Selling Marketing Automation to the C-Suite: A Plan to Persuade Executives
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A marketing automation platform can be instrumental in helping you achieve business goals, work more efficiently, and increase the return on your marketing campaigns. But how do you make the case for marketing automation to your executive team? Check out this presentation to discover how to create a strategy for getting your C-suite on board with marketing automation.
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Selling Marketing Automation to the C-Suite: A Plan to Persuade Executives
- 1. Selling Marketing Automation to the C-Suite Hally Pinaud Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Marketo @Hallypino
- 4. Agenda Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders
- 5. A Plan to Persuade Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders
- 6. Building a Business Case What it is, what you’ll need.
- 7. Why Marketing Automation? Why Now? Companies that nurture customers generate 50% more quality leads at 33% lower cost. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human. 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than 2 years.
- 8. State Your Goal Nothing is more compelling than straightforward data • Proof points – why? • Data for your business Building a Business Case
- 9. Context is King Give a state of the business: • What are you doing now? • How will this fit? Building a Business Case
- 10. Investment and Costs What does it cost? (Not just the solution, but all of it.) Building a Business Case
- 11. Change Management How will this all come together? Building a Business Case
- 12. Change Management Discover Define Deliver Drive
- 13. You Need a Change Agent You? A Colleague? Your Boss?
- 15. Getting an Executive Sponsor What do you need to know?
- 16. • Have a plan and your business case ready – be sure to include the executive summary • WIIFM? – What will this person and their people get from Marketing Automation? • Be ready to go beyond the CMO Tips for Finding an Executive Sponsor
- 17. The CMO Cares about ROI, customer experience, and building a more relevant, effective marketing team.
- 18. • What is the cost and ROI? • Resources needed? • What gaps do we have in marketing? • Change management plan? The CMO’s Questions
- 19. The CEO Wants financial growth and to outpace the competition. Thinks long-term and big picture.
- 20. • How will this impact the bottom line and fuel growth? • What do others do? • What is time to launch and time to value? • What additional resources will be needed? The CEO’s Questions
- 21. The CFO Cares about managing expenses, ensuring profitable growth, and containing risks.
- 22. • What’s the ROI of this? • Why should we prioritize it? • Does this comply with the regulations that apply to our organization? The CFO’s Questions
- 23. The Sales VP Focused on growth, profit, and sales efficiency.
- 24. • Will this give us more leads? • Will they be better leads? • Will this take time away from Lead Gen? • Will this place any additional burden on sales? The Sales VP’s Questions
- 25. The CIO Wants to innovate and evolve infrastructure to meet future needs in a sustainable way.
- 26. • How secure is this solution? • Will it integrate with other systems? • How much will you use it? The CIO’s Questions
- 27. Countering Objections Things you should be prepared to hear.
- 28. “We have too many campaigns/events/etc. coming up.” If You Hear…
- 29. “We don’t have the staff to do something like this.” If You Hear…
- 30. “We don’t have enough content to roll out a marketing automation system.” If You Hear…
- 31. Selling Your Vision Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders
- 32. Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders Selling Your Vision
- 33. Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders Selling Your Vision
- 34. Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders Selling Your Vision
- 35. Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders Selling Your Vision
- 36. Understand the Goals Build a Business Case Recruit a Change Agent Get an Executive Sponsor Counter Push-Back Meet with Stakeholders Selling Your Vision
- 37. Key Takeaways • Getting the C-suite to see the benefits of marketing automation is a big part of making it work. • Focus on the perspectives of each C-suite persona – understand their pain points and concerns! • Build a strong business case first. It will help you argue the importance of automation with all stakeholders.
Notas del editor
- [Graham to intro] Thanks Graham. It’s a pleasure to be here today, and I’m looking forward to talking through some of the tips we’ve uncovered that will help you get your leadership onboard with marketing automation.
- The fact is, I hear from forward-thinking marketers in this exact situation all the time. In fact, it’s a position I’ve been in myself. We really want to be the heroes of our organizations -- the person who brought in a solution that helps everyone save time, get more done with their busy days, and really do higher quality, more personalized and targeted marketing. And I think we all recognize that means means more revenue and in many cases, big cost savings. Who wouldn’t want to come in and save the day with a solution that does all that? The truth is, bringing marketing into our organizations doesn’t have to be hard. But, making big changes means getting your team onboard. Especially leadership. Without support from the C-suite, your plans won’t make it very far.
- And to accomplish this feat, you need to come up with a strategy that outlines how you want marketing automation to improve your business and then align your plans to the goals of the C-suite. Something I guarantee Black Widow here has never had to do. (Although would that make for a really interesting Avengers 3 plot? Maybe I’ll run that idea by some folks here later…) No, I’m kidding… but with all that said I’m excited to take you through some of the ways that you can be most effective in persuading your leaders to make this important move, so you can be the hero your organization needs.
- Let’s start by looking at our agenda, which I think pretty effectively doubles as a plan to persuade.
- Our first step is really going to be understanding the goal of getting marketing automation in place. We can use that knowledge to create a business case – and I’ll talk a little bit about how we do that. Next, we need to start assembling our team, and I’ll go over the importance of a change agent and your stakeholders. We’ll walk through the executive team – what makes them tick and using that knowledge to champion your automation initiative. And finally, I’ll talk through how you can respond to some really common objections and questions that your execs will almost certainly have.
- Step one, you need to build a business case for marketing automation. Starting with the “why” and how it aligns with your organization’s goals. TechTarget defines a business case as an argument, usually documented, that is intended to convince a decision maker to approve some kind of action. And by the way, the document itself is also referred to as a business case.
- And to start, let’s delve into the “why” – why and how getting marketing automation in place aligns with the goal of most every organization: maximizing value. The fact is, to grow our revenue we need to be bringing in new customers, increasing their lifetime value, building brand advocacy, and doing more for less. Your mileage may vary as to how those activities align to your c-suite leaderships’ motives, as we’ll see in a moment, but one thing is for sure: marketing automation can help you do all of the above. -Why is that? Well, the digital landscape has radically changed how our customers buy from us. Gartner research shows that customers are doing it all on their own, and by 2020, 85% of the relationship will happen without human interaction. So we have to find a way to replace that one-to-one conversation. Fast. -And technology – particularly marketing automation – is the proven way forward here. For example -- this stat from Forrester, companies that nurture customers, that is, have ongoing, marketing automation powered conversations with them, really see more traction and lower their acquisition costs. -Finally, we don’t want to lose any more time! In fact, Gleanster finds that top performing companies have had marketing automation for two years or more. So we want to get going! I share all this because cold, hard data. The sort you see here? This is a really powerful way to connect with your c-suite on why marketing automation and why now. You want to make sure it factors into your business case. Speaking of business case…
- Let’s talk about the brass tacks of creating a business case. In my experience, presentation varies. Some organizations have preferred templates to create them, some have preferred formats – word, powerpoint, etc. – so find that out. But regardless, you’ll likely be asked to cover some very specific points as you present your case. Right off the bat: clearly state your reasoning for implementing marketing automation. How do you expect it will help you with your marketing efforts and revenue generation goals? How would you like to see the marketing department improve with marketing automation? Better lead qualification? Lead nurturing? Cross-channel communications? Again this is where data from trusted sources can be a huge help. Where you can find them, supply proof points (like the data on my last slide) for success and business-specific ROI data. Here at Marketo, we have an ROI calculator on our site you can use for that endeavor. I’ve also found that the data from other, similar businesses that you’ll find in case studies can be an effective benchmark for business cases.
- Next, make sure you’re providing some context. This is a mistake I see business cases make a lot – they assume that everyone in the business is deeply familiar with what’s currently being done in a specific area of the business. As your business case escalates, you may find it moves further and further away from marketing and you need to ensure that everyone understands the change in your customers, the techniques you’re currently using to engage them, the structure of your marketing organization, and how marketing automation will fit into your current day-to-day. Some questions to answer here are, Which types of campaigns do you currently run to reach your goals and how effective have they been? Are you running email campaigns? Events? Mobile campaigns? This state-of-the-business detail will feed into the next two areas you’ll want to cover…
- Like investment and costs. This is a big one, probably the first thing your CFO will look at if he or she is involved! You need to give a solid estimate for deploying the marketing automation solution you want to pursue. A tip here is to do what you can to incorporate all associated costs – not just the technology itself. For example, if you’re hoping to bring on a partner to implement or train, etc. You’ll want to account for that so costs revealed later in the process are not a reason for a ‘no’ after you’ve found executive buy-in.
- Finally, we come to change management. How do you really expect the rubber to hit the road if you implement this solution? As they say, the devil is in the details: Who’s going to own the implementation process? How long will it take? Is there a project plan? Who will run the system day-to-day? How will they be trained? If this sounds like a lot of planning, know that answering these questions ahead of time will actually make the process much easier and go a long way toward getting your c-suite onboard. Having a person and a plan for the change process alleviates a lot of ambiguity. So let’s talk briefly about that plan...
- One way to put together your change management plan is to think of – and present -- the process in four steps. Discover: where you understand the business objectives connect them to marketing automation. Here, you’ll outline your implementation strategy, KPIs, and involve stakeholders. Define: where you Introduce marketing automation to your team and advocate for its position in marketing practices. At this point, demonstrate how you will actually use the platform. Deliver: this is where you create a governance board and start kicking your plan into high gear. Start executing the outlined strategies. And Drive: The ongoing piece, where you use marketing automation to mature your capabilities. But who owns all this?
- Once you’ve got your business case ready, you need to get the wheels in motion. You know that marketing automation would be a beneficial addition— not just for the marketing department, but for the whole organization. Someone needs to act as a primary change agent— the one person responsible for making this evolution possible. This person needs the vision, courage, knowledge, and skills to move your company toward transformation. To really get everyone onboard with the vision, they need to be: brave and open to scrutiny, because they are going to have to stand up to questions and have conviction in the results that will be achieved really action-oriented, so they can move the plan forward, realistic in their goals – so you hit the goals you set for the project and keep everyone’s faith in the investment And finally, capable of getting stakeholders onboard. Not just leadership, either, but folks like sales who have skin in the game too. More about that in a second. Many of us are ready to be that hero. But if you can’t be the one, find a colleague who can be. Oftentimes, I have found that the biggest impediment here is organizational clout, and if that’s your challenge too, a direct manager can be a good place to start – either to be that agent, connect you with one, or to give you cover while you move the ball forward yourself.
- So what about everyone else who is affected by marketing automation? As I mentioned a second ago, your change agent should really be prioritizing their buy-in too. Probably before you start looking for an executive sponsor. Knowing your immediate colleagues or sales managers if you have them, for example, are all for the change, will make it a lot easier to get the CMO to get on the bandwagon. This will change how they do things – for the better – but they’ll want to feel like they were a partner, not an afterthought.
- Once you’ve built your case with sales and other stakeholders, you’re ready to look for an executive sponsor. Getting the enthusiasm of executives is all upside: It makes your project more reputable with stakeholders. Executives are better able to communicate the need for technology throughout your organization. And, they also have direct influence over resource allocation – money, people, and so on. So you can see why getting an executive champion is one of the most important and challenging stages of implementing marketing automation.
- How do we get an enthusiastic leader onboard? Start by setting up meetings with members of the C-suite. In general, some things to keep in mind as you meet with these folks: One is that you should have your business case at the ready. Consider sharing it with an executive summary so it’s easy for each leader to get to the things that matter most to them. Another tip: give some deep thought into the “What’s in it for me?” (the W-I-I-F-M) for each of the people you’re speaking with… it’s sort of the persona-based marketing equivalent of appealing to the c-suite, right? And more about those personas in a second… Finally, each organization varies. Some of us – many of us I’d bet – have a CMO, VP or SVP of Marketing who would own this initiative. That’s absolutely where I’d start. But you may require buy-in from different people, so it’s a good idea to have a plan for how to sell marketing automation to a few of the executives in case your first attempt falls through, or in case you need to present the business case to others. So let’s talk about the motivations and questions you need to be ready for from each executive…
- You’re probably familiar with the CMO or equivalent at your organization. They are your first stop, most likely, because they’re the obvious choice to get onboard with marketing automation. As marketing leaders, our CMOs are interested in proving and improving return on investment – and they like tools that do exactly that. CMOs are often the real customer advocates within an organization. So customer experience is one of their top concerns to factors into their assessment. At the end of the day, they really want to make marketing more relevant and effective so that they can drive more revenue.
- Because of these concerns, CMOs will have some likely questions that you can prepare for. First, what’s the cost and ROI of marketing automation? To answer this question, be ready to talk about your ROI estimates and the return other orgs have seen. For example, companies that use marketing automation report faster growth and 25% better revenue than companies that don’t, according to a Marketo Benchmark on Revenue Performance. Next, they may want to know what resources you’ll need. CMOs are interested in how marketing automation platform will impact the department’s structure. You know that marketing automation helps boost productivity, which will take a lot of data- entry tasks off the team in the long-run. And, if you choose to implement a marketing automation platform with a great deal of marketing expertise, it will be easy to ramp up and you’ll have lots of learning support. Your CMO may want to know about current gaps, too. Here, it helps to have a solid awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of your department, as well as the ways marketing automation would impact these areas. For example, maybe marketing’s lead qualification system isn’t as good as it could be, resulting in reduced sales productivity. Another thing CMOs always want to know about is the change management plan. You know that obviously everyone involved is on their team, and it can be hard to introduce new technology that will disrupt status quo, even if it results in huge improvement. You’ll want to take your CMO through your version of the 4-step process we discussed earlier.
- Next, let’s talk about getting your CEO involved. The CEO’s mission-critical goals are financial growth and beating the competition. Keep in mind that they’re held accountable by forces like your board of directors, and typically have a pretty big picture view. CEOs can be risk averse, and the questions you encounter may reflect that.
- The CEO will probably want to know first and foremost how marketing automation will impact the bottom line and growth. What you can explain here is that marketing automation will help you reach the right customers with a much more tailored message, which means more resources focused on building long-term relationships with buyers that buy. And of course, that means more revenue through new customers and better long term customer value as well. He or she may also want to know what your competitors are doing. You know, according to data from a survey from The Economic Intelligence Unit on behalf of Marketo, almost 20% of companies invest in marketing automation. And – if it’s relevant – companies with revenues of more than $5 billion are even more likely to invest in automation. It can be helpful to allude to some case studies here too – the ones we have on the Marketo site, for example, may include companies similar to yours. Another likely topic will be time to launch and time to value. So you’ll want to be prepared with a solid timeline that lays out how long it will take to roll out the platform and cite a few of the same ROI statistics you gave to your CMO. Lastly, be set to talk about resources. Your answer here should be in line with what you’ve told the CMO.
- If you find yourself selling marketing automation, know that more than anyone else on your c-suite, he or she is concerned with the profitable growth and managing expenses. Consequently, you’ll really want to be ready for questions that pertain to the dollars and cents of automation.
- To start, have a few stats at the ready – maybe the ones we talked about for the CEO or CMO – to illustrate how Marketing Automation can drive ROI for your organization. That almost certainly answers the CFO’s very first question. Next, you’ll really want to be ready to talk about why this initiative should be prioritized. Your CFO is always hearing about new ways that someone in your organization wants to spend money. It helps to highlight how marketing automation can help tie marketing activities back to revenue, which means more purposeful marketing spending overall. It helps to point to a few competitors that are already using marketing automation to reduce waste and drive revenue. Finally, since the CFO is in the position of containing risk, they may want to know whether marketing automation complies with any advertising and marketing regulations that might apply to your organization. You’ll want to research this and come to the table prepared.
- If your organization includes a sales team, the sales leader will be a very important person to get bought off on automation. To appeal to a sales leader, be ready to talk about profit and sales efficiency.
- Many of the questions that sales leadership may ask pertain to leads. Will they receive more, and will they be better? You’ll want to be ready with many of the same stats you presented to other leaders here – pertaining to both the quality and quantity of leads that sales can expect after adopting this new technology. Another concern sales leadership may have is will this slow down marketing’s lead gen efforts? We know the answer here is resoundingly no. In fact, you can explain that marketing automation enhances all parts of the customer journey, allowing marketers to generate leads more efficiently. And yes, sales will definitely want to know what sort of burden marketing automation may place on them. You’ll want to assure the sales VP that in fact, marketing automation should decrease the amount of non-revenue generating work the sales team will need to do, because ultimately, you’ll be providing higher quality leads that are ready to talk and much, much more likely to close.
- Last, but not least, is your CIO – often the infrastructure owner and the c-suite leader most concerned with making sustainable technology purchases. Be ready for them to care about how marketing automation meets current and future needs and ask questions accordingly.
- The number one question many CIOs will have is about security. Here, answers vary by platform -- for instance, Marketo is committed to the security of its platform. Our products are accessed across the internet from secure connections, tested for issues before release, and scanned for vulnerabilities frequently. Of course, as you research, make sure to review and assess each vendor’s security certificates. But will it integrate? Again, because your CIO cares about sustainability, he or she wants solutions that play nice with existing solutions. You’ll want to research potential vendors thoroughly: do they integrate with your CRM or ERP systems? How easily, and how well? For example, Marketo offers deep standard integrations with platforms like Netsuite, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics, to name a few. Along those same lines, your CIO may want to know about how much you expect to use your marketing automation solution – after all, they don’t want to purchase wasteful technology. The pain points you address in your business case should help here, so the CIO can understand how you intend to use the solution, and the day-to-day role you intend for it to play.
- So now that we know how to position marketing automation in its best light to members of our c-suite leadership, here are a few more tips to counter some of the “almost-no’s” you might hear.
- If your organization has a full slate of events or campaigns coming up, you may hear pushback that now is just not the right time. This can be frustrating, because of course, we’re marketers. There’s always an event or campaign coming up, right? If you hear this, I would recommend that you channel the sentiment. Now is the perfect time, because it will help you get more out of upcoming programs and future programs. The more marketing program activity you have, the more you can look at results, determine ROI, and invest in things that work. When it comes to getting marketing automation up and running, the sooner the better.
- You may hear that you don’t have the staff to get marketing automation going. And yes, it’s true that it doesn’t run itself. But there are a few things you can mention: one is that you can have consultants or agencies help you ramp up. Companies that do that often find they only need to spend a few hours a week—to run some reports and tweak your campaigns and workflows—to see meaningful ROI. And of course, success is ongoing. If you pick the right system, you’ll get even more from the system over time as your staff grows in size and skill.
- Finally, you may hear a chicken or the egg type statement, for example, that you don’t have enough content. The truth is that most companies – big or small -- don’t start with tons of content. What’s you need is a plan to create that content. For example, say you want to send out content every 3 weeks, and you have 4 pieces at the moment. In that instance, you have 12 weeks to create something new. You can suggest a cadence of building new content that works for your organization – and remind your executive that marketing automation will free up a lot of administrative workload that could be used for this purpose. You can also repackage content like blog posts and newsletters – the sort of taco bell approach to content where you’re using the same ingredients! With this approach, you’ll grow your content library over time.
- So let’s recap. When you’re selling your vision of marketing automation, start by understanding how marketing automation can support your goals, personally and organizationally.
- Channel that into building a business case.
- Make sure you’ve considered your change management plan and chosen a change agent.
- Get your plan out to your stakeholders.
- Find an executive sponsor by appealing to the specific perspective of each executive for buy-in.
- And finally, handle the push back you encounter to keep the train rolling.
- With executive support, you’ll be the marketing automation hero your organization needs. Before we end, just a few key takeaways. C-Suite support is a big part of making technology like marketing automation work. Treat these conversations like targeted marketing! Focus on the executive persona to speak to their unique pain points and concerns. And finally! Build a strong business case first. It will see you through all of the conversations we covered today.
- I think we have time for just a few questions now. Can you provide an example of documentation that would be helpful in making the business case? Sure – most organizations are going to be looking for a written business case or a deck. As I mentioned earlier, your organization may have a preferred template or format, but if you’re looking for a generic example, you can find an internal selling deck on the Marketo website as well. Is there a benchmark for number of employees it should take to run a marketing automation instance, if I’m asked this in speaking with C-suite members? Great question. I’ve seen organizations with one marketer, all the way up to hundreds, using a marketing automation platform. A big part of this is which platform you choose to use. Marketo, for example, is robust, but very easy to use – so it’s very adaptable for marketing departments of all sizes. I’d look less at benchmarks and more at what your organization is hoping to accomplish, and of course, how the platform scales. Because as you succeed, you’ll want something that you can mature with as a user. Do you have a general idea of what the timeline to integration should be? Another good question. It varies on so many factors. What’s important is finding a pace that works so that you’re managing change in a way that makes the solution usable and effective for your organization in the long term, and of course, finding a partner that can advise you on best practices, accommodate your pace, and provide the support and expertise you need along the way.