3 Benefits of a Marketing Automation System and What It Means to You

Marketing automation systems are used by leading businesses to streamline operations, generate more leads and measure ROI—67% of marketing leaders currently use a marketing automation platform (Salesforce, 2017), and global spending on marketing automation technology is expected to continue to grow.

While the best marketing automation systems allow several ways to combine strategy and software to get the most out of your marketing budget, there are three key benefits that companies getting started with marketing automation should know.

Benefit #1: Generate More High-Quality Leads

In the past, sales reps held all the information about your product and services, and prospects only got the information you wanted them to have. Today, buyers are doing most of their research online before reaching out to you. Marketing automation systems help companies use this shift to their advantage by tracking prospect behavior and interactions across channels.

What it means to you:

Knowing more about your leads helps to shorten the sales cycle. By understanding who your lead is and what content they’ve responded to, you can provide more actionable leads to sales—by further qualifying leads prior to hand-off, you allow your sales team to only spend time on strong prospects. Sales can have more meaningful conversations with prospects once they become sales-ready, and by reducing wasted efforts on leads that aren’t ready for a sales call, your team will be more productive.

Benefit #2: Automate Your Efforts

Marketing automation systems allow teams to automate repetitive tasks, and set up triggers to automate nurturing campaigns—the system streamlines the execution of these tasks, giving marketing and sales that time back to do more creative work that can have a bigger impact.

What it means to you:

By setting up automated actions based on a lead’s activities, such as opening an email or completing a form on your site, you simplify the immediate follow-up process. When you can couple marketing automation with an inbound strategy centered around your ideal prospects (buyer personas), you can deliver a follow-up message that is more relevant and tailored to what that prospect may be interested in. You can also develop automated nurturing (drip) campaigns targeted to deliver the right message at the right time to nurture them toward becoming a customer.

B2B purchases can have longer sales cycles and include products or services that require a more long-term commitment. Nurturing campaigns allow you to deliver more in-depth educational content like whitepapers and case studies to prospects during this time, helping to establish your expertise and giving supporting information to prospects that need to get buy-in from other stakeholders.

Benefit #3: Analyze and Adjust

The best marketing automation systems allow you to execute and analyze your digital marketing efforts across all channels, so you can see how contacts are engaging with your brand and message—on your website, through email and social media channels—and determine what to do next.

What it means to you:

Simply put, when you can see how your efforts are performing, you’ll have a better idea of what’s working and what needs some work. And while one of the benefits of a marketing automation system is the time you save that would have been spent sending emails or posting updates to each social media channel, automation feeds off of data analysis. Using a tool that connects all of your marketing efforts and allows you to analyze them holistically will help your team to be more strategic and make data-based decisions. You’ll be able to see:

• Which content formats were effective?
• Was the messaging correct?
• Was the channel the right one?

With this information, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts and budget.

These are just a few of the many benefits that marketing automation can provide, and selecting the right platform is an important decision. You can learn more about marketing automation on the HubSpot or Salesforce blogs. When you are ready to determine the best marketing automation system for your needs, a digital marketing partner like SyncShow can guide you through the process and develop a strategy that will help you achieve your goals.

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