Marketing Governance

Organizing your marketing operations is complex and time consuming. Especially for strong brands for whom consistence in cross marketing channels is essential. Paragon helps to streamline  marketing processes, so they can be simplified and costs and time can be reduced while quality goes up.

One of their customers is the Dutch insurance company Centraal Beheer Achmea. They asked Paragon to help align their marketing and sales. Jorrit Drieënhuizen, account manager at Centraal Beheer Achmea, tells you why.

Matt Jauchius, CMO of Nationwide, discusses how he brought speed and agility to his marketing organization. The first step was to focus on changing parts of the organization rather than the entire organization. He hired new talent and made process changes. For decision making to be fast, a set of capabilities needs to be centralized while still empowering edge units that interact with customers.

Over the last year we have seen some initiatives on Augmented Reality (AR) applied to marketing collateral and editorial content. But now AUDI is launching an AR campaign to promote the R8 supercar.

AR is recognition technology that allows a person to see additional content such as a video, 3D imaging or web editorial when scanning a symbols on a printed media. So you think here we go again. Another piece of technology which is difficult to incorporate in daily marketing processes, another investment needed from your superiors with no real arguments, another nifty gadget with its true potential unknown.

But AR is different. For years we have been focussed on creating multichannel campaigns, aligning collateral production workflows and creating channel agnostic content. AR now brings it all together. We can use this technology to engage our customer and we can now track the use of mass media like its direct media. We can expect marketers to struggle with the application of AR and the integration into the marketing processes. But we will offer our customers a great 21^st century experience and in that process become 21^st century marketers.

Watch the movie at Audis UK Facebookpage

New Media Forecasts report, ZenithOptimedia found that the leading country in 2012 terms of new media adoption was Norway, with an average penetration rate of 38.8% across three key digital technologies – smartphones, tablets and IPTV.

It was followed by France on 35.7%, the Netherlands on 35.1%, Sweden on 31.3% and Denmark on 31.2%. However, balance will shift a little towards 2015. ZenithOptimedia expects the Netherlands to be on top in 2015 with a penetration of 65.1%, followed by France 60.8% and Ireland 50.2%.

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With Marketo, you can define and automate every step of your traditional marketing programs.

This Revenue Performance Management solution by software vendorMarketo focuses on the integration of Marketing and Sales. The program allows marketers to see in which stage of the marketing funnel leads are, and where action is needed. It includes an extensive email automation function and a detailed history of actions by potential leads.

Finally Marketo includes an analytics page, which makes it easy to measure ROI and predict the impact each program will have on revenue. The program also includes a feature to create custom reports, to zoom in on certain results.

All in all, its a program with a lot of possibilities. .

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Sales and marketing are many companies greatest costs. Yet few have any real idea how spending impacts business growth.

Its a familiar sound. While most companies are aware that their marketing department does something useful, or at least does something that costs a lot of money, they find it difficult to prove exactly how Marketing contributes to the bottom line. Software vendorEloqua recognizes the problem and tries to change this situation by educating CEOs and CFOs still doubting the accountability of Marketing.

Revenue Performance Management is the way to gain more insight into the revenue generated by Marketing and Sales, says Eloqua. By assessing Marketing performance on five parameters (Reach, Value, Conversion Rate, Velocity, and Return), Marketing can change from an art into a science.

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Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Development, Marketo have collected seven ways in which Sales Development can enhance revenues:

1. More consistent and better quality follow-up on leads = better conversion of leads into opportunities. Marketers live and die by whether their leads turn into opportunities. So when you have a qualified lead, you don’t want a sales rep to call once and leave a voicemail. You want someone whose dedicated job in life is to reach your leads, overcome objections, make sure they are a fit, and get them connected to sales teams.
2. Faster lead response times = better conversion rates. When a lead submits an inquiry on your website, the faster the response the better. According to a Lead Response Management study, the magic number here is five minutes. A five-minute lead response means you’re four times more likely to qualify that lead than a 10 minute response, and a staggering 21 times more likely to convert than after 30-minute wait. SDRs can focus on this fast response time whereas it will never be a quota-carrying reps top priority to jump on an inbound lead. Read More

Leading Through Connections. This study was based on face-to-face conversations with more than 1,700 chief executive officers and public sector leaders based in 64 countries around the world. The objective of the study was to gauge the perspective of CEOs and public sector leaders on emerging trends and issues. IBM has conducted this study every two years since 2004.

In the 2012 study, CEOs identified technology as the most important external factor that will impact their organization over the next three to five years. Just as important, it appears that CEOs are changing their opinions about technology’s primary role in the organization. IBM says the view that technology is primarily a driver of efficiency is outdated and that CEOs now believe the most important role of technology is to enable collaboration and relationships – between an enterprise and its customers, business partners, and employees, and among those same stakeholders. Read More

A recent study by software vendor Eloqua found that UK marketers are currently missing critical sales opportunities due to a lack of alignment between sales and marketing. The study, based on an online survey administered by YouGov, was created to better understand marketers’ priorities and concerns as they track prospects through the buying cycle.

The study found that 75% of UK marketers surveyed lack any type of lead scoring programme. Lead scoring programmes help the most qualified leads get passed to the sales team in a prioritised manner, improving sales’ ability to close deals. Additionally, 85% of the UK marketers surveyed do not have a lead nurturing programme in place. Lead nurturing programmes further improve sales close rates by staying top of mind with potential buyers who may not be ready to purchase at the moment. Read More

Improving the relationship between marketing and sales has become an important objective for many business-to-business enterprises. Changes in the way that business buyers access information and evaluate potential purchases make it essential that both work collaboratively to create and deliver compelling messages and materials.

Most of the efforts to improve this relationship have focused on the content of demand generation messages and materials and on the responsibilities of each in the lead generation/lead nurturing process. These are important issues that deserve the attention they’re receiving. But, there’s another component of the marketing-sales relationship that’s often overlooked—the reliability and responsiveness of the supply chain for marketing material (Sales collateral, promotional items, and point-of-sale materials). Read More