Driving the adoption of new marketing automation technology can be a challenge unless the value proposition to the end-user is significant. Obviously, how easy the technology is to use plays a huge role in adoption, but ease-of-use should be a given and that in and of itself doesn’t always translate into high user adoption rates.
Recently, the Aberdeen Group conducted a survey of top performing organizations in the area of Marketing Lead Management and found that 67% leverage some type of distributed marketing software platform and/or process in order to provide local marketers with the ability to assemble, customize and distribute campaigns at the local level while maintaining centralized control over content, brand and compliance standards at the corporate level.
A Distributed Marketing Software Platform represents the far end of the technology-user-adoption spectrum as it is doing just what the name states – distributing a tool set across the entire enterprise that allows users to market to their customers and prospects. Often times, users of a Distributed Marketing Platform also include third-party independent agents and partners thus extending the solution beyond the walls of the corporate enterprise. Therefore, when considering user adoption, a Distributed Marketing Platform can appear to be an intimidating challenge simply due to the sheer volume of users to convince to utilize the solution.
Aberdeen Group’s survey highlighted a tactic used by 22% of top performers called “On Behalf Of Marketing” or “OBO Marketing” which provides significant value and can lead to high user adoption rates. When leveraging OBO marketing, the central corporate marketing organization is responsible for conducting campaign efforts on behalf of their local offices in a manner that makes it appear as if the local office or representative is the one actually sending the campaign. Local representatives that have access to a Distributed Marketing Platform with OBO marketing capabilities can simply opt-in to campaigns, upload existing contact lists (or purchase new ones) and then rely on the corporate office to execute multi-channel campaigns on the local representatives behalf.
As campaigns are executed, the local representative will receive an e-mail confirmation that the campaign was sent along with a campaign report link that provides real-time campaign performance statistics. More sophisticated platforms such as Distribion’s Distributed Marketing Platform can also highlight campaign recipients that the local representative should contact based upon automated lead scoring calculations that take into consideration campaign activity and contact attributes.
Automating social media efforts on the local representatives behalf is also a hot new opportunity within the area of OBO marketing automation. Many agents, franchisees and other local representatives express interest in leveraging social media as a sales and marketing channel but have yet to fully adopt social media due to four primary factors: (1) Time commitment, (2) Training, (3) Inability To Find or Produce Relevant Content and (4) Company policies limiting activities due to compliance concerns. A big opportunity to drive platform adoption can be realized by organizations that can help their local representatives overcome these challenges. Distribion, recently released a new distributed social media marketing module that allows corporate marketers to publish social media campaigns that consists of numerous content posts with links to supporting collateral that local representatives can opt-in to and have posted at designated time intervals to the local representatives social networks on their behalf just as if they posted the content themselves. (Prospects are invited to contact Distribion and experience Distribion’s distributed marketing social media module through a free online demo environment.)
Leveraging a Distributed Marketing Platform with OBO marketing capabilities can provide significant time savings for local representatives and provide a steady stream of highly qualified leads. These benefits provide a compelling value proposition for local representatives which should lead to high user adoption rates.