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There are now more people in the world with cell phones than people with access to electricity or clean drinking water. Consumers send over 500 million tweets and watch over 200 million hours of video each day just via YouTube. Many businesses have started to think about these changes in very small ways, such as the adoption of a “social” strategy or a tool like marketing automation to help manage all of their efforts. This is why we’ve seen adoption rates of marketing automation rise from 25% to 53% within 12 months among the 32 B2B Fortune 500 companies (Found in the State Of Demand report) — and yet less than half of those companies are using marketing automation correctly.
We now operate in a world where tools are no longer enough to get you to the next level of demand excellence. It takes changing the way you think about driving demand, in addition to tools and techniques.
Most companies know change needs to happen, but are reluctant, slow, or unwilling to change. This is killing modern marketing programs in those companies. Companies that are excelling at modern demand generation practices such as lead nurturing, on the other hand, are generating 451% more leads than those who are not using these modern demand generation practices. So I asked Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of Annuitas, what he’s seen in enterprise change management, and his thoughts on the need for change management for driving demand.
Research has found Marketing Automation being adopted by very large percentages of technology companies, yet many companies are citing they are not getting the value that they were expecting from their tools . What do you think is the largest reason why?
"The single biggest reason I have seen is that organizations fail to develop the right strategy and processes first. Their biggest failure point is that marketing organizations make the marketing technology the focal point, and technology should never be the focal point."
If the focus shouldn’t be on the technology, where should it be?
"Before adopting a marketing automation tool, organizations should define who their customers are in terms of their challenges, how they buy, what content they consume, how they consume their content, their purchase path, etc. They can then develop content that aligns to their buyers’ needs and buying processes, implement the right processes, and then enable this with marketing automation. Automation first rarely works and only brings a marginal improvement to organizations.
I was speaking to Nick Panayi, who runs global Digital Marketing for CSC, about the need for Change Management in terms of B2B marketing. He recounted for me the approach and journey they have been on at CSC. When he arrived at CSC, there was very little strategy or process in place when it came to their demand generation discipline.
Before he even started to talk about the adoption of technologies, he started with defining strategy and process. He said he spent his first three to four months evangelizing the “what could be” approach to those in the organization to get buy-in. While he admits they are still in the process of changing, he can see the benefits of patience, process, and strategy coming first — in essence, the change management piece being the catalyst, not the marketing automation itself."
The term "Change Management" refers to change, but I hear so many companies say they have changed. They say they do social media, blogging, and lead nurturing, but what else needs to change?
"I hear this in many organizations and what has changed is the fact that you are doing different things. But the more important question is: are you really doing things differently? The underlying reason “why” is important — not just the final execution. Just adding new tactics does not mean an organization is doing anything differently. When I use the term change management in regard to B2B marketing, I am talking about a fundamental change in the way we work, the way we think, the way we market, and our corporate culture. It is a pretty big change, which is why it takes time to occur in an organization. This is not a tactical change, but a strategic change. Without it, there will be limited advancements and we will continue to see a big disconnect with our target buyers."
My favorite quote from Carlos as we talked was, “When we think about the drastic changes that have occurred with Buyer 2.0, the approaches to buying, and the incredible change that has resulted, the only logical response that marketers can and should have would be to also change.” It is so true — the world in which we drive demand has changed, and if we fail to realize this, it will be really hard to succeed. The road to success in the future is not a simple path, but a journey that requires a lot of internal searching and an understanding of our consumers’ needs and why we operate the way we do. It requires a lot of change, not just the adoption of new tools.
To help you better face change, I’ve worked with Carlos to write an eBook (you can get it here). It’s here to help you understand the reasons you need to change, make a business case for what needs to change, and outlines the steps to managing change in your demand generation programs. I hope you find this helpful and empowering. Please reach out to either myself @msweezey or Carlos @cahidalgo on Twitter if you would like to further the conversation.
Mathew is the head of thought leadership for Marketing Automation at Salesforce.com Company. A consummate writer, he authors a column for Clickz.com on marketing automation, has been featured in publications such as Marketing Automation Times, DemandGen Report, Marketing Sherpa, ZDNet, and is the author of Marketing Automation for Dummeis (Published by Wiley February 2014).
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