10 Practical, actionable suggestions on how to ensure your Marketing Automation programme flies.

1. steps to a
successful marketing
automation mission
www.LBDGA.com

2. Does this sound
familiar?
Marketing automation sounded like the
perfect solution.
You invested time, money and faith in a marketing
automation platform. It’s in place, it might even be
linked to your CRM system. But it’s not delivering
the hot leads you’d hoped for. It hasn’t improved
your marketing productivity. It hasn’t upped
conversion rates or reduced your incremental
cost per lead.
This guide counts gives you 10 practical,
actionable suggestions on how to ensure
your marketing automation programme flies.
www.LBDGA.com

3. can you
help us with
marketing
automation
yesKnow your
buyer…
You might know your products or services, but how well do
you know your buyers? What business problems do they have?
What keeps them awake at night? What can you offer them to
meet this need?
Only by asking these questions can you get to the heart of what you
need to communicate, and when. Marketing automation gives you
the ability to deliver the right information to each individual prospect
at the right time, but how do you get the best from it?
Companies that have
used marketing automation
report 53% higher conversion
rates and nearly 10% higher
sales quotas.
Salesforce.com
www.LBDGA.com

4. can you
help us with
marketing
automation
yesKnow your
buyer…
Actions:
n Have you agreed personas for your key prospect types, and are
you staying true to these?
n Find out where your prospects are going online, and join them
there. Put together a co-ordinated social selling strategy,
building advocacy at every touchpoint
n Keep listening to what the market is talking about, and show
that you’re listening. Remember, it isn’t about you any more
www.LBDGA.com
Companies that have
used marketing automation
report 53% higher conversion
rates and nearly 10% higher
sales quotas.
Salesforce.com

5. ADD
CONTENT
Never underestimate the power and importance of content.
It’s the fuel that powers your marketing automation rocket.
But you need a tankful to keep you moving.
Writing compelling, useful, relevant and consumable content will be the
number one success factor in converting more sales, bar none. This is
where the bulk of your energy and investment should go – strategically
planning out and mobilising your content assets to provide real value to
your target audience and tell an engaging story about your business.
93% of B2B marketers use content
marketing. But only 42% say
they are effective at it.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
www.LBDGA.com

6. ADD
CONTENT
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Actions:
n Attract unknown contacts through breadcrumb content, identify them
through gated content, nurture them with relevant content
n Lists, blogs, cheatsheets and infographics are useful allies, enabling you to
cover a number of points at once in an easily digested form
n Before beginning a piece of content, have it clear in your mind the persona,
stage of the buyer journey, message and what you want them to do
93% of B2B marketers use content
marketing. But only 42% say
they are effective at it.
Source: Content Marketing Institute

7. Have you defaulted to more traditional
ways of doing things – ‘batch and blast’
emails, shouting louder because you’re
being heard less?
A demand generation strategy using marketing
automation is an intensive and long-term
process. The majority of your prospects won’t
buy from you today. A marketing automation
platform is designed to help you get results in
the long-term.
Run a mission
that lasts
Only 27% of B2B leads are sales-
ready when first generated.
Source: MarketingSherpa
www.LBDGA.com

8. Actions:
n Make it easy for people to find you. Despite
being a business critical tool, many B2B
companies still haven’t optimised their websites
for easy viewing and user-friendly functionality
n Analyse and continually reassess subject lines,
bullet point benefits and calls to action. Test
at least two variables in each project to see what
works best
n Double-check who is contacting your
prospects – it could be that they’re receiving
multiple messages from your company, so
ignoring them all
Run a mission
that lasts
www.LBDGA.com
Only 27% of B2B leads are sales-
ready when first generated.
Source: MarketingSherpa

9. Effective inbound – attracting unknown
prospects and converting them to
known contacts – ensures that your
marketing automation platform can get
to work on engaging prospects through
the buyer journey to sales.
Getting your search and social activity up
to speed involves an investment of time
and knowledge, but it doesn’t take a huge
financial commitment. And once your
automated model is in place, the process
is essentially self-propelling.
Feed the
Funnel
65% of companies have acquired
a lead through LinkedIn, and
almost half via Twitter.
Source: B2B barometer and Econsultancy
www.LBDGA.com

10. Actions:
n Encourage advocates
n Referrals, recommendations and word of
mouth are powerful
n Make it easy for people to share your content
n Amplify your content
n Repurpose, promote, publicise and socialise
across all relevant channels
Feed the
Funnel
65% of companies have acquired
a lead through LinkedIn, and
almost half via Twitter.
Source: B2B barometer and Econsultancy
www.LBDGA.com

11. Align Sales
and Marketing
Historically, marketing and sales have found
it difficult to co-ordinate their approaches.
A marketing automation platform gives both
parties unprecedented opportunities for
success, but efforts have to be integrated.
Sales won’t define lead criteria based on ‘digital
body language’, content engagement or buyer
journey stage. But they do monitor prospects’
interest levels and propensity to buy. Your
marketing automation platform can provide
sales with invaluable insights.
Over 40% of senior executives believe they
would drive more revenue with a combined
sales and marketing resource.
Source: LBDGA Research – Sirius Decisions Conferencewww.LBDGA.com

12. Align Sales
and Marketing
Actions:
n Lead score like a salesperson – don’t use the same
lead criteria checklist you’ve always used. Delivering
better quality leads comes from using the information
your platform provides to deliver real insight
n Build a useful profile – don’t dump every web page
view into the sales lead sheet. Filter and build a true
picture of what the prospect is interested in
n Mirror sales speak – don’t use terms like ‘digital
body language’. Use terms that they would use when
describing the opportunity after a meeting
Over 40% of senior executives believe they
would drive more revenue with a combined
sales and marketing resource.
Source: LBDGA Research – Sirius Decisions Conferencewww.LBDGA.com

13. Go big
on data
65% of management decisions are now
based on data, not guesswork.
Source: MIT 2011
Putting a marketing automation platform in place will
expose data issues you didn’t know you had. Poor
quality data will result in project failure.
If you haven’t already, take the opportunity to review your
company’s data. Ensure that you’re capturing behavioural,
online, and sales data, and that everyone involved is
co-ordinating their data into the same system in the same way.
www.LBDGA.com

14. Go big
on data
65% of management decisions are now
based on data, not guesswork.
Source: MIT 2011
Actions:
n It sounds simplistic, but use data to select activities and channels that
are most effective and provide the best return-on-investment (ROI)
n Analysing the most engaging content, formats, times and frequency
give the ability to get more from the time and money invested
www.LBDGA.com

15. One of the key reasons
marketing automation
efforts fail is a lack of internal
communications.
From the start, it pays to get
buy-in on your plans. As you
move forward, keep stakeholders
informed and actively seek out
their views on how the platform
impacts on their roles.
Seven weeks a year are lost by workers seeking
clarification due to poor communication.
Source: National Assoc. of Prof Organisers, 2012
Open up communications
www.LBDGA.com

16. Actions:
n Keep language precise and consistent.
Remember that phrases you use to
describe what you’re doing and how,
might not necessarily translate to
other departments
n Create management dashboards
to communicate project performance
based on pre-defined objectives
n If you haven’t done so, run an internal
marketing campaign to educate
stakeholders
Seven weeks a year are lost by workers seeking
clarification due to poor communication.
Source: National Assoc. of Prof Organisers, 2012
Open up communications
www.LBDGA.com

17. Keep
going
As big as the change in buyer behaviour is the size
of the opportunity it creates. Use data and response
rates to refine messaging and audiences, and
incorporate triggers into continually-running activity.
Marketing automation is a means to an end. Despite your
investment in research, time and money, the technology
alone won’t help you to reach your goal unless you’re clear
in your mind about what you’re doing and where you’re
going as a business.
No.1 cause of project failure? – lack of direction and goals.
Source: Pink Elephant Conference 2012www.LBDGA.com

18. Keep
going
Actions:
n Low-touch or zero-touch programmes cut incremental costs
dramatically, and are achievable when nurture marketing is
automated
n Don’t think on a campaign basis, focus on programmes that
can be constantly active and running in the background,
triggered only when the required behaviour is met
n Ensure your targets and timescales are realistic and achievable.
When it comes to the roll-out phase, take your resources into
account and alter your targets and time plans accordingly
No.1 cause of project failure? – lack of direction and goals.
Source: Pink Elephant Conference 2012www.LBDGA.com

19. Measure the mission
Companies that excel at lead
nurturing generate 50% more
sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.
Source: Forrester Research
www.LBDGA.com
As your marketing automation platform
begins to deliver on its promises, you need to
consider how to measure and report metrics that
can help you demonstrate return and value of your
marketing activity at board level.
Measurement of revenue and sales should demonstrate
uplift or increase in activity, especially marketing activity
that can be directly attributed.

20. Measure the mission
Companies that excel at lead
nurturing generate 50% more
sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.
Source: Forrester Research
www.LBDGA.com
Actions:
n If you’re attributing revenue and sales from marketing activity,
calculating ROI becomes very straightforward. Activity should be
allowed to evolve to demonstrate month-on-month improvement
of ROI on programmes
n In order to understand your pipeline and what activity delivers
results, visibility is needed on where your new prospects come
from and how much they cost
n To place a true value on an acquired prospect, end-to-end
understanding is needed on drop-off and close rates by channel,
to identify appropriate allocation of resources for future activity

21. Collaborate
It’s early days for marketing automation. Many marketers are still operating
in the dark to a certain extent, not making best use of the systems they’ve
implemented. Having a platform, however, is better than not having one.
When you understand the potential of the platforms available, and combine
them with the experience, insight and intuition of a good marketing team and
knowledgeable partners, you’ll start to question why you’d do it any other way.
Nine out of ten business buyers
say when they’re ready to buy,
they’ll find you. Be ready.
Source: DemandGen Report
www.LBDGA.com

22. Collaborate
Actions:
n Look for progressive partners who have experience in the marketing
automation space, who speak the language of demand generation,
and who can make a world of difference to your success rates
n Change is often seen as a threat, rather than an opportunity. So it
can take a third party to help you identify the changes required, carry
them out effectively, and realise the desired results
Nine out of ten business buyers
say when they’re ready to buy,
they’ll find you. Be ready.
Source: DemandGen Report
www.LBDGA.com

23. We’re not alien to all of this.
If you think you could benefit
from a marketing automation
audit, please contact us on:
0845 838 3883
or email: demandmore@LBDGA.com | www.LBDGA.com

24. You may
also enjoy
reading:
Marketing
Automation
Selection
Cheatsheet
Demand
Generation
Infrastructure
Blueprint
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Telephone: +44 (0)8458 383883
Email: info@LBDGA.com
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Little Horwood, Milton Keynes
MK17 0NR
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1st Floor Centric House
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Marketing
Automation
101 Guide
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About Ledger Bennett DGA
We are a B2B Demand Generation agency that uses
sales and marketing know-how to help customers
increase revenue by deploying Inbound Marketing,
Content Marketing and Marketing Automation
strategies. Our highly focused Demand Generation
programmes drive our customers’ business
performance, helping them to:
n Generate more opportunity
n Convert that opportunity into sales
n Retain customers and grow their value
Using more measurable and cost effective
techniques than traditional full service marketing
agencies we are able to maximise business revenue
in the modern world where the internet has
fundamentally changed the behaviour of the buyer.
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