Tag Archives: business

Automation Nation

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As we dig deeper into 2013, I predict even more companies will get on the marketing automation bandwagon and the marketing industry as we know it will become an ‘Automation Nation‘.

Automation Nation

By definition (and according to Wikipedia), marketing automation is the name given to software platforms designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks. Marketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes. These tasks and processes are then interpreted, stored and executed by software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error. (Originally this was called email marketing automation.)

The benefits of implementing a marketing automation solution are tremendous especially for those firms’ marketing departments that are operating on the ‘lean and mean’ side. It gives organizations and marketers the ability to do more with less! Using a marketing automation platform allows marketers to streamline their sales and marketing activities by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions.

Marketing automation consequently provides a more consistent, less manual way for tracking items such as lead source, conversion rate and MARKETING ROI (aka the holy grail: being able to attribute sales revenue to the Marketing department!!! Yes Sales Team we do contribute to ‘your sales’ :) )

Okay now where was I…yes marketing automation solutions. As I was saying, there are many different solutions out there –some more basic than others. A fully developed marketing automation system will provide information across all phases of the marketing process, including:

• Demand Generation
• Lead Management
• Lead Scoring
• Lead Nurturing
• Lead Generation
• Campaign Analysis
• Lead Qualification
• Sales Effectiveness

Whereas, a more basic platform may only provide lead nurturing and automated functionality, for example.

The first question most people will ask is, “Okay, so which is the best marketing automation provider out there?” TBH (to be honest), the answer really depends. It depends upon your organization’s need, established business practices as well as its level of commitment to making your sales and marketing processes automated.

If you know there are certain processes that your organization will never change, that will prevent you from, for example doing lead scoring and nurturing, then a fully developed system might not be the best choice. Conversely, if your organization is open for change and you have buy-in from key decision makers and leadership, a fully-developed system might just be the perfect solution.

Here’s a great chart that helps defines the steps you should take if you are looking at selecting a marketing automation vendor:

10steps

Courtesy of: http://www.marketingautomationsoftware.com

So, if your organization isn’t already on the bandwagon, I encourage you to get on and not be left behind! The benefits of automation are just too great to ignore. Let automation take over all those manual tasks you are doing so that you can be freed up to take your marketing programs to the next level. I promise you, it’ll be a life changer (in a positive way) and fun too!

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The Power of Saying “Yes”

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The Power of Saying “Yes”

As a dad, business owner and on occasion, “glass is half empty” guy, I routinely say no. No to toy requests, business model considerations and boring restaurants. “No” can be deflating and helpful in some ways, depending on the context and how old you are.

Businesses often protect and insulate themselves by saying “no.” No, to special requests, payment options and anything outside of the lines. Just think how airlines use no to drive billions of revenue (“no, sorry you can’t change your ticket without a fee”).

Service firms from my experience often have a similar mentality, and that is a shame. Whether it is a 2-person landscaping company or a firm made up thousands of consultants, we should only say no when we really need to. We should be saying yes, because they (meaning clients) really need us to. Service firms after all are beholden to their clients. We are getting paid because of our knowledge, skill set and ability to do something that has monetary value to someone else, whether it is a business or homeowner or just average consumer dude. So why do we say no so much?

 

red-light-green-light

Knowing when to start - and stop - a client relationship can be a difficult decision.

A very important client (they all are though, right?) asked us to do something outside of our core competency, in a tight time period and during a time that we had little to no resources to make it all happen. I should expand that their needs were not even related to what we do for them but their other agencies and partners failed or couldn’t assist them. So as the CEO I am battling two masters: my employees and my clients. The funny thing is we all just realized we needed to say yes and help them because that is our job. We had plenty of suitable excuses to tell them no, but they needed us, and what good is an agency that prides itself on our ability to move fast and deliver for our clients but fail to deliver on that promise?

A few days before another great brand asked us if we could help them out as their main marketing agency could not. While this is a loaded conversation in and out itself, we had no choice but to say, yes we can help.

So we said yes on 2 circumstances where “no” was the easy reaction. Our business is plenty strong so we don’t have to take on any new clients and projects.  However, that is how we are building the team, culture and company as other service firms continue to dole out invoices better than they do service.

So how do you respond to a difficult request from a client? “Yes” really is not only the right thing to do (most of the time), but saying “yes” can prove whether you are a vendor or a partner.  Of course, saying no can also do the same thing – but that is a different kind of post.

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