In an era where most of the buying process is complete by the time a prospect is ready to engage with sales, effective marketing automation is the key to engaging potential customers early and often in the sales process.
While there has been an increase in the adoption of marketing automation in recent years, it is not as easy to implement as you may think.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed to streamline marketing actions. Marketing departments can use marketing automation to more effectively market across multiple channels simultaneously, such as email, social media and websites.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
The benefits of marketing automation can be enormous, especially for a business with a longer sales cycle that requires nurturing to help the buyer make a decision. By continuously providing prospects new information to help them move forward in their purchasing decision, marketing automation significantly improves the efficiency of your marketing and sales efforts, freeing up your team to focus on your core business.
What Makes Marketing Automation Difficult to Achieve?
In its simplest form, marketing automation may seem like a collection of content, such as blogs, eBooks, and white papers, used to drive potential customers down the sales pipeline, but it is actually quite complicated to implement. In fact 85 percent of B2B marketers using marketing automation platforms felt they were not using them to their full potential.
In order to have an effective marketing automation platform, it is essential to have an agency that is a subject matter expert in your field and can help your team stay ahead of the curve on all the latest marketing trends.
Importance of Subject Matter Experts
Now that you understand the difficulties of implementing a successful marketing automation campaign, what is the key to success? To achieve the level of success you want out of your marketing automation efforts, the agency you choose to partner with needs to be subject matter experts in your field.
Think about it like this, most marketing agencies have experience working with a particular target client base, be it manufacturing, technology, construction or sales. A marketing agency will lean on its experience to ensure they completely understand your target audiences and then will quickly be able to build an effective marketing automation process that will drive your leads down the sales funnel.
While most marketing agencies will be able to deliver some form of results, why waste your time and marketing budget allowing an agency with little to no experience in your field setting up your marketing automation processes?
Has your business streamlined its marketing efforts? Are you using your current marketing automation platform to its fullest potential?
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