THOUGHT LEADERSHIP IN THE MARKETING AUTOMATION ARENA

http://www.stephendebruyn.comThought leadership in the marketing automation arena 

I attended the B2B Marketing University event organized by marketing automation firm Silverpop this week in downtown San Francisco.  The Giants tickertape parade was held on the same day in the city, so no shortage of excitement getting to the event location.

The presentation schedule contained some highly relevant content of interest to anyone who wants to understand more about changing buying and sales cycles, content marketing, and prospect engagement.   Presenters included Adam Needles from Left Brain Marketing (he formerly played an evangelist role at Silverpop), Mac McIntosh from Acquire B2B, Carlos Hidalgo from the Annuitas Group, and Will Schnabel from Silverpop.

Supported by a considerable amount of research data, Adam Needles presented a convincing argument that even though the B2B buyer might still go through the same reasoning process during the buying cycle, how he or she obtains relevant sales information, and from whom, has radically changed.   Buyers today leverage the wealth of information available on the Web in order to orient themselves in a given marketplace, and identify and select vendors.  This presents challenges as well as opportunities for the seller.  The balance of power in the relationship has shifted to the buyer - so the seller better adjust, by providing content that is relevant to the buyer during the various stages of the cycle, and presenting that content via the online channels and platforms used by the buyer.  

Research shows that there is a significant disconnect between the buyer and seller in terms of where they spend their time during the sales cycle – buyers spend the majority of their time in the early stages of the cycle, whereas sales is almost exclusively engaged in the final stages of the cycle.   This is remarkable, and presents clear opportunities for marketers to engage buyers during the early stages of the cycle, and nurture them along the path to purchase through dialogue and support with relevant content.

 All in all, presenters came to very similar conclusions as we did at The Thought Net – see our presentation on the Buyer Cycle Revolution.  However, we focused more on the opportunity which today exists for organizations to present a thought leadership position during the early stages of the buying cycle.  We also believe that sellers should increasingly focus on engagement via social media outlets, platforms and communities, as that’s increasingly where buyers congregate to gather content and obtain advice from peers and colleagues.  In addition, we believe that the engagement tactics outlined above should not be limited to prospects – significant revenue benefits can be extracted by developing engagement strategies with existing customers.  This is an area which historically has been neglected by both marketing and sales.

All in all, with these event series Silverpop is really practicing what it is preaching – carving out a thought leadership position for itself in the marketing automation space, by providing prospective buyers with highly relevant and captivating content.  An excellent iniative…