Blog Walkthrough
- History – What is Marketing Automation?
- Stats – What do numbers have to say about Marketing Automation?
- Myth #1: It is Difficult to Deploy and Use
- Myth #2: It Does Not Focus On Inbound Campaigns
- Myth #3: It Doesn’t Help Post Sale
- Myth #4: It Makes Everything Very Robotic
- Myth #5: It Requires both a Massive Budget and Team
- Take away – Conclusion
Do you know that the motivation behind coining the term ‘marketing automation’ (MA) was the following phrase: “What do we tell retailer X to do when customer Y arrives on a Monday morning?”
John D.C. Little the man who curated the term, further suggested that we analyze the digital trail of customer Y before bringing him to the sales funnel.
In other words, in the B2B globe, marketing automation leads to increased ROI, higher productivity and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Marketing automation is a great way of guiding potential customers through your website, social channels and campaigns to generate new leads, all while converting existing ones. Its salient applications are:
- Lead Generation,
- Lead Nurturing,
- Metrics and Analytics,
- Management Activities, and
- After Sales Support.
These what the numbers have to say about Marketing Automation:
+14.5% increase in sales productivity through Marketing Automation. – Nucleus Research
-12.2% reduction in Marketing Overhead through Marketing Automation – Nucleus Research
+20% increase in sales opportunities through nurtured leads, compared to not nurtured. – DemandGen Report
+451% – increment in qualified leads through Marketing Automation. –The Annuitas Group
Despite this, other studies have also concluded that mere
32% of the companies using a marketing automation suite believed marketing automation to be very successful.
While another study showed
50% the companies experienced no increase in qualified leads, with only 19 percent showing a dramatic increase.
Why is there still some unease to adapt to the new potent technology?
Many marketers have heeded to the stories floating around the internet and otherwise, just Google “marketing automation fails” and you will be neck deep in content. But trust us this fear and anxiety is hyped-up and the fact of the matter remains that if MA is used right, it can skyrocket your sales through your rooftops.
Here are some of the myths that are acting as cobwebs for businesses and CxOs:
Myth #1: Difficult to Deploy and Use
Enterprises must be aware of the core objectives and use the marketing functionalities in that regard. They should not jump into all marketing functionalities they can put their hands on.
For instance, if the government wants to run a campaign to mention urgency to the citizens they only need Voice Broadcasting services, Ringless Voicemails will do no good.
In other words, businesses shall consume the functionalities they require in a phased approach of crawl, walk and run.
Crawl: Frequent with the basics of marketing automation. Run single-channel campaigns. Be sure to give users proper landing pages and offers in these campaigns. Integrate lead scoring to leads drop into relevant campaigns automatically.
Walk: Tailor data according to campaign responses. Remove duplicate and dead leads. enable more sophisticated targeting and personalization to the other leads. Deploy multichannel campaigns.
Run: Now once you are equipped with the basics, run on with full functionalities. Unify campaigns for a true, multi-channel approach, employ long-term nurture and score leads across channels to drive maximum conversion.
Myth #2: It Does Not Focus On Inbound Campaigns
“Web search is one of the top three methods used to gather information about a possible solution” according to Demand Gen’s 2015 B2B Buyer’s Survey Report. This customer-centric shift has created the need for marketers to become versatile for both inbound campaigns.
Marketing automation equips marketers to get prospects in their sales to funnel based on the behaviors and preferences they share on their path to purchase.
It also helps in gaining insights from campaign reporting and the information gotten through the web content management system with each site visit — such as searched queries, content engaged and clicked links.
These digital touchpoints would be used to fuel further interactions that trigger response and movement along the path to purchase.
Myth #3: It Doesn’t Help Post Sale
It is not wise to ignore the customers, and marketing automation very well takes care of the fact that you do not do that.
It helps you follow up and help them if needed. It boosts upsell, cross-sells, and repeat sales opportunities. In simple words continue to engage your customers and remind them why they chose you in the first place.
Marketing automation will for sure nourish the post-sale customer relationship just as well as it does for nurturing the lead.
Myth #4: It Makes Everything Very Robotic
CMOs and Sales heads think that MA takes away the life-like interaction from the customer interaction, and that might increase the bounce rates in general.
But guess what, this is not marketing automation’s fault entirely.
It is the Company’s responsibility to sound personal with their curated automated calls and texts.
Focus on the tone of your automated voice and tailor messages as cheerful as possible.
Myth #5: It Requires both a Massive Budget and Team
This is the final and most prevalent myth. It is of no doubt that an enterprise or a company need to have the right sales and marketing strategies, right channels and the right team to generate leads and convert them.
Having said that, it is not true for a company to necessarily have a massive budget or a team. Marketing automation reduces your need to have a lot of people on board as it will manage the tasks regarding attracting, engaging and nurturing prospects and customers. By doing so you can shift your intelligence in more tactical tasks and strategic planning.
In Conclusion
According to Forrester Consulting out all the B2Bs that responded only 17% consider themselves to have leading marketing maturity and only 10% of them believe their teams can execute fully marketing automation technology.
Some businesses have set up marketing automation and are benefiting from them but most will still take time to adapt.
It is not bad to be a late bloomer, sooner or later marketing automation is going to become a necessity to align businesses with the right marketing goals.
To know more about our exclusive cloud-based automated marketing suite, burst us on chat at leadsrain.com or get in touch with our sales executives at support@leadsrain.com
