Meet Heidi Williams, Marketing Enablement Specialist with SmarkLabs.
What is your role at SmarkLabs?
At SmarkLabs, I am a Marketing Enablement Specialist. I work directly with our customers to establish marketing plans while also ensuring they have the resources needed to succeed.
Why did you join SmarkLabs?
Joining SmarkLabs was a massive leap for me. I was working in a different industry, feeling unfulfilled, and wanted to do work that felt engaging. When I first met with the CEO, I could tell how much knowledge he held in the marketing world, which was really inspiring. I wanted to move forward because I knew that working here would be exciting as I love meeting new people and helping them, but I also knew that the knowledge I would gain would be priceless at this stage in my career.
What is your favorite part about working at SmarkLabs?
One thing I love about working at SmarkLabs is the emphasis on continued education. In my first few weeks with the company, I completed multiple certifications relevant to the scope of work I’ll be performing. I am also challenged to get out of my comfort zone and work on projects that involve things I have never done before.
What are the toughest challenges ahead that your industry faces?
One of the toughest challenges when working in an industry like Marketing, which is constantly changing, is differentiating your company from the crowd. As we learn more about marketing, other companies are also learning. Differentiating your marketing from others will become increasingly important and challenging as time goes on.
What do you like most about your industry?
I like that Marketing is consistently growing and evolving. Marketers are always looking for new ways to improve, and I find it exciting to work in an industry with a surplus of new information to learn.
What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?
When I’m not working, I really enjoy baking and crafting. I have a huge sweet tooth, so I love to try new recipes. I like crafting with polymer clay, beads, and sewing/embroidering.
Did you know that approximately 42% of marketers still use spreadsheets for marketing attribution?
What is an Attribution Model?
Marketing attribution is the process of assigning credit for conversion to the various marketing channels that contributed to the sale. By understanding how different marketing activities contribute to conversions, businesses can optimize their marketing mix and budgets to better achieve their desired results.
Attribution modeling allows marketers to analyze how much credit each marketing channel and customer touchpoint should receive for a given conversion. A tool like HubSpot can make managing attribution even easier. Over time, marketers can utilize this approach to optimize their programs toward the touchpoints that drive the most value. These models focus on different touchpoints to better understand how the customer behaves when interacting with your marketing.
Why does Marketing Attribution matter?
Some of the different reasons that Marketing Attribution matters include:
Improved decision-making
Increased return on investment
Improved customer journey insights
When considering how these factors impact your organization, it is clear that they provide a reason to learn more about how to improve. With knowledge and the right tools, companies can get complete visibility into the online channels that drive leads and will no longer be in the dark regarding marketing attribution.
Improved decision-making
Understanding which marketing activities are most effective enables businesses to allocate their resources more efficiently. By mastering marketing attribution, you take the first step to move towards better utilizing strategic marketing and moving beyond tactical thinking. Having a clear plan allows your business to make informed decisions that create a positive impact and, in turn, generate more customers.
Increased ROI
Businesses can optimize their camp by attributing conversions to the touchpoints that played the most significant role in influencing a sale. Digital Marketing can help uncover the strategies and efforts that result in increased conversations and ROI.
Improved customer journey insights
By understanding how customers interact with your brand across different channels, you can better map out their potential customer journey. Marketing attribution can help you determine the specific content your potential customers like, the ways they like to communicate with your business, and the activity that officially converts them to becoming a customer.
What are some of the different types of Attribution Models?
Attribution models can primarily be separated into two categories: single-touch attribution and multi-touch attribution.
Single-Touch Attribution
Single-touch attribution models assign all of the credit to a single touchpoint. The selected touchpoint is usually the first or last touch. Other marketing touchpoints can easily be overlooked when using single-touch attribution, as only one touchpoint receives credit for the conversation. First touch attribution is awareness focused, while multi-touch attribution is conversion-focused.
First Touch Attribution
First touch attribution gives all the credit to the first interaction that led to the desired action or conversation. This specific model is easy to set up and track. It also helps demonstrate how a consumer is introduced to your brand.
Last Touch Attribution
Last touch attribution gives all the credit to the last interaction that led to a closed won exchange. This model can help you determine the touchpoint that influences the consumer at the end of their interaction.
Multi-Touch Attribution
Multi-touch attribution gives each contributing channel a portion of credit for the final conversation. These models are highly informative because they account for the entirety of the buyer journey and allow you to identify where you are having the most success.
Linear Attribution
Linear attribution looks at each interaction that a prospect had before the final conversation and gives equal credit to each interaction.
Full-path Attribution
Full-path attribution gives 22.5% of the credit to the first interaction, the interaction that created the contact, the interaction that created the deal, and the interaction that closed the deal. The remaining 10% is then evenly distributed across all other interactions.
Time Decay
Time decay gives more credit to the interactions that occur closer in the customer’s journey to the completed conversation. This model allows marketers to identify the touchpoints that have directly led to the conversation. The value of this model is based on where customers engage across the funnel instead of the impact the touchpoints had on the consumer.
How can utilizing Attribution Models benefit your business?
Utilizing attribution models allows you to identify the specific touches that are influencing your customer. By understanding the particular click that leads someone to interact with you, you can focus your efforts on bettering these practices.
There isn’t an attribution model that is considered superior to the others. That being said, different factors like buying cycles or business goals can make one model better than the other.
Which model is best for your business?
To determine which attribution model is best for your business, you need to identify the information you hope to gain. There is no shortage of attribution models to help aid your understanding of both consumer behavior and which touchpoints are the most impactful.
Combining multiple models is the best way to get the most thorough insight across the entire buyer’s journey. By implementing numerous models, you are utilizing your tools to the fullest degree to truly understand the activity that will drive your business toward success.
Legend Power Systems is a publicly-traded company with a technology solution that uniquely solves a 100 billion dollar problem in annual waste and risk for commercial buildings. Their intelligent technology sits at the center of the modern commercial building.
The Legend Power team began looking for a way to help their partners market, sell, and provide service to their clients most effectively. A new web portal would provide a unique opportunity in their market for partners to capitalize on the success of Legend’s technology solutions.
Challenges
Legend Power leadership began defining new processes and resources to best support their partners. The portal they envisioned would provide new and existing partners access to the latest training, marketing, and product resources. The portal would also need to facilitate an efficient and engaging experience.
Partner management software may have satisfied some aspects they desired, but it would lack customizable features and a fully-branded experience.
As with many new initiatives, technology was just one piece of the puzzle. The Legend Power team wanted to ensure their strategy and implementation processes would best facilitate success for their partners. They engaged SmarkLabs for guidance on defining goals, finding the best solution, and developing an ongoing strategy.
Solutions
SmarkLabs collaborated with Legend Power and assisted in the development of their partner program goals, strategy, and completion of their custom portal build over a three-month period.
First release highlights:
User login and profile functionality with permission-based access to relevant resources.
Organized content management system to populate and update resources
Deal registration automation with connectivity to HubSpot
Fully branded for Legend Power
Custom lead generation app to grade power quality
Results
The adoption of this program by Legend Power’s channel partners was above 90% shortly after its launch.
The overall build was a successful collaboration that required Legend Power and Smarklabs teams to work closely through the organization of content, as many processes continued to be defined alongside the build.
This portal now serves as a key differentiator for prospective partners evaluating new products to resell, as it is a first of its kind in the industry.
Thanks to this collaborative partnership, Legend Power continues to invest in the development of additional portal features that enable the success of its partners.
IngeniousIO is an innovative solutions leader in the AECO (Architecture Engineering Construction and Owner-Operated) space. Their data-driven platform enhances a company’s entire project lifecycle through the use of a cloud-based application. IngeniousIO’s platform elevates efficiency and reduces tech spend by effectively managing operations including business development, project execution, and more! Their goal is to eliminate internal and external fragmentation within the ten-trillion dollar AECO industry.
Challanges
1. Raising awareness of their platform. They’ve invested thousands of dollars and many years to create a platform that brings value to their end customer. These resources would be wasted without raising considerable awareness of their solution. 2. Promote their offering in an accessible and interesting way. Their end customer is not likely to read lengthy whitepapers or market research reports, so IngeniousIO must find an alternative way to present their solution. If done effectively, the true decision-makers should be aware that a solution exists in the market that solves persistent issues.
Journey
After doing considerable research on their end customer, IngeniousIO decided that the best medium to communicate their message would be through video. They considered different formats, including demo and customer-centric case studies. Ultimately, through conversations with SmarkLabs, they decided to produce a video that highlighted key product features in a humorous, approachable way.
Solution
SmarkLabs took the lead in writing a script that communicated IngeniousIO’s message, consistent with the goals stated above. Once finalized, SmarkLabs went to IngeniousIO’s office for an all-day shoot. Knowing that the video would be promoted across social media platforms, we collectively made sure that the run time would be less than 60 seconds. We shot multiple takes of each scene to ensure that we had the flexibility to choose the best option during the post-production process.
Implementation/Onboarding
IngeniousIO proved to be a valuable creative partner throughout the course of the project by providing the onscreen talent and offering helpful suggestions over the duration of the shoot. By limiting the shoot to a single day, we were able to respect the client’s time while also making sure we had their undivided attention, ensuring the end product shone brightly. Once completed, IngeniousIO charted a path for their video to be promoted primarily on YouTube through the use of paid advertising.
Results
IngeniousIO allocated roughly $200 a day for promotion on YouTube. Through July 15th, after four weeks of promotion, IngeniousIO has generated tremendous activity from their targeted demographic; they’ve garnered over 475,000 impressions and over 260,000 total views. But that’s not all! The total view rate of the video, meaning those who have watched the entire ad beginning to end, is an astonishing 54%. Since its launch, 41,000 construction professionals viewed the video in its entirety! While views of the video are nice, ultimately IngeniousIO was hoping to raise their number of inbound leads generated. This month alone, they’ve garnered over 550 click-throughs which leads the viewer to a sign-up form on their website. At this rate, assuming industry standards apply, IngeniousIO has generated 90 new sales qualified leads this month! Due to the success of this partnership, SmarkLabs and IngeniousIO plan on partnering together on digital and creative endeavors for the foreseeable future. Click here to learn more about IngeniousIO’s unique, value-driven offering.
Through an integrated market research campaign, CodeScience connected with targeted prospects, delivered value and improved its positioning as a thought leader in leveraging the AppExchange.
The Challenge
CodeScience had marketing resources and budget to allocate for an initiative that would help the company to connect with key prospects while emphasizing and further establishing its positioning as a leading developer of Salesforce AppExchange products. SmarkLabs pitched a number of ideas for integrated, full-funnel campaigns. After review and a collaborative call, CodeScience and SmarkLabs decided to leverage a market research strategy to accomplish these goals.
The Process
By laying the right groundwork, this campaign fueled content and drove strategy for months to come. Here’s the framework for the campaign, piece by piece:
Identify your persona and research targets. CodeScience uses an account-based marketing approach, emphasizing ideal-fit companies to work with, so we looked to target this demographic in the research: loosely, mid-size to large technology companies with at least one product on the AppExchange.
Define your offer. We wanted to create content that would be valuable to both companies who have developed on the AppExchange before and those who have not, but might benefit from doing so. The sweet spot: A report on strategies for driving adoption and revenue through the AppExchange, with research on what works best.
Determine your questions. What do you want to ask, why is that information valuable and how? We brought together key stakeholders to break findings into sections and reach consensus on the most valuable learnings, drafted a series of questions, and brought in a data expert to make changes geared toward extrapolating insights from collected data.
Build your survey. There are several tools to do this; we used SurveyMonkey for ease of creation. The survey had an immediate question to disqualify any respondent not yet on the AppExchange, and required a work email to confirm respondents fit.
Build your outreach and strategy. We compiled a targeted list based on account priorities, data on whether a company has an AppExchange presence. We also drafted a series of emails to go to this list until they completed the survey, scheduling six touches over the course of three weeks. An escalating incentive to solicit responses, which doubled if there was no response after the first touches, was also budgeted for and implemented.
Collect and process the data. In the weeks the survey was live, we collected about 140 qualified responses from targeted respondents. Due to the highly defined nature of the group, responses were solicited through targeted, private emails only. The data expert helped shape responses into clear insights and takeaways.
Create the report. We grouped and wrote through our key findings, publishing a PDF report within a month of completing response gathering and closing the survey. The report’s original iteration was downloadable behind a form on an optimized landing page.
Tell the world. Our promotion strategy ran deep. The launch of the report coincided with Dreamforce ‘17, Salesforce’s (and the AppExchange’s) signature event. Leveraging a mix of direct sales outreach, sales development, and promotional marketing emails, we used the report as a foot in the door to generate meetings — with the angle that we just published research about how to succeed in the ecosystem, and would love to share the findings with them first. Other pieces included social-media and email-signature promotion, press release, a five-piece blog series breaking down the insights, a semi-custom direct mail play and social targeting to priority accounts, and a digitally optimized, interactive version of the report.
The Results
The market research campaign significantly impacted CodeScience’s marketing and sales outcomes, as well as the company itself. Here are some measures of success — some based on KPIs, others less numerical but still significant.
Quantitative
140 qualified responses (and Amazon gift cards sent in appreciation)
100+ form submissions to download the report
5 additional meetings booked at DF ‘17 to discuss the report
1000+ digital views of content (blog series, landing page, PDF and interactive report)
Qualitative
Improved market positioning and boosted awareness
Provided topic for DF ‘17 hosted panel and a reason for sales to helpfully reach out to prospects
Launched a related podcast on the strength of findings and connections
Advent Health Partners (Advent), a technology and services provider helping hospital organizations centralize and collect data for more efficiency, had a solution for an industry problem but needed more leads faster to capitalize on market conditions. In a crowded content marketing world, it was essential for the company to provide something truly of value to break through the noise.
The Solution
SmarkLabs evaluated Advent’s positioning, market and resources to recommend next steps that will help them achieve their goals. To do this, Advent had a valuable internal resource: its client services team. The team’s experience in helping clients solve problems could also be applied to prospects as a way to add value and establish its expertise and credibility.
Leveraging this expertise without disrupting client services called for a plan that was consistent and repeatable, to distill knowledge efficiently. To maximize internal investment, it also needed to be scalable. Hospitals face substantial resource and revenue challenges through the claims process, including combatting or receiving denials, responding with additional reviews and appeals. For Advent prospects, that pain is top of mind. Here’s how Advent and SmarkLabs set out to help hospitals solve that pain through a coordinated marketing and sales strategy.
Blog content educated prospects of the problem with tips on solving it
A free download offering examples of good and bad appeal letters, and a template for crafting your own captured leads and created interest
A webinar series helping hospitals solve challenges increased awareness, captured leads and demonstrated expertise
A free review of hospitals’ own appeal examples and a consultation with personal advice started the sales conversation
Automated emails from sales reps revisited a consultation with interested leads who did not book meetings originally
Each piece of content had clear next steps and built toward a sales situation, nurturing prospects and creating new, well-informed opportunities. Pieces were added after initial successes to keep building a clear path and meet evolving lead-generation goals.
The Results
Blogs focused on combating denials generated thousands of views and represent the top two most-visited posts.
The marketing offers generated hundreds of submissions from current prospects and previously unknown leads.
The consultation offer alone increased quarterly pipeline by 22%.
The success of the webinar and campaign led to a monthly recurring webinar series educating providers on how to better manage common problems throughout the claims process. The series regularly generated 100+ registrants seeking assistance and expertise.
