It’s one thing to know the basics about marketing automation – what it is, how it works, and what it can do for you – and another to truly understand the ramifications of a system that fuses the art of marketing with hard data science. From seeing data in a different light to using technology to improve personal connections, marketing automation is more than just a new generation of software.
The Human Factor
Even if you’re using marketing automation already, you can gain insight into the technology and use it as an even more effective revenue generator when you work with professionals who know every aspect of the system. Think of it as a high-performance race car; a good driver can get in and, with a little training, make it around the track in decent time, but professional drivers win races. Like a Formula One car, marketing automation is powerful, but it doesn’t drive itself; a marketing automation consultant or third-party marketing firm that knows how to put it through its paces will help you win your own race to the top of your market.
Data as Inventory
Most of us think of data in the abstract, and it’s hard not to. After all, there’s just so much of it – about 2.5 quintillion bytes of it generated daily, according to IBM – that it’s hard for us to visualize as a concrete resource.
Enter marketing automation technology.
To a marketing database, data is inventory. It has value, needs organization, and is perishable just like any product. Storing, retrieving, and moving data quickly is essential to keeping the stock fresh – in other words, ensuring its continued relevance to your marketing activities. By turning information itself into a commodity that can be managed the same way you’d restock inventory of any product or material, you’re able to keep up with your customers’ demands for timely, relevant marketing.
Defining User Environments
Customers are aware that their data has value too, and they’re only willing to spend some of it when they know they’re exchanging it for something of worth. They want to feel comfortable spending the coin of the digital realm, their data, with brands they come to know well. With marketing automation, you’re able to personalize marketing channels to create the customized user experience prospects want. That’s just as important (if not more so) to B2B buyers as it is in the consumer sphere as your B2B prospects typically spend more, stay loyal longer, and have a far longer sales cycle.
Scalability Matters
Unless you only have a couple of customers or a nearly one-to-one ratio of personnel to buyers, you can’t personalize engagement manually. It’s just not possible to make a meaningful impact in limited time without scalable software. Marketing automation that lets you carry on multiple conversations with leads in real time and delivers highly relevant content precisely when it’s needed allows you to deliver the same high quality marketing interactions whether you’re working with a few hundred clients or a few hundred thousand. Conventional marketing technology pre-dates the rise of social media and mobile-first design, but marketing automation has that scalability and flexibility built into it from the outset.
Once you move up to marketing automation, do more with it than just taking that high-performance vehicle around the neighborhood. Put it in the hands of professional marketing revenue drivers and watch it fly past the competition.
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