Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach that aligns marketing and sales teams to target specific high-value accounts and drive revenue growth. By orchestrating coordinated campaigns across multiple channels, ABM enables businesses to build stronger relationships, increase customer engagement, and improve sales efficiency. Stop using “Marketing-generated” with ABM. ABM is a team effort between marketing and sales.
In a recent Quora post, we answered a question about the value of marketing automation. If you generate – or seek to generate – a high volume of leads (100+s) from the web from self-directed buyers, then yes, you will value having a Marketing Automation platform.
Consider Marketing Automation as part of a broader “technology stack” – there is the “Martech Stack” and the “SalesTech Stack” – we look at these together as the “RevTech Stack”
Their are a number of leading players in marketing automation – Marketo, HubSpot, Eloqua, Pardot, SharpSpring, Act-On, Infusionsoft, Mautic and others.
Prices range from a few 100 per month to many $1,000s – a lot is based on volumes (size of lists etc), but there are also a wide range of feature sets.
It is difficult to recommend any one system. We use SharpSpring, Pardot, HubSpot and Marketo. All of these are solid systems. Consider the integration and platform ecosystem (e.g. Pardot is part of the Salesforce Cloud).
HubSpot is a premier marketing and sales software platforms for inbound marketing. For HubSpot Partner Agencies, one of the main benefits is that, instead of having various marketing and software systems in place and having to switch between them all, HubSpot allows your business to have a one-stop shop for all of your marketing and sales needs.
However, migrating your existing website and software capabilities over to HubSpot can be tedious at times – albeit rewarding in the end. Once you’ve integrated HubSpot into your technology systems, you have their vast array of features at your disposal.
To help with this process, here are 5 tips for using HubSpot that we recommend for anyone starting out in HubSpot.
If your company were a living creature, Sales and Marketing would be two specialized vital organs that need to work together to sustain and grow your business. Lack of communication or coordination in these essential areas can hinder your company’s growth or even cause it to wither. To work effectively they need an integrated and streamlined process to keep your company healthy.
At Revenue Architects, we’ve developed a Closed Loop Marketing Architecture™ to provide a blueprint for revenue marketing and aligning marketing and sales. It’s a continuous process that delivers tailored omni-channel experiences that engage customers and drive conversions. By ‘closing the loop’, sales and marketing align around the end-to-end customer lifecycle and campaigns are measured for total revenue impact.
This blueprint enables businesses to refine their marketing strategies based on data that is managed and analyzed to provide much needed insights into your prospects and the customer lifecycle. Many businesses perform these same tasks internally with various teams, or pay for multiple services — like e-blast platforms, CRMs, lead tracking, etc. — but often these methods, which don’t ‘close the loop’, waste valuable resources and lead to incomplete or ineffective results.
It’s the middle of Q4 and the end of the year is fast-approaching. For many, it is a time to slow down from work and spend time with family. For sales people, it’s can be a frantic time, as many B2B companies must close sales opportunities to achieve revenue goals.
So, what can the marketing team do to help the sales team and ring in the New Year on a positive note? Here are a few tips to align marketing and sales and help ease the December frenzy and drive some upward momentum into the New Year.
Marketing Automation has been around since the 1990s. Back then, the focus was on automating email marketing— managing the development and delivery of emails to target lists at scheduled times. Over the decades, software developers expanded the capabilities of Marketing Automation to meet the requirements of a variety of marketing functions and users.
Today, Marketing Automation refers to a broad range software technology for marketing and it is an important element of closed loop marketing. Its evolution has raised many questions about what it is, what it does, and whom it benefits.
Corporations with complex, high-consideration sales are often accused of 
focusing on the short-term, which is inevitably reflected in their demand generation or campaign strategy. This generally means that marketing and sales are not aligned and operating to some degree as silos. With short-term horizons, the campaign communications focus tends to be on sales driven, tactical programs designed to seek out “hot leads”.
In the highly competitive, complex B2B sales world with longer sales cycles, this is not fully sustainable. There is a typically a sales team or committees of savvy buyers. A short term focus may eke out some leads, but what about the other leads who may with some nurturing turn out to be qualified opportunities — but not yet “sales-ready.” The modern buyer knows your product or service from what is readily available on the web and related sources and will be considering any number of options before making a decision.
Studies show that 50% of leads are qualified but aren’t immediately ready to buy something from you [Source: Gleanster Research]. With lead nurturing however, you can bring those leads through your sales funnel and garner 4-10 times the response rate compared to a regular email blast while doing it [Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report].
So where do you start?
Choosing a marketing automation vendor can be challenging. Whether you are jumping into marketing automation for the first time, or are re-evaluating your current system, it can be a difficult and daunting task – especially with how many options are out there these days. Marketing Automation Selection Criteria can help.
The vendor you choose will have an enormous impact on not only your Marketing Department and marketing efforts, but could easily touch other areas as well such as Sales, Customer Service and IT. It is important to consider these other groups when evaluating various vendors, as they may have requirements, obstacles and questions that should be taken into consideration.
To help make the evaluation process a little easier and more effective, here is a recommended process to follow: Read more
I received these statistics in a recent email and I thought they were worth sharing further with some comments. I am adding some implications as I see them below each one:
A whopping 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
The Twitter Buzz was so great for #SchwabIMPACT and #RIAS4U during Schwab’s annual IMPACT conference this year, it reached Twitter’s trending list!! The Keynot by EVP Bernard J. Clark, unveiling enhancements to “RIA Stands for You” campaign propelled the buzz.
Below are a selection of tweets as well as some highlights of a related webcast next week.
RIA Stands for You: Tips to Get Started! – https://bit.ly/TVfXmU
Are RIA Firms Using CRM Effectively? – https://bit.ly/ToZZUj
Bernie Clark at Schwab Impact: RIAs’ Competitors ‘Want What You Have’ – https://bit.ly/RFcCrL
Check out our #RiAS4Y blog post and download our Revenue Performance Healthcheck – https://bit.ly/ZBnueC
Check out all of the news on the Schwab Talk blog – https://bit.ly/TnKCaa