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Why Does Marketing Velocity Matter?

Marketing VelocityMarketing velocity is the speed or rate at 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.

Why Does Marketing Velocity Matter?

If you’re like most enterprise software marketers, you may be realizing that being good isn’t good enough anymore. Enterprise software companies have to be fast, too. And yet the sales and marketing function has largely failed to keep pace with the increased velocity of product development and market dynamics.

Meanwhile, research is proving what entrepreneurs have known intuitively for years: Speed matters. The key to success in enterprise software markets is to win early favorite vendor status. And we know early favorite vendor status is awarded to the company that gets to the prospect first. When prospects are reesarching a software category, they are very likely to be persuaded to the worldview of the first company that contacts them (unless they have a negative experience).

You may be thinking, “We call prospects back within 48 hours, isn’t that enough?” Actually, no. If you’re not contacting prospects within minutes of their interaction with your brand, you’re missing your window of opportunity.

Data reported in 2013 by Yahoo Small Business Advisor shows that contacting a lead within five minutes yields a 78 percent close rate, compared with a 19 percent close rate when the response to a lead is within five to 30 minutes. The numbers are even more dismal if you want to contact a lead after 30 minutes, at just a 3 percent close rate.

Technology makes rapid response to even passive interest possible — but it makes it possible for your competitors, too. If you’re not competing on velocity, then you’re not competing at all. 

Learn more in the latest white paper from The Starr Conspiracy Tech Unit, “Marketing Velocity and the 5 Keys to Making the Cash Register Ring.”