If there are areas of your demand generation programs draining your resources, it’s wise to consider the best ways to take the weight off your team.
Many manual, time-consuming marketing problems can be solved with technology; the right marketing tech will simplify complex tasks and improve results, such as by helping you meet new data-privacy compliance requirements or automating time-consuming lead data processing.
Unfortunately, MarTech can’t cure a lack of talent, substitute for broken processes or make up for a bad B2B marketing strategy. Depending on your specific circumstances, outsourcing certain demand gen activities to an agency or consultant may be good choice.
Read on to see whether any of the these seven demand generation services may be right for your team’s needs.
7 Winning Demand Generation Services
Service #1: Lead Generation
2017 HubSpot research states that lead generation is a top challenge for 63% of marketers.
The success of a demand generation program isn’t just measured by the volume of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) generated; the quality of those leads matters, too. And, no matter how you slice it, it’s not easy to get that quality. It’s especially difficult when you’re struggling to scale your results, managing multiple campaigns across an ever increasing number of demand generation channels to grow sales pipeline and marketing-influenced revenue.
With expert guidance into which of hundreds of engagement tactics is the best choice for your organization, you can reach the right B2B decision-makers and accounts in both local and international markets.
The right type of service can lead your program toward an approach uniquely blended to reach your program goals, using insights from leading data providers. The multichannel campaigns you need could mix programmatic display and third-party lead generation to support your account-based marketing (ABM) efforts. Speaking of which…
Service #2: Account-Based Marketing
Are you looking to fine-tune your demand generation strategy with account-based marketing?
ABM involves identifying and targeting key account decision-makers. The right approach to building an ABM strategy starts with establishing a solid criteria for account- and persona-based targeting.
While specific types of software for ABM can help demand generation marketers sync up data from multiple sources to find and engage target-account decision-makers, ABM services can further help you execute your strategy. With ABM campaign templates, tools to connect your campaigns with qualified lead sources and real-time performance monitoring, such services can help ensure your ABM programs live up to expectations.
Service #3: Event Data Management
Live and virtual events are undeniably expensive. Are you able to measure and demonstrate a return-on-investment from your event marketing?
68% of B2B marketers used in-person events as a marketing tactic in 2017, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s report 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends. 36% consider it crucial to the success of their program, according to the same research.
One of the most significant challenges to maximizing the potential returns on events is associated with data management. Such as translating spreadsheets of data from registration forms and business cards into contact records in the CRM.
Manual processing is massively time-consuming and can inhibit successful follow-up with leads in a timely manner.
Event data management services for B2B marketers provide the technology needed to automate event lead processing, including the standardization of data formatting and filtering of leads by qualification criteria. It automates lead routing by assigning leads to the right channel based on your standards; it enhances your data with trustworthy third-party insights and enables rich event performance measurement.
Service #4: Global Data-Privacy Compliance
Expanding data-privacy regulations are overwhelming many B2B marketing teams, especially with the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) right around the corner. Such regulations dictate how B2B marketers should be approaching topics such as consent and opt-ins?
The compliance climate is definitely challenging, and regulatory requirements are changing rapidly. Over half (53%) of enterprises expect to spend slightly or significantly more on achieving and demonstrating compliance over a 12-month period, according to the Thomson Reuter’s Cost of Compliance report. One-third (33%) expect additional requirements to arise in 2018.
Services designed to help B2B marketers manage the pressures of the GDPR and other global data privacy compliance requirements can allow you to maintain demand gen program velocity, without being slowed down by the steep requirements and steeper risks of new regulations.
The right service may guide you through collecting the GDPR’s required agreements from your third-party vendors, including customization by region and industry. It should also help navigate the complexities of new opt-in requirements and meet all the necessary points with consent language for each campaign.
For more info on how to prepare your organization for the GDPR – including ebooks, webinars, checklists and more – check out Integrate’s GDPR Resource page.
Service #5: Top-of-Funnel Optimization
Multichannel demand generation programs span many different paid and owned channels, from events to third-party lead gen to search and social media targeting. Commonly, B2B marketers face increasing pressure to scale the channels used in a campaign and struggle to achieve any sort of visibility across the top of the marketing funnel.
The right solution for orchestrating demand generation and automating efforts at the top of the funnel should address efficient campaign and source management:
Campaign Management
- Campaign templates to quickly modify and duplicate existing efforts
- High-level and drill-down monitoring of historic and live campaigns
- Tools for unified management of targeting criteria and campaign assets
Source Management
- Centralizing lead sources across inbound and third-party, digital and non-digital channels
- Budget allocation and pacing tools
- Real-time and historic measurement across lead sources
Service #6: Lead Processing & Routing
While B2B marketers can benefit from highly sophisticated technologies that enable predictive analytics and remarketing, many are still spending hours each week doing manual tasks that could easily be automated.
One of the most common areas of demand generation programs we encounter that could benefit heavily from automation services is lead processing and routing.
Many marketing teams spend dozens of hours each month manually reconciling lead data from different sources, in different formats and may be missing crucial fields. Getting data ready for upload is a time-consuming nightmare and the lack of automation in this process contributes heavily to the lead data quality issues plaguing the CRM and MAP of many organizations.
The technology exists to automate processing, including quality checking, standardizing formatting and consolidating delivery to your MAP and CRM.
Services to streamline your lead routing and processing can also improve the results of your marketing-qualified lead generation by automating routing to the right nurturing track or sales representative, ensuring you’re able to follow-up before your competition.
Service #7: Real-Time Optimization and Measurement
There’s a lot at stake if you rely on historic performance measurement, looking back at future results. You can’t win back budget lost on lead sources that performed poorly or content that just didn’t click with your target prospects.
Since demand generation is measured with full-funnel metrics, marketers need real-time, full-funnel visibility into performance. More importantly, B2B marketers need this visibility without having to spend hours crunching and consolidating data from disparate sources.
Services for real-time optimization and measurement should allow B2B marketing programs to import data from the MAP and CRM to be viewed in a unified dashboard, allowing marketers to view the real-time progression of leads and opportunities through the funnel.
Services for real-time measurement also allow demand generation programs to benefit from in-flight campaign optimization. By understanding what’s working from the moment an ad campaign is launched, you can make the most of your budget by removing the worst-performing lead sources, adjusting your budget, swapping out content or improving your targeting parameters.
To learn how the demand generation professionals at Commvault increased marketing-attributed deals 400% while decreasing budget spend by 25% with a real-time measurement and optimization service, click here.
Create Efficiency with the Right Demand Generation Services
While hiring a high-end strategy consultant may be a great idea if you require help with strategy, your team may benefit more from the efficiencies available in the form of a monthly software subscription. Services that create automation in your program and take the weight of manual tasks off your talent can provide dozens of hours each month in recovered efficiency, allowing you to invest talent, resources and energy where it counts.
