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1. How is Marketing Solutions different than other agency or service providers?
Answer: Our primary focus is helping B2B organizations improve their sales opportunities and overall productivity using leading edge automated web marketing systems. The combination of our resources and technology offer clients a systematic way to develop leads, improve conversion rates and increase the lifetime value of customers. We are not an advertising agency (although we work with them). Our sole focus is on web marketing strategies that produce measurable results.
2. What companies are ideal clients?
Answer: Mostly B2B organizations with longer sales cycles or companies that are interested in getting more from their marketing and sales investment. Companies that realize that yesterday’s go to market strategies are no longer productive.
3. How does your interactive agency services differ from an ad agencies service?
Answer: Our interactive agency service is focused on implementing internet marketing strategies for clients that want to integrate on-line web marketing with their traditional marketing, but do not have in-house resources. We create, send and manage communications, pay-per-click programs and other tactics to develop qualified leads and convert those leads to customers. Ad agencies focus on creative and fulfillment services such as logo design, brochures and branding identity packages. We do not offer those services directly, but we do have strong affiliations with ad agencies and can connect clients to those resources.
4. How does MSI charge for services?
Answer: Our services are priced on a project basis. Typically, these projects are a combination of consulting, campaign design and development, management and reporting. We offer both fixed pricing and time and material (T&M) pricing, depending on how clearly the tasks are defined. Generally, there are fixed costs to create the client environment and variable hourly costs to develop and manage integrated web marketing campaigns.
5. What is marketing automation?
Answer: Marketing automation utilizes a rules-driven database program to manage and execute multi-channel communications based on the behavior, demographics and expressed interests of prospects or customers. Marketing automation advances the capabilities of traditional database marketing by combining disparate sales and marketing functions.
6. Do you license the systems you use to end users?
Answer: MSI is an affiliate partner with several product developers and Email Service Providers (ESP’s) for the purpose of managing interactive web marketing campaigns for clients. We do license the products we use to organizations that want in-house control for campaign management. However, we find it is generally more cost-effective for companies to outsource this activity since it requires multiple skills (e.g., copywriting, graphic design, HTML programming and campaign design).
7. How affordable are your services?
Answer: Extremely affordable, for several reasons. First, the investment to acquire our tools and collective resources can be 2 to 4 time the cost of outsourcing the service. Second, most companies already have budget allocated for marketing and sales support. By re-allocating budget, not spending more, companies can gain measurable insight to the effectiveness of all their campaigns. Lastly, the benefits our solutions offer generate a significant boost to sales productivity and marketing ROI. In most cases, our services will require less investment than the equivalent of one full-time exempt employee.
8. Our sales reps do a good job. How specifically would marketing automation help?
Answer: Automating lead development and customer nurturing offers similar benefits that a manufacturer would reap from automating a manufacturing process. The technology that exists today to automate communications, yet, maintain relevant and personalized content, was not feasible even just a couple of years ago. Web marketing and marketing automation ensures that sales touches occur at the right time, to the right person, with the right message. The sales team will use their time to build stronger relationships with existing customers.
9. We already use a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM), what’s different?
Answer: CRM systems are very helpful to capture data on prospects and customers and allow sales reps and managers to measure activity. They are also useful in daily reminders for follow-up tasks (e.g., letters, emails, phone calls, visits). However, CRM systems require someone to manually input data and execute tasks. This can be a tremendous administrative burden on the sales team, especially if you track all leads, not just qualified leads. Web marketing automation will execute follow-up tasks on behalf of the sales person and automatically route pre-qualified leads to them directly or via CRM.
10. It seems your services rely a lot on email. Isn’t SPAM an issue?
Answer: Yes, SPAM is an issue for all of us. However, most businesses today rely on email to conduct business. We implement only permission-based communications using best practices to ensure the highest deliverability and readership rates. In addition, we do not rely solely on email. Our systems include customized landing pages, interactive web forms, direct mail and telesales – all managed in and by the system using a rules-based automation engine. We believe in multi-channel, measurable communications using traditional and interactive web marketing tactics.
11. How can we determine if your services can benefit us?
Answer: First, take our self-audit. This will help you determine if you have opportunity to improve your sales and marketing strategies. Then, we can meet with you at no obligation to discuss your business needs and help you get a clear understanding if our services offer you a positive return on investment.
12. What other ways can web marketing automation help an organization?
Answer: Our systems are used by any business that has a repetitive need for on-going communications, such as training, internal communications, seminar registration, event surveys or on-line testing. Because we use a combination of web landing pages, web forms, email and rules-based automation, an organization can automate many activities.
13. What types of reporting is offered?
Answer: Analytics are built-in to our campaigns. We’ll provide weekly, monthly and/or quarterly reports demonstrating specific activity for each individual campaign and for the aggregate of many campaigns. You’ll see total activity for each individual person in the database including their behavior history, such as emails opened, links followed, survey completed and leads routed. If we integrate with a CRM system, this data flows to the CRM automatically so sales reps have a clear and complete history of exactly how their prospects and customers reacted to your messages.
14. We’re concerned about having our client data on servers other than our own?
Answer: This is a valid concern. Our systems utilize web-based software, also known as “Software as a Service”. This represents an evolution from “Software out of a Box” and offers many benefits. It is a trend in the software industry and security is paramount. Each client we work with has their own secure environment with redundant back-up. We are partners with Microsoft and SalesForce.com and must maintain the highest security with our systems to ensure the integrity of clients’ data.
15. What if in the future, we decide to bring the capability in-house?
Answer: This is an easy transition. All data will remain in tact. It would be a matter of changing access rights to the secure environment and adjusting the license fees.
16. Is there a minimum or maximum size of the database?
Answer: No. The size does not matter. What’s more important to know - is web marketing automation a viable approach within your specific marketplace and your sales process. Generally, we see databases, in the B2B marketplace, ranging from as few as 500 records to as many 50,000 records. Some organizations have a million or more records in their database. |
