Lead Me To Your Door

Marketing Cloud Value Part One: Assessment

“The long and winding road
that leads to your door
will never disappear.” – The Beatles

I doubt Paul McCartney and John Lennon were thinking about Marketing leads when they wrote that song in 1962 but I’m sure your Marketing department can relate. Getting leads to your door, website, or other continues to be a complex process.  You want it to be straight-forward for your customers but there are a lot of curveballs coming from different directions; and it is not just from your direct competitors. Distractions from other sources are everywhere so you need to keep your marketing initiatives focused to keep your buyers from getting lost.

Don’t let the path to your door disappear.  Educate yourself on the marketing tools available to feed and sustain your lead pipeline. 

The allocation of today’s business budgets has drastically changed as a result of our digital age; with much more emphasis towards marketing than in years past.  Online tools are a necessity regardless if you sell to consumers or business.  Studies show that a minimum 60% of business shoppers and over 80% of consumers do online research prior to a purchase. 

Budgets in general are shifting to accommodate the modern reality.  Although, February showed a recent dip in marketing growth at 7.6%, this follows an all-time August 2019 high of 8.7% growth per The CMO Survey. They also reported that spending on Customer Experience has increased by 71% over the last three years. WebStrategies predicted, “In 2020, the average firm was expected to allocate 45% of their total marketing budget to online.”

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With the expectations of marketing and CX budgets to rise to accommodate the new digital age buying behaviors, which marketing tools should you consider when beefing up your marketing strategy?

There are so many marketing products out there, you should first make an honest maturity assessment of where you are today.  Oracle provides free online marketing assessment tools to quickly assess your current state.  

Call to action

1.  Take the Modern Digital Marketing Appraisal to determine how modern you are. Rate your modern marketing sophistication related to:

• Data Integration
• Acquisition Sophistication
• Targeting & Segmentation
• Marketing Personalization
• Cross-channel Messaging
• Performance Optimization & KPIs
• Organizational Alignment
• Lead Management

2. Take the Marketing Automation Assessment Tool to assess your level marketing automation ranked against peers; specific to your role and function.   Go to the Oracle Marketing Cloud website and scroll down to the green “Marketing Automation Assessment Tool” link. Enter in your job level, company size, and select from 11 different roles to assess how you compare to your peers related to your marketing automation evaluation.

Both the appraisal and assessment provide a ranking of your current state and provide valuable resources for you to explore based on your maturity level.  This will help drive which type of solutions will be most valuable and relevant to your current moment in time.

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In my next post, I’ll take a deeper dive into the key marketing areas I think can have the biggest impact on your bottom-line based on the assessments we just discussed.  In the meantime, enjoy the marketing resources you can download from these assessments; that include insights and tips to further enlighten you on your journey to modern marketing and help keep those buyers knocking on your door.  

No proprietary information has been shared. This post and this blog are solely the opinion of the author.

*Sources:
27 Statistics Retail Marketers Need to Know for 2020 (Consumer Online Retail Search)
Top Ten Results from the February 2020 Marketing CMO Survey
WebStrategies: How Much Should I Budget For in 2020

Part One of Two: Value of Oracle Marketing Cloud