This is a follow-on post to “Going Further With Marketing Automation” written by Carlos Hidalgo for Marketing Automation Software Guide.” Click here to see the post.
I see a lot of confusion related to marketing automation. Carlos mentions this quote from Adam Needles’ blog stating that “Less than 25% of organizations that have implemented a [marketing automation platform] fully currently utilize its potential.” Carlos goes on to say that this research indicates that process, not technology, is the surest way to alignment. I take another conclusion from this as well – that these companies need to take a step back and look at process – and take another step back and look at strategy.
Strategy drives process and process drives technology. If you take the “going further with marketing automation” discussion strategically up one notch then companies will have much more broad questions to answer. Companies that have a good sized database to nurture and / or a significant amount of existing lead activity, will likely find that lead management makes sense. If building that database is the challenge or generating lead activity, the field opens up to additional possible activities that a company can pursue to generate demand for their products or services. And with all the decisions that need to be made in this case the starting point becomes strategy – not process – and certainly not technology.
The framework we use is called the Strategic Marketing Framework.
Strategic Discovery – To put this in perspective compared to lead management, this would be like a lead management audit but looking at a more broad portfolio of potential activities, vs. looking at the lead management process. The goal of strategic discovery is to identify strategic options.
Strategic Feedback – In strategic feedback mode the focus is more on ranking different activities to identify top priorities for the organization. In this phase we synthesize all the ideas coming back from the different experts and start to evaluate the strategic options that came out of discovery.
Strategic Selection – This step is all about selecting strategic options to pursue and selecting the right teams to execute if needed.
Execution – The teams you select execute the strategy that addresses your challenges. The end result might be to implement lead management, demand generation or some other strategy.
Bringing it all back to “Going Further With Marketing Automation,” lead management process should clearly drive marketing automation and not technology. And the Lead Management Framework put fourth by Carlos makes a lot of sense for lead management. And if you are considering lead management vs. other marketing activities, then the Strategic Marketing Framework can be a useful model for important marketing decisions.
