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What do you wish you asked your marketing automation vendor before buying?
| Guest post by: Jeff Ogden |
Article Overview: Hindsight is 20/20 and buyers of marketing automation software are probably thinking If I had only known what I know now. Thankfully, our friends at Software Advice did a survey to ask exactly that question: What do you wish you asked your marketing automation vendor before buying?
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Free Download - Marketing Made Simple TV is looking for a few good sponsors By Jeff Ogden |
What do you wish you asked your marketing automation vendor before buying?
At the B2B lead generation company Find New Customers, we believe it takes a lot more than software to have success with
B2B demand generation.
It also takes People and Process. For instance, Lead Nurturing and
Scoring relies on Problem to Solution story-telling and great content,
as well as well-thought out buying processes.
To read the full article, click on the Permalink.
But we will summarize what they concluded. (Please note that no
vendor or customer names are used, as we do not see this as the fault of
any single person or company.) Also, please note that Find New
Customers shares our thoughts using “FNC comment.”
Questions revolved around four areas:
1. Clarifying Communication around Integration
(FNC comment: Marketing automation needed to “play well” with others.
Assuming everything will work as the vendor promises is a common
mistake.)
“Just knowing that a marketing automation system integrates with CRM
isn’t enough. You have to understand specifically how the systems work
together, especially with leads, campaigns, and opportunities.”
2. Getting the Service & Support You Need
(FNC comment: Implement marketing automation is hard work.
Licensing software is easy. Take what the vendor suggests and multiply
by 3-4 times.)
“You have to look under the covers
and ask those hard questions about training. What’s really involved and
how much will it cost? What’s the average time it takes for one of their
customers to get up to speed? And then check it on your own because
they’re going to tell you what you want to hear.”
“When you’re ready to send out a
campaign and there’s a glitch, you really need someone to call you back
in a timely manner. I don’t expect it to be 5 minutes, but I don’t
expect it to be 2 days. So that’s another really valuable question that I
didn’t ask: What’s your turnaround? They said in the beginning, for the
implementation, that I would have an assigned account rep to help me
bring up the system and do the integration, but once we turned it on,
that person went away. So, I definitely would have had something put
into the contract regarding customer service, or at least drilled down
to question that component of it.”
3. Match the Product Roadmap to Your Goals
(FNC quote: Make sure the product you are shown is the product you are buying.)
“I went to [a conference] two years
ago and was excited by the new interface/platform. To date, it still
hasn’t been rolled out.”
“Understand the reality of what
version of the solution is being sold versus what is available. We were
surprised how much of the presentations we saw were coming soon or in
beta and not functionality in production use today.”
4. Maintaining Your System
“[Systems] have maintenance windows, even though the vendors will say that they’re SaaS
or cloud. When this certain marketing automation tool that I
implemented had maintenance windows, all of my landing pages that were
hosted by that tool went down. If I would have known to ask about
downtime beforehand, I wouldn’t have picked that tool because being a
demand gen expert, that’s where my core focus is. I can’t afford to have
my landing pages go down.”
Before you start your selection of marketing automation, step back and ask yourself some questions:
- Is the system compatible with our existing CRM system?
- Is our data quality good enough to support the system?
- Is everyone on the same page – Sales has bought-in and so has Marketing?
- What insights can you get from social networks and thought leaders?
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About the Author: Jeff Ogden RSS for Jeff's articles - Visit Jeff's website With 8 out of 10 companies saying the lack of quality sales leads is their biggest problem, they need help. SiriusDecisions also found that fewer than 1 out of 10 companies that implement lead management software went beyond the basics. They need help. We help companies implement world class lead generation programs. Companies need quality sales leads, so they need sales lead generation programs including social media marketing. They need to implement lead nurturing programs. We are considered one of the best leads generation companies in business today. Click here to visit Jeff's website   Definitive Guide Making Quota 7 Keys to Lead Nurturing 7 Keys to B2B Marketing Succes How to Find New Customers |
Related Forum Posts
Re: looking for experienced affiliate feedback
- Hi Nancy,
I don't have any direct experience with trying to sell my own products as a vendor, but as far as I know, you can set up a vendor account with Clickbank for a one-time fee of $50. This may be per product, but it's only a one-time payment. Affiliates will find your product through searching the marketplace and will promote it if they like it.
I would suggest going this route to start. Plus, Clickbank handles all affiliate payouts for you, whereas with PayDotCom, you are responsible for paying the affiliate directly.
Hope that helps,
Alan
Re: Is it worth buying a Dell computer with financing?
- what you should know is that whenever you are buying any item and apying monthly you are definitely paying at least 50% more than if you buy it cash. I beleive on the long run it is worth buying the computer with finance if you are using it for business. My rules about buying things on credit is basically for business and nothing else.
Re: New man with Twitter Studies
- Thanks for the helpful replies.I do take on board all that you say and you are probably right in that i need to use automation to help get messages read.I
I dont post a lot on here ,but the learning curve here is incredible.
Re: Those Annoying Telemarketers
- Use caller id to your advantage. Sometimes telemarketers have useful business tools for you to use, so it doesn't always pay to be rude or hang-up on them.
You might consider setting up a separate "vendor" voice mail box. On the welcome message, state that you are really busy and that you receive many cold calls a day, but might be interested in the service they have to offer. State that you review the "vendor" voice mail box about every other week, and that you do actually listen to their pitches. Invite them to leave a message to be reviewed, an let them know that if you are interested in their product, you will return their call.
I think this is a fair balance between saving you time, not being interrupted by telemarketers but at the same time lettering those telemarketers try to get their message through to you.
--matt
Re: Bad SEO techniques?
- blackhat seo techniques are generally frowned upon now.
you can add automatic social bookmarking to that list. this one is on the fence and really dependent on the service/software you use to do the automation.
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