According to a recent survey conducted by Forrester, 2012 could be a very big year for marketing automation.

The report, B2B Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2012, forecasts that as the marketing industry continues to focus on big data and advanced analytics, there will be an increase in the adoption of services that can generate and fully utilize data, like marketing automation.

Forrester reports that 20% of manufacturers, 20% of financial services and 18% of business and professional service companies plan to begin using marketing automation technologies this year.

What are the factors driving marketing automation to this tipping point? Let’s take a look:

Decline of Outbound Strategies
Much has been written lately about the end of “push” marketing strategies. The modern consumer does not want to have marketing messages forced on them. Customers need to develop a relationship with your company and be pulled into a sales-ready state. Drip marketing and other behavioral targeting strategies provided by automation solutions focus more on leading a prospect through the buying process.

Marketing Impact on Revenue Growth
A lack of transparency when it comes to ROI and revenue generation has plagued marketing departments for years. However, advanced reporting, dashboarding and analytics are changing that and allowing marketers to accurately show their contributions to the bottom line. As budgets get tighter, the ability to be more accountable for marketing investments will become crucial.

Ease of Use
Since marketing automation first arrived on the scene, the user interfaces of automation platforms have improved significantly. As the products become easier to use, they are being adopted by an audience with a wide range of technical skill. Drag and drop interfaces and intuitive design make automation solutions easy to learn and master.

Improved Lead Generation
In a down economy, lead generation is even more crucial to a company’s success. Marketing automation helps dramatically increase both the number of leads generated and the quality of those leads. This improvement in lead generation improves conversion rates, close rates, and ultimately revenue.

Are you planning to implement a marketing automation solution this year? Do you already have a marketing automation success story? We’d love to hear it!

At Pardot, we strive to create tools for our users that are relevant, fast, and easy-to-use. Our newest features – our new SEO and SEM tools – were created to be just that.

We designed these tools to help you maximize your marketing campaigns, while simplifying your reporting and management efforts. The tools are flexible and customizable – simply upload the keywords you want to monitor, and we take it from there.

Along those lines, we created this simple glossary for you to review in case you want a refresher on all of the new metrics you see when you login to Pardot and start using our Search Marketing toolset. Below is a glossary of the most important SEM and SEO metrics you’ll see when you login. Feel free to download our glossary and share it with your team.

Last weekend, techies, designers and marketing gurus alike came from all over the metro Atlanta area, convening in Tech Square for 54 hours of entrepreneurial crunch time. “No Talk, All Action” boasts the Startup Weekend website, and last weekend in downtown Atlanta over a dozen hopeful teams buckled down to the task of launching a start-up in just over two days.

As a proud sponsor of Atlanta Startup Weekend, Pardot had front row seats to all the action, and now we want to share a few things we learned with aspiring start-ups. Zach, Raz and Stuart (our Pardot reps at the event) weigh in on what they observed over the course of the weekend. The general consensus? Developing an organized plan for your start-up is just as important as having a great idea. Here are five tips to make sure that your start-up is not only brilliant, but makes it off the ground:

1) Don’t get lost in tech talk. “When pitching your startup, focus 80% on the ‘what’ (problem) and the ‘why’ (validation) and 20% on the ‘how’ (tech/product),” Zach tweeted Sunday night.  Several teams in the competition delivered whiz-bang presentations that left the audience and judges wondering what exactly they were being pitched. Remember that your audience may not have in-depth technical knowledge, so focus more on the purpose behind your product than the technical details of building it.  “Why, then what, then how,” Stuart agreed. “The best pitchers are the best story tellers.”

2) Practice, practice practice!  Many teams seemed to be unaware of the time limit for pitches. Come prepared! Having an organized and professional presentation can make a big difference in the audience’s impression of your product. One or two dry runs of your presentation can ensure that you’re able to get all your key points across in the allotted time.

3) Do your research.  Again and again, the judges would ask a presenting team to explain how their product/service was different from something similar that already exists on the market. It was uncanny how familiar the judges were with what’s already out there. Make sure you have conducted sufficient market research and can differentiate your product from others out there (hint: “market research” requires more than a quick Google search).

4) Show them the money.  Okay, not a requirement for Atlanta Startup Weekend, but having a well thought through monetization plan is a sign that you’ve thought through the complications that might arise and are prepared to deal with obstacles. That being said, don’t be afraid to pitch an idea that’s more about benefitting society than monetary gain. The QuitFor team pitched an idea to help people stop smoking, and the judges rewarded the social conscience of the group with third place.

5) Most importantly, have fun!  At the end of the weekend, the room was all smiles because those who participated met some new people and had fun. One of the greatest things about start-ups (and one of our greatest points of pride here at Pardot) is the energetic, innovative atmosphere that surrounds a team that’s truly excited about their product. So make sure that you’re developing something you’re passionate about — and having fun while you’re at it!

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Hosting webinars and creating video content can be overwhelming. From topic selection and scheduling to recording and sharing, lots of time and activities go into creating a successful webinar. Dive into the wonderful world of webinars with Rob Dyson, Technical Project Manager at Pardot and webinar production process guru, for an in-depth look at webinar process best practices and the latest tips and tricks. Whether you’re new to creating webinar and video content, or you’re a process pro, this presentation will help you take your own webinar efforts to the next level.

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The marketing world is changing at a phenomenal rate. New technologies have spurred rapid innovation in techniques, processes, and tools. Keeping your marketing strategy on the cutting edge can make you more efficient and effective.

However, this rapid pace of change can be overwhelming. It can be difficult to even know if your marketing is outdated. To help you know where you stand, we’ve put together a list of 10 red flags that may indicate your marketing needs a re-vamp.

10 Signs Your Marketing Needs a Makeover:

You can’t articulate your strategy
Keeping your team on the same page can be a challenge. A comprehensive strategy should be constantly updated and embraced at all levels.

You are cold calling (and only cold calling)
If your sales team is being forced to make cold calls on a daily basis, you are in trouble. Your marketing should be generating and nurturing warm leads that can then be handed off to sales.

You’re being pressured by Sales
If there is tension between your sales and marketing teams, this is a good sign that something is amiss. You should be able to monitor your marketing results well enough to demonstrate your value to sales and the organization at large.

You are using Direct Mail
It’s time to give it up and save the paper. Direct mailing is an inefficient strategy for most businesses. Use drip marketing for greater targeting abilities to make your message more relevant.

You don’t care about SEO
No matter your industry, potential clients are looking for you online. Optimizing your web presence to make yourself easy to find is crucial.

You don’t know your ROI
The age where marketing was not responsible for knowing their ROI is over. You should be utilizing analytics to effectively track your success in all channels.

You aren’t producing content
In the age of new media, content is king. Large brands like Nike and Coke have already shifted to more content based strategies.

Your social media is not a dialogue
You are already using social media, but you may not be utilizing it correctly. Social media channels are not used simply to broadcast your brand. You should be creating a conversation with your customers.

You aren’t developing relationships
If you aren’t producing content or creating dialogues with your customers, you aren’t developing relationships that lead to loyalty and advocacy.

You aren’t focused on retention
Focusing on closing sales is great, but you can’t ignore the customers you already have. Developing engaging material for your existing clients will help prevent turnover.

Does your marketing pass the test? What improvements are you making in 2012? We’d love to hear from you!

“Every @Pardot employee I pass has a big smile on their face! So great to see!” one client tweeted at Elevate 2011, last year’s Pardot Users Conference.

If you happened to catch Sunday’s edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, you know why. The results of the AJC’s annual “Top 100 Workplaces” contest were released yesterday, and Pardot claimed the number one spot in the small business division its first year in the running. At last Thursday’s Top 100 banquet, Pardot also took home the award for “Best Work-Life Balance” over all Top 100 companies.

So what’s an average day like at the number one small business to work for in Atlanta? AJC writer Matt Tierney spent a day in our offices and took in all the quirky perks — from our scooters to our “Pundies” — that make Pardot a fun, innovative and energetic work environment. You can check out his article, “Pardot: Top Small Workplace“ on the AJC website.

Sound like a place you’d feel at home? Great news, we’re hiring! Check out the following infographic to see if you’d be a good fit for our company culture, then head over to our careers page to see what positions are available.

Download this infographic (PDF).

Embed Working at Pardot on your site: copy and paste the code below.

Working at Pardot - An infographic by the team at Pardot Marketing Automation

Have you been exploring Pinterest? What about Instagram? And I’m sure you also rushed to set up your company’s Google+ page last summer, right?. It’s hard not to be swept up in the tidal wave of new media channels and marketing techniques being blogged, shared, and tweeted each day.

Like many marketing blogs, we’ve covered our fair share of social media channels here as well. These new channels have been used in a variety of industries to increase reach and effectiveness. However, the most valuable “share” your content receives may be coming from email.

In a recent study on how content is shared, Buzzfeed discovered that email, not social networks, delivers the greatest traction for a marketing message. Not what you were expecting right? Let me explain.

The power of social media is based on the assumption that the greater the size of your social network, the more influence you ultimately have with your message. In theory, this logic is fairly sound — the larger your network, the more people that see your message. However, Buzzfeed’s study found that this may not be the case.

The study found that the median ratio of Facebook views to shares was only 9-to-1. That means that for every Facebook share, only nine people visited the story. With the average facebook user having 229 friends, this ratio falls well short of what you may expect. Twitter’s median ratio is even lower, at 5-to-1.

The data suggests that viral content is not the result of a few “influencers” setting the tastes of the masses, but a large number of people sharing content with small, intimate groups. This personal form of sharing has been emails’ M.O. since inception.

The 1-to-1 sharing ratio of email compares favorably with the ratios from leading social networks. Email becomes even more attractive when you factor in the intimate nature of email interaction and the sheer amount of time spent using email each day. New email tools such as autoresponders and drip marketing are making the channel even easier and more effective for marketers. Many email platforms give you simple sharing capabilities through features like AddThis integration.

Social media channels are still great ways to distribute content and foster communities, but email may not be as far off the pace as you might think. So if you are planning to increase content views, conversion rates, or web presence this year, make sure email is still a big part of your strategy, and think carefully about sending content that’s engaging, interesting, and fun for readers to share.

You are set and ready to go with a fantastic new marketing automation system to create great marketing campaigns. So, where do you begin? Which campaigns are some of the first you should run? Time is money, so which campaigns will bring you the best bang for your buck? Join Mathew Sweezey, Sales Manager at Pardot, as he steps through five campaigns that will give you a great running start to your marketing automation campaign efforts and quick wins for great results.
Sign up now for the webinar:

Best of the Basics – Marketing Automation Campaigns You Can Run With [Click here to Register]
Date: Thursday, April 26, 2012
Time: 2:00 PM EDT (US)

Speaker:
Mathew Sweezey, Sales Manager, Pardot LLC
Mathew Sweezey is a leading expert in Marketing Automation, specifically lead flow analysis and nurturing execution. His primary focus is in Advanced Lead Nurturing Workflows. He has worked with numerous lead technology companies, helping them create and execute their lead flow and nurturing processes.

Blogging is an underrated resource for B2B marketers

The life of a B2B marketer can be stressful. You are pressured from all sides to generate new leads on an ever shrinking budget. Even if you’re successful, odds are that most of the credit for that sale will still go to the sales team. It’s tough.

Luckily, the number of tools you have in your arsenal is always growing. We’ve certainly covered a few on our blog, from landing pages to drip marketing programs. However, one of the most successful tools for generating leads may be nothing new: your blog. While new tools come and go, the humble blog has remained a great source of potential leads.

So if you haven’t looked seriously at your blogging strategy in awhile, here are five reasons to give it a second look.

SEO. The more relevant content you create in your industry space, the more relevant your company will seem to search engines. Creating keyword rich pieces of content will help your company to appear higher in search results for your industry.

Thought Leadership. Although it may not always feel like it, you are an expert in your industry. You possess a great deal of knowledge about how the industry works, your competitors, and the tricks of the trade (or at least you should!). Your potential customers will be grateful if you share this knowledge with them and will view your company as an industry leader when they look to purchase.

Calls to Action. Once your blog is optimized in search results and devoted fans are flocking to your site each week for your industry knowledge, you can begin to convert this traffic with calls to action. Your blog is the perfect place to advertise your new content and provide opportunities for conversions. Just make sure your blog does not become a billboard for your company. Focus on adding value for your readers first. Readers will reach out when they are ready.

Email sign-up. The easiest way to generate leads from your blog is the simple and oft forgotten email sign up. If your content is provides enough value, readers will exchange their email address for keeping up to date with your posts. It’s a great way to start building a relationship.

Reuse old content. Content has a long shelf-life, but getting full use out of a well crafted piece of content can be hard. Your blog provides a great way to link back to this older content where applicable, squeezing value out of your content for years to come.

Are you using a blog in your lead generation strategy? How is it working for you? Let us know!

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Learn the secrets of how B2B marketers are putting Google AdWords to work for them. AdWords, the leading Pay-Per-Click (PPC) platform, can be critical in reaching more customers and understanding exactly what they are searching for as they seek solutions, tools and services for their businesses.

In this webinar, we’ll cover PPC marketing best practices, including how to:

• Reach the right audience using Google AdWords and boost your ad performance by choosing the right keywords and writing compelling ads
• Stretch small PPC budgets to the max and still reach business goals
• Craft a winning PPC strategy based on improving value and decreasing waste

This webinar is ideal for businesses that are new to online advertising, as well as existing AdWords users who want to get more results from their online advertising investment.

Speaker:
Jeffrey Demers, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Wakefly, Inc.

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