The goal of marketing remains the same

My first takeaway was that the end goal of what marketing as a function is trying to achieve  has not changed at all. People want to buy from companies they trust. The goal of marketing is to build trust with potential customers and maintain that feeling of trust with existing customers.

Before the dawn of the digital age, word of mouth was the most popular method that people used to decide what to buy and from whom. Existing customers served as trusted advisors for potential new customers.  Building trust is the way that companies sell to and keep their customers today as well.

Then what has changed?

What is different today, is that now there is so much information and so many ways to get that information, that it becomes hard for the customer to figure out what is true and who to trust. An interesting statistic that was shared at the event was that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last 12 months.

In addition, the buyer could search for information on the Internet or receive information from companies in the forms of emails, SMS messages, notifications through the website, messages on Facebook, Twitter and many other ways. They could also search or receive these messages on their desktops, laptops, iPads, mobile phones or smart watches.

It is the responsibility of companies today to help the buyer cut through the noise and consume the information that is relevant to them and helps them figure out what product or service will best meet their need. The challenge or opportunity, depending on how you look at it, is how do companies leverage all this data and these different technologies to deliver relevant messages to people through their preferred way of receiving them? The focus should be to begin building this trust with potential buyers and existing customers by making them feel like they have a 1 on 1 relationship with the company.

What technology trends can help you do this?

The 5 key technology trends that were the underlying theme of most sessions at the event were:

• Cloud – In the State Of The Cloud report by RightScale, 95% of the enterprise organizations that were surveyed used cloud technologies. What that tells me is that IT organizations are moving away from managing hardware to managing software. The availability of applications in the the cloud has raised the bar for performance, stability and time to market for new functionality. This has leveled the playing field to some extent as similar capabilities could be available to companies to use as they try to sell to, service and keep their customers.
• Mobile – Technology companies have been talking about making their tools available on a mobile device for some time now. What is new is that they are now talking about mobile first and mobile only. Techcrunch predicts that by 2020 there will be 6.1B smart phones in the world. Compare this to the projected population in the world in 2020 at 7.7B people. A large number of the smart phones will be the only devices people use to run their lives and their business. This makes it all the more important to figure out how to build products that are easy to use on a mobile device and also build those relationships with potential buyers and existing customers using this device.
• Social – Human beings are social and want to be part of a community.  Though communities have been around forever – the difference now is that they are online. Social is nothing but an online community – the size of which is controlled by the individual. Social is both an outbound messaging channel so companies can deliver targeted messages using Facebook or Twitter; and it is also a data source to get to better know your buyer. Social is no longer just a marketing channel but it has also become a place where companies can service their customers and sell additional products to existing customers.
• Data Science – Vcloudnews states that every day 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created online. What does that even mean? The challenge is making sense of this data so that companies can use the data to better understand their buyers.  This  is in fact a science, because if analyzed and leveraged correctly companies can create superior, personalized experiences for their potential buyers and existing customers which will undoubtedly lead to more business for the company.
• IoT – My definition of IoT or the Internet of things is the ability for a device to record an activity and trigger a communication when a certain condition is met. Companies have only started to scratch the surface on the use cases for this. The concept of devices triggering actions has been around for a long time – e.g. a thermostat that turns off the heat when a certain temperature is reached; but what is different about IoT is the ability for the device to trigger a communication that can be accessed on a variety of devices when something happens.

Some companies get excited about the potential that these new technologies offer, others are overwhelmed and not sure how to best leverage these. What is important to keep in mind is the end goal – building trust through a personalized and superior experience. Use only those technologies that help you  achieve that objective. Remember, at the end of the day, these technology trends simply equip us, and it’s really the relationship with your customer that matters.

Although Mautic is still young, we’re amazed at the community that we’ve been surrounded by. As we seek to foster this growth, we thought we’d share some key themes for how to develop a vibrant, connected community.

Change Your Language

When we set out to develop Mautic, we started with an idea. We wanted to change the way people looked at marketing. We wanted to level the playing field for every business and help them connect with their audience in a meaningful way. But we knew it was going to take a special group of people who felt as connected to the vision as we did. This is true of any brand. But it had to begin by changing our language. How often do we talk about “converting leads”? Whether we like it or not, we are conditioned as marketers to consider our buyers as potential leads, instead of individuals who are part of a community. It may be semantics, but if your brand wants to build a true community, you will see them and describe them differently. It will also change the way you interact with them.

Would you rather be considered a lead or a guest? Disney has built a culture and a brand that seeks to interact with people in a different way. It permeates their brand and the language they use everyday. In the book Built To Last, Jim Collins describes the terminology that Disney uses to build the voice of the Disney brand.

• Employees are “cast members.”
• Customers are “guests.”
• A crowd is an “audience.”
• A work shift is a “performance.”
• A job is a “part.”
• A job description is a “script.”
• A uniform is a “costume.”
• The personnel department is “casting.”
• Being on duty is “onstage.”
• Being off duty is “backstage.”

These simple changes to their language reinforces the message they seek to communicate. It also greatly impacts the customer or “guest” experience. If you’re like Disney and your central message is “making people happy”, you will not call your guests, potential leads.

Make Community Sticky

In their book Made to Stick, the Heath brothers reveal the key elements to making ideas stick. These core tenets are vital to not only growing ideas, but communities as well. They are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories.

• Simple: If your mother doesn’t understand your core message, start again. Your central value statement should be simple and easy to interpret.
• Unexpected: How do you get someone’s attention? You must be willing to do something that is out of the norm. How about giving away powerful software for free?
• Concrete: No business speak here. Your message must not mince words. You must say exactly what you mean, and mean exactly what you say.
• Credible: Does your message backup your value? How can people determine this? Are there reliable sources? Can your community test your product or service?
• Emotional: This often makes people in business feel uncomfortable. Research shows us again and again that we are driven by emotion or feelings. Don’t be afraid to get real.
• Stories: Who in your community uses your product or service? What are they using it for? Is it changing their life in some way? These stories will serve to further connect and fuel your community.

Mautic is filled with individuals who have gravitated to these principles. Leaders like Takuro Hishikawa in Japan, Rodrigo Demetrio in Brasil and even more in Europe, Thailand, the US and around the world. These individuals jump in and help others by equipping them with translated documentation. They gather their network to share common ideas and solutions. They take their free time to assist those who are trying to setup and troubleshoot. This is community.

Everyone who has contributed to Mautic has engaged and participated because they believe in one or more of these “sticky” principles. It connects them at a level that is deeper than simply intrinsic value. It’s a feeling.

Feelings and Idea Flow

In addition to the key elements above, when a community is developed, it must not remain stagnant. There is a flow that naturally comes from collaborating with others as we move toward the realization of a common ideal. In the book Social Physics, Alex Pentland highlights this with the concept of idea flow;

“Synchronization and uniformity of idea flow within a group is critical: When an overwhelming majority seem ready to adopt a new idea, this convinces even the skeptics to go along. A surprising finding is that when people are working together doing the same thing in synchrony with others— e.g., rowing together, dancing together — our bodies release endorphins, natural opiates that give a pleasant high as a reward for working together.”

It feels good to be part of a team that works together to realize a vision. This is not simply research. This is a physiological fact. When you feel connected to a community that is aligned around a common goal, your body engages. It gives you that sense of accomplishment, a sense that provides feedback in the form of emotional satisfaction.

The Right Kind of Community

We’ve highlighted some key elements to developing your community online. But we must be careful to grow the right kind of community. It is not simply a “group of people that share a similar characteristic”. This is more about facts and figures than principles and ideals. True community is a “feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.” This definition is what makes our communities sticky. Promoting this concept and designing an idea flow by helping each other achieve our goals, is what will truly connect us.

This translates directly to how we market and sell. When we recognize that sales creates customers and that community creates advocacy, it changes the way we interact. We will make efforts to connect with them using a different language, on a higher level and with a common purpose.

This approach works. Over the last year and a half Mautic has seen tremendous growth. We have used these principles to grow a simple idea into 10,000 communicators who have used Mautic and a community of over 4,500 individuals who consistently interact with and share the vision of a marketing solution that thinks differently.

As you seek to reach your audience and develop your brand, what are other principles you’ve discovered to help your community grow? Share them in the comments below!

Many businesses use the word free as a lure. They will offer their solution to us without initial cost, then convince us to pay after seeing the value of their solution. But is that truly free? We would argue these are trials, not free solutions.

“Free” Marketing Automation

Lately, we’ve seen many businesses offer “free marketing automation software”. But are they? Mautic is free and will be forever. But this is not a marketing concept. This is a philosophy.

When we set out to produce marketing software, we were compelled by our mission. To empower organizations by providing powerful communication tools to anyone who needed them. Free speech is a freedom we often take for granted. To provide a solution that empowers free speech is an incredibly powerful concept.

GNU Free Software Definition says:

We campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. When users don’t control the program, we call it a “nonfree” or “proprietary” program. The nonfree program controls the users, and the developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power.

So while others offer “free” marketing automation tools, read the fine print. Because free for a month isn’t free. It’s bad marketing.

Authentic Marketing

We believe in the concept of authentic marketing. Authentic marketing is about value and values, it’s not about trickery. When we have something of value, we don’t need shady marketing to communicate it. Marketing should be the artful way we convey and connect individuals to that value. So for our marketing efforts to be effective, we must consider trust as a key element for connection. If we continue to use trickery, we diminish not only our brand, but our value proposition.

As marketers, let’s strive to be authentic in the way we communicate with buyers. We can’t be lured into traditional marketing schemas. Our values AND value must shine at every step of the customer journey. The Young Entrepreneur Council encourages us:

Don’t get trapped by marketing dogma. Think outside the box and be willing to take risks, so long as it’s in line with your philosophy. For instance, blog openly about the problems your company seeks to solve in the world and how you’re working to overcome them by fulfilling your mission.

Honesty, truth and conviction. When we communicate our values using these principles, it is authentic marketing. And the data shows it’s what customers are seeking. Let’s not disappoint them. It’s time we start using our creative voice to engage buyers in authentic conversations and communicate with our vision, not archaic marketing tricks that convey false promises.

“… human nature dictates that people have a hard time genuinely connecting with, being close to, or really trusting other humans who (pretend to) have no weaknesses, flaws, or mistakes.’ This is not only true of human connections; it’s true of our relationships with brands.

We encourage you to join our community. Because free is free. Forever.

The business is an interesting collection of talented individuals. They’re comprised of educators, strategists, programmers, artists, designers and more. The variety of talent gives them an advantage over their competition. But more importantly, their collaboration creates innovative solutions for their clients.

The solutions they produce are highly visual in nature. These large images help communicate strategy so that employees can understand the “big picture”. Associates can then have a dialogue with their peers about important, strategic issues. The visuals unlock understanding, that words so often, can not.

The Team

The outcome of these engagements were often riddled with “a-ha” moments. They are moments when an employee would stop and say “I get it!”. The visuals provided a much clearer picture than a presentation filled with bullet points. But the visual isn’t born out of thin air. It takes a close partnership between the business strategist and the creative artist.

The development of these visuals always begins with the problem. It starts with the team sitting down with the client and listening to the challenges they face. Each team member hears the problem from their own point of view. These unique perspectives add immense value to the solution. In today’s marketplace, the collaboration between marketing and software development teams will become invaluable. This partnership can spark innovation and will be more powerful when they work together. And as marketing continues to move online, development must have a seat at the table. They will play a vital role in growing the customer relationship.

The Collaboration

This partnership between the artist and the strategist is important. Even though their views are different, the goal of engaging associates is the same. Likewise, the collaboration between technology and marketing is critical. These two functions have operated in silos. They are focused on their own goals, without consideration for the other.

The collaboration between marketing and software development will become invaluable and more powerful when they work together.

The collective reset button needs pressed. Teams should tear down their silos and realign on the purpose and goals set out by the organization. What is that purpose and goal? Creating seamless user experiences that add value at every stage of the customer relationship. Media buyers used to operate in lock step with marketing, and many still do today. They work together to understand how customers buy products. But communication channels are changing. Digital is now how we reach and connect with our audiences. Many organizations must work to help teams come out of the dark ages. They must forge bridges of awareness and understanding.

The Approach

So what approach do we take when aligning marketing and development? Marketing automation is a perfect place to start. These two teams must converge to meet today’s customer demands. Just like the artist and the strategist, aligning around the common goal is where we start. People would always wonder how an artist and strategist could work together. With a common goal, these two different views always produced incredible results.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the roles of marketing and software development. Although unique, they are two sides of the same coin. How does this collaboration work effectively?

• Listening: Strong developers and designers always begin by listening. Both these roles need a thorough understanding of the problem. This understanding is important before thinking through the problem and crafting the solution.
• Design: Any approach to solving a problem requires a big picture view. This view reveals all the elements that may impact the desired solution. Trusted marketers understand the entire customer experience and likewise, trusted developers are focused on creating structure and order in their code.
• Focus: Good marketing and design requires simplicity. There should be one single theme or idea. Great developers create beautiful code that works well with as little “extra” fluff as possible. This focus removes clutter and aligns our efforts.
• Vision: One of the most important elements that developers and marketers exhibit is vision. Marketing should take into account customer buying trends and consider feedback from their audience. Developers should also look ahead. Potential problems should be identified and resolved before they become an issue.

This approach, combined with a common goal, will create more meaningful value. And at the end of the day, that is what we want for our customers.

Marketing automation is becoming a more integrated way to do business in the digital age. It’s clear that these two roles not only have common ground, but approach their work in a similar way.

We are excited about the community of Mauticians that represent both marketing and development. It has, and will continue to, provide us with the ability to meet the needs of organizations around the world. It is in this special collaboration that we can provide tools to help you reach, engage and develop relationships with your audience.

We can also become too mired in the details of our journey. And if you have children, you know exactly what I’m talking about. “How many hours will it take to get here?” “I have to go to the bathroom.” “Why are we stopping?” “I’m hungry.” And on, and on it goes. These are indicators that they our precious cargo are more interested in the destination than the importance of the journey. Seeing the big picture can offer us a view that is holistic, and gives us insight that we might not otherwise consider. That is why this final post in our big picture series is focused on starting your marketing automation journey.

Big Picture

As marketers we can become so hyper-focused on specific goals, campaigns or initiatives, we forget the broader context with which they fall into. This big picture view is critical as we begin to understand how marketing automation fits within our business. It’s important to remember that our understanding of this view will enable us to make the right decisions on how to automate our processes and marketing tools.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve highlighted broader systems that your organization needs to consider as you evaluate the big picture view of marketing. It begins at the business strategy level, then works it’s way down to your marketing scorecard and goals. As you determine the metrics you would like to impact, it is imperative that these blend into your customer touch-points and not override them. If our customer journey becomes secondary to your goals, we are missing the point. The customers’ journey to your business is the windshield of your marketing efforts. It should be clear and unobstructed.

The Roadmap

With that, let’s climb to a higher altitude and see the big picture landscape of our marketing automation journey. First and foremost, marketing automation is not a bolt-on solution. For automation to be truly successful, you must consider all of your marketing efforts en masse. Some think that a landing page with a compelling call-to-action is all their organization needs to integrate automation. But this is a shortsighted view. Consider our road trip. Let’s say it will require multiple days to get to get to our destination. If we plot our course without considering the climate, construction and traffic at each stop, we may miss alternative paths to help us get there in a more effective and efficient manner. What if it is quicker to go around the big city? What if construction is slowing traffic down?

This is true of your marketing automation journey. If we consider our customer touch-points and lay that context beside the omni channel approach, we will begin to see paths and connections that we may not have considered before. This is one of the key approaches to automation that often gets overlooked. The layering of channels and touch points is as vital to the creation of automated processes as content creation itself. If we don’t evaluate the intersections of the customer journey in connection with the channels we communicate through, our efforts will fall flat.

Start Your Marketing Automation Journey

So now that we have a map of our marketing automation journey, where do we go from here? This is a conversation that will be entirely unique to each organization. We are extremely excited to have assembled a community of developers, users and marketers that have plotted their own journey’s and have committed themselves to share what they’ve learned with you. Mautic is unique in that this community cares about your success. This is not a profit game. This is a journey of connection. You see, when you win, we all win. Here are a few thoughts to get your marketing automation journey started.

• Assemble your team: As we’ve noted in previous posts, your marketing efforts involve a number of teams. As Macy’s discovered, Macys.com was having a significant impact on in-store purchases. The online team learned they had to work with brick & mortar and understand how the customer searches and purchases.
  

  “We used have 2 separate silo’d budgets, we really now have one Marketing budget. And we look at the best way to spend that, what’s the best allocation, what’s the best media mix, whether it’s digital, offline, how do they work together to deliver…yeah of course the most sales, but really, that best customer experience.”

  For more information on Macy’s teamwork, click here.

• Understand your customer: This goes without saying. When you understand your customers needs, you will be more in tune to their purchase cadence. You will know more about their buying habits, how they seek your product or service out and what tools/communities they use to evaluate. This will help you deliver the right value at the right touchpoint.
• Determine the channels: The channels which you communicate and connect with your audience, will be incredibly important. If your customers are online, than connect with them there. If they are in your stores, connect with them there. If they are in both places at the same time, make the connection seamless. Don’t tackle every channel if your customers aren’t there and don’t automate what you don’t have the structure for.
• Automate with a goal: You should never automate without a set of goals you are seeking to achieve. Automation should further assist your audience/customer in meeting their need. It should never be self-serving. When you deliver value, your customers will remember. They will follow you because you care more about meeting their need than meeting their bottom line.
• Review and verify: This is as critical to the process of automation itself. Always be testing. Always be analyzing your audiences’ behavior and purchase cadence. This is an area that, as marketers, we need to become more adept at understanding the information that is being gathered with every click, every visit and every purchase.
• Adjust course if needed: Marketing automation is not a “set-it and forget it” proposition. It is a complex digital conversation that grants you access to the voice and cadence of your customer. Your customers change. They are constantly looking for value in every area of their life.

Remember, your marketing automation journey is more about relationship building than it is about channels, touch-points and data. With every piece of information you learn more about who your customers are, what their likes and dislikes are, and how they desire to be connected with. Our job is to listen, and trust that we’ve provided value at the right touch-point, through the right channel and at the right time.

For a full-size PDF of “Your Marketing Automation Journey” visual represented above, click here.

Before we get started I fully recognize that there are a number of different individuals from different industries who are reading this. So when we talk about communication channels, I want to be clear that the channels represented here, cover the basics of marketing communication. There will likely be other channels that are not included in this list, that are relevant to your industry that you will want to consider.

It is critical when we talk about automating our marketing channels, that we understand why we are automating, what we are automating and how we are automating. Each channel will have it’s own unique goals and approach related to the why, what and how. This will become apparent as we begin to unpack the different channels and how your customers are using them.

At a high level we’d like to outline the following channels;

• Social Media
• Google & SEO
• Corporate Website
• Customer Communication
• Mobile Applications
• Customer Communities
• Brick & Mortar
• Feedback

Understanding Omni Channel

As we look at the holistic customer journey, one of the terms that you will see is omni channel. This term simply indicates all the marketing channels along your customers journey to your organization. The typical sales funnel is being uprooted by new channels and processes everyday. Your customer may learn about your product or service by walking down the street, seeing a Facebook post and browsing Instagram, among a variety of other ways. Understanding this will help you see your communications differently.

Let’s remember that as you evaluate all of these different channels, consider how automation can assist you in connecting with your audience, gathering data about your customer, but more importantly bringing value to them. This omni channel approach should help you see your marketing differently. It’s time we begin looking at marketing not as campaigns or headlines, but as value creation.

“It’s time we begin looking at marketing not as campaigns or headlines, but as value creation.”

Now that we’ve defined our communication channels, we need to determine how each channel fits into the broader goals of our strategy. As we discussed in the scorecard post, what are the critical metrics that you are trying to move and what are the levers (or channels) that will help you move them?

This activity should be done with each channel. Remember, engage your team! As you begin to outline which metrics are impacted by which channel, you will begin to see how each channel can be utilized to gain the traction you’re looking for.

For starters

Let’s take a look at a quick example. Imagine one of the metrics on your scorecard is to increase awareness, and add leads to your CRM system at a trade show. As we review all of the channels you are currently communicating through, there are definitely a few that would be relevant. Social Media, Google & SEO, and your corporate website. These channels could all be used to drive awareness (among others) for your involvement at the show. The key is to now review all of customer touch-points and see if there may be an opportunity to drive awareness through them as well.

Now let’s consider how automation could help us achieve this goal. Here are just a few ideas to get you started;

• Prizes: Determine a “conference only” prize that when visitors visit a website landing page, they will automatically be entered in the drawing. Then share the landing page on social media to gather more leads. Be sure to note they must be present to win.
• Deliver: Bring value to your customers from the booth. What can you deliver at the conference? Think about your product or service. Are there things you can do to help them overcome their challenges in small doses? Be sure to scan their conference card in order to receive it.
• Promote: Determine what the conference #hashtag is and begin developing blog posts prior to the conference related to the topics that will be highlighted. Share these posts via social media and include the conference #hashtag and then direct visitors to visit the booth. You can gather their contact information and provide the value you positioned in your marketing efforts.

This example represents the front end of the customer buying journey. It is a relationship generator. What happens when you get that email address is critical. If you truly want to develop a deeper customer relationship, don’t keep asking for the sale, add value. When you add value, the process of marketing automation will feel invisible and you’ll develop trust.

Over the last week or so we’ve covered a large area with a couple of high altitude posts. First we outlined customer touchpoints. Then we discussed the scorecard. And then we highlighted the initial stages of automation. In our final post of the series, we will be reviewing the entire cycle in a visual that will assist you in continuing the dialogue with your colleagues.

Is there a specific example you would like us to cover? Comment below and we can provide a case study that is specific to your needs.

Last time we discussed the importance of starting with outlining the customer journey. It is critical that your business starts here. Your business and marketing goals should be always be aligned to understanding, and ultimately meeting, their needs.

As noted above, although you may find yourself in the marketing function, it goes without saying that the function of marketing should be to engage customers while supporting and driving the overall business objectives. Marketing should never sit on an island. Your marketing goals should be aligned to this “north star”.

The Marketing Scorecard

All of these goals will ultimately be incorporated into your marketing scorecard. The tasks and goals that you’ve researched, discussed and aligned on, will be the foundation for how your business keeps track of success. We would like to provide you with a quick overview for how you can develop your own marketing scorecard. This combined with your customer journey will be used to develop your marketing automation strategy.

• Improve Awareness: As you assess your current place in the market against competitors, what are the strengths of your solution should you be sharing? What are the value gaps you can expose in your competitors, that your product or service offers? What are some relevant content areas that you can explore? How do you begin telling the marketplace about them? What new and unique channels can you use to share these stories?
• Generate Leads: Every business needs customers. Although we in the industry calls these leads, they are people. People that have needs that you would like to fill. As you review the customer journey, where can you connect with them? Generating leads is about meeting your customers needs. Meet them where they are at. Assess their journey and provide value and the “leads” will follow.
• Increase Sales: This is where engagement becomes relationship. It’s when the customer decides that the value they sought out, is worth the money you’re asking for in return. If your solution truly brings about a value exchange, then you have an incredible opportunity to extend that relationship into something much more valuable.
• Drive Loyalty: This is the brass ring of any business. When a sale becomes something more. Apple, Nike, Starbucks. These organizations have delivered value AND an experience that enriches our lives. They are adding value after the sale. As you craft your scorecard, don’t simply stop at the sale, find opportunities to delight the customer long after the sale is done.

Bear in mind that these are high-level scorecard metrics and are designed to be a starting point for you and your team. Each one is a broad category that encompasses other more specific measures that will ultimately focus on individual goals that, if developed well, are SMART.

Marketing is not an Island

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, this should not be an exercise you accomplish on your own. There is value in reaching outside of your function to ensure that you are creating a holistic scorecard. Consider the functions that impact each and every area of your strategy. There could be a new scorecard metric that is waiting to be revealed, that will have a significant impact on your business!

Later this week we will drill down even further and start to assess all the communication channels that will help you drive your strategy and connect to your customers and impact your metrics. As you begin to unpack these high-level metrics, what are some underlying measurements that you are tracking? Share them in the comments below.

Well that depends. Before we go too far down that track, we’d like to offer some guidance. No, we’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re here to give it away.

In full transparency, we’ve been working tirelessly on a marketing automation solution that is top shelf. It’s open source, filled with flexibility, plays nice with others and is, well…free. At the core of who we are, we want to make marketing tools available to every organization that needs it. But what is a valuable solution without the instructions? This goes beyond documentation and how-to’s. It is strategic. We’d like to share an approach that we trust will help you understand the marketing automation landscape and determine how all these solutions fit together for your organization.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we’d like to offer our thoughts on how to assess your current state, further understand your customer buying cycle and develop a plan for implementation. All in an effort to help you customize your own unique approach to marketing automation.

The Touchpoint

In today’s post we want to highlight the value of the customer touchpoint. So many organizations today think that a few simple email campaigns will unlock the door to endless customer engagement and profits. This is simply not true. For your company to be truly successful you must learn that marketing automation is about understanding the big picture of your customer.

It’s critical in today’s marketplace, that you not only understand what customer need you’re meeting, but understand each touchpoint you have with them. During the buying cycle, there will be many times that you have an opportunity to create a meaningful, value-filled connection.

Step 1 of understanding how marketing automation fits within your business, begins with laying out your purchase/sales process and evaluating each customer touchpoint. We would like to provide you with a few thoughts to help get you started;

• First, write down the steps in your sales process from left to right. (Tip: This process should be cyclical. You never want to end the process with a sale.
• After you have identified your sales process, under every step, write down all the different touch points where the customer is involved/connected with that step. Does it involve contact with an associate? When do customers interact with your product or service? List all of them out. Even ones you think are outliers.
• Now you’ve written down each touch point your customer has with you and your product or service. There are a couple of additional questions that will take this exercise to the next level. Evaluate each touch point. Are you being proactive or reactive? What value can you bring the customer at each step that would delight them?

We’ve provided a high-level example of a sales process to get you started. Keep in mind this is a 50,000 foot view. If your process is more complex, there are likely many additional channels under each step that will require further evaluation.

Don’t Go It Alone

You should not lay out this process or answer these questions alone. Each and every function in your business likely has a touch point and channel they are responsible for. Whether it is the cashier or the accountant, the salesperson or the receptionist, these touch points will provide you with a holistic picture for the areas where you can add over-the-top value to your customer, with the ultimate goal of developing a long-term relationship. To start you off, there is an HBR presentation that could assist you in beginning to see and understand the cumulative customer journey.

But outlining these customer touch points is just the beginning. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the opportunities to connect with your customer will continue to grow. So it’s important to make each and every connection count.

Understanding the big picture of your customer buying journey, and the touch points that impact them, will help you assess the areas you need to improve. But before you invest in a marketing automation solution, it is important to realize that automation will not increase your sales, creating meaningful customer experiences will.

Stayed tuned for the next installment of the Big Picture of marketing automation where we will discuss how to outline your goals. The blueprint for your marketing automation efforts.

What is Asset Management?

The term asset management has historically been used predominantly within companies keeping inventories of physical products. Asset management was the way these organizations tracked inventory levels, the availability of products and other tangible resources. But in the marketing world today this term has come to mean something a little less specific. Asset management in marketing is defined as the management of a digital resource and the monitoring of all activity associated with that resource. This means an asset can be any number of things: a white paper, a PDF, a PowerPoint, a movie, a spreadsheet, etc. These assets are not something that will be used up or spent but rather a digital resource your company wishes to make available to your target audience. (Questions about your ideal customer or how you should define them? Read this article about finding and marketing your target audience.)

Now that we understand how asset management is related to marketing we can begin to look at how you manage these digital resources within Mautic.

Assets in Mautic

When you use Mautic for your marketing automation platform you have access to a powerful asset management platform as well. Mautic helps you manage digital resources and track a large number of metrics around each resource. Sometimes the best way to learn is by looking at a specific example.

Download Example

You have a product, a zip file, that you want to give to your audience. You could easily just give them a link to a file and they could download the file directly. But when you do this you have little to no real metrics about who is downloading, how often, or any other valuable information about your download. Instead, you use Mautic, and your marketing automation platform, now the file is being tracked within your platform and you have much more detail available.

You may want to create a form within Mautic. This form will collect information from your visitors before they download the file you have for them. By doing this you are asking your visitors for just a little bit of information before giving them something. Your interaction becomes an exchange. Read more about the process of building good forms here. But beyond just the form aspect, Mautic provides many other helpful features. You can include your asset as part of your drip campaigns, you can create versions of your assets, and you can quickly see metrics as they relate to each asset.

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Asset management is very important to your marketing success. You need to take the time to properly create and share your assets and maximize the marketing effect each can bring to your business. Don’t waste your amazing content without getting something in return.