How to Avoid a Marketing Automation Catastrophe

In this environment, many of your peers have turned to marketing automation as the solution.  The conventional wisdom says the technology will solve the lead gen deficiency.  Here’s the problem: 3 out of 5 marketing automation implementations fail.  The organization spends a lot of money on the software and expectations are high.  Unfortunately, the results are slow coming.  It was the CMO’s idea, so their credibility takes a huge hit.  Making matters worse, the sales team steps up their complaints about marketing’s contribution & effectiveness.

Our research shows that the #1 reason for implementation failure is lack of content.  If marketing automation is the car, content is the fuel.  Without fuel you go nowhere.  The majority of marketing departments struggle to produce sufficient content to fuel marketing automation.

There are two approaches to fixing the content problem:

1. Outsource
2. Leverage internal resources

OUTSOURCING

Outsourcing is an easy fix.  Most marketing department are short-staffed.  They lack the bandwidth for dedicated content production.  The downside to outsourcing is lack of buyer knowledge.  No one knows your customers like you do.  A third party isn’t close enough to produce relevant and contextual content.  To resonate with buyers, content must be contextual.  It must speak to your buyer’s goals and objectives, struggles and obstacles.  Outsourcing produces generic messaging. Get a copy of our Internal Marketing Team Strategy Deck here.

LEVERAGE INTERNAL RESOURCES

Avoid the temptation to outsource content creation.  No one knows your buyers better than you do.  Leverage internal SMEs to produce relevant & timely content.  To pull this off build an Internal Content Marketing Team.

What is an Internal Content Marketing Team? It is a department dedicated to custom content production.

What does an Internal Content Marketing Team do? It produces content in enough quantity and quality to meet the needs of the marketing & sales organizations.

What is the impact of an Internal Content Marketing Team? It fuels marketing automation and enables marketing to deliver timely and relevant content.

INTERNAL CONTENT MARKETING TEAM

There are three steps to building an Internal Content Marketing Team (ICMT).

1. Department Strategy – The first step to creating ICMT is defining the department strategy. In this stage, there are many decisions to be made.  Things like: marketing goals, target audiences, campaign themes, media choices, promotion plans, SEO strategy, etc.  You need a good road map if you want to pull this off.
2. Department Design – The second step is designing the department that runs ICMT.  The output of this stage is an org chart with required roles, job descriptions and headcount requirements.  Do you need full-time or part-time contributors?  Will you hire dedicated copywriters and art directors?  Who are my internal Subject Matter Experts? Do I need media partners?  These are some of the questions addressed in step #2.
3. Department Execution – The final step in the process is executing on the strategy.  Here’s where you see fruit of your labor: blog posts, eBooks, white papers, newsletters, webinars, etc.  You have done your buyer research, leveraged your SMEs and produced compelling and contextual content.  You are now ready to fuel marketing automation to deliver the right message at the right time.

CALL TO ACTION: Content Creation is by far the marketing leader’s biggest challenge.  They all struggle to produce sufficient content in enough quantity and quality to enable lead generation efforts.  Without content your marketing automation experiment will fail.  To produce relevant & timely content, leverage internal resources.  These are the SMEs who know the buyer best.  Stand up an Internal Content Marketing Team and watch your lead gen efforts take off. Get a copy of our Internal Marketing Team Strategy Deck.