Over the last few years, sales and marketing software platforms have been exploding like Peter Brady’s homemade volcano. And, it’s only getting muddier — as Marcia and her friends might say.
In fact, there are so many different solutions out there that Gartner went so far as to create a subway-style transit map to depict all the different types of software available to the marketer. But, what systems are right for a professional services firm? And, once you know which systems you need, which ones are right for your firm, in particular? While this blog will, by no means, answer all these questions for you in detail — it will get you started in the right direction.
Revisiting the Integrated Web System
Over the past few months I’ve written and spoken at great length about the concept of the Integrated Web System. Basically, the system is a collection of technologies designed to help you attract clients you don’t know, convert them into potential leads for your firm, nurture them over time with valuable content, and guide them towards a conversation with your business development personnel. The technologies that comprise this system are — CMS, CRM and marketing automation. For this post, I’m going to assume you know what these technologies are, what they should be doing for you, and what they could be doing for you (if you don’t, go back and read my article, Your Website as an Integrated System, and you’ll be up to speed in the time it takes Usain Bolt to run the 100M).
What Software Best Fits Your Firm?
Over the past few years, we’ve reviewed a number of platforms in those three areas. In our experience, identifying the systems that make sense for a firm are primarily tied to the size of the firm and the industry it’s in. The infographic below provides a high-level view of what software solutions you might want to consider based on the size of your firm — below the infographic is additional detail. For this article, I’m purposely excluding the CMS component of the integrated web system. If there are thousands of sales and marketing solutions, there are surely 10x that many CMS solutions. The majority of sites we build at Rattleback are built on either WordPress or one of two proprietary solutions.
All-In-One Sales and Marketing Systems for Small Firms
Over the last few years, a number of really great platforms have emerged that are essentially all-in-one sales and marketing solutions. As it turns out, they are extremely robust platforms that combine much of the functionality of traditional CRM programs and more sophisticated marketing automation solutions at a much more accessible price for a small business.
Functionality You Can Expect From These Systems
Depending on the system you choose, you can expect a variety of useful features such as:
- Email marketing capabilities with the ability to segment leads based on their web behaviors.
- Marketing automation capabilities such as basic lead scoring and automated campaigns.
- Contact management features that show a complete history of your relationship with the prospective client including meetings, conversation notes, online activities and email interactions.
Some interesting functionality you can find in these systems:
- Web payment processing for subscription-based services.
- Landing page and online form builders.
Who These Systems Are Best For?
These systems are really best suited for small firms — those with less than 25 total employees where marketing and business development roles are likely to be dual roles staffed by just a few people. In firms like these, having CRM and marketing automation in one place makes a lot of sense. The people tasked with driving content development, marketing content, and facilitating interactions with potential clients are all one in the same — seeing all these activities together at once is critical.
What Are Your Options?
Three great systems to explore are:
What You Can Expect To Pay
These systems are surprisingly affordable, though they’re priced by the number of contacts you plan to market to. You can get into a solution for anywhere from $99-$400 per month to manage upwards of 25k contact records.
Solutions for Middle-Tier Firms
As a firm gets larger, marketing and business development roles begin to diverge. The folks tasked with marketing the firm and cultivating new client relationships are much more likely to be specialists focused solely on those tasks. As a result, business development people are much less likely to need visibility into the marketing activities that are housed within a marketing automation system. Alternatively, marketing people need much less frequent access to individual contact records and contact histories. But, each of these folks need more functionality and capability from both systems.
Marketing Automation Systems for Middle Tier Firms
Most of the solutions that work best for middle-tier firms are fairly new to the market as well — they’re systems that have either come out of email marketing solutions or have been built from the ground up as “lighter” versions of more expensive, more established marketing automation solutions for larger companies.
Functionality You Can Expect From these Systems
Probably the first thing to note is that these solutions do not have CRM components — by design. They’re built to integrate with many of the more robust and more commonly used CRM systems on the market today. In addition to all of the core features you’d get from the All In One Systems, you can expect:
- Inbound marketing functionality to help you analyze different keyword strings to inform your content strategy and identify which content is performing best for your firm.
- Social media publishing and monitoring tools to promote your content more effectively through all your networks (both company networks, individual networks and even groups) and analyze how effectively your social media effort is driving site traffic and conversions.
- Progressive profiling tools to learn more about your prospects over time as they interact with your content.
Some other interesting functionality you’ll find in these systems:
- Blog platforms and content management functionality — in some instances even the ability to build dynamic site pages that show content based on who someone is or what they’ve already done on your site.
- Dynamic calls-to-action which give you the ability to build out a sequence of calls-to-actions based on who someone is or how they’ve already interacted with your site.
- Integrations with other important systems you might use already such as webinar solutions, CRM, list building services, etc.
Who Are These Systems Best For?
Larger organizations where knowledge experts, content producers, marketers and business development folks are less likely to be one person or contained in one small group. These systems are best suited for firms with 25-500 people that may have upwards of 7-8 business development personnel and 2-3 marketing folks. These systems are also ideal for firms that are already committed to a market-leading CRM solution.
What Are Your Options?
If your firm fits in this group, these are the best systems for you to explore:
What You Can Expect to Pay
These systems are priced by the amount of contacts you hope to market to. Most firms should expect to pay roughly $1k/month to use one of these solutions and market to approximately 5k contacts on a monthly basis.
CRM Systems for Middle-Tier and Larger Firms
I’m not going to go into much, if any, detail here. Ultimately, middle-tier firms need to graduate from basic contact managers (like Highrise or Nimble) to true CRM solutions. The critical difference between a contact manager and a CRM is that a CRM keeps leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities in separate databases within the software. This functionality will be crucial for a middle-tier or larger firm that wants to be successful with online marketing.
What Are Your Options?
There are really two types of systems for you to consider:
- Market-Leading CRMs: Salesforce, Sugar, Microsoft Dynamics and Sage (I’d also throw Zoho as an alternate option to this group).
- Industry Specialized CRMs: Deltek Vision, Cosential
What You Can Expect to Pay
Fees for these solutions are generally priced by the number of users you have. Fees range like crazy, but as an example the Enterprise instance of Salesforce is $125/month/user. This is the version you’ll need if you plan to integrate with a marketing automation solution.
Serious Marketing Automation for Larger Firms
As a firm gets much larger than, the functionality of the systems actually don’t change considerably, they just get more detailed and more sophisticated. In short, these systems are designed for very sophisticated marketers that are marketing to much larger, more complex audiences. They enable the marketer to build comprehensive marketing segments from very large pools of contacts based on profiles, actions and behaviors. And, they’re doing this in an increasingly more sophisticated way. For instance, a few months ago Marketo released a social lead scoring module that lets you score a lead not only for how they interact with your website, but also for how they interact with your social channels.
Who Are These Systems Best For?
Ultimately, I tend to believe that these are best for much larger firms — those with over 500 associates. Many firms of this size can easily have 25-30 areas of expertise and can be serving 8-10 markets in a meaningful way. They’re much more likely to have a fairly robust marketing team (possibly upwards of 20-25 people). Ultimately, to get the most potential value from the investment, I believe a firm should have a full-time Marketing Operations Manager — someone who’s job is use the automation solution to create value for the firm.
What Are Your Options?
In this space, firms should really be looking at:
What You Can Expect To Pay
Solutions of this sort also tend to be priced based on the number of contacts you hope to market to. To market to 5k people per month, you should expect to pay over $2k per month.
Closing Thoughts
Ultimately, when a client hires us to build an integrated web system we use this model to establish a starting point to determine the system that will work best for them. But, no two clients are exactly alike. Sometimes a fairly robust solution makes a lot of sense for a smaller firm and other times a fairly simple solution will work just fine for a much larger firm. In the end, I hope this gives you a good starting point if you’re exploring new sales and marketing technologies. If you need help, you can contact me anytime.
