Marketing velocity is the speed or rateat which marketing efforts yield business results. Marketing velocity can be accelerated with the thoughtful implementation of enabling technologies such as marketing automation, CRM, social media platforms, and analytics solutions. However, companies often expect these technologies to be the solution rather than enable the solution. In fact, sales and marketing technology slows marketing velocity or speeds up bad outcomes more often than it serves as an accelerant.
This week, we’re diving into marketing velocity and how you can use sales and marketing technology to make the cash register ring.
More than 80% of marketing automation system implementations are unsuccessful.
There is no way around it. Enterprise software companies need a custom implementation of their marketing and sales systems. While there are myriad reasons why custom implementation is the best option, here are just a few reasons for you to consider:
Reason No. 1: The technology provider always has its own proprietary marketing model that it wants you to implement. Its brand is often built on this model. Unfortunately, these models weren’t necessarily built for enterprise software companies. The complex sales and marketing process involved in selling seven-figure software deals in emerging markets is just different from transactional sales models. This doesn’t mean the systems won’t work. In fact, several of them are game changers. They just need to be used the right way for your business (which varies even among enterprise software companies based on business strategies).
Reason No. 2: Technology poviders want you to adopt as many features as possible. This is something they actually work on. It’s one of the primary reasons that “lead nurturing” and “progressive profiling” because two of the most damaging concepts for enterprise software marketing in the 21st century. Strong words, I know, but lead nurturing and progressive profiling and oversold as solutions to your problems because they leverage the coolest components of marketing automation and CRM. I’m not saying there isn’t a role for lead nurturing. I am saying that the best way to kill marketing velocity is to drop your leads in the purgatory of a 10-step marketing program. Use only the features that increase velocity and the business results you want will follow. This most often means using a stripped-down version of the technology (and, no, you won’t pay less for it).
There is no shame in using 20% of the functionality offered by your sales and marketing systems. Anything that slows down velocity should be discarded.
Reason No. 3: Integrations need to be prioritized by velocity. There is more to integration than simply tying two or more systems together. What are they supposed to do once they’re talking? The short answer is they need to increase velocity by passing only the most important information between marketing and sales. If your marketing automation system isn’t placing a lead in the call queue within seconds of download, then the integration strategy is not driven by a focus on velocity.
Reason No. 4: Standard dashboards and metrics are not focused on velocity. The primary goal of your system is to increase velocity. The primary goal of your system is to increase velocity. Who cares if we have a 25 percent click-through rate if qualified leads aren’t called within 30 minutes? The technology provider wants to set up a robust dashboard. And the executive team will always want more metrics than are necessary. Your custom implementation needs to focus only on the metrics that matter. More than five, and you’ve boggled the human brain.
