What Is Marketing Acceleration?

What is marketing acceleration and why is it even worth discussing? In the larger context, acceleration refers to the increasing pace of change. In B2B Marketing, we are experiencing an unprecedented amount of upheaval in what defines our success. We not only need to be fast, we need to get faster. We need to be speed racers.

While we are being impacted by the rapid rise of social networks and the use of mobile technologies to connect business professionals, we are also being asked to produce more with less. More leads. More sales. Greater awareness. Less money. Less People. Fewer tools.

So how do we get there? Ultimately it comes down to determining where can we achieve the greatest return from people, process and marketing tools to meet customer needs. But we can use the power of acceleration to help our companies achieve greater success in 3 ways:

1. Pipeline Acceleration: increasing the speed of conversion from initial response to lead, opportunity and sale.
2. Program Acceleration: the rate at which we move from a marketing concept to a campaign that is driving results.
3. Market Innovation: the rate at which we respond to market changes (possibly down to the individual level) with programs, campaigns and marketing-led activities.

Traditional Pipeline Acceleration. You can define this as the speed at which we move from a market response to a deal. At the top of the funnel is lead follow-up: this may be the easiest item to consider. Conversion rates increase the more quickly we follow-up from an initial response. Improving response times to campaign activity can have a dramatic impact. So any marketing process that impedes a rapid response should be scrutinized.

In the middle of the funnel is the acceleration of lead conversion.  This looks to decrease the amount of touch points to the prospect before moving into a sales opportunity. This is where it is important to clearly define at what stage you “hand off” leads to sales. But marketing is not finished once a lead is created…

At the bottom of the funnel is an opportunity to accelerate conversion of opportunity to deal. This is where you can make significant impact on your bottom line revenue by re-invigorating stagnant pipeline opportunities. You must first strategically determine what is the reason for any stagnation and then provide offers to aid in the movement towards deal closure. Hard offers specifically focused on this area can help accelerate deal conversion.

• People: minimal impact to existing resources
• Process: can have significant impact to existing processes as new responder, lead and pipeline processes need to be built.
• Systems: minimal system impact

Program Acceleration. This is defined as moving a marketing campaign idea to execution more quickly with an objective of increasing the effectiveness of programs built based off nascent market needs and real customer pain points. The goal is to remove the waste (time, people, budget) in the marketing expense inherent in programs that are simply ineffective.

• People: can have significant impact to existing resources
• Process: significant impact to existing processes as a real market feedback loop needs to be implemented
• Systems: minimal tool impact potential

Marketing Innovation.To increase the speed at which you respond to market changes, companies need to invest in technology and expand the use of market insights, competitive intelligence, marketing automation and social monitoring. In order to increase the speed of innovation, you need formal innovation programs driven from the top of the company (such as Dell’s IdeaStorm and EmployeeStorm). Innovation needs to become a core value of your company and built in to your corporate DNA supported by senior management with real incentive programs. This may seem like a monumental task but more and more companies will begin to see that this can create tremendous competitive advantage and may soon become a requirement to avoid falling behind.

• People: Significant impact to all employees, not just marketing
• Process: significant impact  as new innovation programs need to be developed and deployed
• Systems: significant impact as new systems needs to be procured, installed and deployed

With our activity-based cultures and corporate pressures, the urge to just build something and move on is tangible. By considering marketing acceleration, you can not only decide what programs to build, but also how to get more out of each dollar invested in marketing activities. And ultimately, this will translate into your marketing team making a greater contribution to sales.