

Companies frequently deploy their specialists with individual goals, which means separating organic, paid, and email tactics. Different teams run with these efforts, and communication about what’s going on is often superficial or even reactive.

Third-party data has been like a giant light switch. When we turn it on, we suddenly see how we are talking to prospects across different channels.

These capabilities are going away, and it’s as if we are suddenly stuck in the dark. We’ll lose the story of what happens between first and last touch with a narrow lens of focus. We need to be working toward one goal. That means building out reporting capabilities to tell a story about our brand or product before the ability to leverage third-party data goes away for good.

Prepare For Long-Term Success

If there’s a silver lining in all of this, it’s that first-party data has always been the more robust and reliable way to speak with prospects and clients! The established best practices, like ideal customer profiles and high-quality content that speaks directly to their wants and needs, are the best way to grow your business whether you’re tracking with pixels, UTMs, or even whatever comes next.

But how can you stay ahead of the game… permanently? Read on.

It’s All About the Journey

We know it’s fundamental, but it’s worth focusing on because the single biggest threat to “no cookies” is that we risk replaying the same content to the same people, never progressing our prospects past the starting point.

As marketers, we rely heavily on pixels to show us when a prospect has visited before, and on subsequent visits to show the right “next step” of content on the journey. Without cookies, return visitors don’t pick up where they left off. Instead, they start over. It’s like traveling in a circle that always takes you back where you started.

Obviously, this is lethal; but luckily, it’s not permanent. There are two ways to fix this broken route.

First, marketers need to develop competency using UTMs. UTMs are attached to links and are supported by Google Analytics, which means you get solid tracking and intel that works with the valuable analytics data you’re already used to. UTMs are relatively simple as far as functionality goes, yet we’ve seen companies large and small waste tens of thousands of dollars through improper usage.

For UTMs to work, the journey itself must speak directly to the pain and needs of the prospect. A consistent message that delivers the right message at the right time and in the right place is the kind of journey that converts.

So often, we find ourselves working with clients who have solid tools for serving up a customer journey, but the content falls flat.

What prospects are seeing doesn’t demonstrate enough understanding of their needs to convince them to move further along their journey with you.

Or, it talks more about the company than the people who need the product. It may not be customer-centric. A well-mapped journey built on top of a multichannel strategy is what turns a prospect into a lead.

Audience Discovery And Development

Another challenge is how to get the right customer on the right journey that speaks to their pain. It’s that old “if a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it, did it make a sound?” question.

Long before digital reigned supreme, marketers put soap commercials on daytime television shows and candy bars at eye level with the kids who would want them. For marketers, the name of the game has always been (and will always be) getting the product in front of the right buyer. In digital, connecting audiences with journeys and mapping the most effective channels is another process made easier by cookies.

We think of the starting point as a digital watering hole: putting the satiating message where the thirst is the greatest. Cookies made it a little easier to see how prospects landed on our doorstep, but that’s a reactive process. We see a shift to make the creation of watering holes a proactive process. Across channels, we need to work smarter when it comes to targeting.

Over the long term, there are also tools that will become more important, and savvy marketers are investing in them now:

Intent data. We’ve been blown away by the sophistication of the tools that already rely heavily on first-party data to collect—and crunch—information about online behavior that shows high interest or high need in a specific area. Companies like 6Sense can overlay onto channels, like LinkedIn, and show us as marketers where our watering holes are, and who is taking a sip.

Audience insight tools. Once you’ve got the first-party data and information from UTMs streaming in, how do you make sense of it? Tools like Drift Audiences sit on top of this information and mine it for insights.

But others, such as SparkToro, make it quite convenient to understand what your audiences prefer engaging with now. It’s an off-site tool that pulls in millions of data points across websites, social platforms, etc. to allow for quick and easy audience segmentation based on factors ranging from job title, to what they’re reading, etc. (In short? Take your ideal customer profile and see what they like!)

It’s not so much about creating a new audience as it is about finding the value and places to invest in the people you’re already tracking.

Email’s Never Dead. Now It’s more alive.

Email is going to surge back because people have already identified themselves, and you’ve got an invite to meet a prospect on their terms. We’ve been so focused on inbound thus far, but this outbound component has some serious upsides:

• Anyone who takes the time to give you their email is more likely to show interest in your message.
• You’re in control, and with email, you’ve got the floor to make your case without competition from other content on the channel.
• Everything in email is trackable. Create a compelling CTA, add a UTM, and watch the analytics roll in on how your message is being received.

A caution about email: more email means more static to cut through.

Compelling, well-targeted, and engaging content will win over this outbound tool. Personalization and highly bespoke content will be of the highest value when it comes to making it to the top of an inbox. Ten highly-focused emails that get the right message to the right prospect at the right time will be far more valuable than a blast to hundreds or thousands.

Related: Our email marketing guide

Content Is Always King.

The ability to tell your story is always going to be a differentiator; but through the lens of the cookieless world, content is important because Google rewards loyalty.

Click it, stay on it, and share it: there’s simply no substitute for content that solves pain and engages.

So be merciless. Customers need to see answers that solve a problem and learn something new. Whoever is telling the best story and driving engagement has an advantage because they’re simply providing a better customer experience through relevancy.

But it also has to rank

Great content that isn’t read is … what, exactly? A waste?

Sure, you can run paid advertising to promote it, but this far through reading, you’ve probably figured out that paid advertising is only becoming less effective. (Note that’s different than ineffective)

Investing in great content is only one part of getting to rank. For example, is your site super slow? Is Google Search Console telling you a ton of your site is actually on page two of Google? Does anybody actually link to what you write, or are you the only one promoting your company’s work?

Search engine optimization should be more than a line item in the budget – it needs a holistic strategy and dedicated headcount for larger organizations.

This also means culling your content to get rid of anything that doesn’t provide the ideal answers your target audience is looking for. For more on what that looks like, read this dive into why we deleted over half our website with positive results.

Video and Media Marketing Poised for Growth

What are your top three videos right now? Most of us can’t answer that!

But video is an immensely useful tool, especially when served up by YouTube. YouTube? Yes. It’s a Google property using first-party data, so analytics will reward engagement. Moreover, you can build audiences and net new contacts from video viewership and leverage analytics to see what messages are resonating.

YouTube isn’t just about video; in fact, it’s the third largest search platform behind Google and Google Images.

In addition, you can increase on-site engagement with the right video embedded (or podcast, etc.) into related website content. Give your reader more reasons to stay when they visit!

Video is an Achilles heel for so many of the clients we work with, because it gets a bad rep … not so much because it’s a bad tool but because it’s frequently not used well (just like email and chatbots). Engaging content is a must, and when used well, it’s a smart content marketing play.

Develop Your Lead Management Capabilities

Cookies affect all aspects of marketing, and lead management processes certainly face some challenges.

Lead scoring algorithms will be less effective if someone isn’t cookied. You won’t see a prospect score up when they’ve visited repeatedly and consumed a lot of content. It will be necessary to revisit lead scoring models and look at ways to compensate so the marketing pipeline doesn’t suddenly begin to slow down.

Sales and marketing need to reconsider what to do with prospects who pony up their info as part of first-party data processes. When someone has taken the time raise their hand, they are a valuable prospect. You must, however, be hypersensitive to sales readiness. The lack of cookies will change the definitions when you lack information about the journey that brought your customer to your door.

Attribution has always been a challenge as well. If you can’t see the journey, you fall back into the trap of giving the credit to the last touch. UTMs can fill this gap, but they have to be fully implemented to keep the attribution process moving smoothly.

Related: Make sure you have a strong lead management process with this blog!

The Additive Case For Chatbots

If you’re not using automated tools to drive conversations with chatbots, you’re missing out. There is such untapped ability for platforms to customize and automate an experience through a customer-focused approach.

When done with intent, chatbots help people see value in engaging with a brand, in a personalized way. They are an additive to an otherwise robust user experience that’s focused on the user.

But a ton of companies get this wrong.

• The wrong reason to use bots is to automate the process of mining for data, lessen the load when it comes to talking with a prospect, or try to streamline the process of getting leads.
• The right reason is to add to the overall customer experience and connect on a more meaningful level.

When this happens, we’re seeing more and more people willing not to just interact, but provide that high value first-party data. Read more on chatbot strategy in this blog.

Another good reason for chatbots is immediacy multiplied by relevance.

Chatbots should vary across different areas of your website, ready to serve up unique assets or experiences that extend the value of the content the user is viewing.

One tactic we love: instead of a gated web form, use the chatbot to deliver an asset right away by entering information and getting the link to the asset immediately (or at least acknowledge “it’s on the way” if you prefer to cookie them through your marketing automation platform).

Then, follow up that first asset with a choice of a few more, as well as offers of other relevant calls to continue the conversation.

Think about it: If a key contact from a target account grabs one of your assets, you can have logic in place to immediately offer them a chance to connect with Sales (in addition to other options). It reduces friction on their buying journey but prevents unqualified leads from taking up Sales’ valuable time.

You can also use your chatbot to highlight related content on content-heavy areas of your site, like a blog. For example, if you read our blog explaining what revenue marketing is, you’ll get a bot recommended related content … but it doesn’t fire immediately, ensuring it fires to people who are actually reading the article.

Related: We partner with Drift, a leader in the space!

Impact On Account-Based Marketing Strategies

Account-based marketing (ABM) strategies rely heavily on the ability to identify individuals who are part of the accounts getting deferential attention.

Doing this traditionally required cookies, and UTM parameters can only go so far in filling the gap. Many of us are asking: Can intent data platforms replace the role of cookies in account based marketing?

Well, sort of.

No one thing can fill all the gaps, but in so many ways more data can help if you know how to use it. The best uses center around:

• Better informing advertising strategies, as well as customization and personalization.
• Seeing the overall trends in market interests.
• Enabling sales and streamline conversations at the account level.
• Collecting first-party data to hone the overall plays in the ABM strategy.

Another critical aspect is eliminating the linear path of a typical customer journey and building a radial path. Don’t offer one single asset as a next step; offer many as a choice. This helps offset some of the issues with retargeting and the repetitiveness of content when you don’t have first-party data but still need to maximize every touchpoint.

Related: Our ABM executive’s guide dives into what to do (and avoid)

More Than Crumbs: Your Revenue Pipeline

Much will change with the elimination of cookies; but so much stays the same.

What we think will never change is the idea of customer focus. Cookies are, in the end, a tool that helps marketers … but does little for prospects!

When you build processes that are truly customer focused, you stick with the most powerful tools (like first-party data) that endure because, in the end, they’re the right thing to do. And as an extension of customer focus, what works no matter what is high value content that addresses pain points.

This is not about how we, as a company, get the data we need to market ourselves. Do that and you’ll miss the boat on speaking to what the customer really wants.

Cookies or not, it’s a relentless focus on your user that wins more closed-won deals.

Want help?

Learn more about how we’re different as a company and with our services, or see how we can help, from digital advertising to ABM, lead management to marketing operations!

The post Not Cookie Cutter: What To Do With A Cookieless Marketing World appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

Customers expect instant gratification.

How you manage, organize and present the content on your website is crucial for building that gratification and leading to a successful digitally-oriented business.

And this isn’t just the case for B2C buyers … B2B buyers expect the same! In fact, 87% of B2B buyers want to self-serve part or all of their buying journey. 

With the majority of the buying journey now happening online and over half without even speaking to a vendor, a traditional content management system (CMS) often won’t cut it.

You need more to grow digital revenue. And a digital experience platform (DXP) is the answer.

First, let’s talk through some basic elements about digital content and experience:

The Content Management System

A content management system is software that enables you to create and manage content on a website. WordPress, Squarespace, and Drupal are well-known examples – in fact, WordPress accounts for nearly 40% of all websites on its own!

The good thing about the CMS is that one no longer needs to be a developer to produce web content. The CMS empowers the basic content owners to own their content lifecycles.  

Before the CMS came along, you’d need to know languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and depending on the complexity of the site and server processing, back-end languages as well to get a website up; that, or have a full-time IT team ready to transform your mockups into web pages.  

A CMS has two layers:

• The first is a content layer where you can create and update blog posts, product catalogs, videos, etc.
• The second is the code layer that governs the functionality of the platform.

A good system should separate these layers. This enables you to develop new functionalities for the platform independently without interfering with the content that you’ve already uploaded. 

They enable you to customize the website with the basics alone, but you’ll encounter challenges such as high maintenance costs and complexity if you were to customize beyond the basics.

Your customers expect you to provide them with an exceptional customer experience. The content management system is capable of this. But it cannot deliver the sort of customer experience clients expect on its own and that’s where a digital experience platform or DXP comes into play.

How Is a DXP different from a CMS?

A Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is a software that helps firms undergoing a digital transformation to provide superior customer experiences.  DXPs are quite similar to a CMS, but they are more advanced with integrated features targeted to managing those experiences.

They can integrate customer experience tools that come in handy in an era where businesses have to be customer-oriented to protect their market share.

Some elements that make DXPs different are:

• Multi-channel experience: Your customers have multiple devices through which they can access your website. They expect you to optimize the content for all these devices. DXPs help you adapt content for all these platforms.
• AI capabilities: The CMS primarily helps you to deliver content that is vital for the digital experience. A DXP does this too, but it goes further through automating the smart delivery of the content across IoT devices. DXPs provide a 360-view of your clients across different platforms hence they can use the analytics to create personalized experiences.
• Personalization: You are in a better position to improve the customer experience for your clients if you understand their needs. DXPs can prioritize content for your clients based on their attributes. It helps you deliver content that resonates with each client.
• Scalability: I can go a few ways on this, but for the moment let’s talk about back-end functionality. You can create new instances that run when needed without IT’s intervention. This is due to a dynamic architecture based on traffic and how users interact with your site … in other words, it can adjust based on your target market’s experiences!

Think of it this way: What makes for a good digital experience?

When everything makes the customer feel they’re important while giving them what they need.

But how you deliver that experience matters.

• A content management system enables you to write and organize content for your organization’s online presence.
• A digital experience platform enables you to personalize and integrate your content with other platforms for a better customer experience.

Which Should You Choose?

I’ve touched on both, but let me compare the two a bit further if you’re considering one vs. the other. Both certainly have their use cases – for instance, a small business will absolutely want a CMS, but global organizations looking to edge their competition should strongly consider the benefits of a DXP.

Why you should choose a CMS:

Easier out-of-the-box setup. For example, all you need is web hosting to get a typical WordPress site live.

Works with a small budget. They can be quite budget-friendly, especially for smaller businesses. And there’s a healthy market of developers who can work on literally anything with your site, with a bevy of plugins available to help solve many challenges you might have.

Easy user adoption. Nearly anyone with any web experience can use parts of the back-end functionality.

Why you should choose a DXP:

Global Scalability. Beyond the back-end details mentioned earlier, if you serve multi-lingual audiences, for example, a DXP will make going global more sustainable.

Asset Scalability and Speed. Upload one image, and your platform’s systems can generate a multitude of other image sizes, allowing you to easily provide faster on-site experiences (which matters). Leverage cloud-optimized storage also speeds this up and comes standard.

Strong customization. A CMS can get expensive quickly if you customize beyond the basics and lead to less-than-ideal site performance. Your digital experience platform is built to be designed for your specific needs and workflows while maintaining ideal performance.

Better security. Outdated plugins or instances lead to easy hacking opportunities, and a CMS that isn’t properly maintained creates openings.

Integrations. Simply installing a plugin won’t always do the trick. They can cause problems for other plugins + having too many begins to slow your site down – or even break it! DXPs are made for more complex marketing infrastructures.

Analytics. Curious what users interact with most on a high-value page? An analytics integration (which best-in-class DXPs have standard) provide that data!

Related: Our MarTech consulting makes sure you have the optimal stack no matter what technology you use, from DXP to MAP, CRM to ABM

The Leading DXPs

Adobe and Sitecore are some of the leading DXPs you could deploy in your digital transformation, according to Gartner’s research.

These DXPs combine capabilities from CMSs and marketing automation platforms to create multi-channel digital offerings that remain ahead of other market options. 

Other DXPs to note include Acquia, Episerver, Oracle, IBM, BloomReach, and OpenText and have their own benefits. But having worked with multiple platforms listed, I’d have to say Gartner’s right: Two stand above the rest.

And I strongly feel that Adobe Experience Manager brings more to the table than the others – including Sitecore. 

What Is Adobe Experience Manager?

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a premium tool with an array of capabilities in a singular platform. It can help you manage your content, digital assets, digital enrollments, and even digital signage.

You can dive more into AEM with our blog on building its business case, which also includes migration tips for both marketing and IT to consider.

Here, I want to focus on the burning question you’re probably asking:

Why AEM?

There are a lot of tools that you can choose from in the marketplace. But, here’s a few reasons I much prefer AEM:

AEM’s digital asset management (DAM) tool has a superior architecture. The DAM is scalable, lightweight and it has excellent cloud capabilities – especially with Adobe’s cloud service offering that removes a lot of the burden of platform upgrades + provides stronger security checks integrated into your deployment process.

Working with other tools will require that you integrate the DAM as a separate solution – for instance, Sitecore added a DAM to their tool, but at the time of writing, they have several version iterations to go to match the features and capabilities of Adobe’s DAM (Adobe Assets).

Adobe’s comprehensive ecosystem is another huge plus.

• Their AI, Sensei, has been around for many years – it’s quite mature compared to many other market options.
• Audience Manager seamlessly works with AEM to create real-time personalization.
• The focus on holistic customer journeys is clear in their other product offerings, including journey analytics

Simply put, as we continue to harp on key needs for our clients as they continue to evolve and embrace revenue marketing, AEM is a tool that marketing operations can absolutely leverage to make it happen with best-in-class capabilities.

Let’s Get Technical

A CMS and DXP are certainly not alike. The former is powerful for creating content for your organization. The latter is powerful for creating and personalizing content across multiple platforms to give your business the online presence it deserves.

In today’s world, organizations must have a multi-channel digital experience to keep and grow customers.

A CMS won’t suffice for enterprises in a cutthroat marketplace that continues to become the buyer’s playground.

Those orgs need a DXP to meet your customer where they expect you to be … or risk failing to make the impression you need in a world of endless digital clutter and never-ending innovation.

Convinced? Then read more:

• Build your business case and have IT and marketing aligned for an AEM migration
• New to AEM? Head over to our getting started guide and level up
• Learn about our AEM consulting services for transforming how you digitally interact with customers

Still unsure, or have questions? I’m happy to connect on LinkedIn, and I also strongly recommend you reach out to Katelyn Booth as well!

The post DXP vs. CMS: Which is right for you? appeared first on The Pedowitz Group.

As a leader, whether you’re a director with a team of 3 or a CMO with a team of 300, it’s your job to keep your team(s) well-equipped to continue driving revenue and position them for sustained success.

So, what do you as a marketing leader need to know when it comes to inbound? Let’s dive in, with help from a survey we sent to inbound marketers in summer of 2020:

Click to jump to a section: Statistics To Know | Trends | 7 Questions To Ask | 4 Mistakes To Avoid | What To Do Now

Inbound Marketing Statistics To Know

• While 69% of C-level executives believe their marketing strategy is effective, only 55% of their marketing employees agree. (glean.info)
• 36% of CMOs had a difficult time proving the ROI of marketing spend. (Kuno Creative)
• CMOs are spending 29% of their marketing budgets on marketing technology. (MarTech Today)
• Nearly one in three buyers say they chat with businesses in order to determine if they’re trustworthy and credible. (Facebook)
• Consumers continue to embrace short-form video, and “… people who frequently watch short clips are more receptive to advertising.” (Deloitte)
• Landing pages, the least popular type of signup form, have the highest conversion rate (23%). On the other hand, popups, the most popular signup form, have the second-lowest conversion rate (3%). (Omnisend)
• 80% of consumers say they’ll only download an app from a company they know and trust, and 72% are concerned apps are tracking their movements. (Sinch)

From The Survey:

We had inbound marketers rate which channels were most important to them as part of a survey, with 1 = not important and 5 = very important. A few data points jumped out:

• Executives viewed Digital PR, Display, and Paid Social as less important to their inbound strategies than respondents who were Managers / Directors
• Organic social media had the widest distribution of answers, receiving most votes in the 2-4 range but with some 1s and 5s
• Some Managers / Directors struggle with identifying what’s most important – we had multiple respondents list each channel as important or very important.

Trends To Consider

At a high level, here’s what you need to know to help your team(s) align throughout the organization and be prepared for what’s coming next.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

This has been a hot topic in the marketing space for years, and its growing adoption signals it a coming war between leading platform providers for market share.

But how does this impact inbound, you ask?

You – and your team – will need to marry the two concepts together if your organization adopts the technology and underlying processes needed to ramp up ABM. (More on that in our Executive’s guide to ABM)

The intent data within these platforms enables marketers to know what a given company is researching – and what buying stage they may be in. It also provides new ways to identify target companies your sales team may want to pursue.

It’s focused on two key areas:

• Marketing identifying greater Sales opportunities and engaging them with relevant content to their buying stage and topics of choice
• Sales investigating potential targets and asking Marketing to help warm prospects before they reach out

Inbound relies on cohesively reaching customers and prospects through multi-channel (or omnichannel) strategies that keep you top-of-mind as someone goes through a buying cycle. You’re inviting a user to view your content and eventually volunteer information to you through a form, chatbot, or scheduling software to become a lead.

How they work together:

• ABM will fail without a strong inbound marketing strategy and pinpoint execution
• Inbound can be enhanced with ABM technology, but that alone is only part of the ABM process

Related: Is is possible to build chatbots people don’t hate?

What Buying Stage Is Your Content For?

Any strong use of a customer journey requires knowing what content to serve to a given prospect / customer … and when. More on this below in common mistake #1!

From the survey:

“Often, inbound marketing struggles because you’re sending out the wrong messages.

Your marketing is too self-centered when you need to make the customer the hero. Or, you’re too focused on tactics like SEO but not enough on brand marketing, which is an invisible driver of many of those searches.”

James Gerber, Vice President, Account Services @ CracklePR

Some common questions that are related:

• Do we know where our customers actually spend time? Or, what they’re looking for?
• If somebody is just researching, do we have content that will answer the questions they’re trying to answer? Or is everything veiled in a sales pitch?
• Are we trying to build trust with our target audience through our content, no matter what stage of the journey they’re on? Does our content reflect that?
• Should we ungate all of our content? It’s a debate worth having – the linked blog looks at both sides

Index Bloat is a problem

If you have dozens – or hundreds – of irrelevant, low-quality pages / assets on your website, it hurts you in three ways:

• Customers can have a poor experience, leading them to look elsewhere for solutions to their problem
• It acts as an anchor on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranks, keeping your content from being front-and-center in search results
• Both marketing and sales have to keep sifting through irrelevant content to find what will truly help a user / customer / prospect

Read how we did our own SEO content audit (and results we attained) to dive deeper into this topic.

Google hates your team

They love your Google Ads money, but they’re making it more difficult to control how its spent – and harder to ensure it’s spent efficiently:

• In mid-2020, Google setup a barrier on terms in Google Ads that caused ~20% of words / phrases people type into Google to trigger your ads to be hidden.
• They’ve also removed various methods of bidding in the Google Ads auction, instead putting control into Google’s algorithms – and creating more waste.
• On top of this, they’ve added “recommendations” into their Ads platform. Most are terrible and will hurt your advertising efforts.

These are just a few of the roadblocks Google is throwing into your team’s ability to do more. So, knowing some of the challenges your team has to work with every day can help you enable them to be more successful.

Click Fraud

Click fraud is exactly what it sounds like. It’s clicks on your advertising that aren’t legitimate, often from automated bot systems designed to make website owners money from ads showing on their sites. This not only skews your data … but it wastes your marketing budget!

If you follow some leading PPC (pay per click) experts on LinkedIn, you’ll notice this topic has come up more often of late. While fraud has been known for a long time, it’s become more prevalent as large companies such as Uber discover its impact.

And per a PPC Protect study, only 13% of customers had “little to no fraudulent activity.” In fact, they said “As businesses start to spend more money on online ads, it’s clear that they are exposed to more fraud and ultimately lose more money.”

This is significant, as the online ad industry continues to soar far past the $125 billion mark.

If you invest heavily in digital spend (and especially Google / Facebook / LinkedIn advertising), you’ll want to have your team look deeper into this area.

Heightened emphasis on user privacy (a.k.a. The cookie-less world)

Related: Read what to do about cookieless advertising

DuckDuckGo. Safari and Firefox browsers. uBlock Origin extension.

These are just a few ways it’s become more and more difficult to identify who’s reading your content, as these all cater towards increased market demand for a more private online experience.

DuckDuckGo – the search engine is aggressively marketing itself in contrast to Google as a place where your behaviors aren’t tracked, and it passed a significant milestone as it continues to grow.

Browser wars – Safari and Firefox already have integrated tracking protection, meaning they actively block tracking code from doing much of what it’s intended for. Google, feeling pressure to keep market share with their Chrome browser, is moving to the same … but not until 2023.

FLoC – Short for “Federated Learning of Cohorts”, this was Google’s proposed solution in response to the move towards cookieless browsers. It was met with some skepticism in the marketing community and eventually was scratched by Google.

Right now, Google has pushed back their browser updates on cookies into 2024, which slows this down for marketers since Chrome is the top-used browser (by some margin).

In addition, extensions continue to flood the market with the sole purpose of blocking one’s ability to be tracked. This puts a greater emphasis on relying on intent data + on-site behaviors to determine what makes the most sense to take to market.

The never-ending quest for better CX

Every interaction – both digital and in “the real world” – either causes a person to become more or less likely to buy from you.

It’s why customer experience (CX) continues to be something bandied about in boardrooms and marketing teams everywhere. Inbound’s role in building strong CX spans all of your content, your advertising, and how it all ties together.

Over-promised tech

This impacts more than just inbound, of course – but it’s worth noting that as teams use more and more, there’s more chances for them to get things wrong, too.

From wasted budget to underutilized processes, there’s a real potential for improvement here.

Start with auditing your tech stack in that blog!

The importance of brand

Inbound is predicated on a customer choosing to invest time with your content. This means you must cultivate a sense of trust with the audience that makes them more likely to click on your ads, pick your organic search result, or pause when your post appears in a news feed.

The problem? Most leaders give it lip service … and nothing else.

When a prospect sees your company’s name, what word / phrase jumps to mind? Do you have voice of the customer research to accentuate this? How does this impact the likelihood a prospect will want to continue their buying journey with you?

A related data point worth browsing: Branded searches in Google Search Console data. Are more or less people looking specifically for you? And using keyword planning tools, how does this compare to your competition?

From the survey:

I used to focus on lead generation v demand generation in pursuit of leads (because that was how I was measured). But ironically, by focusing on providing value to customers, you drive more leads and build stronger word of mouth and brand perception over the long-term.

Peter Lorenco, VP of Technology @ Avid Technology

Mobile-First indexing

It’s become an age-old drumbeat for any website: Is it optimized for mobile?

Well, as of March 2020, it’s even more important than ever. That’s because Google announced “Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking.”

In short? If every high-value page on your site hasn’t been tested on mobile to ensure a fantastic experience, you’re only hurting yourself and tanking your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Site speed matters more than ever

Another big factor in SEO! As Google integrates its Core Web Vitals into its ranking algorithm(s) and customers demand faster websites, your website’s speed becomes even more important.

Note that Core Web Vitals themselves are being used more as a “tiebreaker” than anything – but overall speed itself absolutely matters.

We’ve seen many clients losing out on ranks due to slow websites that aren’t technically optimized. This could be due to a number of factors such as unimportant code loading first, large images, too many tracking codes … the list is extensive.