Earlier today Forrester’s Marketing Tech analyst Lori Wizdo opined about Oracle’s acquisition of Eloqua. It can be found here and is a must-read if you currently or plan to leverage tech as part of your marketing mix. But one passage really resonated with us:
Winner: The spirit and soul of the 21st century B-2-B marketer.
The CMOs and marketing leaders I talk to all seriously get it. They know they need to completely change their engagement model (what they used to call marketing) to be audience/buyer/customer centric.They know that driving sustained, predictable, profitable revenue growth means that lead value, velocity, and volumes are maximized; and that this has to be done more efficiently and effectively. They get that this complex set of interrelated goals requires an integrated, holistic process automation approach that spans the marketing, sales, and service organizations of a B2B enterprise. And they know they don’t have that. They know they need to meet this tough challenge with a mixed automation toolkit that only makes a challenging job harder. Hurray! A knight in shining armor riding a white charger with bright red livery is coming to the rescue.
We love this passage for it reflects much of what we have been discussing over the past year, in particular:
- Engagement model is what marketing is all about
- Marketers must deliver value as defined by “sustained, predictable, profitable revenue growth
- The way to achieve the above is to manage a “integrated, holistic process automation approach that spans the marketing, sales, and service organizations”
- This inherently recognizes the increasingly blurred distinction btw the Marketing, Sales and Customer Service functions in most companies. It comes back to the concept of engagement where-ever they are in the non-linear funnel.
The only thing we would quibble with is the B2B distinction. We feel this applies equally for B2C marketers.
