Business
Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. I am interviewing a special guest from Amazon: Darrell Alfonso. Let’s get started! So Darrell, welcome. So happy to actually have you on the show. And I know that you actually have a very, very strong, marketing technology background. Sounds like are certified for Salesforce. And you know multiple different--Marketo, like for example--marketing automation tool, very well. And you are Marketo champions, and you advise multiple different Fortune 500 companies. That's a very impressive. Many marketers are not necessarily having that technical capability that you have. So welcome to the show. Do you want to spend a couple minutes and give us any additional information about you? Darrell Alfonso: Yeah, sure. And I'm so happy to be here. I'm an avid listener of your show and I’m a reader of your content so honored to be here. So yeah, I've been in B2B marketing for about 10 years. Six years ago, I was introduced to Marketo and marketing automation, and that was really a turning point in my career. I found that people were having such a hard time with these complex marketing automation platforms. Pam Didner: I can concur. I do have a problem with that. I mean, seriously, and I cannot do a lot of stuff on my own. I have to work with a business consultant. Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. Yeah. And it's quite the same for a lot of marketers out there. So in addition to driving results at work, I also became a contributor to the community. So I wrote articles, I created how-to videos. I even ran the user group in Los Angeles when I was in Los Angeles. After that, I won a few industry awards for my work in that community. And so today, my team runs one of the largest marketing automation platforms in the world. And I work for Amazon Web Services. Pam Didner: Yeah, no kidding. Darrell Alfonso: And our goal is to really empower the hundreds on hundreds of marketers that work for AWS to give them the tools and processes they need to create exceptional experiences for our customers. Pam Didner: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. So speaking of marketing automation, Marketo Eloqua HubSpot, and that people tend to equate marketing automation with email marketing. So what is your definition of marketing automation? I'm curious. And then, what does that encompass? Darrell Alfonso: I define marketing automation as the programmatic management of the customer lifecycle. And that encompasses automating and managing marketing activities throughout the awareness stage, the buying stage, and then even after they already become a customer. Pam Didner: Got it. Darrell Alfonso: Now, traditionally, this isn't really the industry-wide accepted definition of, of marketing automation. In a traditional sense for most companies, marketing automation includes things like lead management, lead scoring, nurturing, working with sales, and other advanced features like web personalization and marketing reporting. Those are the components that you typically make up marketing automation. But it is a lot more than email marketing, Pam Didner: … email marketing. I 100% agree with that. The way I look at the marketing automation, you are totally right. You have to encompass and take into account the customer journey and that you are using customer life cycle, I like that. But I think it’s understand what are the different touch points that you are creating to reach out to your customer and to try to make it trackable and also make an effort to analyze it, to understand your customer a whole lot more. So with that being said, what are the top two challenges, from what you can see, either implementing marketing automation or maintaining it? Darrell Alfonso: That's a good question. One of them is more strategic or high level, and that's the trap of being too feature-driven. So, what I mean by that is it's common to buy a marketing automation platform and then figure out, based on the features available, what's going to be your marketing strategy and how you're going to do your marketing. So you're basing it off of what technology is available to you, that determines what you're going to do. And that's very backwards. The better way to do it is to figure out what your goals and objectives are first, and then figure out what are the specific features and technologies that's going to help you get there. That's one of the big problems that I see in organizations today, Pam Didner: So, when you are looking into a technology, it's important to understand why you want to accomplish and identify that first and then source the technology that will work with that. Darrell Alfonso: Absolutely. And I think it's easy to fall into that trap, especially for marketers that have never done it before. So they're very tempted to say, “okay, what can the tool do? So that's what we're going to do.” But the same set of features is not right for every company. Customers are different depending on your industry and depending on your product and service, the way that you implement marketing automation must be very custom and tailored to your organization. Pam Didner: You know, speaking of that, you say it has to be custom and tailored for your organization. So what is your take on make versus buy? Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. If you're just starting out, I, I think the only way to, to get some of the marketing technology that you need is to buy it. So if you really are in the situation of build versus buy, the way I think about it is to look down the road five or 10 years to see what that will look like and what the service or the activities that you're going to do will look like for both the vendor and then for you. And then you have to calculate all the costs. Pam Didner: What do you mean? We need to spend money? (laughs) Darrell Alfonso: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's such an important thing to, to think about, because if your business doubles or triples in size, you may need a lot more than what your platform provides today. And if you get to that stage, when you're five years into the future, the marketing technology roadmap will be heavily driven by the vendor and not you, right? And there's only a handful of customers that can really drive a vendor's roadmap. Pam Didner: Right. Darrell Alfonso: And it may not fall in your favor. So that, that's how I kind of think about it. It's tough to do all those calculations, but I think if you list out the, the key things that you need and look ahead and anticipate the amount of service you're going to need in the future, that can really help you make a good decision. Pam Didner: Yeah, I hear you. I mean, it's nice, especially on the enterprise side, you can think ahead in terms of what your Martech stack roadmap will look like. And obviously just like you said, it just needs to be driven from the objectives and also your business directions that you want to go. Darrell Alfonso: Right. Pam Didner: But for small businesses, obviously a lot of time, even though they want to look ahead, they probably can't. They can see probably like a product roadmap of growth for next five years. But in terms of what, how marketing will morph a lot of time, the mid-size companies, or even small businesses, they probably don't have that ability or even can afford to look that much ahead. And, um, I'm using myself as an example, Darrell, here. When I started just using data management as an example, I used Dropbox when I started. And I have everything in Dropbox and I have that for four years. And then last year during Christmastime, I basically said, guess what? “I want to structure my Dropbox. And I want to put that in G Suite.” So I put everything kind of like in G Suite. So I made that massive transition, literally killed my January, sorry, my Christmas holiday, because I was doing that. That was kind of like a little bit dumb ass on my part, if you will. I'm trying to do that during the holiday and then, I discovered Zoho. Zoho is kind of like an office platform that actually they have as CRM, they have Zoho Forms, they have Zoho Campaigns, which is an email marketing automation tool. All of a sudden, I don't have to use Drip for my marketing automation and then use Salesforce as my separate tool. Those tools are wonderful, but if I want those tools to talk to each other, I actually have to hire someone else to actually write a code to ensure they talk to each other, in addition to connecting just API, right? So then in June I make a massive transition from G Suite to Zoho. So I transfer over 14,000 files from Google Drive to actually to their Zoho work drive. That was huge amount of work. But again, as a small business, I probably can’t afford to have that kind of roadmap, but having everything under one umbrella. Oh my God. Darrell. I have to tell you. Talk about efficiency! Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. I completely agree. Pam Didner: It makes a huge difference. But it's a lot of work. Martech in general is just a lot of work. So I drink a lot. (laughs) Okay. I drink a lot. I drink a lot of tea! Come on. Darrell Alfonso: (laughs) There you go. There you go. Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you. I think that that's one of the major problems today is the disparate systems that you have to work with. And having data in different areas. While I was running, I had this great sort of vision of what the future kind of would look like. I don't think it's going to be one platform to rule them all, but I do think it's going to be standardized. So you know how the Microsoft Office Suite of products, how you can just take a spreadsheet and then you can paste it into PowerPoint or paste it into Outlook and everything is always the same. And you can understand it and comprehend it. And it becomes more of like, just tools that you're familiar with using so you can get your work done. That's how I think the future is going to be when it comes to marketing technology. Like it's not going to be all in one place, but everything is going to be more standardized so that you can actually do stuff versus like what you said, like spending your entire Christmas holiday moving things around. (laughs) Yeah. So…. Pam Didner: Yeah, lot of the time, of course you can hire people to do that. But the reason I did that, I kind of want to be in the trenches that's because I kind of want to learn. I personally think Darrell, and I'm very jealous that you are the Marketo champions and you are certified Salesforce admin. I personally think that kind of skillset is important. I'm not saying that you must have, that's not my point. But it’s super critical to be a future or next generation of marketer. Darrell Alfonso: Yeah, I think so. One thing that I saw early on and why I chose marketing automation was because of how in-demand it was and how critical it was to most of the things that marketing does. Pam Didner: They touch everything because digital, because it's digital, you need to build a system that in the back end to talk to each other. Yes. Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. And, and that's, that's how I advise people, especially when they're coming out of college, is to develop those niche or really in-demand skills because you can then work anywhere. People always need technical marketers that know how to get the job done. I've truly benefited from that in my career. Though I do-- I'm still hoping that the platforms will become easier and they'll more of become just a tool versus something that you have to study hours and hours for. But, I completely agree with you. The technical skills are today, especially, is really in demand. Pam Didner: Yeah. There is another question I want to ask your opinion. When I talk to a lot of marketers and they focus on the front end, they focus on email marketing outreach. They focused on email marketing that's because, if you do email marketing that's very much tied with lead gen. You create leads for the sales team and you do email marketing, same thing. You capture the prospects and then you nurture them. Which is all good, right? It's much easier to quantify the marketing's contribution to, say, the sales and the business growth. And for marketing automation, a lot of them are really about the backend, is really about processes. And it's really about setting things up. So as a marketing automation manager, from your perspective, how do you quantify your impact to revenue? Darrell Alfonso: Right. So the first thing, though, that I definitely want to say is that though, that job is typically backend, I think that good marketing automation managers will find more and more ways to contribute to a better customer experience. Because the platform itself has a lot of areas that are more front facing, like landing pages and emails and advertising is often managed in these systems. Right? If you can take the data behind that and advise on making more strategic marketing decisions, I think that that can get you out of the back office all the time, so to speak. That's one thing that I want to preface, what I want to say, say first. Pam Didner: Okay. Darrell Alfonso: The next thing that I like to recommend if you're having trouble proving your impact, is to really get involved with the critical business reports the marketing teams… Pam Didner: Dashboards, building the dashboards. Darrell Alfonso: Right. So, marketing automation people are really well positioned for that because much of the data is already there. So you're looking at activity, data engagement, data that's in the marketing automation platform or, or the CRM. So often you are building the connection between the tools and then some sort of dashboard. And if you're the owner of reports, you're often looked at as the strategic advisor. Because leadership will say, “Well, Darrell, you know, I know that you didn't create this campaign, but why…” Pam Didner: “Why is the number down?” Darrell Alfonso: Why is the number down? Right. So then I have now become more of a strategic advisor versus someone that's just handling the technical stuff. So, I think that that's going to be a really big, important part if you want to try to show your impact. Pam Didner: I actually love your answer, not just focused on the process, but also getting involved on data analytics. Because you know, the data and the tools inside and out might as well just take it one step further. And another thing that you suggested--which is, I love it, I love it so much--is like, yeah, I'd be the owner of dashboard. Again, you know, the tools, you know, the processes. Why don't you just build a dashboard for everybody? I love these two! Excellent, excellent ideas. Before I was like, “I'm just doing the process. You are on the backend, you know, like you are invisible. How do you make yourself visible?” Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. Pam Didner: You know, so the last question I wanted to ask you, Is you touch a little bit on this and it's, what's ahead for the marketing automation, from your perspective. And you touch a little bit in terms of standardization and the pretty much all the big players need to have a come-to-Jesus meeting. Right? (Darrell laughs) Some things like standardized to make the end-user's job a whole lot easier. I agree with that. And hopefully they will do that. What else? What else from your perspective that, using your crystal ball, that you can see ahead? Darrell Alfonso: I mean, it's sort of aligned, but, one of the big problems today is within your marketing automation platform you usually have email marketing and maybe web personalization. But today, especially as the buyer journey changes, you need a lot more. So you need content discovery, you need advanced lead routing, which is a little bit in the weeds there… Pam Didner: No it’s not! That’s the most important part-- high quality leads for your sales people. Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. So you, you need that. And then, you need customizable reporting that works well for your organization. To get that, you need to build literally a stack of marketing technology and then weave it in, stitch it together. So, yeah, that's very limiting from a cost standpoint, from a resources standpoint. You have to learn all these different tools. So, so I do see the core marketing automation platforms either buying or building those new technologies or new services that really work with the way people buy today, you know? And then that’s through things like content and social media. That's a big thing that I can see is probably going to happen. Pam Didner: Very, very good. So to wrap it up, why don't you tell our listeners how they can find you? Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. So LinkedIn is my favorite Twitter, probably my second favorite and yeah, absolutely. They can reach out to me. I post a lot of my thoughts on how to do marketing automation and operations. So I do think that if they have questions on how I think about it and how I strategize it, you pretty much just have to look at my content. I don't mind people reaching out to me. I might be a little slow to respond, Pam Didner: You work full-time, so totally understandable. It's all good. So very good. Excellent. So I have one silly question I want to ask you. Darrell Alfonso: Yes Pam Didner: So what is the most, I'm talking about the most useless talent you have? Darrell Alfonso: Useless talent. Pam Didner: Yeah. Useless (laughs) Darrell Alfonso: Okay. So, actually I haven't told many people this, but I can do tarot card readings. (laughs) Pam Didner: Really? Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. So I have a deck and then maybe one day I'll have to go practice a little bit, but you know, I'd be happy to read your fortune (both laugh). And I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen to you (laugh). Pam Didner: That's useless? I actually think that's very useful. Darrell Alfonso: Yeah, well, I think my friends and family think it might be useless, but you know, it's definitely fun. (laughs) Pam Didner: I love it. Did you learn that somewhere? Darrell Alfonso: I actually did. Yeah. I have a book on how to do it. And then, I watched a lot of videos. You know, there's a lot of depth when it comes to it, and also it's a little bit personal with who you do the reading for, right? Because if I read your fortune versus my brother’s, you know, and a card like the tower comes up or something like that, I would read it differently because it depends on the person. Pam Didner: It depends on who. I 100% agree with you. So a friend of mine now we got just dragging it a little bit. Just bear with us. And I have a very good friend, her name's Donna. And, she firmly believed she was a witch, like in her previous life. Right? And she can, she does, uh, the toro--, it's called tarot cards, right? I have to say there was a couple of times when she read my fortune, not necessarily like, Oh, like when you're going to die, but it's like, Oh, this is whatever she didn’t necessarily needs to be very specific, but like certain things is going to happen right, at a certain time. And she would call that out and, well, it actually happened! Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. Pam Didner: I actually think that's very useful. Darrell Alfonso: Yeah. So anyway, I won't make your listeners listen to more of this tarot episode (laughs) Pam Didner: (laughs) So if you are interested to have your fortune read, you can also reach out to Darrell through LinkedIn. Thank you so much for coming to my show. Really, really appreciate it, Darrell, and your insight about marketing automation is spot on and really, really appreciate that you can join us. Darrell Alfonso: Thanks a lot for having me, Pam Pam Didner: Again, thank you so much for listening to my podcast. And the podcasting is one-way communication, and I don't necessarily know who you are, but your support means a great deal to me. If you want to chat, reach out on any social media channel, you can also join my Facebook community. Build Your Marketing Skills to Get Ahead. When you join, you get a free Starbucks on me. You can go to the Announcement tab and click on the barcode of the gift card. Love to hear from you. Take care. Bye-bye!