1. 62 l PEO INSIDER | SEPTEMBER 2016
Make Marketing Automation
Technology Work for Your PEO
Christine Pescatore and Tracy Thomas
marketing
Marketing
looks a lot
different
than it did a
decade ago.
Throughout the last several years, tech-
nology has transformed the sales process.
Today’s buyers have increased access to
information, allowing them to research
and gather content, read reviews, and seek
referrals from their social networks long
before ever talking to a sales consultant.
How can you get in front of your pros-
pects early in the process and give them
personalized content that can establish
your expertise and help your PEO stand
out from the rest? Marketing automation
may be your answer.
What is Marketing Automation?
According to Wikipedia, marketing
automation refers to software plat-
forms and technologies designed for
marketing departments and organizations
to more effectively market on multiple
channels online (such as email, social
media, websites, etc.) and automate repeti-
tive tasks.
Technology such as marketing auto-
mation software and sales engagement
platforms can be game changers to attract
visitors to your brand, convert these visi-
tors into leads, and turn leads into clients.
This type of technology, which can often
integrate with your current customer rela-
tionship management (CRM) software,
helps you create an efficient marketing
program for your PEO, allowing you to do
much more without a substantial increase
in “people”resources. By tracking and
responding to your potential buyers’online
behavior and building a stronger relation-
ship with prospects, you’ll accelerate your
sales funnel and generate more results.
What are the Main Benefits of
Marketing Automation?
Generate more High-Quality Leads for
your SalesTeam
In the PEO industry, where each quali-
fied lead is valuable, it’s critical to find the
right prospective buyers. Our prospects
spend a lot of time heavily researching and
considering several options. Marketing
automation software can help identify
people actively consuming your content or
researching a PEO or other HR solu-
tion. It also allows you to increase your
branding to these top-of-the-funnel
prospects.They may not be ready to buy,
but continuous engagement can keep your
brand top of mind.
If you are ready to move beyond
simple email marketing tools, consider a
marketing automation solution such as
MailChimp, Constant Contact, Marketo,
or HubSpot.These are examples of
marketing automation solutions that vary
in price and offer some combination of
lead generation, lead management and
scoring, automated email marketing
campaigns, analytics, and integration with
major CRM software.
Qualify and Prioritize your Leads
Did the lead engage with you by opening
an email, clicking on a link within an
email, browsing your website, or down-
loading a whitepaper? Lead scoring allows
you to assign points depending on how
the lead engages with your company’s
marketing program. In the simplest of
terms, the more points, the more engaged
the prospect.This level of detail lets sales
consultants have valuable information
before they contact a prospect, which
may help make the first outreach more
successful.
Nurture your Leads
As you move towards the middle and
bottom of the sales funnel, you can start
building relationships with your prospects
by delivering highly personalized and
useful content.The goal is to give them
the information they need at just the
right time they need it. Based on specific
information captured by your marketing
automation software, you can send each
prospect specific landing pages, forms,
What the Research Says
Many companies have successfully implemented marketing automation and see the
value in the investment.
• B2B marketing managers say the most important criteria for marketing automa-
tion software are price, product integration (e.g., CRM, social, web, mobile), and
ease of use. (Pepper Global “Marketing Automation Trends Report 2014,” www.
slideshare.net/PepperGlobal/pepper-global-2014-marketing-automation-report.)
• Seventy-nine percent of top-performing companies have been using marketing
automation for more than two years. (Gleanster, www.gleanster.com/gleansight/
marketing-automation)
• Best-in-class companies are 67 percent more likely to use a marketing automation
platform. (Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that
Produce,” www.aberdeen.com/research/9575/RR-marketing-automation-platform.
aspx/content.aspx.) l
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2. SEPTEMBER 2016 | PEO INSIDER n 63
emails, or collateral with relevant content.
Build trust with your prospects over time
and allow them to go at their own pace to
ease them into a buying decision.
Sales engagement tools such as
Showpad, pitchXO, and Fileboard offer
lead nurturing features. Like marketing
automation software, sales engagement
tools vary in price and in features. With
easy access to current marketing collateral,
sales consultants are able to launch or
share a presentation or brochure during
the proposal process.These software
platforms may provide you with valu-
able information, such as when a pros-
pect opened your presentation, clicked
links, forwarded it, etc., so your sales
team knows when to place a follow-up
communication.
Report on your Marketing
Campaign’s Success
Marketing automation provides you with
data to help you prioritize prospects, iden-
tify highly engaged leads for your sales
team, and understand the performance of
a marketing campaign. You’ll gain insight
so you can tweak your strategies and
tactics for future marketing campaigns.
The data reveals what content is reso-
nating with your audience and allows you
to better cater to prospective customers.
Is this Right for my Business?
Before you invest in marketing automa-
tion software to help generate and nurture
leads and drive results, there are several
factors to consider:
• Time involved. Are you ready to invest
the time it takes for training and getting
the platform up and running? While
many of the options are user-friendly,
the time invested will vary depending
on how granular you want to make your
marketing efforts. For instance, you
may want to create one drip campaign
for your prospects, with content taking
them from top to bottom of the funnel,
or you may want to create multiple
campaigns based on vertical, geography,
prospect size, etc.
• Follow up. Even though the word
“automation”is in the name, this isn’t
something you set up and forget about.
You will need to monitor the process
and adjust your efforts as you see the
results.
• Content creation and maintenance.
You can’t automate your marketing if
you don’t have substantive content to
send to your leads. Content is key to
making marketing automation work
for your PEO. You’ll need to prepare
content for each step in the sales process
from the moment you identify a lead
through the proposal stage.
What good are numbers, if they don’t
reveal the path forward?
To effectively manage your healthcare plans you need
expert actuarial consulting and robust analytics, not just
a report. We analyze your healthcare data and translate
it into a meaningful roadmap for decision-making.
The PEO industry relies on us to provide the meaning
behind the data.
Let us do the same for you.
Contact Bruce Miller, EVP, Chief Risk Officer, Managing Principal
Bruce.Miller@PRM-Corp.com • 888-244-8905 • PRM-Corp.com
Numbers
don’t lie, but
what are they
telling you?
Benefits Risk
Management
Risk
Assessment
Actuarial Services
& Reporting
PEO & Multi-
Employer Analytics
86840-0716_PRM_HALF_AD.indd 1 7/29/16 10:10 AM
Please visit us in Booth 513 at NAPEO’s Marketplace 2016
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3. 64 l PEO INSIDER | SEPTEMBER 2016
• Good leads.To get the full value from
your marketing automation investment,
you need to have a substantial amount
of leads to work with and a reliable
process for generating a sufficient
number of new quality prospects. Some
recommended list companies that can
assist you include ZoomInfo, Data.com,
and Avention.
Marketing automation technology
can improve the impact of your content,
capture lead intelligence, convert leads to
deals, and enhance the overall customer
experience. Leveraging this technology
can help grow your business by delivering
measureable, bottom-line results. l
Christine Pescatore is senior marketing
manager: content and brand and Tracy
Thomas is senior marketing manager:
design and delivery for Oasis Outsourcing,
West Palm Beach, Florida.
Social Media Marketing Tools
Social media marketing is an excellent way to connect and engage with your target
market, but it can also be time consuming. Using automated tools can increase your
reach and your efficiency by allowing you to post in one place and have that post ap-
pear in multiple platforms and/or by scheduling posts. Below are some examples of
tools that can make your social media marketing efforts more effective and efficient.
HootSuite
This popular social media software offers the ability to easily manage multiple social
media accounts on one dashboard, schedule social media posts for the future, and
analyze how your social media efforts are being received.
Sprout Social
This is another great tool to automate the time-consuming activity of posting multiple
messages to multiple social media accounts, respond to public interactions with your
brand from a single platform, and view social media analytics.
SocialMention
Interested to know what people are saying about your company, the competition, or
another important topic in the PEO industry? Similar to Google Alerts, this is a great
tool for monitoring your company’s mentions in the social media landscape so you
are aware of any feedback or commentary about your brand. l
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