Why is it important to automate lead or demand generation efforts in B2B marketing? Because proving ROI is critical.
Marketers everywhere are under tremendous pressure to prove marketing ROI. You have to do more with less and have little to no room for errors. An automated lead generation and management system that is sophisticated, yet easy to use, is fast becoming a must-have tool for B2B marketers. It can dramatically improve demand generation and objectively measure every aspect of your marketing to prove ROI and justify budgets.
I have looked at marketing automation solutions from several companies. Most of these are available as “Software as a Service” (SaaS) offerings. Some are end-to-end solutions that track, measure and automate every step of the lead or demand generation and management process and some specialize only in certain aspects.
To quote Brian Carroll, noted lead generation expert, author of the popular book Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and CEO of InTouch, Inc., “It starts with a lead.”Most B2B marketers use their websites as the hub for all lead generation efforts. Therefore, marketing automation solutions focus on tracking and measuring activities on your website. Doesn’t Google Analytics do that? That’s a fair question.
What I have found is that these automation solutions go far beyond Google Analytics or any other site statistics package. They get down to the very granular level. You get answers to questions like:
In my opinion, the greatest value lies in the objective, rule-based scoring of leads. These rules are customizable based on sales and marketing agreeing on a set of unified lead definitions. In other words, sales and marketing play on the same team. Hallelujah!
Instead of treating all prospects the same, these marketing automation systems allow marketers to nurture and continue to qualify leads until they are sale-ready. The emphasis shifts to quality over quantity. You now have a closed-loop system that tracks, and measures marketing ROI in a systematic and objective manner.
I will post in the near future a comparison of the packages that I have tested so far.
Let’s chat to determine if this will be a good fit for both of us. It will be a friendly conversation to get to know each other better, not a high-pressure sales pitch.
mlgreen8753 says:
Using video in your lead generating strategy is a great way to automate marketing. Video is like a 24hr sales person and sites like http://www.adwido.com make it easy for you to get your video distributed.