Harnessing the Power of Marketing Automation

- A PUBLICATION OF LEDGEVIEW PARTNERS-
HARNESSING
THE POWER OF
MARKETING
AUTOMATION
4 STRATEGIES TO UNLEASH THE POWER OF
YOUR MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEM

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Intro
Marketing Strategy & Buyer
Personas Development
Website Strategy
Lead Management Strategies
Success Metrics
Conclusion
1
2
3
4

Harnessing The Power
Of
Marketing Automation
INTRODUCTION

4
The Power of Marketing
Automation
If you are new to Marketing Automation systems you may be a bit
overwhelmed by the feature set available to you and you may be
wondering where you should begin. Or maybe you have been using the
email functionality in your Marketing Automation tool but you are
unsure where to begin with the rest of the features. Marketing
Automation is a very powerful tool and we are going to look at ways to
unleash the power of the system to enhance you marketing strategy.
There are several Marketing Automation tools to choose from and some of the
names you may be familiar with like Act-On, HubSpot, Pardot and Marketo. If you are a
Microsoft Dynamics CRM user, you may also be familiar with the ClickDimensions tool
that can only be used within Dynamics CRM. They all provide a platform that is
intended to help you manage and successfully execute your marketing strategies.
INTRODUCTION

5
Think about Marketing Automation like a All-Inclusive Resort. If you have ever been to an
All-Inclusive resort, it’s great because it includes your airfare, lodging, food and drinks….no
worries about needing to go off location for a meal or have your wallet with you while you are
out. It’s all included. Marketing Automation is somewhat similar as it includes all (or most of)
the tools in one package that you need to execute your Marketing Strategy. With Marketing
Automation, you no longer need to purchase an email package and another package for social
and another one for web tracking, etc. It’s all nicely put together for you in one package!
This eBook will focus on four key areas to help you harness the power of a Marketing
Automation “package”. We will focus on ways to help you to increase traffic to your digital
assets and then covert those visitors to leads, nurture those leads and eventually convert them
to sales. Because, let’s be honest, not only do we want to show the ROI of our Marketing
Automation tool but we want to ultimately help our organizations by increasing sales! Let’s
take a closer look.

Marketing Strategy &
Buyer Persona
Development
CHAPTER ONE
1

7
Marketing Strategy &
Persona Development
The first step in any good Marketing Strategy is first starting with
defining who you are targeting and what strategy you will be deploying
to reach those audiences. The same is true with your Marketing
Automation system. You now have an ample set of tools available to
you but the core marketing principles still apply and you need to truly
understand your audience in an effort to create a targeted, personalized
message to your defined customer segments.
In setting that strategy, it’s more
important than ever to have a
keen awareness of the stages
that your prospects go through
as they move along your sales
funnel. Think about your
different customer segments. Do
you know what information and
what answers they are looking
for during each of these buying
stages? What information is
relevant to them when they first
encounter your company versus
when they have moved further
down the funnel and are
considering a purchase?
You would, or should be, talking to the prospect in different ways depending on the stage
you find them in. Understanding this ahead of time, is critical in effectively deploying the
toolsets of your Marketing Automation system.
CHAPTER ONE

8
Through the adoption and execution of technology,
today’s marketer, has been given the opportunity to create
personalized experiences at scale. The execution of this
1:1 marketing will involve harnessing the power of two core
technologies – Marketing Automation and CRM.
Whether you already have those technologies in
place or are considering the adoption of these powerful
tools, there are three questions that are critical to answer in
developing a personalized marketing strategy even before
you touch the technology.
1. Who Are Your
Personalizing
For?
2. What Content/
Messaging Do
Your Want To
Position?
3. Where Will
You Use Your
Content?
Personalized Marketing

9
Three Key Questions To Ask When Creating Targeted
Communications
This is a critical step in the personalization process. You need to really know your
customer segments, understand the needs, wants and desires of each segment and also
understand what the sales triggers are for each segment to understand how they are
moving through the sales funnel and becoming “sales ready”. Why is this critical?
Understanding this will help you target the right messaging, the right content at the right
time to the right people.
9
Personalized Marketing
1. Who are you personalizing for?
After you have defined those segments, your next step is to determine what content
and messaging you want to position to each of your customer segments. Examples of
content include case studies, blogs, eBooks, events, videos, infographics, social posts,
product demos, webinars, etc.
The types of content that you should create will also be dictated by the industry in
which you serve and the customer you are reaching. Take a look at your customer
segments and create a chart that aligns content to each of the defined buying stages for
your product and/or service. This will be a good starting place to know what content you
currently have and what you will need to create to execute your personalization strategy.
2. What content/messaging do you want to
position?
Finally, the last “how” question to be answered in developing a personalization strategy is
the “where”. You have defined your customer segments, aligned content and now the next
piece of the puzzle is where will you use your content? Again, the “where” opportunities are
ample and just a few examples of areas where you can execute a personalization strategy
include email, landing pages, forms, social and web content. The most important thing here is,
once again, to know your audience and know where they want to engage. This is why question
#1 is so important. The segmentation of customers will help to define demographic as well as
behavioral attributes that will help to define where your customers seek and access information
so you can position accordingly.
Once you have answered these three critical questions, you can now begin to harness the
power of your Marketing Automation System and CRM System to create personalized marketing
experiences at scale.
3. Where will you use your content?

Website
Strategy
CHAPTER TWO
2

11
Website Strategy
Marketing Automation tools can help you to enhance your website
strategy. While not all Marketing Automation systems have the ability
to manage your web content some do have this feature. For those that
have it, one strategy that can be used to maintain a powerful website is
the use of personalized web content.
With personalized content you can deliver content specifically tailored to where a
prospect is at in the buying process, or content targeted to people the very first time
they visit. Personalized content lets you target content based on anything you know
about your contacts, for true relationship-driven marketing. Content can be tailored to
anonymous visitors based on their location, device, or referral source. Or, you can tailor
content to known visitors based on your marketing lists, or the contacts current buying
stage. By creating lists that recognize your different buying stages, you can customize
the content that people in each stage will see. Visitors see content personalized for
them. Not all marketing automation systems offer this but some do. If this is something
that is important to you check to see if your tool offers this or if your Content
Management System has this feature.
Another feature, is the use of Live Chat. Use live chat on your website so that
people visiting our site can quickly connect with you while they are on the site. While the
chat platform is not typically part of the Marketing Automation features set, you can use
web tracking to track visitors using the Live Chat tool. You can then trace this activity
as part of their buyers journey to understand if the use of the tool is a factor in the
conversion of a sale. If your audience seeks to communicate with you this way, give
them the option to do so!
CHAPTER 2
Create a Powerful Website Presence

12
Another strategy that
can be used is the use of
web tracking. Most
automation tools will offer
the ability to place a
tracking script on your
companies website. Once
this tracking script is in
place, you can then start
tracking your anonymous
visitors but also the web
activity of your prospects
and contacts. Use this web
activity to tailor content,
calls to action, etc. as you
learn more about the
activity of your visitors over
time.
Quick Fact
Businesses that personalize
web experiences see an
average 19% increase in
sales.
(MarketingProfs)
With your powerful website in place, you have built a great digital asset but now
it’s time to bring people to it. There are many strategies that can be used to push traffic
to your website but listed here are a few that can be executed as part of your Marketing
Automation tool box. Blogging, Social Media, Search Engine Optimization and Event
Management are all excellent tactics to drive traffic to your website and can be
accessed from within your Marketing Automation system. When executed, the goal of
each of these tactics should be to drive traffic to your website and then covert that
visitor to a lead for your company.
Generate More Traffic To Your Website

Lead Management
Strategies
CHAPTER THREE
3

14
Lead Management Strategies
This is where Marketing Automation really starts to shine. To convert
traffic to leads, you will want to utilize landing pages, forms, calls to
action (CTA’s), adopt a list segmentation strategy and use offers and
promotions to convert your website traffic into leads.
A lead or prospect, is considered
“converted” when an anonymous
visitor to your site fills out one of
your web forms or clicks on a link
in an email that they receive from
you. Including relevant Calls To
Action (CTA’s) on your website
that lead your visitors to a
conversion form, will be critical.
These call to actions should
again be relevant to the buying
stage the consumer is in.
Once you have captured a lead, your next step should be focusing on moving that lead
through your sales funnel. In marketing. you want to nurture that lead and ultimately
qualify it as a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and then send it off to sales. The tools
within your Marketing Automation system that will give you the power to do that include:
email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring and an integration to your CRM System.
CHAPTER THREE

15
The use of email marketing is a critical component
to a lead management strategy since the conversion of a
lead off of your website will involve an email address.
The key here is to develop an email strategy that focuses
on sending relevant and timely messaging to your leads
based on their stage of the buying process or other
specific attributes such as job title, industry, etc.
Lead Nurturing builds upon the use of Email
Marketing and offers Marketers the ability to set up
automated nurturing campaigns based on the behaviors
your prospects and customers take when engaging with
your campaigns. It’s important to note that while email is
an often used component of a Lead Nurturing strategy it
is not the only strategy that can be deployed. Lead
Nurturing campaigns can also include triggers based on
list membership, event participation, web site activity and
sales alerts among others. Lead nurturing campaigns
can be set up for many different customer profiles and
Businesses that
use Marketing
Automation to
nurture prospects
experience a
451%
INCREASE IN
QUALIFIED LEADS
(The Annuitas Group)

16
With the use of lead scoring, you can manage the qualification of a Marketing
Qualified lead and know when to send the lead to sales through an automated process.
As you are nurturing your leads, you want to automatically add scoring values to their
activities so that you can determine their likeliness to buy. Ultimately your sales team
wants to know…is this lead worth contacting? Lead scoring helps you to assign a value
to the activity that the customer is engaging in and when you hand the lead to sales they
know it’s someone worth contacting.
That brings us to our next step which is CRM Integration.: As marketing is working
to qualify a lead, there are several marketing activities that will take place and actions
done by the customer such as how they are engaging with your website, emails, forms,
landing pages, events., etc. . With an integrated system, you can share this information
with your sales team so they can see and understand how your leads and contacts are
engaging with your marketing activities by exposing that information in CRM. This will
lead to a more relevant and direct conversation when your sales team engages with the
prospect and/or customer.
having a strong understanding of your customer segments/buyer personas will help
you in knowing how you want to structure your lead nurturing campaigns. Some
companies set these up based on a series of behaviors, others by lead nurturing score
levels or by demographic information. Knowing your audience will help to direct your
strategy.

Success
Metrics
CHAPTER FOUR
4

18
Success Metrics
It’s critical, to analyze and measure your successes and failures. There
are many Key Performance Indicators or KPI’s that you can choose to
measure. However, most Marketing Automation tools that are
integrated with a CRM system provide you with the following:
CHAPTER FOUR
 The number of website visitors to your website and the source of that
traffic such as organic, paid, social, referral, etc.
 The number of leads generated during a specified time period.
 Data on the leads generated that turned into Marketing Qualified Leads
(MQL) and then into Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).
 The number of RFQ/Quotes generated (if that is relevant to your
business) and ultimately the number of Customers acquired.
Act-On
Revenue Impact Reports | December 2016

19
Another KPI that will be important to measure is the
website visits, leads and customers acquired from the
types of campaigns that you deployed. Most Marketing
Automation systems will provide a report that shows the
number of Opportunities that were won and their original
campaign source. This type of reporting can really help
you to showcase the successes of your marketing efforts
and provide you visibility to those efforts that are not as
successful so that you can readjust strategy.
Companies with
the best quality
data drive
70% more
revenue through
marketing
programs than
those with
simply average
data quality.
(SiriusDecision)

Harnessing The Power
Of
Marketing Automation
Conclusion

21
of successful marketers cite
marketing automation as being
most responsible for improving
revenue contribution.
78%
Don’t be intimidated by your Marketing
Automation System. While the tools
available to you may be ample, break
down and prioritize the tools that will
best help you meet your marketing goals.
Begin with those and then add more
functionality as you become more
comfortable with the system over time.
Conclusion

Meet
Ledgeview Partners
Ledgeview Partners is a business and technology consulting
company who partners with organizations to transform sales,
marketing and customer service operations & processes that
are supported by core technologies including Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation.
Ledgeview Partners’ consultants combine savvy business
intellect with strong technological aptitude to provide
solutions that extend well beyond software
implementations. It’s about building relationships,
transforming business, and delivering phenomenal customer
experiences.
Ledgeview Partners is a Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner
and a Salesforce Silver Consulting Partner.
ledgeviewpartners.com

Harnessing the Power of Marketing Automation

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