Me, Myself & Marketo

And so it begins...again. A new year and new job and a new instance of Marketo.  On one hand it's exciting to bring a marketing automation suite into a stealth mode company and have a chance to start from scratch. There's nothing in place. On the other hand, it looks so empty at first. Beginning at the beginning again so I have create all those precious little nuggets of activities that have made life so much easier.

Here's a plan for getting up and running quickly. It's quick and dirty and you can build on the rest.

• Day 1: Marketo sent the login details and credentials. Add the muchkin code, connect SFDC, initialize the database schema sync, add the cname.
• Day 2: Build the landing page template. You don't have to wait for the standard pack Marketo installs. Look at the blank template and modify the css to fit your brand. (Do NOT cut and paste code from an existing landing page from your website and use it as a template. The Marketo editor will not work if you do that. The key pieces to modify are the (denoted with mkt) header, content, column, footer. This is what the wysywig editor looks for in order for the properties to show up correctly.)  
• Day 3: Create the first smart list for bad data filtering. Get on a kick-off call with the customer success manager.
• Day 4: Create all Adwords landing pages and run ads there.
• Day 5: Check out all your sync and conversions to see if lead details are coming in correctly. 

Up and running in 5 days. Of course if you're motivated this just needs to take a few hours.

If there's any advice, the most important place to start is to define your lead capture forms and pages. Success is highly dependent on your getting your lead capture forms correctly. It is after all the primary place where names get entered into the system. 

Begin by determining the absolute minimum number of form fields you need in order to make some routing decision about the lead. It is generally accepted knowledge that that longer forms deter users from filling it out. Over time, you can try different lengths for various assets to get a sense of the trade-offs. At this point, replicate what is there.