Pardot is a powerful marketing automation tool that allows you to find and nurture leads, close more deals and maximize ROI. In other words, it can help turn your marketing team into superstars. Of course, that’s only if they’re using the technology to its full potential.
Before your company can leverage the true value of marketing automation, your marketing team has some homework to do. We recommend completing these 3 assignments before your Pardot implementation is finished.
Assignment #1: Develop buyer personas.
Think of the different kinds of marketing campaigns your marketing team might run with Pardot: email, blogs, etc. If the goal is demand gen, then your team will be attracting and converting leads. To do this, they’ll need a ton of great content. But before they can create that content, they’ll need to develop buyer personas.
Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your company’s ideal customers. Each one should focus on a different segment of your audience. For instance, the first persona might be the CEO of a small app development company, while the second could be a director of technology at a larger firm. A good persona should contain a bit about the customer’s role within their company, the challenges they face and how your company can help them.
With personas in place, your team will be able to deliver highly targeted content, which is much more valuable than sending the same messaging to everybody in your company’s database. Pardot can also use your team’s personas to automate lead scoring in a way that saves time in the triaging process and helps make sure the wrong leads don’t get passed along to your sales reps.
Assignment #2: Start creating a backlog of great content.
Does your team have a writer who’s dedicated to crafting emails, blog posts, eBooks and more? If not, can writing responsibilities be distributed across the marketing team? What about freelancers? Whoever’s creating the content, we recommend building a stockpile before your team starts publishing. That way, when they’re finally ready to use Pardot, they won’t be scrambling.
And remember: A good content strategy hinges on delivering value. If your company isn’t providing useful information to your audiences, you aren’t likely to see much success.
Assignment #3: Clean up your data.
Once your team knows who to market to, make sure they’ll be ready to import their data into Pardot in an organized way. Have them segment contacts in a way that makes sense, including breakdowns for different personas. That way, they’ll be ready to send the right content to the right people. If they’re targeting existing customers to earn new business, for instance, they’ll be able to email a helpful blog that puts your brand back in your customers’ inboxes. And if they’re reaching out to prospects, they’ll be able to deliver a piece of content that’s designed to nurture new relationships.
Again, Pardot is a powerful tool, but it’s only going to help your business’ marketing efforts if your team is using it in the right way. Make sure they’re prepared so your company gets a return on its investment.
