While there are multiple reasons to use marketing automation software, here are three that I consider to be critical for a successful marketing program to meet established goals and objectives.
Lead generation - Marketing automation software helps you acquire new people and enter them into your database for further evaluation and analysis.
Leads need to be both market qualified and sales qualified. The marketing qualified (MQL) lead has to demonstrate some level of interest in what you offer, either by filling out a contact form or downloading a piece of marketing material, such as a white paper or case study. Marketing automation software is set up to evaluate the lead and assign a score to that lead. By qualifying leads, less time and energy is wasted on people who are weak leads to begin with.
A sales qualified lead (SQL) needs to meet the BANT formula. BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Needs, Timeline.
Assuming all of these requirements are met, your sales staff will score the lead high in agreement with the marketing lead value. The marketing automation platform you use tracks the progress of the lead through your sales cycle.
Synchronize and integrate sales and marketing - Marketing automation software works with your CRM to transfer information about the leads from the sales CRM to the marketing automation tool (and vice versa) to gain efficiencies for both organizations.
Too much time is wasted in manually adding or copying data from one organization's system(s) to the other. However, marketing automation software doesn't just copy the lead generation data. It also evaluates the interactions the prospect has with your website. How many pages did she visit? Did he fill out the form to download a case study? Did she sign up for a free consultation or webinar?
The marketing department uses the same data as sales to develop personas and create marketing materials that work across and in each stage of the selling process. Sales personnel use that same data to guide the prospect through the buyer journey by giving her the information she needs to make the decision.
Measure effectiveness of content - Marketing automation platforms can track user interaction on a per page basis. Suppose you create landing pages for individual services. Are those pages being seen by a large number of prospects? Are the prospects responding to, and completing the CTA on each page?
Some marketing automation tools can also track your web site's visibility in search engine results on a keyword basis, which is helpful in seeing which pages are showing up high in search results. If you're distributing content on social media channels, you can quickly see which channels are sending targeted traffic to your pages.
If these three benefits of using marketing automation software resonate with you, then it's time for us to connect and learn more about your marketing and sales operations. Call us at 571-606-3106 to start the conversation. Measured Results Marketing can analyze gaps in your marketing and sales programs and give you the solutions in prioritized order to improve revenue. Click here to see the services we offer to make your marketing and sales programs work better together.
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