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We’re confident that 2015 will be The Year of Marketing Automation – this could be both our and your best year yet. After all, the idea of Marketing Automation isn’t a new one.  Marketing automation has been around in one form or another for decades.  Mailing campaigns intending to engage customers have existed long before we became a social medial and email culture.

Now, marketing solution is one of the fastest growing marketing solutions available and 2015 is poised to be a grand year for it.  Let’s go over what’s happening in the market right now that makes this the best time to add marketing automation to optimize your performance and get the best results.

Why Add Marketing Automation in 2015?

First, when you look at the data it’s easy to see why you should add marketing automation software to your repertoire of business solutions.  75% of top performing companies have been using some type of marketing automation in their businesses for the last two years.  Other data suggests that business-to-business companies increase their sales-pipeline contributions by 10% when adding marketing automation – this includes 25% of business-to-business Fortune 500 companies.

Mobile Marketing and Marketing Automation in 2015

If you really want to get serious about marketing automation in 2015 and you already have a platform, then your next logical step is to think about mobile marketing.  Mobile technology is the first screen in a customer’s life and a marketing tool that they carry everywhere.  By employing mobile marketing, you’re able to tell when, how, and where they’d like to be approached.  However, to properly engage customers using mobile devices, there are some hard and fast rules you should note:

• Don’t engage based on location alone.  With location services activating marketing messages, consumers are likely to be blasted with messages at every street corner.  This will lead to frustration and many customers will begin to ignore messages, even when those messages are relevant.
• Beacons aren’t able to engage successfully.  Beacons are messages, much like location services, that engage a consumer based on what they’re near.  Staying at the Hilton?  Beacons will send messages to a device letting the consumer know what restaurants, sporting events, and theaters are nearby.  Poor beacon strategy will decrease engagement and drive consumers away.  Don’t rush to roll out beacons unless you’re sure you have a strategy in place that will be successful.
• Protect your customer’s data.  With high profile data breaches in the news last year, consumers are aware that you’re collecting their information and that there’s always a potential for it to get out.  Taking appropriate steps to ensure a checks and balances system before collecting data will ensure that your customers are safe and you’re protected from bad press and customer disenchantment.

Marketing automation is also getting more affordable. Many new marketing automation startups that have proven successful, are forcing old players to get with the times and reduce prices.  If they choose not to lower prices they’ll become more specific in different areas in order to service their customers.  Competition will be fierce in 2015, which will lead many to change the way they do business.  Many startups will see success and offer freemium services and/or services with no startup fees involved.

2015 will truly be the year that any company, no matter how small or the size of its budget, can begin to market like Fortune 500 businesses.  Let us show you how marketing automation can make this year the best yet for your business!

If you’re on the fence about marketing automation, it might be best for you to take a look at how it can transform your business by comparing the before with the after.

First, you may be wondering how a move to marketing automation will benefit your business financially.  It’s a fair question and one with an interesting answer. On average, marketing automation costs less than what it would cost you to hire three to four employees to do the same job.  Combined with payroll taxes, health insurance, and other benefits – this could mean huge savings for companies.

Marketing automation is also able to make a significant impact in small to medium sized companies.  For the most part, those marketing departments are relatively small, so it’s difficult to devote the time and energy to daily tasks let alone things like updating databases and tracking content performance.  Marketing automation can make a major impact in these areas by doing that work for you.

Marketing Automation: The Before

When we start getting into the before of larger, multi-national companies, the impact that automation can have becomes even clearer.  Large companies are often running campaigns and social media accounts for several locations or departments, all at the same time.  As an example, Unilever owns more than 400 brands worldwide.  They have a variety of marketing campaigns for different brands, in different parts of the world, for different products; at any given time.  Marketing automation would help a company like Unilever manage the activity on all of their social media sites, including scheduling content, tracking interactions and followers, and delivering real-time data to see how a strategy is performing overall.

Working the Demographics

Besides tracking how well your campaigns are performing, marketing automation gives you the ability to target them to specific demographics.  If you’re targeting clients of all kinds, marketing automation can help you specify where they fall in the buying pipeline.  Are they marketing managers themselves or are they business owners?  Automation can help you keep that information straight while sending targeted messages to all of your clients.  Most companies will see an increase in sales and conversion rates once they implement marketing automation solutions.

Beyond all this, marketing automation will create a more predictable revenue cycle and align your sales and marketing teams, which will substantially increase your growth.  Some experts say that by using marketing automation, a company can expect a 29% increase in won deals as opposed to 19% won deals, without marketing automation.  Your sales department will benefit as well.  For a majority of companies, 73% of the leads that the sales department receive, go nowhere.  With marketing automation, you’re able to identify and cut out the 73% ahead of time, which means that your sales team is able to focus on high-quality leads.  Not only that but since nurtured leads tend to spend about 47% more than non-nurtured leads, you don’t have to wait around for your sales team to establish relationships.  Marketing automation has already done that for you, with targeted, personalized messages and content.

These are only a few of the ways that marketing automation can benefit your company and transform your sales team.  If the after looks better than the before to you, contact us today to get started with your marketing automation solution!

Have you been asking yourself, is marketing automation a good idea? Or maybe, is marketing automation worth the hassle? To run an effective marketing campaign and gather appropriate leads, marketers should take advantage of marketing automation.  Marketing automation gives you the ability to manage the targeting, timing, and content of your outbound messages in the most effective way possible.  By implementing marketing automation, you’ll be able to personalize your marketing to each prospect’s wants and needs based on where they are in the buying pipeline.

Of course, everyone knows that increased revenues are the number one reason most businesses decide to incorporate marketing automation.  In fact, out of top performing companies, 70% are found to use marketing automation.  But what you might not realize about marketing automation is that it also helps companies build and improve internal communications, making your sales and marketing teams more effective.  When marketing and sales teams come together, their mutual decisions are most effectively implemented through marketing automation.  This improvement results in effective lead nurturing, scoring, and a handoff process designed to meet both the marketing goals of the organization and sales requirements.

Marketing Automation: Is It a Good Idea?

Many times, marketing automation is the solution to specific challenges an organization has. For example, if you’re having issues capturing appropriate and solid leads, marketing automation can help solve this by accurately targeting leads.  It also gives you, the marketer, the advantage of sending out effective and personalized messages but automating this process so you’re able to focus on more important aspects of your campaigns.  Marketing automation will provide you with real-time data and analytics, letting you know what’s working and what’s not.  It takes the guesswork out of marketing and allows you to nail down the details that draw in your targeted audience.

Marketing automation works best for companies who are in specific situations, such as:

• Companies in a large market with numerous leads;
• Organizations with a longer sales process;
• Businesses with sites that are content heavy;
• Processes and systems already in place, to coordinate.

Will Marketing Automation Work?

Marketing automation is not a magic wand or a quick fix.  It’s a process that will take work, time, and adjustments.  Marketing automation strategies will be tested and adjusted continuously based off the information it gives you.  It will take initial effort on your part but your long-term workload will be lessened, if the system is implemented correctly.  For companies who are producing quality content and getting a steady flow of leads from their sites, marketing automation could be a solution to effective and timely follow-up.

If you think that marketing automation might be an effective tool for your campaign and you’re ready to talk, contact us today for a quote!