Many marketers question the return on investment of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media Campaigns, eMail programs, blog posts or whether their website itself is actually leading to any new business or sales. The pressure on today’s marketers is greater to both understand and effectively utilize all these channels. While most business executives understand marketing is a business necessity, often someone’s job security depends on proving their marketing budgets were well spent. The term that marketers must learn today is Marketing Automation. Unlike its name, which might suggest otherwise, marketing automation still requires (human) teams to both develop campaigns, institute programs and develop creative content. But marketing automation does utilize technology to provide capabilities many marketers may not even be aware are currently (and readily) available. Once in place, these tools can provide automatic sales processes and reporting that can be game changing. Put simply, Marketing Automation tools can:
- Provide contacts and leads directly to your sales teams inboxes, dispatching the right lead to the right team member
- Tell you who is visiting your website, (a person or what company) even though they have not filled out a contact form
- Provide a results dashboard for campaigns of many types; eMail, Social Media, Keyword, Display etc.
- Score leads based on their actions and put automatic sales and marketing pipelines in-place
For example, if a contact receives an email from your company, with Marketing Automation, you can control what happens next. If the contact does not open your email, they may automatically receive a second or third email at a pre-determined schedule. If they do open the email and click on your website, they may go into a different track. These leads then may get a sales call from your team, or receive emails on a different subject matter; all depending on your business goals. If they click on a particular product or service page on your website or read a specific article on your blog, the lead can be directed to a particular product group within your organization. A great marketing automation tool will integrate with or include a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. Today’s marketing automation tools can turn this kind of ambiguous data into living and breathing sales leads for your business. Armed with these tools, marketing teams will remain valued partners to sales teams and companies will have considerable advantage over the competition. Big Idea can help you make effective use of all the latest marketing tools.
