Is your sales team’s time best spent nurturing leads one at a time? Probably not. Unfortunately, many companies rely on the sales department to qualify and nurture leads that may never turn into new business. This can be immensely time consuming and resource-draining. Marketing automation streamlines those time-intensive marketing processes and is extremely effective in accomplishing marketing goals.
Why Marketing Automation Integration is Essential for Your Business
Are you just getting started on your automation journey? If so, we have a handy resource for you. The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Automation. It will help you get familiar with some basic automated marketing and sales concepts.
Why Do You Need Marketing Automation?
Of course, we all would like to be able to work faster, but what are the real objectives for marketing automation? Businesses that have integrated automation have benefited from increased sales revenue, improved lead nurturing, campaign effectiveness, and overall marketing productivity.
Instead of brute-force efforts trying to nurture leads one at a time, marketing automation allows marketers to segment leads based on personas, interests, and the buying-cycles stage. Suddenly you are holding a one-on-one conversation with thousands of people at once, and because of dynamic content and personalization, your the only one who really knows.
Challenges and Obstacles
If marketing automation is such a powerful tool, why aren’t more marketers using it? The two biggest obstacles are often lack of an effective strategy and budget limitations. While both budget limitations and strategy concerns can be intimidating, they don’t have to be. The myth that automation is cost-prohibitive and hard to implement simply isn’t true. The reality is that there are many options for high-quality marketing automation that are easy to deploy and cost-effective.
One final challenge facing some companies is simply being open to integrating new systems into their overall marketing strategy. Integration may feel like a headache, and new strategies always require a learning curve. Your business has to weigh the benefits of time and energy spent in learning a new system against the outcomes that can be achieved. There’s no doubt about it; getting your system integrated will take time. Most marketers expect results to take 6 to 12 months. To be most effective, you might consider using a combination of both outsourced specialists and your own in-house resources to integrate your automation system.
What Should You Look for In an Automation System
When considering an automation system, most businesses are looking for a system that is both easy to use and provides analytics that can prove improved performance. Here are the key features to consider:
- Dynamic content
- Personalization
- Lead Scoring
- Email Management
- Lead Capture
- Landing Page Development
- Lead Segmentation
- CRM integration
- Attribution
- Analytics
- Reporting
How can you tell if your system is a success? It’s safe to assume you want to see increased revenue as well as improved quality lead generation. Revenue and customers acquired are the two areas cited most frequently as critical to the success of a marketing automation integration strategy.
Another important metric to measure is conversion rates. You will want to know the conversion rate for leads at each step of the selling cycle. Knowing these rates will help you pinpoint where your sales funnel is leaking, and what you need to do to fix it. Additional metrics you should be familiar with to measure performance are revenue generated, lead generation ROI, cost per lead, leads generated, click-through rate, and website traffic.
How Can We Help
Do you need help identifying the right marketing automation system for your business? We offer strategic planning, marketing automation optimization and implementation services that can help. If you are ready to increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster, sign up for a complimentary initial consultation/discovery meeting. Schedule yours today and let’s see if we can help.
Key Takeaways
- Automation streamlines those time-intensive marketing processes and is extremely effective in accomplishing marketing goals.
- Revenue and customers acquired are the two areas cited most frequently as critical to the success of a marketing automation integration strategy.
- Download The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Automation.
