– April 18, 2016
Marketing is now moving and evolving so quickly that no team can be successful without the right technology.
But with so many new tools available, how do you choose the marketing technologies most worth your time and budget? Check out our top five marketing technologies for demand generation.
1. Marketing automation continues to be the hub for demand generation. Marketers now leverage a number of tactics to drive leads into their marketing automation system, and then assign those leads to “targeted nurture tracks” according to line of business and stage of the buyer’s journey. Marketers then monitor the lead’s digital engagement and leverage explicit data captured on our progressively profiled forms to score the leads and determine if they are ready to pass to sales.
2. Every additional tool tends to be either integrated or used in conjunction with marketing automation, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software like Salesforce. Once a lead is deemed “Marketing Qualified” in our marketing automation system, it is aligned to a sales rep for follow up via our CRM system. Effective marketing teams track the status of a lead from “Assigned” to “Contacting”, and “Qualified” to “Disqualified”; monitoring the conversion rates from “Marketing Qualified” to “Opportunity” to “Closed Won”.
It is critical that your sales organization fully adopts the appropriate use of a CRM system, because “if it doesn’t exist in [your CRM], it didn’t happen.” Marketing leverages the data in the CRM to understand which programs are performing, to shift marketing spend to top performing programs and to substantiate further marketing investments.
3. Predictive analytics software is an emerging way to leverage the data from both your CRM and marketing automation tools to produce actionable insights. Essentially, predictive analytics leverages your existing data and augments it with third-party data to create predictive models for targeting your marketing efforts and prioritizing your sales organization’s hunting efforts.
4. When we’re talking about tools for demand generation, I can’t overlook one of the leading technologies that helps drive net new leads and engages existing leads in your marketing automation system: webcasts and webinars. Webinars rank high for effective B2B lead generation tactics, with 66% spending 20 minutes or more attending a webinar*. Momentum offers iMeetLive™ which allows you to easily host video webinar presentations that engage prospective buyers and accelerate them through the pipeline, ultimately driving business results. The iMeetLive™ solution, makes it incredibly easy to produce professional, branded web events and engage your audience through HD video, polling, Q&A and exit surveys.
5. Finally, perhaps one of the most overlooked tools that benefits your demand strategy is project management and team workspace solutions. With so many marketers focused on content marketing these days, having a tool to manage the content creation process, reviews, deliverables and communication with stakeholders and teams is critical. Emails and spreadsheets are no way to effectively manage these types of projects. Introducing iMeet Central, which makes it easier to communicate and collaborate with internal teams, external vendors and agencies from one integrated collaboration platform to complete projects faster. With iMeet Central, you are able to review, edit and approve assets online, eliminate version control issues, centralize communication and assign tasks and deliverables all through one cloud-based centralized tool. And another big plus: you don’t have to worry about firewall issues for your external agency vendors.
To try any of our solutions, fill out a free trial request or call us at 1-888-551-5925.
