As it happens with all major shifts in strategies, likewise it is not always a smooth sailing for small and medium businesses when implementing marketing automation for the first time. In fact, even the most successful and largest global organizations often experience sheer difficulties that can turn them away from implementing and adopting innovative technologies.
According to a report published by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, it has been confirmed that just 15% of B2B marketers use advanced business growth technology and tools for measuring analytics and practice them to leverage data in their sales and marketing efforts.
Luckily, some of these common roadblocks in adopting marketing automation to more successfully help in marketing on multiple online channels (such as websites, email, social media, etc.) and thereafter automate repetitive tasks can be avoided by following a few simple steps since B2B marketers still continue to see the value and benefits of using automation, which can increase productivity that directly affects the company’s bottom line.
Just 15% of B2B marketers use advanced business growth technology and tools for measuring analytics and practice them to leverage data in their sales and marketing efforts - HBR Click To TweetHere are 3 golden ideas to eliminate any barrier that can prevent marketers from achieving their marketing automation goals:
Roadblock #1
Inaccurate Contact Data
When it comes to marketing, the accuracy of the data about your customers and prospects determines your success. It has been widely seen, that marketing database are too often full of inaccurate, old, or invaluable data. However, there is business growth technology out there like easy to use CRM platforms to guarantee you that your database is organized in a meaningful way.
You can even easily invest in a data-cleansing tool, which will automatically update, match, or add customer and prospect records in your easy to use CRM system that can be integrated into your marketing automation tool.
In addition, B2B markets can also try progressive profiling strategy, which helps in collecting information about a lead in a phased manner. This means, instead of asking your leads and prospects to fill out forms that are too long, you can request for a few pieces of new information at different stages of the sales cycle rather than gathering all the information right away.
Roadblock #2
Deficiency Of Alignment Between Sales And Marketing Teams
Marketing automation, not only benefits the marketers but also it is also equally helpful for the sales teams. While marketing automation is considered as the backbone of growth for B2B companies, it has also become a useful tool in aligning marketing and sales teams to foster a sales-marketing relationship.
Here are some of the best practices that have worked for many marketers in building up their sales-marketing liaison:
Roadblock #3
Failure to document your strategy
Marketing automation is an astonishingly powerful tool, but like any other tools, implementing marketing automation can only be successful if there is an effective strategy behind it. It might seem tempting to jump and start using this new shining technology, create rules and send out innumerable emails. Although it is always okay to get your feet wet, it requires taking a step back and rethink about your marketing automation’s needs and goals, for successful implementation of the tool.
You planning period may include assigning ownership, assessing the skill set of your team, and filling any gaps in the marketing automation processes, but gradually as you set up automation in your new system, you need to think through your marketing automation strategy from a granular level. For example, here is a planning template you can use, which will help you to build out your strategy, step-by-step.
Howdy! This post couldn’t be written any better!
Going through this article reminds me of my previous roommate!
He always kept preaching about this. I will send this information to him.
Fairly certain he will have a very good read.
Thank you for sharing!