Marketing Automation Services, Demand Generation, and Lead Management | Allinio
Creative commons by Muffet
Last week’s Content2Conversion event was top-shelf; kudos to Andrew Gaffney (@agaffney) and the crew at DemandGen Report (@DG_Report) for getting a great venue, great speakers, and distilling it all into one day. Besides the timely content regarding content (snicker), there was something else that made this event a home run in our eyes.
The Cluetrain Manifesto 10th Anniversary Edition was written by Rick Levine (@ricklevine), Christopher Locke (@clockerb), Doc Searls (@dsearls), David Weinberger.
For those of you who never read it, let’s cut to the chase… [Read more...]
Here’s what The Marketing Consigliere thinks about 
The Essential Marketing Automation Handbook which was written by Ardath Albee (@ardath421) in conjunction with Marketing Automation platform vendor Genius.com…
The other week Think Outside the Inbox, a book you can purchase, was reviewed and this next review, a free ebook downloadable here is very timely.
Basically, The Marketing Consigliere recommends that you read both books, starting with Think Outside the Inbox, followed by The Essential Marketing Automation Handbook. “Think” is a comprehensive introduction to these concepts and should be read by anyone making a decision to purchase a CRM or Marketing Automation platform (which is most Marketers, since only a few early adopters are reaping the benefits of Marketing Automation at this time.)
If you have made a buying decision, or already have acquired a solution, you should still buy Think Outside the Inbox and download the ebook because it will succinctly yet thoroughly get you immersed in the concepts of Marketing Automation, although the techniques may differ from vendor to vendor. Fundamentally, it will help you create an effective lead scoring scheme, understand how to develop the appropriate content for each phase your customers’ buying cycle, and how to optimize your results by applying trial and error to your lead nurturing. Ardath Albee has indeed done a tremendous job explaining the “essentials” in this booklet (which also may be available in hardcopy format if you ever go to en event that Genius.com is exhibiting at such as Cloudforce).
Disclosure: A copy of this book was provided at no charge by the authors
Think Outside the Inbox was written by David Cummings (@david_cummings) and Adam Blitzer (@AdamBlitzer), both of Marketing Automation platform vendor Pardot.
In seven easy to read and understand chapters, this book is a very satisfactory primer on what Marketing Automation is all about and The Marketing Consigliere recommends that you get a copy. There are many solid lessons that you need to read and digest from it. The first thing that jumped out was their sharing of the Sirius Decisions study finding the the average B2B sales cycle is 22% longer than it was five years ago. The point is with a more both a more fluid buying process and selling process, where players come and go as if on the stage of a play, you need to institutionalize control of the process so as not to lose information as the actors “exit stage right.” [Read more...]
Jim Sterne (@jimsterne) is an A-List, top notch, impeccable luminary in the metrics arena. He currently chairs the Web Analytics Association, and is the driver of the eMetrics Marketing Organization Summit, which the Marketing Consigliere has been enjoying for years when it generously comes to the Washington DC Area. So The Marketing Consigliere took great interest when he found out the Jim has come out with another book.
His latest book, Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment, which came out last month, belongs on your professional library shelf. The conversation that is going online with or without you may be more important than you realize, and you need to at least start listening if not joining in.
With this book written by a well respected professional such as Jim, Marketers, especially B2B Marketing types, should understand that social media and social networking are here to stay and that metrics and measurement of same is mandatory.
AFCEA
The Marketing Consigliere knows many great B2B professionals in the Marketing Automation space. Many of them are great evangelists spreading the word of the promise of the growing number of tools out there that help firms drive revenue by aligning Sales and Marketing. However, he feels that there has not been a sufficient model that sets the stage for the transformation necessary to take advantage of all of these revolutionary tools.
Therefore, he has laboriously come up with a white paper that attempts to explain this through an analogy with a proven application of the model- that of the warrior, who seeks to dominate his enemy. This white paper is also an experiment – The Marketing Consigliere seeks feedback from other Marketers on this paper and will incorporate the input that helps make it better – instead of calling this “crowdsourcing,” he prefers to call this pro-sourcing.
