What is holding back the B2B market from adopting MAPs?

A recent article in DemandGen report suggests that Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) vendors may suffer a dip in their revenues from a market valued at $325m in a recent analyst report in 2011 because the 50% growth this represents over 2010 has again been driven by the high-tech industry. As Raab states: "The market itself has to expand rapidly if those vendors are to grow quickly.”


What, we should ask, does this say about other B2B industries? Does this just reflect the willingness of the technology industry to quickly embrace new technology in general? Or have other B2B industries yet to be convinced of the merits of marketing technology? Maybe they are confused by the speed with which things have been moving - is automation about email and landing pages, SEO management, social networking, measurement or gibing Marketing something to plug into Salesforce.com? Or all of the above? Raab's report should help with dispelling some of the claims and identifying where some of the major platforms perform best.


I got my hands dirty with marketing automation, with a US software company as long as 5 years ago when they implemented Eloqua. That's a long time for other industries to stand on the sidelines. One reason more risk-averse industries may not yet have implemented the type of change programme needed to implement marketing automation must be that they are unconvinced by the ROI data. If automation was an 'open-and-shut-case' then surely everyone would be doing it!


Have the vendors oversold the benefits of their solution and under-played the cost, training and process changes required to get results? It can be a little difficult to know, since often there is no benchmark data available with which to compare improvements. In my experience, buying a system is often the beginning of Marketing to study its navel, not the end. Maybe MAP implementation will follow the CRM model where stories of failures are legion.


I'd be interested in hearing your opinions and examples of successful adoption of marketing automation outside high-tech industries.

Process and Objectives - then programs and tactics!

When I engage with a new client or lead a new marketing team, I'm often struck by how the drive to 'get things done' in Marketing, often with little budget and with immense time pressure - usually from Sales who are chasing quarterly numbers - takes over from thinking about planned outcomes. Everyone is busy. But do we stop long enough to determine if we are busy doing the right things?

Many marketing managers seem isolated from the sharp end of closing business and delivering revenue, with metrics, where they exist, still focused on opens, clicks and downloads rather than closed opportunities driven by Marketing activity. In a complex, long sales cycle, this is even more the case. So how does activity get associated with key business KPIs?

For those companies embracing marketing automation that by necessity drives a focus on process, data and measurement of outcomes, the automation project may for the first time encourage an explicit look at Marketing as more than a set of disparate activities. However a recent report suggests this is not always successful. 'Walk before you can run' was the key message of a recent DemandGen Report article on best practice for automation new adopters.

“Many companies rush to make an automation purchase before taking the time to define their internal requirements, such as what will they need from the automation solution,” said Carlos Hidalgo, President,  The Annuitas Group. “It is best to approach the purchase of automation in a cross-functional manner that includes groups beyond marketing including sales, operations, customer service and finance as these decisions will have an impact on each of these functional areas.”

This multi-functional, but marketing-led, approach to implementing what is effectively 'ERP for Marketing' introduces a fundamental change to the way marketing is practised in most B-to-B organisations. It produces a focus on outcomes rather than on activity. It requires Marketing to integrate at a process level with other functions and departments and demonstrate the link between what Marketing is doing and its impact on business performance. This is important stuff and it won't happen overnight.

I have yet to see many UK case studies of successful implementation and shows attended by many Marketing Managers continue to promote individual tactics, such as SEO and viral. Is this likely to change now that business is harder to come by and every dollar is being scrutinised?

5 Ways to Kill Off Your B2B Marketing Automation Project

Recent experience has reminded me that, as we in B2B seek to implement enterprise-class tools to support our marketing efforts in demand generation and sales support, it is easy to forget some basic principles that can quickly set our initiative back - or even kill it off altogether: Here are 5 key things to consider if you want to  be successful:

1. If you're not clear about the project objective or success metrics, you won't know what progress you're making. If your SVP Marketing or CMO has decided to buy X vendor's software for Marketing, because sales has already got Salesforce.com and he heard that it integrates well - or they're offering a reduced license cost for 12 months - you're already on to a loser.
2. If you don't know the differences between your go-to-market processes in France versus the USA, don't be surprised when you get resistance to adoption. With enterprise software there is no such thing as one size fits all. 'Best practice' doesn't mean do it this way or not at all. Differences exist in local culture, process, market maturity, people skills and understanding of direct marketing techniques that need to be reflected in the project - by getting people involved early on and documenting what needs to happen. This document will make it much easier to brief vendors or other professional services people who will be needed to actually configure and set up the marketing automation platform.
3. Underestimate the impact on marketing managers' day-to-day jobs at your peril. Marketing automation changes the emphasis in Marketing from activity - programme execution - to results. And it requires familiarity with complex technology, with support from specialists in IT. This isn't what most Marketing people signed up for: we are specialists in creative communications and organising events or product launches, not setting up emails, planning landing page offers and tracking open rates. We don't want to deal with technical people day to day. You may find that automation leads to a rethinking of the skills and experience required in marketing and a period of unrest and change.
4. If the marketing project is driven by marketing in isolation from the rest of the business - particularly Sales and Customer Service/ Support ('Oh, we can worry about integration later.') - it will take much longer and cost much more to fix it later. Marketing can only be treated separately from the rest of the business when what it does has no impact on the business - this is the old world we are trying to fix, so try not to make this mistake again. A marketing automation project requires us to look in detail at areas that we have hitherto safely ignored: process, metrics, data, ROI, integration with other functional areas on which we are mutually dependent. In other words, don't make the mistake of thinking you can just use it for sending out emails and tracking activity on the website and worry about how to get qualified leads into the sales team SFA later. You will find customer data is out of synch in the two systems, campaign tracking is impossible and you are unable to show any evidence of ROI to the CFO.
5. Ignore the Change Management process; offer minimal training and do not invite comment from marketing users during roll-out. Implementing systems for marketing is just like implementing any other system - it is an exercise in change management. Everyone needs to be on side - from executive management, to the ultimate end user. Unless all parties understand what they are trying to achieve, why and how it will affect the status quo, the project will run over budget, take longer than anticipated and go way outside the scope - assuming any of these things were defined up front.

Marketing automation projects are not primarily about the technology. If your CMO is seduced with all the bells and whistles or stunning dashboards, remind him/ her of these 5 key points of failure - which are by no means exhaustive - and get him to take a step back and consider the basics.

B2B Marketing Automation Continues its Inexorable Rise

Yesterday, DemandGen reported that Marketo has signed up 700 customers in two years, grew 315% in 2010 and has now set its focus on enterprise customers, as well as its traditional SME base, with its first $1m win. This would seem to put it on a collision course with Eloqua, who has increasingly been focused on the small-to-medium size companies as it has ramped up its European operations.

This announcement follows closely on the heels of last week’s story that Eloqua is preparing for IPO, having ‘held briefings with various financial analysts and public investors about the future of the business’ and hopes to secure a $400m - $500m evaluation.

Both of these stories confirm analysts’ expectations – and my Blog predictions for this year – that marketing automation amongst B2B companies has come of age and is going to experience significant growth and consolidation, as evidenced by acquisition of Unica and Aprimo last year.

Inbound Enters the Fray

Meanwhile, in support of some contentions made in my last couple of Blogs on ‘funnel management’, Hubspot , with its “Get Found, Convert, Analyze” mantra is getting greater recognition and bringing metrics to SEO and social networking activities that tie them into the Eloqua/ Salesforce worlds, which are still primarily about outbound nurturing and engagement. This is where the future lies I believe.

Last year, I was using Hubspot for web tracking and enhancement, social networking tracking and optimising keywords. However, I was still using Blogware from Compendium for enterprise blogging, because of its expertise in publishing effectively to Search sites, Linked-In etc; and Vocus for press distribution, social networking; with Eloqua and Salesforce at the back-end. ‘Overkill’ do I hear you cry?

This ‘best-of-breed’ approach acknowledges the need for good publishing platforms for different channels (web, social media, email offers etc) combined with a ‘quantify it’ approach to managing each stage of the buying cycle, through tracking and reporting. I see the current platforms (and don’t even get me started on the free tools available for Twitter publishing/ tracking etc.) continuing to embrace a broader set of channels for tracking purposes - but we are still some way off a single solution for publishing, tracking, analysing and reporting on all digital and off-line channels throughout the whole buying cycle. Maybe we will never get there.

I’d really like to hear who you are using for what, so let me know who your favourites are and why.

Next time, I’ll look at the content challenge that this poses for all of us as marketers become publishers, as well as analysts and accountants.