Marketing Automation Best Practices: Lessons Learned from 700 Customers
Steven Woods: Digital Body Language, Deciphering customer Intentions in an Online World
Eloqua.com

Notes coming (I'm sure!) soon to http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com...

Shifts in marketing -- distribution becomes free. Music from for-sale CDs to nearly-free digital transmission. Same for encyclopedia, from print to software to online, then to Wikipedia where content creation can be decentralized.

Maps, printed to CDs/digital software, to Google Maps on the fly with information layers online. Mapping 100% changed.

Marketing is the same -- transformation. Big batch outbound campaigns somewhat targeted with segmentation, to email doing the same thing. To today, information is free, give it away, sales not the online information conduit.

Social media, free trials, webinars, gives away information to transform the buying process. Prospects not getting this information from your salespeople directly anymore, they're not the conduit for information. They can get trials from your website, cutting sales out of the process, they're out of the room, they can't read body language anymore.

Marketing is now reading digital body language of buyers and use it to do all the things sales did as the primary conduit for communication.

Buyer wants information on their own timeline. They don't want the sales pitch. They want information. Our data as marketers is inconsistent and messy. We'll interact with them in multiple ways across many platforms before they buy.

Listen: Where are your buyers finding information about you?

Share: Set your information free.

Reciprocate: Don't forget to ask for something in return. You have to be able to sell. How much is what you have online worth to a prospective buyer? Once you establish it, what could you ask for in return? A short form, get contact information. A 1-hour webinar, some additional information. If you have the info, don't re-ask for the same information again. As long as it isn't too much and repeated/asked for more than once. (Use cookies to keep this info straight. See eloqua.com.)

Sales Alignment

Empathize: Understand the buyer's process. It's a buying process, not a selling process. They buy from you, they don't want to be sold to.

Recognition > Evaluate > Sample > Integrate > Test > Deploy

Target: Right person, right time for sales. Qualifying leads, only get hot leads to sales, not warm or cold. Intent to purchase vs. ability to purchase. Could be anywhere on this continuum.

Respond: Build a response process around one prospect; scale that to all prospect. 5 X follow-up within an hour, drops by a factor of 5. Must follow up very fast.

Data

Cleanse: Build a contact washing machine. The info is in different places and in different forms. Even people's titles are different as they submit it -- needs to be washed to de-dupe and cleanse all the fields so they make it into your systems as cleanly as possible. The build routing and segmenting on top of this.

Model: Model all aspects of the buying process.

Understand: Build activity/interest into your 360 view of people, plug leaky funnel.

Analytics

Socialize: Culture of analytics is more important than absolutes. If the data is right in front of you, you act differently. (Driving a Prius/can see your gas comsumption.) Shine a light on a metric and people respond to it.

Sequence: Analyze conversions of each stage in funnel. What's the value of each phase? Map the costs back up the ladder, how much is a lead worth cold, warm, hot? We know the final result/sale and what it's worth, what about the other components?

Rebuild: Use analytics to break down sales/marketing silos. If we can understand/map data around your processes you can break down the siloing between sales and marketing. That each side sees the value of the others. Needs to be marketing accountability, build back a funnel your quota is X for deals/leads/qualified/inquiries, and then have that drive the rest of the process.

Marketing shows sales their process and progress, and put effort into training each marketers on what the big deals are, where we're close to closing, who's closing, where the revenue is going, so based on the analytics we can see which online efforts are effecting the late stage deals, that we can show they we influenced their sales through our efforts

How can we engage with this new buyer?

Set your info free, and watch their digital body language, and ask for info if what you're giving is quality.

Focus on your data, understand your prospects' interest

Build a culture of analytics; measure something and trace it all back through the process.

cofrenchy: #OMS09 I wantta try this tweet question thing & see what happens: What is a good contact washing machine process for a small business?

The first step is washing the contacts, how are they getting into the machine? What are you trying to do/what are you monitoring? How do you want to engage with them?

mikebannan: @stevewoods So what's a good specific example of digital body language? #oms09

zenaweist ? for Steve - where's social media fit into the process in his company, in ELOQUA?

mikebannan: @stevewoods Ideare: twitter in sessions: set a hash for the session ID. Better: set an account for the session. Eases interaction. #oms09

unomos: #OMS09 @stevewoods Q for Steve: how does a one man marketing team automate this process?

Need to cherry pick the areas where automation makes the most sense. Come at it from a single buyer, then scale it to everyone. A single buyer who says "contact me" has given you an hour to respond. Should automate the first steps so you get them during this critical hour.