Before you invest in Marketing Automation and Personalization: Introduction to 4 big things you need to do
If you want to successfully implement new platforms for marketing automation, personalization, and measurement—you need to know your audience, you need your content to be structured for use, and you need a team that has the right skills and process to continuously measure and optimize. I’ve got some great advice for you to get everything in place.
While there are tons of articles about tactical executions with marketing technology, there are few that discuss where to begin, how to make sure your house is in order. So, this is a 4-part series about what you need to have in place BEFORE YOU BEGIN to implement marketing automation and personalization.
While you may already be well on your way to considering platforms to add to your marketing technology stack, there’s a lot more to consider than just plugging in or turning on the technology. In fact, integrating new technology often seems like the simplest part.
What I cover in this series: the building blocks of a next-generation experience
The promise is that digital platforms are enabling us to be more meaningful with our customers, that every experience matters, that it’s much broader than Marketing Technology — and that our ability to market extends far beyond product selection.
But if your business sells products and services that are undifferentiated with low brand awareness, there’s no question you need to focus on experience first and foremost — consumers and customers certainly know how to look for businesses that care more than others, and they’re all just a click away.
I’ve broken down the major topics you need to consider into separate posts:
🔺 Part 1: An Introduction (appears below)
- The history of one-to-one marketing, Marketing Automation and Personalization 101, the Digital Marketing Ecosystem framework, and questions to ask yourself right now.
🔺 Part 2: Do you have the RIGHT KNOWLEDGE of your customers and their expectations? Have you mapped out the needs of each role?
- I provide ideas on how you can create more granular personas and scenarios, that allow you to better target the right people.
🔺 Part 3: Do you have the RIGHT CONTENT and USER EXPERIENCE to benefit these individual customers?
- I provide ideas on site structure and content that automation and personalization platforms need in order deliver more relevant experiences.
🔺 Part 4: Is your business ready for a future of CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATION? Is everyone who contributes to the customer experience ready to work together? Do you have the right roles to command marketing technology?
- I provide thoughts on how to be structured for success.
PART ONE • Introduction
The 20-year-old history of “one-to-one” marketing … and we’re not there yet...
In 1999, at the dawn of the “new media” age, Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf were advocating for a new way to approach sales. They called it one-to-one marketing. Back then CRM was really in its infancy, and certainly the connection between marketing-led websites and the sales processes for most businesses was weak, if being considered at all.
But their premise wasn’t complex: for customer relationship marketing to be effective, a salesperson must be able to tailor the purchase experience to the customer’s specific needs, through listening and adapting for mutual benefit. Beyond the single sale, this approach should generally lead to greater loyalty and long-term customers.
But, these early advocates of one-to-one marketing noted the complexity as well, when they said “it’s one thing to train a sales staff to be warm and attentive; it’s quite another to identify, track, and interact with an individual customer and then reconfigure your product or service to meet that customer’s needs.”
That was 20 years ago — are we there yet?
I’m going to answer that question with a provocative statement: technically we’re closer than your business is probably prepared to execute, but we’re not there yet. But this introductory post, and the detailed follow-up posts to come, can help you get on your way.
A quick primer: How Marketing Automation and Personalization platforms enhance your digital experiences
Let me give you a short version of how these platforms work to make sure you’re on track:
- They use algorithms to drive your customers to specific content (from an email to a landing page, from page to page on a site, even over many visits) — but you have to be able to describe who a customer is through what you know about their needs and expected actions
- They can dynamically present one type of content or another (different people see different things) — but you have to create the majority of content that they present, and
- They can insert the next best recommendations, links, information that direct people down the path to purchase — but you have create the paths and teach the platforms what rules — what to show to whom and when.
Marketing automation & personalization platforms
use rules-based workflows to drive dynamic content — allowing you to provide a more relevant, efficient and successful experience for every visitor
These platforms put your content to better use
It’s 2019, I can make an assumption that you have a lot of content online already. That might include deep product information; ability to research by complex criteria and attributes; configuration of custom products/solutions; design solutions, best practices; accurate pricing, availability, delivery; quotes and commerce; training, installation, support. And you’ve put this content online because in general, you know it’s important to someone.
And that’s true — taken as a whole group, customers will want every type of information and content you have. But as individuals, people can be very different from one another, in what they need to know, in what they want at that moment.
So you have the content, but what you want to enhance is the experience — show each person what they really need, and make it simple for them to experience your business online. That’s the promise of these new platforms to help individualize the experience for everyone.
The first thing you need to do: Map the complete customer experience and decide what you know and don’t know
It’s 2019, and whether you’re in charge of the digital experience for a B2B-focused manufacturer that sells industrial products to business customers, or a building products manufacturer that caters to homeowners, I’m going to guess that you have a pretty thorough website, one that has products and solutions well organized, with an experience that was directed from a strong customer-focused strategy. You’ve built on-brand messaging and design, and hopefully have email and digital campaigns that work together to attract and nurture leads and drive them to your sales team.
But is your business able to identify, track, and interact to the level your customers expect? Can you quantify just how well digital is contributing to the sales of your business? That’s where rethinking your approach, the way you think about the sale, and implementing marketing automation and personalization features into your experience can take you to the next level — the level we’ve been shooting for for decades.
The Digital Marketing Ecosystem
This is Hanson Inc.’s version of the Digital Marketing Ecosystem, as seen primarily from the customer’s point of view (Search-Research-Purchase), and the points of marketing/content interaction with your business, and the underlying systems to power the experience.
Success today requires connecting across all touchpoints from driving awareness through marketing, advertising and social engagement (search), to supporting information gathering, evaluation and consideration with rich content and features on websites and apps (research), and turning desire into action, whether through traditional sales, distribution/retail, or eCommerce (purchase and support).
WHAT TO DO FIRST: Begin your planning by mapping out what you’re doing across this ecosystem, and noting what platforms are part of your MarTech stack.
Read part 2: Better understand your Audiences and what they really need
⭐️ Mike Osswald is VP, Experience Innovation at Hanson Inc., an Ohio-based digital agency that creates meaningful experiences enabled by technology. Contact us if you’ll like to talk further — we’d love to be a part of the conversation.
