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Make Marketing Automation Technology Work for Your PEO Christine Pescatore and Tracy Thomas

marketing

Marketing looks a lot different than it did a decade ago.

Throughout the last several years, tech-nology has transformed the sales process. Today’s buyers have increased access to information, allowing them to research and gather content, read reviews, and seek referrals from their social networks long before ever talking to a sales consultant. How can you get in front of your pros-pects early in the process and give them personalized content that can establish your expertise and help your PEO stand out from the rest? Marketing automation may be your answer.

What is Marketing Automation?According to Wikipedia, marketing automation refers to software plat-forms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repeti-tive tasks.

Technology such as marketing auto-mation software and sales engagement platforms can be game changers to attract visitors to your brand, convert these visi-tors into leads, and turn leads into clients. This type of technology, which can often integrate with your current customer rela-tionship management (CRM) software, helps you create an efficient marketing program for your PEO, allowing you to do much more without a substantial increase in “people” resources. By tracking and responding to your potential buyers’ online behavior and building a stronger relation-ship with prospects, you’ll accelerate your sales funnel and generate more results. What are the Main Benefits of Marketing Automation?Generate more High-Quality Leads for your Sales TeamIn the PEO industry, where each quali-fied lead is valuable, it’s critical to find the right prospective buyers. Our prospects spend a lot of time heavily researching and considering several options. Marketing automation software can help identify people actively consuming your content or

researching a PEO or other HR solu-tion. It also allows you to increase your branding to these top-of-the-funnel prospects. They may not be ready to buy, but continuous engagement can keep your brand top of mind.

If you are ready to move beyond simple email marketing tools, consider a marketing automation solution such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, Marketo, or HubSpot. These are examples of marketing automation solutions that vary in price and offer some combination of lead generation, lead management and scoring, automated email marketing campaigns, analytics, and integration with major CRM software.

Qualify and Prioritize your LeadsDid the lead engage with you by opening an email, clicking on a link within an email, browsing your website, or down-loading a whitepaper? Lead scoring allows you to assign points depending on how the lead engages with your company’s marketing program. In the simplest of terms, the more points, the more engaged the prospect. This level of detail lets sales consultants have valuable information before they contact a prospect, which may help make the first outreach more successful.

Nurture your Leads As you move towards the middle and bottom of the sales funnel, you can start building relationships with your prospects by delivering highly personalized and useful content. The goal is to give them the information they need at just the right time they need it. Based on specific information captured by your marketing automation software, you can send each prospect specific landing pages, forms,

What the Research SaysMany companies have successfully implemented marketing automation and see the value in the investment. • B2B marketing managers say the most important criteria for marketing automa-

tion software are price, product integration (e.g., CRM, social, web, mobile), and ease of use. (Pepper Global “Marketing Automation Trends Report 2014,” www.slideshare.net/PepperGlobal/pepper-global-2014-marketing-automation-report.)

• Seventy-nine percent of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than two years. (Gleanster, www.gleanster.com/gleansight/marketing-automation)

• Best-in-class companies are 67 percent more likely to use a marketing automation platform. (Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce,” www.aberdeen.com/research/9575/RR-marketing-automation-platform.aspx/content.aspx.) l

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emails, or collateral with relevant content. Build trust with your prospects over time and allow them to go at their own pace to ease them into a buying decision.

Sales engagement tools such as Showpad, pitchXO, and Fileboard offer lead nurturing features. Like marketing automation software, sales engagement tools vary in price and in features. With easy access to current marketing collateral, sales consultants are able to launch or share a presentation or brochure during the proposal process. These software platforms may provide you with valu-able information, such as when a pros-pect opened your presentation, clicked links, forwarded it, etc., so your sales team knows when to place a follow-up communication.

Report on your Marketing Campaign’s SuccessMarketing automation provides you with data to help you prioritize prospects, iden-tify highly engaged leads for your sales team, and understand the performance of a marketing campaign. You’ll gain insight so you can tweak your strategies and tactics for future marketing campaigns. The data reveals what content is reso-nating with your audience and allows you to better cater to prospective customers.

Is this Right for my Business?Before you invest in marketing automa-tion software to help generate and nurture leads and drive results, there are several factors to consider:• Time involved. Are you ready to invest

the time it takes for training and getting the platform up and running? While many of the options are user-friendly,

the time invested will vary depending on how granular you want to make your marketing efforts. For instance, you may want to create one drip campaign for your prospects, with content taking them from top to bottom of the funnel, or you may want to create multiple campaigns based on vertical, geography, prospect size, etc.

• Follow up. Even though the word “automation” is in the name, this isn’t something you set up and forget about.

You will need to monitor the process and adjust your efforts as you see the results.

• Content creation and maintenance. You can’t automate your marketing if you don’t have substantive content to send to your leads. Content is key to making marketing automation work for your PEO. You’ll need to prepare content for each step in the sales process from the moment you identify a lead through the proposal stage.

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• Good leads. To get the full value from your marketing automation investment, you need to have a substantial amount of leads to work with and a reliable process for generating a sufficient number of new quality prospects. Some recommended list companies that can assist you include ZoomInfo, Data.com, and Avention.

Marketing automation technology can improve the impact of your content, capture lead intelligence, convert leads to deals, and enhance the overall customer experience. Leveraging this technology can help grow your business by delivering measureable, bottom-line results. l

Christine Pescatore is senior marketing manager: content and brand and Tracy Thomas is senior marketing manager: design and delivery for Oasis Outsourcing, West Palm Beach, Florida.

Social Media Marketing ToolsSocial media marketing is an excellent way to connect and engage with your target market, but it can also be time consuming. Using automated tools can increase your reach and your efficiency by allowing you to post in one place and have that post ap-pear in multiple platforms and/or by scheduling posts. Below are some examples of tools that can make your social media marketing efforts more effective and efficient.

HootSuiteThis popular social media software offers the ability to easily manage multiple social media accounts on one dashboard, schedule social media posts for the future, and analyze how your social media efforts are being received.

Sprout SocialThis is another great tool to automate the time-consuming activity of posting multiple messages to multiple social media accounts, respond to public interactions with your brand from a single platform, and view social media analytics.

SocialMentionInterested to know what people are saying about your company, the competition, or another important topic in the PEO industry? Similar to Google Alerts, this is a great tool for monitoring your company’s mentions in the social media landscape so you are aware of any feedback or commentary about your brand. l