of these companies bought Salesforce, for example, when they really didn’t have the resources to use it well.

Today we have hundreds of sales and marketing automation platforms, which makes things complicated for first and second time buyers in 2017. The good

news is that we’re seeing an influx of hybrid platforms that handle both sales and market-ing automation.

Examples include InfusionSoft and Jumplead. These platforms, and many others, manage your CRM, contact management, sales pipeline, inbound and outbound digital marketing and

P1 / Marketing Automation

Here’s how to choose well.

P2 / Marketing Measurement

Use these tools and metrics to impress your CEO and CFO.

P3 / Marketing People

How To Hire a B2B mar-keters

P5 / 10 Great New Articles from

Around the Web

b2bMarketology

>> CONT. PAGE FOUR

Harris CMO Partners 2017MARCH

Marketing tech driving you nuts? Here’s what we

learned from clients.

I can’t tell you how many of our clients have bought sales and marketing auto-mation tools and then ended up letting them sit there collecting dust.

Our clients are typically SMB tech and manufactur-ing companies in the $20-$150 million range. Some

Great Tools for Marketing Metrics

March is metrics month for B2B marketers. Use

these tools to gauge your success and report to your CEO.January and February results are in the bag, which makes March an ideal time to start checking assumptions in your 2017 strategy.Remember, marketing depart-ment metrics differ from CEO/CFO metrics. For marketers, metrics like marketing touch-es, click-throughs and conver-sions are key to understand-ing what’s working.CEOs and CFOs, however, much prefer metrics like CAC and M%CAC, which we’ll detail in this article. These are solid financial metrics appre-

ciated by CEOs and CFOs because they are accountable to investors for financial perfor-mance.

You need to provide both types. The data exists but sometimes requires effort to find it. Work with sales, IT and accounting.

Marketing techology plat-forms are broadening their

feature sets to include a range of metrics. The market is sat-urated with offerings so you’re bound to find something for your specific needs.

Marketing Dept. MetricsWebsite page viewsThis simple metric, viewed as a timeline charted against your campaigns, gives you a quick idea of whether your tactics are working.

A good starter tool is Google Analytics, which is free. In the ‘better’ category are SimilarWeb, Alexa and SE Ranking.Press and analyst mentions If you’re getting positive atten-tion from industry and financial press, your positioning, con-tent and outreach tactics are rockin’ and rollin’. Two free apps are Talkwalker Alerts and Social Mention . As your needs become more complex, you can move to apps like Mention and Meltwater.

Organic search rankingsThis is typically used to track your traffic and your compet-itors’. I like SEMRush; other top contenders include SEO ToolSet, MOZ and BrightEdge.....More

Mike Harris is founder of Harris CMO Partners. He enjoys writing about trends in B2B strategy and demand generation.

by Mike Harris

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>> READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE

On Demand- DemandWave The Hottest B2B Marketing Trends of 2017

Apr 5-6 DemandBase – Virtual Marketing Information Summit

Asking the right B2B mar-keting interview questions

when hiring a new marketing leader is critical to your compa-ny’s sales success.

The requirements for high per-forming B2B marketers have grown dramatically in the past few years due to rapid advance-ments in marketing technology.

Knowledge and efficient use of multiple technologies is now the baseline entry ticket.Unfortunately, more than a few B2B marketing candidates today lack the skills needed to find and deliver qualified sales leads.

As the interviewer, it’s your job to discover whether a candi-date’s skillsets will get the job done.

Why? Today’s B2B prospect acquires 70% of his/her knowledge about your company, products and services online before ever engaging with your salesperson.

In addition, the efficient use of automation and technology can significantly lower the costs of marketing....MORE

“Forget ‘tell me about yourself’...”

b2b marketing events

B2B Marketing How-To’s

Interview Questions & Anwers ...when hiring a B2B marketer cut to the chase quickly Webinars

On Site Events

Mar 7-8, San Francisco Sales Hacker & #FlipMyFunnel Revenue Summitt 2017

Mar 10-12, San Diego SEMRush Traffic & Conversion Summit

Apr 5-6, San Francisco DemandBase Marketing Information Summit

Apr 10-13, Las Vegas Marketing Sherpa Summit 2017

Apr 11-13, Boston - CMO Content Marketing Conference

Apr 23-26, San Francisco Marketo - The Marketing Nation Summit

Oct 3-6, Boston Marketing Profs B2B Marketing Forum

>> READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE

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Marketing Tech...continued from page one

provide easy-to-use dashboards for metrics at a glance.

Here’s what we’ve learned from our clients:

Top Down Support

#1 - Top down support is uber critical. If your CEO is not on board, let alone your sales and marketing leaders, don’t bother.

Pricey Is Not Better#2 - Go cheap at first and

grow from there. You can go to www.capterra.com and find a wealth of information on the top several hundred apps including features and pricing to fit your company’s specific needs and goals.

Right size, right price is vital. In my opinion, Salesforce’s Pardot is enterprise – for big compa-nies. Even though they have an SMB offering. Why? Because it’s complicated to onboard and use, regardless of company size.

Salesforce is the #1 platform I encounter where it’s installed but not used or used poorly. The smaller the company, the less likely it will have the human resources or patience to stick with it. Marketo, the most popular marketing automation platform, is enterprise for the same reasons.

Many of today’s apps will scale pricing as your needs grow. Pick one of these.

#3 - Understand that these apps are human resource inten-sive. You will need to dedicate at least one or two in-house folks to learn, use and evangelize the new platform. Accept that this will take a large chunk of their time.

#4 - Marketing automation integration with CRM is crucial. Marketing’s primary role is to serve as a front end for the sales team, so technology integration across both sales and marketing platforms is a must.

Products like Jumplead and Infusionsoft, in my opinion, are less complex and have a faster ramp up. Remember, there are dozens of others available so do your research.

SummaryUnderstand that all of these

platforms have a steep learning

curve, despite what they claim. I use Jumplead and my only com-plaint is that their help section needs a lot of help. But they are quick to answer questions by chat and email so I don’t stay grumpy for long.

By the way, investing in these tools has far more implications than just ‘automating’ sales and marketing activities. Proper use will yield critical information for corporate strategy, lead gen, conversion, metrics and other key areas.

Martech is a valuable tool. Do your research, buy only what you need for where you are today and expect to spend a lot of time ramping up.

If you have questions or need help feel free to email me at mike@harriscmopartners.com.

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1. 2017 marketing predic-tions from Marketo

2. CMOs reveal their martech plans for 2017, CMO from IDG

3. 4 content marketing things that turn off your audience from Content Marketing Institute

4. Agencies face tougher new business environ-ment – from eMarketer

5. Forget inbound, for-get outbound, it’s time for allbound – from Engagio

6. How to justify the cost of marketing automation – from RightSource

7. Building a $20MM product – from BuckFiftyMBA

8. How one landing page accidentally drove 300K emails – from BuckFiftyMBA

9. Lead nurturing cam-paigns – from Inturact

10. The top B2B con-tent marketing trends to watch this year – from Hubspot

10 Great New Articles from Around The Web

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About Harris CMO PartnersHarris CMO Partners is a Phoenix, AZ, based provider of business-to-business demand generation strategies and implementation focusing on strategy, tactics, people and technology. We also provide interim and fractional CMO services.

We believe marketing is a lot like fly fishing. Proper equipment, tactics selection and ability to read the stream are everything.

http://harriscmopartners.com

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