Today, marketing automation is a key part of any advanced organization's demand generation, sales and marketing program. It's helping marketers (particularly B2B) in refining their relations with clients. In this era of digital marketing, marketers need to put resources into online channels that empower them to have a direct conversation with the client, yet there's openly room for improvement.
According to a survey, marketers are putting down their bets on websites, branding, search engine optimization and social media technologies; less on paid promotion or, more essentially, marketing automation.
Studies prove that just 13% of automation projects are productive. There are various reasons for this: unclear lead management methods, the absence of content-customer life-cycle alignment, friction from sales and advertising officials, to name a few. At the same time, it must be asked, who is to blame when it fails? It`s not the software, it`s us. We marketers set ourselves up for failure by purchase the following mistakes.
Lack of Content:
If your website is not creating a consistent stream of expert, indexable content all the time, then you will not be driving enough traffic to your site to develop your database of leads. And if you aren't developing your database of leads, then Marketing Automation can't help you. Automation is useful for nurturing the leads you make and push into the system. If you simply have a stagnant list that is not increasing, then your implementation process will probably fail.
Inability to Close Sales:
Marketing Automation can take your leads and nurture them until they are as prepared to purchase as they'll ever be; However, it can't close the deal. Despite everything, you still need a genuine person to have a real conversation – or, more likely, a few – to close the deal. Note that this is assuming you are a B2B business and you deal in high-dollar contracts.
Expecting Too Much of Your Marketing Staff:
Just because you'll have the capacity to "automate" things, don't have the unrealistic expectation that Marketing Automation will help you overcome the absence of staff problem. You have to devote a lot of time to make it work and without committed people on the team, it will affect your lead time with the system. Marketing Automation can be a voracious monster which will eat up content and prospects unless you have the internal resources to keep it working successfully on your behalf.
Lack of Calls to Action:
Even if you have plenty of good content on your site, you should also be driving your website visitors to take action, things like downloading marketing materials, signing up for the newsletter, or finishing a "contact us" form. If you're still unable to turn your visitors into leads, you are again falling short on your end and not giving automation software an opportunity to do its thing.
Remember, Marketing Automation software is a tool. In order to get the best results, you must set the right objectives, select the platforms which are best for your business, stay concentrated on your buyer's needs and create content that is valuable for your audience.
