Today, Eloqua released a new guide designed to help marketers gain C-level buy-in for marketing automation. It's brilliant. Not just for helping marketers frame the conversation with the executives at their company, but as an example of how to create a personalized, multi-persona campaign that helps a buying committee gain consensus.
This probably isn't what Joe, Brian and the rest of the folks over at Eloqua will be overjoyed that I chose to write about, but if you're looking for a template for how to create relevant, personalized marketing campaigns, go download this guide!
Here's the setup:
The story is based on the concept of Revenue Performance Management (RPM) - good story. The great thing about the story of RPM is that marketing automation is just one component of the bigger RPM picture (people and process being the other two). But it's also a story that has hooks for the different people (personas) marketers need to get on board to gain budget to purchase the technology.
The guide makes a very clear and compelling case that marketers must focus on what matters to each persona, not the feeds and speeds of the technology. And it shows you what this might look like in a colorful, 9-page guide. I said brilliant, right?
Take a look at what I'm talking about:
The CEO cares about top line growth, profitability, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and the competition. They worry about overall company performance - some of them variables that are confounding because it's hard to lock down the numbers - or what they mean. Emphasize accountability.
The CFO cares about revenue growth, Op-Ex and Cap-Ex, return on investment and risk management. They worry about accuracy in forecasts and taking proactive action, not reacting after the fact. Emphasize the ability to measure things that are important to them, such as pipeline impact and momentum and improved budget spend. Show them how they'll be able to gain visibility to make more informed decisions.
The IT folks generally think marketers have no idea what it takes to do what they ask. They have a ton on their plates besides what your need to execute your latest campaign. Be prepared to show them you understand what you're requesting from them and additional benefits marketing automation will bring to help them reach other objectives they're tasked to address - such as tying together disparate reporting systems and improving data integrity.
You can see how all this comes together in the guide - this is just a brief swipe. If you need to build a business case for marketing automation, all the better.
But, irrespective of that, if you're challenged to figure out how to improve the relevance of your content and need to address multiple personas on the buying committee for your solution - this is a great example of how to go about constructing a marketing program to do just that.
From a content perspective, think about how each topic of interest to each persona can be addressed as separate content assets, or even combined into a white paper or used to drive a script for a video. If you think about it creatively, you can build a storyboard for each executive - and seed the conversations they'll have with each other when you're not in the room.
And that's just what we all hope to accomplish with our content marketing initiatives - right?
I can tell you that I'm thrilled you wrote about it, Ardath! Thanks for passing along our guide, and I'm glad you found it so valuable.
Posted by: Jesse Noyes | July 12, 2011 at 11:43 AM
I'm glad to hear it - and you're welcome, Jesse!
Posted by: Ardath Albee | July 12, 2011 at 12:51 PM
Ardath -- thanks so much for bringing our guide to the attention of marketers. As you know from your own work, building senior exec consensus around the need for a marketing automation initiative is often more challenging than the deployment itself. We are so gratified you like our approach. We hope your readers who use some the ideas find it equally "brilliant"
Best
Brian
Posted by: Brian Kardon | July 12, 2011 at 03:57 PM
You're welcome, Brian. I hope they do, too!
Posted by: Ardath Albee | July 13, 2011 at 07:16 AM
Hi there, it’s good to be reading some articles online, especially when it is about automation tools. It gives a lot of idea on how to use it and what could be the possible result of using it. And yeah, this makes our life easier and faster, making more productive and achieve more task.
Posted by: Website Guru | August 17, 2011 at 09:08 PM