The Energy Industry: Sales and Marketing in a Time of Digital Transformation
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The Energy Industry: Sales and Marketing in a Time of Digital Transformation
INTRODUCTION
Today, the energy industry fuels massive change, a welcome boost to the
American economy, and new energy sources are just the tip of the iceberg.
From lubricants to solar panels, water recycling to drilling safety, new
industry technologies help keep the world’s lights on—and all at decreasing
environmental and economic costs.
Yet, even as product development and Technology-driven marketing organizations
operations technologies play leapfrog, energy can harness the power of digital strategies to
companies risk leaving money on the table drive more leads, stronger relationships, and
because their sales and marketing teams don’t even greater revenue gains.
have the same “technology first” mentality. As
digital media technologies transform global Energy companies feel mounting pressure
business, energy—by and large—lags behind, on other fronts as well. As environmental
stuck in a “trade shows and handshakes” ethos concerns accumulate, public opinion turns
that has ruled the industry for decades. sour, political obstacles can get in the way
of doing business. To confront these
Today’s customer, whether he’s purchasing challenges, the energy industry must use
a car for his family or infrastructure for his digital communications to engage the public
company, is more self-directed than he used in increasingly authentic and credible ways.
to be, so the research phase of any purchase
takes up a greater portion of the sales cycle.
When sales teams wait to be invited to the
conversation, they engage far too late. An
engagement marketing strategy powered by
marketing automation technologies help sales
teams engage buyers while they research.
01
The solution: An Engineered Sales
and Marketing Engagement Strategy
To bring energy sales and marketing teams into the modern age, look to the
technology sector, which has turned lead conversion into a science. Today,
it’s possible to engineer everything from how you escort buyers through the
sales funnel, to the way your public interprets the news.
Engagement Marketing can help you get more
out of long-standing customer relationships,
give potential buyers the information they
crave, and align marketing with sales so that it
contributes directly to revenue.
In this ebook, we explore the sales and
marketing obstacles that the energy industry
faces, and how engagement marketing
technologies can help. Next, we outline the
steps energy companies can take to engineer
a clean, mean, sales and marketing machine.
02
The Challenge: Decades of Old-School
Business Traditions
In order to meet the demands of the pace of change and the pressure to
compete, marketing technology has transformed the way companies interact
with customers. But energy organizations have a unique set of challenges
when it comes to adoption:
1. Satisfaction with the status quo. to figure out what they should be
Whether you have an ample budget or measuring, let alone to make the case
you’re looking to maximize each dollar, for improved metrics.
business leaders should be concerned with
a business-as-usual operation. Energy trade 3. Lack of digital knowledge or strategy.
shows attract hundreds of thousands of Energy business leaders, who have
sales people, industry leaders, policy makers, traditionally relied on phone and in-person
technologists, and the media. They’re communication, may feel intimidated by the
exciting—and expensive—and they pace of digital communication innovation—
represent an old-school dynamic that and therefore hesitant to acknowledge the
relies on handshakes and personalities. value that these strategies offer. The longer
But this dynamic often offers only a they turn a blind eye to the explosion of
momentary burst of activity—a solitary digital technologies, the more difficult it is
activity—and it does not translate to catch up.
to long-term success or ongoing
relationships with potential buyers. But here’s the irony: the hurdles that might
stand between an energy company and a
2. A sidelined marketing department. modern, well-engineered sales and marketing
If your marketing department carries a solution are the very same hurdles that an
revenue number, your company truly engagement marketing strategy addresses
represents the cutting edge. Most energy so very well.
leaders haven’t even considered the idea,
and their marketers would be hard-pressed
03
Making the Case for
EngagemenT Marketing
Increasingly complex energy technologies draw even the most loyal
energy customers online, to seek out expert resources and content that can
help them make sense of the landscape.
This presents an opportunity for energy Marketing automation also makes it possible
executives to be those experts, using a digital to practice sophisticated lead generation
communications strategy to reach buyers as techniques like lead nurturing. Whether you’re
they research. Marketing automation is core to confronting negative press, or educating
an engagement marketing strategy that enables targeted customers on advanced lubricant
marketers and sales professionals to manage technology, digital lead nurturing is a key
their digital communications by providing element in any modern communication
actionable insight about each individual strategy. Nurturing your pipeline, with
during their buying journey. automated, personalized communications
helps you effectively deliver your message
With marketing automation, sales professionals to the right person at the right time and
can pull up full histories on each prospect, accelerate your customers through the steps
offering real-time insights into the ebooks, of their lifecycle faster. Marketing automation
videos, or webinars they’ve accessed, the ties it all together, offering ROI dashboards that
people they’ve met, the emails they’ve seen, show you exactly how marketing initiatives are
and the promotions they’ve been offered. performing in relation to revenue, and what
Businesses that use marketing automation to you can do to improve the numbers.
nurture prospects experience up to a 451%
increase in qualified leads.
04
Case Study: State-of-the-Art Lubricants
Meet State-of-thE-Art Marketing
As the fourth largest finished lubricants supplier in the United States,
Phillips 66® offers consumers four premier brands, including 76® Lubricants,
Conoco®, Phillips 66 and Kendall Motor Oil®. In the past few years, the
company focused on acquiring new brands and developing specialized,
state-of-the-art lubricant technology.
Phillips 66 is an energy manufacturing Phillips 66 Lubricants leaders realized early
company with Refining and Marketing, on that buyer behavior was changing, and
Midstream and Chemicals expertise. The acknowledged the need for a strong digital
company has a strong focus on operational marketing and communication strategy.
excellence—personal and process safety,
environmental stewardship, reliability and The Lubricants team invested in a digital
cost efficiency. As one of the largest finished media strategy, but soon realized that driving
lubricants suppliers in the United States, leads to their website was not enough if those
Phillips 66 offers consumers four premier leads didn’t make their way to sales.
lubricant brands, including: 76, Conoco,
Phillips 66, and Kendall in the U.S. and 69
in other countries.
05
Case Study: State-of-the-Art Lubricants
Meet State-of-thE-Art Marketing
“Improving web traffic only goes so far,” says Demand Frontier, an energy industry focused
Bill Brown, Director of Marketing for the demand generation marketing and consultancy
Industrial Segment. “It quickly became clear agency, was engaged to help the team take
that we needed to nurture prospects and guide stock of the marketing technology landscape.
them to a broader spectrum of information. Ultimately, Marketo was chosen to help
What could new lubricant technologies do transform and align the Phillips 66 Lubricants
for them? What were some best practices for marketing and sales teams. “Demand Frontier
putting them into use in their businesses? Why supports our efforts to understand where our
should they transition from one product to buyers are in their sales process and how best
another? And so forth. We needed to engage to engage them with our content and offers, so
in dialogue with these prospects.” that we can keep the conversation going.
They are helping us to write the playbook”
“An integrated digital media and communication says Brown.
strategy made sense and that is where we
focused a lot of our media efforts,” said Brown. “It’s clearly a process,” says Brown. “We learn
But Phillips 66’s marketing leaders could see something new every day, but it’s clear to
that they were still missing opportunities to me that this is what the future looks like for
drive higher engagement and get even more marketing lubricants in the digital frontier.”
out of their digital marketing investments.
The next step was implementing marketing
automation technology, processes and
best practices.
06
Your Change Management Team:
Leaders at All Levels, Working Together
Which members of your team should be involved in the process of
researching, implementing, and ultimately investing in marketing automation?
Who should help lead the change in your organization? And, whose buy-in do
you need?
Enlisting the right personnel to take part in that you will achieve buy-in from everyone to
the process of organizational change is the invest in your success.
very first imperative. It’s sort of like creating
a seating arrangement for an exclusive At energy companies, your marketing
dinner party: if you pick the right people, the automation implementation team might look
conversation will flow. Hand-picking crucial something like this:
roles from both sales and marketing ensures
Executive Sales Marketing
President VP Sales/Business Development VP Marketing
General Manager Sales Ops Manager Digital Marketing Leader
Vice President Sales Director Product Marketing
Field Sales Manager Campaign Strategist (Email and Events)
Inside Sales Manager Social Media Director
CRM Administrator KPIs/Analytics Leader
Technical Marketing Leader
07
The Four Change Management Pillars:
A Plan for Modernizing Your Marketing
While the results of successful marketing automation initiatives are clearer
every day, the secret to achieving those results can be elusive for any
organization. In our experience guiding enterprises through the process,
the most successful companies have these success factors in common:
• T
hey understand the changing buying For most enterprise organizations, getting
behavior of their customers, and there involves an ongoing change
acknowledge that embracing digital is management process. In consulting with
a competitive advantage. new marketing automation adopters, we find
it useful to break the process down into four
• T
hey approach planning with the goal pillars, which are used to assess your current
of aligning communication, processes, marketing environment.
and sales engagement—coordinating all
marketing channels into a unified effort. This is not just a high-level, theoretical
discussion—the goal is to create a tangible
• T
hey design marketing programs by action plan that you can launch boldly,
starting with sales revenue targets, and and immediately.
reverse-engineer their marketing metrics
and calendars to achieve revenue goals.
• T
heir content strategies elicit action
and additional engagement from
their audience at each stage of the
buyer’s journey.
08
The Four Change Management Pillars:
A Plan for Modernizing Your Marketing
Pillar 1: Marketing Strategy
How effective is your current marketing
strategy? What level of technological
sophistication—if any—have you reached,
to date? Is your marketing team logistically
ready to take a bigger leap into marketing
automation? Are they motivated to make
sweeping changes that will transform the
organization?
During this stage, you’ll evaluate your
organization’s marketing maturity and
benchmark your existing practices. Upon
completion, you should have a good grasp
of where you stand, and a clear strategic
and tactical roadmap for transforming your
marketing organization.
09The Four Change Management Pillars:
A Plan for Modernizing Your Marketing
Pillar 2: Cross-Functional Alignment
The next step is to actively align sales and
marketing so that both teams are working
toward a unified goal. Your sales and
marketing departments have different
objectives, strategies, and processes. They
also have different terminology, methodologies,
and opinions about how customers progress
through the sales funnel. Your marketing
machine won’t run smoothly until everyone
is speaking the same language.
Cross-functional synergy allows both teams to
get on board. When your sales and marketing
departments collaborate to formally define
each stage of the revenue cycle, as well as
the business rules that determine a prospect’s
movement from one stage to the next, they
create the foundation for a comprehensive
set of robust revenue metrics.
10The Four Change Management Pillars:
A Plan for Modernizing Your Marketing
Pillar 3: Measurement and Reporting These are the four categories of revenue-
focused metrics that your C-suite cares
What are your key reporting metrics? The ones
about most:
that best help you measure future success.
Ultimately, this assessment pillar is where you
• Lead generation: How many people
build your business case. When it’s complete,
entered each stage of the funnel in a
you should be able to confidently present
given period? Are these numbers
competitive and investment analyses to your
trending up or down?
leadership team.
• Active prospects: How many people or
To build a business case for engineered
accounts are in each pipeline stage?
marketing, focus on the revenue metrics that
your CEO and CFO care about, rather than on
• Conversion: What is the conversion ratio
vanity, activity, or cost metrics that may help
from stage to stage? Which lead types
you make marketing decisions, yet relate very
have the best conversion rate? Are they
little to ROI.
trending up or down?
• Velocity: What is the average revenue
cycle time? How does it break down by
stage? Do certain types of leads move
faster through the pipeline? How is that
changing over time?
11The Four Change Management Pillars:
A Plan for Modernizing Your Marketing
Pillar 4: Systems and Technology
What effect is your technology stack having on A marketing automation solution that will help
your marketing automation strategy? Are you you turn marketing into a revenue-generating
being pressured to accept the latest marketing sales partner over the long term is a big ask.
acquisition from a big software stack provider?
Beware of solutions that may serve your Be sure to do plenty of research before
needs in the short-term, but don’t offer the making your decision.
full-feature sets of the best-of-breed vendors.
Switching solutions in the middle of a success
story is painful, and no one should implement a
solution knowing they’ll have to replace it later.
12conclusion:
Enterprises around the world recognize that marketing is no longer only
about eye-catching ads and artful turns of phrase. As engagement marketing
practices gain a foothold in industry after industry, organizations must change
to stay relevant and gain a competitive advantage.
Engagement marketing is a continual process Gradually, you’ll spend fewer resources running
for an obvious reason: new technologies your sales and marketing organization, and
continue to inundate the marketplace and more on growing and transforming it. Be
change the way people communicate. But sure to choose and invest in technology and
as long as you’re measuring leads as they consulting partners who are with you for the
move through your sales funnel and showing long haul.
end-to-end improvements at each phase of
your project, you are making progress. Any
steps you can take toward becoming an agile,
analytical sales and marketing organization—
engaging buyers wherever they congregate,
and proving your revenue impact—are critical
to the long-term health of your company.
13Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the leading marketing Demand Frontier is a demand generation marketing agency and
software and solutions designed to help marketers master the art consultancy, with a focus on the energy industry. We help our
and science of digital marketing. Through a unique combination clients leverage marketing technologies and methodologies to
of innovation and expertise, Marketo is focused solely on helping power programs that deliver sales growth, effectiveness, and
marketers keep pace in an ever-changing digital world. Spanning efficiency. Our leadership team is made up of industry pioneers
today’s digital, social, mobile and offline channels, Marketo’s that have deep, award winning experience with many the largest
Engagement Marketing Platform powers a set of breakthrough global business to business brands.
applications to help marketers tackle all aspects of digital
marketing from the planning and orchestration of marketing
activities to the delivery of personalized interactions that can be demandfrontier.com
optimized in realtime. Marketo’s applications are known for their
ease-of-use, and are complemented by the Marketing Nation®, Headquarters:
a thriving network of 400 third-party solutions through our 305 Golden Bear Drive
LaunchPoint® ecosystem and over 50,000 marketers who share Austin, TX 78738
and learn from each other to grow their collective marketing (512) 900-2755
expertise. The result for modern marketers is unprecedented
agility and superior results. Headquartered in San Mateo, CA
with offices in Europe, Australia and Japan, Marketo serves as a
strategic marketing partner to more than 3,400 large enterprises
and fast-growing small companies across a wide variety of
industries. For more information, visit marketo.com.
marketo.com
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