In the digital world in which we now live, marketing automation is perhaps the most important way to both streamline your operations and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. According to HubSpot, the types of nurtured leads generated by marketing automation make 47% larger purchases than those who were not. More than that, a full 91% of marketers believe that their use of marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of ALL of their efforts according to Marketo.

Making the decision to move to marketing automation isn’t as easy as flipping a light switch, however. It will take a great deal of time, effort and preparation to build the foundation necessary for your marketing automation efforts to thrive.

Break Up That Sales Funnel

If marketing automation is one of the best ways to guide your leads from one end of the sales funnel to the other, it stands to reason that the first step towards preparing yourself for this shift involves defining all stages of your sales funnel. What shape does initial contact with your lead take? After how long do you begin to deepen your relationship, investigating suitability? What is your value proposal to continue to nurture your lead over time? What does your follow up look like? These are all important questions that you need to answer as early in the process as possible.

Getting to Know Your Target Audience

If you don’t truly understand the people you’re marketing to, how can you ever expect to give them what they want or even speak their language? Who are these people? What problem do they have in their lives that only you can solve? What specific features of the product or service that you’re offering are going to attract their interest the most? What might get in the way of a sale? What are they worried about? What other products and services do they like to spend money on?

The answers to all of these questions will not only help you craft more compelling marketing materials, they’ll help provide a true focus for your efforts to guarantee the highest level of effectiveness at all times.

Match the Right Content to the Right Stages

Once you’ve made a list of all the various types of content that will appeal to your target audience (including blog posts, reports, how-to manuals, whitepapers, case studies and more), AND you’ve spent time creating the type of high value content you know they’re looking for, the next thing to do is make sure you’re getting the right content into the hands of the right person at that oh-so-perfect moment.

To do this, you’ll need to identify a few key things. Which of the pieces of content you’ve created will be valuable enough to your target audience that they’ll be willing to exchange their content information for it? What content is more practical and actionable in nature and, as a result, will be ideal for helping to guide them farther down the sales funnel? Most importantly, which of this content do you have and which do you have to create from scratch?

Once you answer all of these questions as they relate to not only your product or service but the unique audience you’re trying to attract, you’ll find that you’re more than prepared for the benefits that marketing automation brings to the table.

Looking to make the shift to marketing automation? AgencySquared works alongside your team to answer all of the above, making sure that you’re prepared to optimize your efforts and see results. Get a complimentary consultation.

 

Marketing automation has rapidly become a best practice for acquiring agency new business.

However, you may be surprised by just how many agencies don’t have any automation set up for email and marketing campaigns, not to mention, how many don’t even have a dedicated marketing department. 

If you are in charge of business development for an agency that isn’t yet convinced of the profitability of marketing automation, here are 25 stats to help you make the case.

25 Statistics on Marketing Automation Usage & Value

1. 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for two or more years. (Source: Pardot)

2. Marketers using automation solutions have experienced a 34% increase in sales revenue on average. (Source: Pardot)

3. On average, nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (Source: DemandGen Report)

4. Companies that use marketing automation generate twice as many leads as those just using email software. (Source: Autopilot)

5. Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (Source: Nucleus Research)

6. Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)

7. 63% of the companies outgrowing their competitors use some kind of marketing automation. (Source: The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups)

8. B2B marketers who implement marketing automation solutions increase their sales pipeline contribution by 10% on average. (Source: Forrester Research)

9. 75% of companies that implement automated marketing campaigns see ROI in just 12 months. (Source: Focus Research)

10. The most important features of marketing automation for users are lead nurturing (57%), analytics & reporting (52%), and list segmentation (39%). (Source: Marketo)

11. Relevant emails delivered through automated campaigns drive 18x more revenue than generic email blasts. (Source: Jupiter Research)

12. Marketers who have adopted marketing automation suggest that the biggest benefits are:

• Taking repetitive tasks out of marketers hands, so they can work on other projects (36%)
• Better targeting their prospects and existing customers (30%)
• Improving customer experience (10%)
• Better email marketing (9%)
• Reduction of human error (8%)
• Lead management (4%)
• Multichannel marketing (3%)
  (Source: Redeye and TFM&A Insights)

13. Sales and marketing teams that use marketing automation software have more than 650,000 contacts in their database, which is 30% more than non-automation users. (Source: Autopilot)

14. Triggered emails – those sent in response to a specific user action on a website – have a 70.5% higher open rate. (Source: Gleanster)

 15. The average length of the sales cycle has increased 22% in the past 5 years as more decision makers are involved in the buying process. (Source: SiriusDecisions)

16. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their buying journey without talking to a human. (Source: Gartner Research)

17. Businesses that use marketing automation average 4,200 leads per month. (Source: Autopilot)

18.  Marketers who send out communications to prospects every two to four weeks generate 2x the leads. (Source: Autopilot)

19. 35% of marketers using marketing automation solutions consistently capture intelligence for the sales team, compared to 19% without marketing automation systems. (Source: The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups)

20. Only 30% of agencies aren’t using marketing automation to distribute content, prove inbound marketing ROI, and improve inbound effectiveness with personalized targeting. (Source: SharpSpring)

21. Gartner estimates a 15% savings on creative production when businesses use a marketing automation system. (Source: HubSpot)