Capitalizing on Campaign Management = Yikes, We Need More Content!!

One of the greatest demand generation challenges that I have seen with every software company is the company’s ability (or lack thereof) to continuously develop compelling content to support campaigns. In many cases, lack of content is ‘thee’ showstopper.

And now, as more companies invest in campaign management systems such as Oracle, Eloqua, Aprimo, Unica, Market2Lead, etc., (refer to Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multitchannel Campaign Management 2009 for an entire list), many of these companies have the ability to (1) automate campaign generation, (2) better (or in some cases, start to) segment their market(s) and target audience(s) and (3) nurture leads (for the first time!), which will further exasperate the ‘content’ problem.

Consider these “as is” scenarios - before campaign automation.

(1) Before automation, we manually launch all campaigns, however simple or complex.
(2) Before (improved) segmentation/targeting, we don’t segment or we segment at the highest (limited number of) levels (e.g., target IT professionals versus LOB managers).
(3) Before nurturing, we don’t know where a prospect is in the ‘marketing pipeline’ so we treat all prospects equally and throw the same campaigns (and content) to everyone without regard to their interest level.

Consider these “to be” scenarios - after campaign automation.

(1) After automation, we can schedule campaigns to execute automatically, freeing up headcount to work on developing and executing more complex campaigns. By default, we can run more campaigns with the same resources, maybe even less.
(2) After improved segmentation/targeting, we can better profile a prospect by title, industry, interests, behavior, preferences, etc. and execute campaigns that are more specifically tailored to an individual (by grouping or segmenting like-kind prospects). This increases the number of campaigns.
(3) After nurturing, we know where a prospect is in the ‘marketing pipeline’ because we can ‘score leads’ and identify what campaigns/content to provide along the way from prospect first contact thru close (and beyond if we are up selling/cross selling into our existing customer base). Now, we can execute campaigns specific to the target, segment AND lead score, increasing the number of campaigns by another x factor.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s assume we are targeting IT professionals. In the “as is” scenario, we develop a number of campaigns with messaging and content that is the same for every IT professional regardless of industry, title, interest level, etc. In the “to be” scenario, we segment IT professionals in Financial Services/Insurance from IT professionals in the Manufacturing segment or the Health care segment and so on. Instead of a one-size-fits-all message to all IT professionals, we can now tailor each campaign to talk to the strategic issues each IT segment experiences (and hopefully play into how our software product/solutions address those issues). With Financial Services – it may be compliance. With Manufacturing, it may be ERP. With Health, it may be integration and so on.

We can further segment based on 'title' executing campaigns that talk to more operational benefits targeting managers and campaigns that talk to more strategic benefits targeting the VP level. Once we execute lead scoring, we can further segment and develop separate campaigns to first time visitors, xx time visitors, etc. and nurture that lead along.

Yikes! We need more content says the head of the demand generation team and begins dialoguing with Product Management, Product Marketing and outside consultants to line up campaigns and the unique content that is required.

Next post provides some ideas on how we can generate the content we need to support an increasing number of demand generation campaigns….

Some interesting links:

Top Ten Marketing Automation Software Vendors
Set Expectations by Scoring Your Lead