What Is Marketo? A Marketer's Guide
HC
Admina Team
2023/10/24
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing has revolutionized significantly over the past decade, thanks in large part to evolving technological innovation. Amidst this digital transformation, one tool has risen to prominence for its sophistication and intuitive nature - Marketo. This article will serve as a guide for marketers, familiarizing them with what Marketo is, its unique functionalities, and how it can be leveraged to streamline marketing operations and amplify success rates. From lead management to email marketing, Marketo offers diverse capabilities. Whether you're new to the realm of digital marketing or a seasoned veteran looking to optimize your marketing strategies, this guide will walk you through everything you need to know about Marketo.
Source: Adobe Stock
Marketing automation is a powerful technology, designed to automate marketing processes and campaigns across various channels. It is essentially a tool that allows businesses to target customers with programmed messages via email, web, social media, and text based on specific instructions known as workflows. The beauty of marketing automation lies in its ability to nurture potential leads through personalized content, transforming them into satisfied customers with ease and efficiency.
Utilizing software to perform repetitive marketing tasks like nurturing sales leads, personalizing marketing messages, and content is what essentially constitutes marketing automation. It plays an integral role in a substantial stack of marketing technology tools. As reported by the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, as of April 2020, the marketplace consisted of approximately 8000 solutions.
This practice of employing marketing automation software hasn't slowed down in marketing organizations. Social Media Today’s 2019 State of Marketing Automation Survey report indicates that about three-quarters of organizations use a marketing automation tool. Some popular tools include Marketo, Adobe Campaign, HubSpot, Oracle Eloqua, Salesforce Pardot, Act-On, and SharpSpring - each receiving recognition as "leading" in TrustRadius' December 2019 "The Buyer’s Guide to Marketing Automation Software." In that report, around 70% of marketers proclaimed that marketing automation software is indispensable to achieving their goals.
Ultimately, marketing automation works towards enhancing productivity, simplifying time-consuming tasks, and nurturing relationships with prospects. By the sales reps driving conversions, it significantly contributes to the overall growth of a business.
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Marketing Automation: A Growing Industry
Interest in marketing automation software has surged recently, indicating a transformative shift in the business industry. The evolution of the marketing automation industry is reshaping how companies operate, employing cutting-edge technology to mechanize routine marketing assignments. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also eradicates potential human inaccuracies.
Source: Adobe Stock
This progression in the marketing nation is driven by a rising demand for customization and expedited communication with customers. Influential drivers such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, and big data feed this sector, bolstering customer interaction and sales. An increasing number of organizations are tapping into these digital tools to bolster customer loyalty and augment return on investment (ROI), marking marketing automation an essential aspect of their strategic blueprint.
Valued at over $2.74 billion in 2021, the global marketing automation solution market is projected to hit $4.69 billion by 2028, indicating a compound annual growth rate of 7.9%. This sizably meteoric growth has been possible due to the advent of cloud computing and the pervasive influence of social media platforms. As more businesses adopt these modern marketing methods, the industry is likely to see an assured shift from conventional, manual marketing to a futuristic, technology-centric era. Hence, marketing automation promises exponential growth and a very promising future.
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Marketing Automation vs. Account-Based Marketing
Marketing Automation and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) are essential components of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, each serving distinct roles. Marketing Automation systems streamline routine marketing responsibilities such as email campaigns and social media scheduling, enhancing overall efficiency. Conversely, ABM adopts a strategic approach that targets pivotal business accounts, necessitating personalized campaigns to engage unique audiences and foster individual client relationships.
In recent times, numerous ABM software providers have incorporated marketing automation-like functionalities to their products. Modern ABM now encompasses native email marketing, landing page and form functionality, engagement programs, and native databases. These features further accommodate demand generation and prospect identification.
ABM software is particularly beneficial for B2B marketers as it facilitates the identification and targeting of accounts using specific metrics. This paves the way for improved coordination with other sales and marketing teams and is a departure from B2C methods that primarily target individual consumers.
ABM is rooted in the idea that B2B sales are driven by accounts, therefore, garnering insights into account behavior, engagement, and activity aids marketers in identifying, appealing to, and converting potential customers.
Despite the assistance offered by ABM tools, handling large volumes of processed data can be daunting for B2B marketers. This has led to an increasing trend of ABMs integrating automation features and vice-versa. Ultimately, the synergy of Marketing Automation and ABM results in a well-rounded marketing strategy, optimizing generalized efforts for target accounts while focusing on personalized treatment for high-value accounts.
Source: Adobe Stock
What is the use of Marketo?
Marketo is an advanced marketing Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. Its fundamental objective is to assist businesses in streamlining and automating their marketing processes. This platform is particularly beneficial in structuring and executing tasks related to marketing automation, social media marketing, and analytics. More importantly, it enables businesses to obtain data-driven insights, which are instrumental in fostering customer engagement and augmenting revenue growth.
Marketo also provides an effective avenue for businesses to realize the actual monetary value of their marketing efforts by attributing specific revenue back to these activities. This strategically aids in optimizing return on investment. Businesses can thus seamlessly identify and implement marketing strategies that are cost-effective and result-oriented.
Moreover, this platform extends the ability to segment audiences, thereby allowing for a more personalized customer experience. Marketers are equipped with the tools to craft campaigns that are relevant and targeted, essentially addressing the needs of their customers more effectively. Undoubtedly, this contributes to better customer relationships, more sales partnership thereby positioning businesses for sustained growth.
Marketo's intuitive understanding and the clear correlation drawn between marketing activities and the overall financial performance of a business makes it a quintessential tool for businesses. Therefore, Marketo stands as a remarkably effective tool in driving business growth and enhancing customer relationships. Its comprehensive services and data-driven approach translate into successful marketing strategies, ensuring business growth acceleration.
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Who Uses Marketo?
Marketo, a renowned marketing automation platform, is versatile and caters to businesses of diverse sizes and industries. Forrester analyst Lori Wizdo categorized Marketo's user base into three distinct groups. Firstly, marketing practitioners who rely on Marketo to build campaigns and make their nurturing strategies operational. Secondly, sales representatives, who, with the help of Marketo, can now get insights into their prospects' digital behaviors, leading to more informed and contextually relevant engagement. Lastly, marketing executives can connect their marketing investment with the sales pipeline and revenue using Marketo.
Ryan Vong, CEO of Marketo partner Digital Pi, expanded on these categories. According to him, the platform accommodates a wide range of users including those involved in demand generation, marketing operations, marketing and sales agencies, product management and other marketing departments, brand management, and marketing administration. He emphasized that this diversity of use scenarios reflects onto the diverse profiles of Marketo users. Vong reiterated that Marketo can function in a broad spectrum of businesses based on its size and maturity, making it a universally valuable tool for anyone wishing to amplify their digital marketing endeavors. Marketo offers a considerable array of advanced tools in fields like email marketing, lead management, customer-oriented marketing, and mobile marketing, thus meeting the distinct requirements of both B2B and B2C companies. By improving ROI, achieving marketing goals, and nurturing customer relationships, Marketo proves its worthwhile contribution in optimizing marketing efforts.
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Marketo Marketing Features
As a prominent player in the marketing automation space, Marketo provides an extensive array of features designed to revolutionize campaigns and catalyze business growth. A key feature of Marketo's offerings is its adept lead management. With the ability to manage, nurture, and score leads, Marketo enables businesses to track potential customers actively and foster better relationships.
In terms of consumer marketing, Marketo empowers businesses to optimize their outreach via personalized email marketing, mobile marketing, and website personalization. These targeted marketing strategies help businesses reach out to customers where they are and increase engagement levels across customer journeys.
Marketo also incorporates advanced tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and social marketing. These tools clearly understand and reach broader audiences in order to maximize content visibility and engagement with website visitors. Coupled with web activity tracking, businesses can better assess their online performance and fine-tune their strategies as needed.
Integral to Marketo's offerings is its seamless CRM integration. This permits bi-directional CRM synching, enhancing customer base marketing and simplifying data management. The marketing calendar feature in Marketo allows for organized and efficient campaign planning.
Marketo further stands out with campaign dashboards and reports features that enable data-driven decision making. Its AI-powered predictive content suggests the most engaging content to users, resulting in higher conversion rates. Overall, Marketo is the go-to solution for comprehensive, intelligent business marketing needs.
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Marketo Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring
Marketo's professional services include two critical features - 'Lead Nurturing' and 'Lead Scoring'. On their website, Marketo describes lead nurturing as a strategic practice designed to foster relationships with potential buyers throughout every stage of the sales journey. It concentrates marketing communications towards responding to the needs and providing necessary information to prospective buyers.
Furthermore, Marketo's lead scoring system is referred to as the backbone of lead nurturing since it enables businesses to understand where each lead stands within the purchase cycle. The lead scoring model incorporates two main aspects: the demographic or firmographic data of the lead and their behavioral characteristics.
Marketo's professional services also extends support to users in utilizing their lead-scoring technology to its best advantage. For instance, service professionals from Marketo help in allocating points to various online behaviors. This could range from adding five points for attending a webinar, deducting ten points for visiting the career page (interpreted as a lack of interest in buying the service and more likely to be looking for employment), or granting eight points for searches related to 'Marketo'.
Thus, Marketo's lead nurturing and scoring systems are integral to data-driven marketing strategies, helping optimize customer acquisition techniques, prioritize high-value leads, enhance conversion rates, and ultimately, improve the return on investment.
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Marketo Pricing: How much does Marketo cost per month?
As a versatile solution catering to businesses of varying sizes and needs, Marketo offers flexible pricing options that are specially tailored to meet specific operational requirements. Four strategically curated packages - Free Trial, Basic, Pro, and Enterprise - cater to an array of company needs. Ideal for small ventures, the Basic plan is competitively priced at $895/month. The Pro package, crafted with medium-sized enterprises in mind, goes for $1,795/month. Larger corporations can preferentially select the Enterprise option at $3,195/month.
For businesses with unique needs, custom pricing schemes are also available. These plans come equipped with an assortment of beneficial tools, including email marketing, lead management facilities, sophisticated analytics, and API access, among others.
However, as pricing is mainly hinged on the number of marketing contacts, costs may undergo changes. This flexibility in Marketo's pricing structure is indicative of the company's effort to prioritize customers' needs and expectations.
Referring to the tier structure mentioned on their website, Marketo groups pricing into select, prime, ultimate, and enterprise segments. This structured tier system and the pricing primarily rely on the number of contacts in the client's marketing database, not usage. In addition, Marketo customers have the liberty to select specific marketing applications without the obligation of purchasing bundles, offering an opportunity to gradually integrate services as their business evolves. Products such as the AI-integrated Predictive Content offer advanced utility by predicting and cataloging the content viable for audience conversion.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, Marketo stands as an advanced and comprehensive tool for digital marketers looking to elevate their strategies in this ever-evolving digital age. With capabilities ranging from lead management to email marketing, it offers a versatile platform to streamline marketing operations and enhance success rates. This guide provides a clear understanding of what Marketo is and how its distinct features can be utilized effectively. Whether a novice or expert in digital marketing, Marketo offers robust solutions to meet the diverse needs of today's marketers, positioning it as a pivotal instrument in unlocking marketing success.
Topics & Questions
Is Marketo a CRM platform?
Marketo, contrary to some assumptions, is not a platform designed for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Instead, it is a market-leading platform that specializes in marketing automation. Marketo is widely recognized for its comprehensive range of capabilities, which include email marketing, lead management, customer base marketing, consumer marketing, and mobile marketing.
This should not be confused with CRM functionality. Indeed, a great advantage of Marketo is its intricate ability to integrate seamlessly with various well-established CRM platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. Through this integration, Marketo can offer enriched data sets that furnish detailed customer views that go beyond what the CRM platforms offer by themselves.
However, it is important to note that Marketo does not inherently possess the CRM functionality. It does not replicate the features of a CRM platform. Instead, it focuses primarily on managing and automating marketing campaigns and processes. Marketo's strategic alignment with CRM platforms enables it to represent a harmonious relationship geared towards optimizing efficiency. It complements, rather than duplicates, the unique capabilities of CRM platforms. By integrating with CRM tools, Marketo enhances their function and creates an essential tool in the creation and advancement of powerful, effective marketing strategies. In truth, the role Marketo plays is just as crucial: it forms the bridge between your marketing strategies and your customer relationships.
Is Marketo owned by Adobe?
In the realm of technological giants and digital innovation, Adobe consistently pushes boundaries, with its acquisition of Marketo serving as a prime example of this commitment. The year 2018 marked a landmark in Adobe's strategic growth plan, as they successfully acquired the renowned cloud-based marketing software company, Marketo. This acquisition symbolized more than just another triumph for Adobe; it was a deliberate strategic move, specifically planned to fortify Adobe's comprehensive suite of customer experience tools.
This strategy was far from superficial. By merging with Marketo, Adobe was able to incorporate the latter's exceptional capabilities in advanced lead management and account-level data into their own product portfolio. Integrated into the Adobe Experience Cloud, these tools provide businesses with the power to not only create but also manage tailored customer experiences.
Marketo's inclusion within Adobe's structure has empowered Adobe Experience Cloud with a remarkable, personalized customer experience management potential. Thus, the acquisition illustrates Adobe's unwavering dedication to establish groundbreaking strides within the digital marketing industry. Adobe's foresight and ingenuity are continually reflected in its innovative endeavors such as integrating Marketo, underlining the tech behemoth's position as a global leader in digital marketing solutions.
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