Marketo B2B Marketing and Sales Blogs

B2B Marketers Need to Get on Board with Social Media… NOW!

2012-02-09T20:16:23Z

by Phil Fernandez

For B2B marketers to be competitive and grow in 2012, it’s essential that they not only realize the value of social media, but make a commitment to improved execution. An eMarketer article recently reported on a new Accenture study, which saw a huge gap between “knowing” and “doing” when it comes to social media in the B2B Marketers survey group. The report found that almost two-thirds of B2B marketing executives view social media as an “important” channel to interact with customers, partners, and stakeholders. The problem is that only 7 percent of the survey group felt that their organization was leveraging social media very heavily. Even more telling, the survey found that 9 percent – nearly a tenth – of B2B marketers were not using social media at all.

It’s pretty well known that B2B companies have been comparatively slow to adopt social media strategies. They certainly have lagged their B2C counterparts in terms of jumping into the social media marketing space over the last few years. But now more than ever, it’s time to put the pedal to the metal. Why? Revenue. Simply put, the saying “he who hesitates is lost” couldn’t be truer right now – and the loss can be measured in cold, hard cash.

There are a number of reasons for B2B companies’ seeming reluctance to employ social media in their marketing. First, companies that sell to other companies tend to be more conservative and bottom-line focused overall, and measuring the impact and results of social media strategies is still a work in progress. Relatedly, many B2B companies have believed that the social media phenomenon is mainly about networking and sharing likes and photos with friends on sites like Facebook – not about driving inbound interest and improving demand generation. For example, think about Facebook’s IPO and its potential $100-billion valuation. The darling social network behemoth is going to be under more pressure to increase profits to match that price tag, which means they will need to up the ante in regards to its own advertising options…and that includes catering more features towards the nascent B2B social media marketing market.

Also, as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn inevitably become better at capturing leads, B2B marketers are going to be forced to spend more time and money on them. The unveiling of Facebook’s data regarding its customer growth, for example, could be the nudge that makes B2B marketers take notice and beef up their Facebook marketing strategies. Indeed, more than 800 million users listing professional-related preferences is no lead pool to scoff at!

Social has been creeping into the overall shifts taking place in B2B marketing for the past few years, and early-adopting companies have seen success – as panels at forward-thinking conferences like SXSW Interactive and Enterprise 2.0 to online publications dedicated to the practice like BtoB Online can testify. But 2012 should be the year – has to be the year – that social becomes standard operating procedure. There’s too much money being left on the table otherwise.

B2B Marketers Need to Get on Board with Social Media… NOW! was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

Utilizing Linkedin to Improve SEO and Organic Visibility

2012-02-09T01:06:43Z

by Jason Miller

Your company and its employees are on Linkedin, but are you optimizing their presence?

I read a recent article from Search Engine Land that talked about the link between Search Engine Optimization and Linkedin. It was a fascinating look at how a properly optimized Linkedin page, both company and employees’, can boost SEO and organic visibility. The author, George Aspland, CEO of eVision, sums it up perfectly:

“Having a company page with associated employees (each with optimized profiles) who are active with a large number of connections, can increase the visibility of your content both on LinkedIn and with search engines, while giving you an effective online networking tool to communicate with hundreds or thousands of connections.”

It got me thinking how great this would be if every Marketo employee had an optimized Linkedin profile that linking to the Marketo company page and actively sharing Marketo content and news. Pretty much every one of our employees was already on Linkedin, we just needed to help them optimize their profile and encourage them to share. As part of the Social Media Month initiative that I wrote about last week, one of the workshops that I put together was based around this very concept; Marketo picture day and Linkedin profile optimization.

“Sharing updates with these connections should help increase awareness of your messages and the Web content you link to in your updates, and possibly increase the rankings of that content as your connections share, bookmark/like, and link to your content.”

In an effort to get everyone excited and ready to put their best virtual foot forward, I hired a professional photographer to come in and take new headshots of the entire staff. The photographer captured multiple shots with several different poses of each employee. We encouraged employees to come a few minutes early with their laptops opened up to Linkedin where they could have a Linkedin expert give them tips to optimize their profile.

Click for full image.

At the end of the day we were able to give 111 Marketo employees stunning new headshots to update their Linkedin profiles and other social networks if they chose to do so.

For individuals, it’s a great way to build connections in the industry, with vendors and partners, and for Marketo, it’s a fantastic way to share our B2B Marketing Blog updates and exciting company news. Marketo requires employees to disclose all affiliations and be fully compliant with our Social Media Policy, and this effort supports that as well.

We then took it a step further by repurposing the photos as nameplates on our desks. Adding a bit of fun and personality to the project, we asked each employee to submit a fun fact about themselves along with their favorite quote.

This is a fantastic way to synergize and encourage cross functional engagement and collaboration across our different departments.

What do you think of our initiative here at Marketo? Are you encouraging your employees to optimize their Linkein profiles and share content with their networks? Are they linking back to your company page?

Utilizing Linkedin to Improve SEO and Organic Visibility was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

How to Calculate the Value of a Superbowl Ad

2012-02-07T17:16:18Z

by Seth Resler

According to Business Insider, the cost of a 30-second TV spot during the February 5^th Superbowl matchup between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants averaged $3.5 million, and topped out at a jaw-dropping $4 million. With companies like Hyundai buying a total of five ads during the Tom Brady / Eli Manning faceoff, 2012 was a record-breaking year for the event, even after adjusting for inflation. I love little kids in Darth Vader helmets as much as the next guy, but here’s the obvious question: Was a Superbowl ad really worth it?

Twelve years ago, Seth Godin wrote in his marketing classic Permission Marketing:

“One reason the Super Bowl can charge so much for advertisements [is because] big events are unique in their ability to deliver about half the consumers watching TV, so they’re the perfect platform for Interruption Marketing aimed at the mass audience.”

His point was that with the splintering of media and the proliferation of marketing messages, there are fewer and fewer places to capture a mass audience. The effect has been to drive up the cost of advertising on the small number of events left that can still reach the majority of that audience. Indeed, there are hardly any events left that capture the attention of the nation the way the Superbowl does. So it’s no wonder that it continues to see record profits.

While the Superbowl primarily attracts B2C advertisers, the price tag is enough to make a B2B marketer pause and ask, “What could I do with a $4 million marketing spend?”

The more important question – and one sure to be asked by your CEO – is “What could you get for a $4 million marketing spend?”

Last year, Fast Company reported that many ad agencies had no idea how to measure the success of their Superbowl ads other than counting YouTube views and looking at the USA Today ad meter. If you were spending $4 million in 30 seconds, would your CEO be happy with these metrics?

At Marketo, we’ve used the science of Revenue Performance Management to drive down the cost of our marketing efforts to approximately $60 per prospect. That means, for $4 million, we could produce about 66,667 prospects.

So we know exactly how many prospects we would need to generate to justify a 30-second Superbowl ad. (Of course, I’m discounting any branding value here.) That’s exactly why we use Revenue Performance Management – to compare different marketing channels so we can decide whether or not it’s cost effective for us to follow in the footsteps of the eTrade Baby and the Budweiser Clydesdales. By using analytics to measure the entire sales and marketing cycle, we can make the most cost-effective revenue generating decisions for our company.

Do you know what kind of return you could expect on a $4 million marketing campaign?

How to Calculate the Value of a Superbowl Ad was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

How to Hire an Awesome Inbound Marketing Manager

2012-02-07T01:05:22Z

by Maria Pergolino

As you may have noticed, some new faces have joined the marketing team here at Marketo to help improve our online engagement and grow demand from inbound marketing sources. Why? Because we believe that to continue our fast growth we need to scale both paid programs as well as inbound programs including SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing.

And it appears we are not alone. Organizations are putting more and more resources into inbound marketing, so I wasn’t shocked to see the chart below from The CMO Club that shows that these skills are the most coveted by marketing execs.

But what qualities are key in an inbound or social media expert? The ideal inbound marketing manager should be an analytical, socially savvy “digital native” who gets search engine optimization and has experience with social media and a strong understanding of the fundamentals of content marketing. Ideally, she or he has demonstrate this by building a strong personal presence online via a personal blog, Twitter account, etc.

Your ideal candidate should also understand that at the end of the day inbound marketing is not just about producing flashy content but about generating leads and revenue. Below you will find the job description I used for the role (posted here for others to use as it is no longer up in our careers section). But what I found is that it takes much more than social know-how to be a great inbound marketing pro including:

A caring individual. Often customers will use social media as an outlet when frustrated. We love this feedback and pass it on to the appropriate teams to resolve issues, but it’s best to put someone who genuinely cares about customer satisfaction into the position to ensure customers are delighted.
Time management skills. Some people may be great at engaging on Twitter, or a super star at writing blog posts, but if they get lost in lower value activities online or can’t find the proper mix of time to spend on different social and creative projects, you may be wasting resources.
A thick skin. Our competitors, like many, often spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about our product. Sometimes though they even make remarks about our team members (with comments almost always untrue). For this we need team members with a thick skin.

You’ll also notice that our inbound marketing roles are called Social Media Managers, not Inbound Managers. Why? Well, one big reason is that there aren’t that many people searching for inbound marketing manager positions. If you look at the chart below you will see that searches for “social media manager” (blue line) is growing, while searches for “inbound marketing manager” (red line) and “content marketing manager” (red line) are almost nonexistent. I see similar results when searching job banks like Monster or LinkedIn. When posting your role you want to make sure that those qualified find it. For us that means posting it under the title Social Media.

What are the characteristics that you look for when hiring inbound marketing talent? Or if you’re an inbound pro, what do you think of the roles we look to fill?

Feel free to copy, edit, and reuse the description below in the search for your inbound marketer.

Program Manager, Social Media & Content Marketing

With over 1,500 worldwide customers, Marketo is a leader in cloud software and one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing companies. In fact, we were recently rated as #1 on the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Fastest Growing Private Companies list for 2011! In addition to growing like crazy, we are delighting our customers and hiring some of the best minds in the industry. Our Marketing team is experiencing rapid growth and therefore we are looking for a Social Media & Content Marketing Manager to execute on all elements of the social media plan to drive awareness and acquire customers through marketing programs. You will work closely with the marketing team, as well as key decision makers throughout the company.

Key Responsibilities:

You have a passion for creating and managing social media and content marketing strategies, including the ability to orchestrate every detail and then measure results
You have knowledge of how to leverage social networks to enhance campaign performance and nurture current prospects • You want to serve as a thought leader, sharing your ideas by creating content for Marketo’s blog, resource center and community
Your content expertise goes far beyond white papers and blogs, and includes the ability to manage video and webinar programs
You have lots of energy and get excited by being a revenue champion for the organization

Qualifications:

Marketo is a high-energy, hard-charging, high-performance company! Our Social Media Manager is a strategic thinker with a creative mindset. You have a strong attention to detail, are well organized and can manage multiple projects simultaneously. You thrive in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment.

Required experience and skills include:

Bachelor’s degree required.
A minimum of two years social media experience with B2B organizations
An established track record of developing successful working relationships with bloggers and other social press
Experience developing a content marketing strategy including podcasts, webcasts, video, mobile and social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, etc)Experience with social media monitoring tools (Radian 6, Visible Technologies, etc.); familiarity with salesforce.com is a plus
Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including excellent writing skills
Proven track record of success setting and achieving ambitious goals
Proficiency in Microsoft Office – Excel, PowerPoint, Access

This position is based in San Mateo, CA. We offer competitive salaries, great benefits, a high-energy environment and lots of room for personal and professional growth. If this sounds like you, we’d like to talk with you. Please send a cover letter and resume to marketingjobs@marketo.com.

How to Hire an Awesome Inbound Marketing Manager was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

Four Signs That You May Need Marketing Automation Help

2012-02-03T15:27:09Z

by Kelly Waffle

I recently finished a book on Thomas Edison. Contrary to public belief, he did not invent the light bulb—instead he discovered the carbonized filament that made the process of electric lighting more efficient, long-lasting, and available. That is what we as marketers try to do with marketing automation—make the process of marketing more efficient, long-lasting, and available. Most of us, like Edison, are dabbling in the great unknown with trials and errors when it comes to marketing automation. Along the way it can get frustrating.

It is said that Edison tried over 6,000 elements before finding the right filament for his light bulb. Unlike Edison, most of us wear multiple hats, have backlogs of projects that we need to get done, and cannot just focus on marketing automation. Few of us have enough staff or time to complete everything we want. For those of you who fit this profile, I recommend the use of third-party consulting. Most marketing automation vendors have professional services teams or an ecosystem of services partners available to you.

Here are four signs that would tell me that I probably need to engage with a marketing automation professional services team:

“Our results are starting to drop off.” Professional services resources can come in, audit your processes, and give your marketing automation a check-up. Are the stages of your revenue cycle mutually defined and accepted by sales and marketing? Are the SLAs associated with lead handoffs being adhered to? Do you have personas defined and content to support each stage of your revenue cycle? A services consultant can look at your lead generation, lead management, lead scoring, and lead nurturing processes and show you where you can fine-tune your systems based on best practices. The problem may be solved with some database cleansing and data appending. Day in and day out services consultants see what is working, what is innovative, and what is practical and they can share that insight with you.
“Our staff can’t take on anymore projects.” A services team can help with the heavy lifting by rolling up their sleeves and working right beside you. They can eliminate that backlog of campaigns and processes for you and then turn them over to your staff—or they can run everything until you get that needed marketer hired. Don’t let your feeling of being overwhelmed freeze you from moving forward for weeks or even months at a time. Consider using a third-party consultant as a valuable extension of your marketing team.
“We don’t know what we don’t know.” You’ve made an investment in a marketing automation platform and have some core processes set up. You even have some resources in place to manage the processes. But you still have questions. “How do we take marketing automation to the next level?” “How do we integrate revenue performance management and marketing metrics into our processes?” “Why are we getting blacklisted after email campaigns go out?” “Why is that process not working between Marketo and Salesforce.com?” Maybe you just need a coach to come in and provide some training to your staff to answer these questions. Maybe you need a services team to come in and work in parallel with your team—building out advanced processes as your team manages the day-to-day activities. There are a variety of ways that a third-party consultant can work with you.
“Our marketing department is seen as a cost center, not a revenue driver.” Are you showing your executive team pie charts and bar charts that just show the number of leads your department is generating—or are you also showing how your department is driving real revenue through opportunities? Are you just presenting leads where marketing is the original source or are you also showing all the marketing influenced opportunities as well? Many of us show where our marketing efforts were the first or last touches, but few show overall marketing influence or multiple touches. Reporting on marketing influence can be hard to set up but it is well worth it—especially if your company has a long sales cycle. Chances are your marketing efforts touched many of the deals in the pipeline many times. Make sure the executive team knows that. A services team can work with you on metrics and ROI reporting so that your executive team understands the full impact that your marketing department has on your corporate revenue.

Whether you are in the marketing department of a small, growing company or a large, global enterprise, or some company in between, you will never have all the staff and time to get everything done in marketing automation that you would like. Talk with a services consultant today and watch that light bulb begin to glow over your head as you come up with new ways to embrace marketing automation and improve your impact on your corporate revenue.

Are you employing professional services with your marketing automation? What factors made you decide it was time to get help with your marketing automation?

Four Signs That You May Need Marketing Automation Help was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

9 Elements for a Successful Marketing Program Mix

2012-02-02T18:10:01Z

by Maria Pergolino

Demand Generation Managers are responsible for finding and executing the program mix that is going to drive revenue for their organization. This includes selecting programs that are going to identify new leads and campaigns that are going to cause current leads in the system to move farther down the funnel. Demand generation managers typically work on a monthly, quarterly, or annual schedule and often tie their campaigns to particular initiatives developed by the corporate marketing or product marketing teams.

To many, developing a program mix seems like simply buying a bunch of leads, though true demand generation managers know that this takes a lot of skill to get the proper mix of programs right. Some of the key factors I use when developing my program mix include:

Target Line of Business: Many companies sell to multiple lines of business, with sales efforts dedicated to enterprise clients, mid-market clients, and small business clients (and potentially many segments in between). Super star demand gen managers know how to create the proper mix of demand by each line of business to ensure happy sales teams.
Target Role: The roles you sell to is often critical, as each may participate in different types of programs or desire different types of content. At Marketo we sell to the C-Suite, Marketing Executives, Sales Management, and Marketing practitioners. If all of our programs were dedicated to just one of these roles we would alienate a huge chunk of our prospects and see overall less successful results.
Types of Programs: Let’s say you could reach your sales lead objectives by running webinars all day every day. Why not? Well, you may have the budget to create these, and they may drive the right leads, but they may also only drive certain types of prospects and you may not have enough time to develop all the content. Instead, you must have a mix of programs from webinars to direct mail to trade shows to display advertising to ensure you reach everyone in your target market while making maximum use of resources.
Offers: Using the same offers over and over again in your programs may cause weak results, but trying to create a new offer for every program can be exhausting. Demand Gen pros know how to get the most out of the content they have, without oversending the same offers to their target demographic.
Time of month or quarter: Let’s say your company works on quarterly budgeting and planning cycles. This means you could spend all your budget and drive all your leads in the last few days of that cycle and still hit your targets. Unfortunately, this approach will not sustain proper lead flow for your sales team. Ensuring a consistent flow of campaigns is mandatory for program mix success.
Billing terms: Many companies are very conscious of the amount of money they have in the bank at any time. Because of this, many demand gen managers must go beyond negotiating on price, and also negotiate payment terms. Working with vendors that are flexible with these payment terms may be something a demand generation manager must keep in mind when creating their program mix.
New, nurture or upsell: Some programs will create new leads, while others will nurture leads or cause current customers to buy more. Putting a campaign mix together that maximizes all of these is critical for long term demand generation success.
Long tail effect of program: Some programs will end the day you stop paying for the program (like pay-per-lead programs), while others will continue to acquire more leads post event (like when you post a recording of a webinar up on your website).
How fast the programs will create revenue: When we run a demo or test drive campaigns, leads turn quickly to opportunities, but when we acquire leads through virtual events or social media they take much longer. Top demand gen pros ensure their mix is filled with fast movers and slower leads to ensure their sales team has the right opportunities at the right time.

I’d like to reiterate here that without paying attention to most (if not all) of these elements you are likely not getting the most out of your programs. Further, if these are important elements, but you are not taking the time to document your planning, things are probably falling through the cracks. I truly believe that a lot of demand generation success comes from experience and common sense, but this only brings you part of the way.

For me personally, I use a simple document that notes each of these program mix components. At the end of the period, I compare the actual results to the plan to ensure we achieved what we expect (using Marketo program functionality). I also share the results with vendors so they know how we performed. This may all sound pretty basic, but I couldn’t find any other blog posts, white papers, or webinars that share how an organization develops their program strategy. What do you think? Is this how you do it, or do you have a different process?

9 Elements for a Successful Marketing Program Mix was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

Cracking the RPM Code: A Look at Our Customers’ Growth

2012-02-01T20:12:06Z

by Phil Fernandez

Everyone here at Marketo was pretty pumped when we announced our record-breaking results for 2011. But, what our team was most excited about was the growing list of Marketo customers – 1600 strong, from global enterprises to young companies – that have achieved unparalleled revenue performance and growth by embracing Revenue Performance Management (RPM).

In contrast to the raging success that’s leading to Facebook’s imminent IPO, many companies are still struggling to achieve their goals – RPM is a great way to get there.

We recently analyzed Marketo’s customers’ year-over-year gains in creating sales leads and efficiencies through marketing automation. We found that their average number of opportunities had increased by over 30 percent, while their leads under management grew by a whopping 250 percent. Revenue growth is a numbers game – the more you have, the more you grow. Plain and simple.

Behind the numbers are a lot of great stories. I wanted to introduce you to one of what we call “Revenue Revolutionaries” – Zuora.

‘Subscription Economy’ Innovator Propels Growth with RPM

Zuora, widely recognized as one of the fastest growing Silicon Valley companies, has pioneered a new way for businesses to launch and monetize any type of subscription service. Zuora has been an early adopter of RPM as a primary driver of its business growth and market leadership.

To meet their ambitious revenue goals, Zuora’s marketing and sales team needed an RPM platform to fully integrate marketing and sales processes. They wanted to establish their company’s visibility in the sales funnel, drive campaigns and content to target prospects, and based on responses, allow their sales professionals to focus on the highest probability leads that would convert into sales opportunities.

With its RPM-driven sales and marketing solution in place, Zuora is able to manage every stage of its revenue cycle, and to focus its sales and marketing efforts on those prospects and opportunities that deliver the greatest revenue.

The ultimate proof is in Zuora’s growth. In four years, Zuora has created the Subscription Economy giving businesses a new way to launch, grow and monetize any type of subscription service. By using RPM to build a higher-powered revenue engine, Zuora has optimized its entire sales and marketing process, resulting in the company quadrupling in size and revenues, expanding internationally into Europe, and raising more than $82M from prominent investors to capitalize on a massive market opportunity.

“Revenue Performance Management empowers companies to transform their sales and marketing processes and achieve truly breakout revenue results,” said Jeff Yoshimura, Vice President of Marketing at Zuora.

Companies like Zuora are proof positive that Revenue Performance Management works. RPM is having a profound effect on corporations’ ability to grow more revenue, more predictably, and more profitably.

So, what are you waiting for? In 2012, RPM is ready to drive the same positive revenue results for you.

Cracking the RPM Code: A Look at Our Customers’ Growth was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

Go On Get Your Blog On: How to Empower Employees as Blogging Champions

2012-01-31T23:42:59Z

by Jason Miller

Marketo launched a company wide initiative to train employees on all things social media last month by declaring December as Social Media Month. A series of workshops and luncheons open to all employees interested in participating and learning more about social media was put together and celebrated throughout the month. The response was fantastic and every one of our sessions were packed to the gills with enthusiastic employees eager to learn the ins and outs of social media and how they can participate.

All employees are trained on the Marketo social media policy from day one as it is part of our new hire orientation. Our policy clearly outlines the types of activities allowed and defines appropriate behavior. It is important to set a tone for the conversations that will take place. Maintaining a respectful and ethical rapport is the cornerstone of our policy. Here is a great article from Entrepreneur on creating a policy for you company.

We believe that every employee has a unique voice and perspective when it comes to blogging and social media. Encouraging our staff to write a blog posts on a industry topics or their individual expertise broadens Marketo’s voice brings about a “humanzing” effect. Referencing Ann Handley’s Content Rules sample blog template, we found this to be a fantastic tool in eliminating barriers that employees might have to writing a post. When combined with Ann’s 12 Point Blogging Checksheet, it’s a perfect way to jump-start this initiative.

Working with Top Rank Online Marketing, we developed a “Blogging 101” slide presentation for the first of our social media workshops. This slide deck was the perfect companion piece to our training as it offered a comprehensive overview for any solid blogging strategy. We wanted to share this slide presentation with other B2B companies who were interested in hosting their own Social Media Month, so feel free to download it and customize for your company to use as a foundation.

Marketo blogging basics

View more presentations from Marketo

We didn’t stop there. Beyond blogging there are so many more ways that our employees could participate as Marketo brand champions in the social sphere. Now that they were armed with our social media policy and an understanding of blogging, we opened the doors to the other social platforms.

Here are some of the ways that we encourage participation:

Participation in LinkedIn groups and Linkedin Today. This can be a tremendous opportunity to share expertise, gain valuable insight, and keep abreast of the latest trends.
Engaging in Facebook and Twitter conversations. Sharing valuable insights, company news, and relevant industry posts can help spread the buzz on Marketo and our partners. Just make sure employees know where to turn for guidance in the case of a questionable post.
Social aggregators such as Digg and Stumble Upon are also great social platforms for employee participation. Sharing and commenting on relevant articles in addition to your own can really boost content marketing efforts while it also show two way participation, which is critical to these sites.

Your employees’ voices can be a very powerful medium across the various social platforms and it’s vital to train them to do so with guidelines set by your organization. Empowering them to speak on behalf of your brand can be a fruitful endeavor for both your company synergy efforts as well as your social strategy. Just be sure you have policies in place and equally as important, discipline measures for those who fail to comply. Stay tuned for part two of our Social Media Month recap coming shortly.

Does your company have a social media policy in place? Do you encourage employee participation on your corporate blog or other social platforms?

Go On Get Your Blog On: How to Empower Employees as Blogging Champions was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

PPC Optimization: Conversion is Only Half the Battle

2012-01-31T18:23:35Z

by Maria Pergolino

I’m pleased to welcome Mike Nierengarten, Founder of Obility Consulting, an internet marketing company as a guest blogger. Mike has spent the last 7 years driving increases in revenue & lowering customer acquisition costs for his clients by optimizing their online marketing tactics.

The value of a lead is relative. Most marketing departments would be more comfortable handing off a lead from sballmer@microsoft.com than one from anonymous@gmail.com. Yet, from an online marketing perspective, these leads often look the same.

Ad networks like Google AdWords offer robust reporting, but they are fairly limited in evaluating the quality of a lead. For most ad networks, a conversion is typically triggered when a visitor completes a lead capture form and lands on a thank you page. Unfortunately, leads are fairly useless without an eventual sale. Marketers need to understand the effectiveness of their online campaigns because managing a campaign based solely on leads can lead to destruction.

An example:

Marketo’s lead management campaigns are not too different from its clients. Marketo’s campaign goals are to identify prospects that are likely to turn into customers. In one campaign, we targeted Google’s Search and Display networks over the course of a month. Based on Google’s conversion reports, the Display Network seemed a pretty attractive option (all numbers are for example purposes only):

Network	Spend	Individual Conversions	Cost Per Conversion
Search	$100,000	1000	$100
Display	$50,000	2000	$25

If I was to manage from AdWords alone, piping more money into the Display Network is a no-brainer. Dirt cheap conversions and high volume, what more could Marketo ask for? And, not surprisingly, Google’s reps had the exact same thought. “Build out dozens more Display campaigns” seemed to be Google’s marching orders, repeated in lockstep over weekly chats.

Now, this campaign wasn’t my first lead management rodeo, and so I wanted to look at lead scoring data before recommending a further course of action. How qualified were these conversions from Search & Display (again, all numbers fictional)?

Network	Spend	Prospects	Cost Per Prospect
Search	$100,000	250	$400
Display	$50,000	200	$250

Well, now I was a convert. Sure the Display Network drove a high volume of undesirables, but who can argue with cheaper prospects? Doubling down on Display made sense. It’s tough to argue with the numbers.

And, that is exactly what we did. For the next 3 months, we gorged on Display leads, doubling our monthly spend. From a prospect (qualified lead) standpoint, we crushed it: each subsequent month, better than the last. The future was bright, but was this new deluge of prospects actually translating to sales and boosting the bottom line? Inquisitive minds (and folks who pay my fees) wanted to know.

Utilizing Marketo’s Revenue Cycle Explorer, we were able to view performance over the course of the months following the 3-month campaign. The results (again, fictionalized):

Network	Spend	Customers	Cost Per Customer
Search	$300,000	100	$3,000
Display	$250,000	5	$50,000

Needless to say (but, I’ll still say it), our strategy diverged significantly, our Google reps’ calls were left unanswered, and the record-setting prospect counts were never spoken of again.

As a paid search manager, it is incredibly valuable to know the worth of a keyword. That value directly translates into a bid. In knowing that bid, I can predict monthly clicks, which gives me lead volume, and ultimately, monthly ROI of a given keyword. With that knowledge, I can get the most of each keyword and devote budget where it will be most effective. All of a sudden my job goes from maximizing form submissions to maximizing return on investment.

As an employee or consultant, knowing the ROI you are contributing to the company (and having the tools to significantly increase ROI from your marketing channel) is extraordinarily useful come review time. You must calculate ROI across all marketing channels. Whether you are managing webinars, email campaigns, or paid search, measurement using revenue performance management tools is the key to translating marketing efforts to sales.

PPC Optimization: Conversion is Only Half the Battle was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

Tying Facebook Leads Directly to Revenue: A Marketo Example

2012-02-08T00:15:01Z

by Jason Miller

Want to know the ROI of social media? So do we. With our latest Facebook campaign, we are doing just that; tying leads generated by Facebook directly into our revenue pipeline via Marketo.

How did we do it? We developed a custom Facebook application that generates a special offer and is powered by a Marketo form. Sticking with our Revenue Rockstar theme, we designed three limited edition “Marketing Rockstar” decals. Visitors to our Facebook page are prompted to “Like” our page which then lets them select their favorite decal. Once they make their selection a Marketo form pops up within Facebook and upon clicking the Get My Decal (submit) button they are prompted to share to their social network.

Here are ten reasons why we love this campaign:

Leads go directly into our marketing automation software in real-time. By embedding Marketo code directly into a Facebook app, it becomes a landing page inside of Facebook.
From there the names are added directly into a lead nurture campaign. A scheduled series of targeted emails and flow steps takes the campaign participant on a journey to marketing qualified lead(MQL).
Anonymous leads are identified. For leads who have already visited our corporate site but have never shared their contact information, we’re able to link their anonymous browsing history with their known profile upon submission.
We’re enhancing the data captured on the lead form with the inferred information populated from Marketo and through one of our data partners. We are then using this information to score campaign members. Matching demographic information like industry, company size, and job title helps identify hot prospects. An added benefit is that we can use this information to provide content that is going to be most useful for this participant.
Including the Marketo “Munchkin” code on our confirmation page allows us to drop a cookie on a prospect’s browser. Why is this important? Because now we can track Facebook as their original source, even if they visit us long after they participate in this campaign.
Lead scoring. Those with high lead scores, based on their demographics, participation in this campaign, and participation in other campaigns (online and off) are then sent to sales as a marketing qualified lead (MQL).
Location, Location, Location. Why force prospects to visit your website when you can capture their information right where they are ‘hanging out’ online.
Virality. Since the campaign is happening on Facebook, they are more likely to share our campaign with their Facebook buddies than if we had simply posted this offer on our website. More sharing = more successful campaign.
We continue the conversation when we mail the decal to the participant. In this case we have the option of including custom messaging on the back of the decal.
We can now measure the marketing ROI of our social efforts. By capturing names through our social channels and tagging them with a specific campaign, we can see which ones turn to revenue. This includes both new leads, and those that are already in the system and are being nurtured with the decal offer.

We believe this is truly a one of a kind social media campaign since it turns social media into a lead generation tool. With the help of marketing automation software these leads are then tied directly to our revenue. This could be a game changer as we begin to gather leads directly from the world’s largest social media platform.

Critical to this program was working with an agency like Scorch who not only understood the design goals, but could help us create a program that was also trackable. Connecting with partners who understand long sales cycles and lead stages is critical for our campaigns success.

What do you think of this campaign? Have you been successful implementing marketing automation with your social campaigns?

Tying Facebook Leads Directly to Revenue: A Marketo Example was posted at Modern B2B Marketing - Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com