What Marketing Automation and Basketball Have In Common

Everyone needs guidance. Everyone needs a leader… someone who calls the shots. In basketball, that’s the coach. Five people running around on a court without a plan of action, is pure chaos. Nothing really gets accomplished, and chances are, you won’t score many points, let alone win the game. Putting a team together is the first step for playing a basketball game, but planning how to be successful during the game is the next HUGE step. That requires a coach.

The same goes for marketing automation. You need a power user. You need someone on your side to guide you to effectively utilize the platform and to make sure to integrate all essential components across the technology stack. Having a passionate power user on board means someone owns the solution, focuses on the platform daily, thinks about best practices and continuous learning, as well as how to optimize the solution for maximum results. Like a basketball coach, the power user ultimately can train, lead, evaluate, and is dedicated to optimizing the solution in every possible way.

In basketball, a coach calls to run the first play. Everyone is in position; the point guard yells “go!” and the screens, the cuts, the passes all happen. Sometimes the play works perfectly, sometimes not. But in the end, there is a game strategy. With some real-time assessment of the plays, and a little fine-tuning, the next time the play is run- its perfection. Score.

Just as in basketball, the marketing automation power user, or coach, plans how the marketing automation system is going to be deployed and implements some of the marketing best practices including strategic lead scoring models and nurture programs. Marketing automation is one of the technologies that helps enable an overall Demand Generation Strategy. But, that is the just the beginning. A nurture program or a lead scoring model that is turned on and is never again touched is a recipe for disaster. Just like your plays, it will need to be fine-tuned along the way.

Some ways in which marketing automation fine-tuning makes the power user essential:

1. Target audience is stuck in an email track and not moving forward. The problem could be something as simple as a field changed in your CRM solution that automatically updated the marketing automation solution field. As a result, they are being held in a step for the wrong reason. Check all fields and evaluate nurture streams for inconsistencies.


2. Target audience is downloading content and their behavior is being scored, but leads are not being passed to sales. It could be that your scoring threshold is set too high. Make some small adjustments in your scoring model and then evaluate lead flow.

The power user’s job is also to get leadership buy-in on strategic direction, to closely align themselves with the sales team and ensure the marketing automation solution helps meet both marketing and sales business objective and goals.

The following points should be discussed and remedied before a company even considers a marketing automation purchase or implementation:

1. Who will be your power user?


2. Is this person trained on the solution? If not, what is the plan of action to get them trained?


3. Does your power user have the time for implementation? Implementation takes time and resources. After implementation, the management of the solution is work as well –plan accordingly.


4. Are you willing to align your teams to map to the new lead flow? After all, implementing a marketing automation solution means that not EVERY lead will be passed to sales. What does that mean for your sales team?


5. Is your power user motivated to stay on top of all of the new releases that the marketing automation provider supplies? Most providers have quarterly releases that enable even more robust functionality than ever before. A commitment to training is essential.

Empower others within your company to become power users as well. Create a team of power users and you will maximize the effectiveness of your marketing automation solution. In the end, the basketball coach is there to make sure we do the best we can, maximizing efforts and results. Sometimes we lose, sometimes we win. But, when we lose, a coach looks for ways to improve the next game. A marketing automation power user has the same mentality, always looking for ways to become more effective and help drive revenue for the team.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/PerTD4