However, many CRM systems are customized: fields have been added to capture information that is specific to your organization and business processes. The reverse is not always true: you may create fields in the Marketing Automation system that capture marketing-specific information, so they don’t have to be synced with the CRM system. Usually new CRM leads are sent to the Marketing Automation system with a certain interval, for example once per day, with some systems this happens in real-time. But it’s not just a one-time import of your contacts. Field Mapping. MORE >>

40% of buyers read or search on Twitter or blogs for more information about brands, 37% post questions and 60% share their research. Consumers are helping each other with information, they are not looking to companies any more. would love to see some B2B examples of this.”. We’ve seen real several examples where a BtoB buyer has selected their solution provider based on feedback and content that they accessed via sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter. 80% of buyers say the found companies, verses the companies finding them. Content needs to be created to drive response. MORE >>

The next step in the process is to map the interests and concerns of each of the personas to each stage in the buying process, for example, No awareness of Problem, Awareness of Problem, Awareness of Solution, Interest, Evaluation, Purchase, Loyal Customer, Advocate.  Ardath Albee , a visionary in this area encourages her “Rule of 5”, meaning for every piece of content you create, repurpose the information in five different ways. It is pretty simple in theory, but very complex in function. Before you can develop a content map, buyer personas need to be established. Tweet This! MORE >>

Take salesforce.com for example.  While it has been a few years, the sentiment still remains, delivering quality information and letting sales and marketing tell the same story. Lots of talk these days about the importance of storytelling in marketing. For me, the best storytelling is engaging a large audience with a story that’s both very personal and yet bigger than you.  And the ultimate test of whether your story is compelling:  do you engage others to the point they start offering up their own stories? recent, standout marketing story for me is Lady Gaga.  Tweet This! MORE >>

Sales Force Automation (SFA) vendors will focus on tools that help sales people identify more opportunities, get more background information on existing leads and facilitate intra-company collaboration. good example would be the number of leads generated via Social Media. An example of this is Genius.com’s Social Marketing Automation. One example is Genius’s sales lead tracking , which provides a real-time communication channel from marketing to sales. Clearly, Social Media is one of the big revolutions in marketing today. Social Media Trends. Social CRM. MORE >>