According to a recent study conducted by Aberdeen Group, the top two marketing pains are: measuring marketing results and lead generation, followed closely by lead nurturing and lead qualification.
Given the plethora of B2B lead generation channels, such as webcasts, seminars, event marketing, public relations, whitepapers, email marketing, and web-based marketing, and all of the technologies available to manage each of them, why are those still the pain points?
Because point solutions don't deliver intelligence. Point solutions offer capabilities. And there is a big difference. Qualified leads need to be moved through the sales pipeline as efficiently as possible. Savvy best-in-class companies know and understand that delivering flat data to sales from business cards collected at a trade show, or names and emails of webinar registrants, is no longer acceptable. That mode of behavior has created a chasm of trust between Sales and Marketing that lengthens sales cycles, and results in duplicate work being done by Sales because they don't trust Marketing to deliver the goods.
Integration and automation are an essential component of marketing intelligence. Sales has tools like Sales Force Automation (SFA) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to help manage the selling process. What Marketing needs is CRM for Marketing. Integrated tools that help to tailor messaging specific to leads, that can be automated to deliver messages relevant to a leads' interest based on their activity in the lead nurturing process, and the ability to trigger those leads over to the Sales CRM system when they are ready for a sales conversation (including the rich set of ever-expanding Interest Profiles so Sales can pick up right where Marketing and the prospect are). Include the ability for sales to pass them right back if the opportunity is outside the current sales focus, and Sales and Marketing have tools that will help achieve meaningful alignment.
Marketing needs a solution that will allow them to manage the messaging, value propositions, and lead generation and nurturing activities so that Sales can leverage it rather than reinventing it.
It's time to get Sales and Marketing rowing the boat in the same direction - leveraging the expertise and capabilities they both bring to the table - in service of the overall organizational revenue and growth goals.
Point solutions for email, webinar registration, surveys, content management, you name it, just don't provide the sort of intelligence that's needed to keep up in today's world.
Start propelling your company forward -- empower your marketing activities with CRM for Marketing.
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