With the ever-growing workload consuming all the time that you have in a day, marketers need a way to scale their work, the work more efficiently, and the answer is Marketing Automation. According to Brandpipe, in 2015 the market has grown to a sizeable $5.5 Billion industry. So, as we are slowly moving on to the center half of 2017, marketing automation shows no signs of slowing down at all. If you take into account the Google Trends Graph, you will get a fair idea regarding how popular this product is becoming, and 2017 is going to be better than all.
How does the Landscape look like?
Marketing Automation has been growing at a fast pace, not only has it increased in valuation but the number of companies using it has also increased.
Now you can associate countless names with marketing automation and there are 27 different notable vendors in the market. Competition, however, is increasing and with demand, it shall keep rising. Most businesses use some sort of digital marketing strategy as a stop-gap arrangement to emulate the likes of marketing automation software, but for how long? Soon, people will understand the efficiency of marketing automation and 2017 seems like a very good year for it.
Most businesses use some sort of digital marketing strategy as a stop-gap arrangement to emulate the likes of marketing automation software, but for how long? Soon, people will understand the efficiency of marketing automation and 2017 seems like a very good year for it.
The Obstacles
Most marketers are of the opinion that these are the reasons what stopped them from achieving their targets:
- Lack of access to customer data already existing in their system
- Marketing platforms are fragmented in nature
- Lack of expertise as well as necessary skills
- Ineffective internal processes
Problem is, most businesses still consider Lead Generation as one of the primary goals of marketing automation. But this is changing and lead nurturing has become a more important facet of marketing. Most organizations use the bulk of their resources acquiring leads, and almost next to none when comes to nurturing these leads.
This is a result of outdated thinking on the part of many legacy marketers. Marketing automation will ultimately lead the way to better alignment between the marketing and the sales department. It is a tool that is useful for both marketing and sales and helps identify lead behavior. With a marketing automation tool, you get access to a fully integrated analytics suite to suit your demands.
How does Marketing Automation Help?
Without even properly implementing and utilizing this tool, most marketers are feeling the waves that it can create in their landscape. So, you can very well understand the tsunami that awaits if marketers do utilize the potential of marketing automation fully. Advertisements have reached a new level
Advertisements have reached a new level with marketing automation as the platform helps ads to reach the necessary target. A personalized approach has completely changed the sphere of marketing. Collecting and analyzing data has helped marketers to come up with personas that help them market products successfully. Behavioral analysis is another great aspect of marketing automation which makes it even more accurate. Social media analytics integration helps marketers to tap into the world of social media and reach out to customers on a one-to-one basis.
Behavioral analysis is another great aspect of marketing automation which makes it even more accurate. Social media analytics integration helps marketers to tap into the world of social media and reach out to customers on a one-to-one basis.
This has led to the increase in quality of the entire marketing and lead nurturing process. As a result, the sales department to has felt this change for the better, their efficiency has improved as well.
If you take a look at the top performers in any industry, you will come across most of the marketing automation users in that sector. They spend money on nurturing their leads, rather than spending all on acquiring leads. What results in the success of implementation of marketing automation is the ownership of the process. Someone must take responsibility for the system.
Automation does not mean everything can be automated. One has to take care of it, modify it to one’s requirements in order to meet their needs. It is best to invest in a small team to run marketing automation, or a team of specialists so that you can reap the profits. With a small team, you know that they will be able to support the entire process and will keep your automation up and running.
With a small team, you know that they will be able to support the entire process and will keep your automation up and be running throughout the year without fail.
Bottom Line
This year, there will be a lot of marketers who will be driven by the resolution of finding alternative methods of digital marketing, and like the year before, much more will adopt marketing automation as their savior. More marketers would obviously mean more vendors, and that in turn would mean more competition, hopefully leading to higher quality software.
Marketing Automation is perfect for small-to-medium sized businesses, and many such businesses will explore this avenue in order to achieve success this year. Marketing automation is becoming accessible to everyone day by day and with the rise of marketing solutions, smaller companies too will have access to better marketing technologies like this.
Have you adopted marketing automation yet? If not, then why? And, if yes, then please share with us your experience in the comments below!
