When I originally had the idea to write this post, I decided to focus on our new marketing automation platform release and how the menu system had changed. I soon realized that the real story was not product-specific, but the underlying reason for the change; To align a menu system with how business-leaders today think about online marketing and sales.
So how is it that today’s B2B Marketing professionals think? Enter the 4Cs:
- Campaign: Think “outbound”… the catalyst to the chain of events that leads to a conversion at the end of the funnel, ie. tweeting, PR releases, email campaigns, etc…
- Customer: An anonymous web visitor, Prospect, Lead, Contact, or Opportunity.
- Channel: Inbound marketing avenues used by your customers to reach your content, ie. PPC ads, twitter, facebook, organic search engine results…
- Content: Web assets and artifacts such as website pages, landing pages, whitepapers, case-studies, or streaming videos.
More importantly, what led to this new method of B2B Marketing process?
A decade ago I might have said that marketers think in terms of Customers and Campaigns. The web wasn’t as inter-connected as it is today, the ability to track advertising spend was minimal, Google hadn’t made your content relevant, and email marketing was in its infancy. Today, marketers wrestle with the daily challenge of being able to identify which Channels are leading Customers to high-value Content, initiatied by Campaigns. Or to put it simply, which combination of the 4Cs is leading to the highest rates of conversion and sales. This can be a daunting task if it weren’t for the growth of marketing automation systems that tie all of this data together.
Central to the process, is a marketing organization’s ability to create, launch, and measure results. Marketing Automation systems today eliminate much of the heavy-lifting required to get a process such as this in-place. The primary benefit gained from a consolidated marketing platform, is that a marketer can launch a campaign, track customers through channels, analyze content and measure results (ROI) all in one place.
