The use of marketing automation software is increasingly more common yet many marketing managers are still concerned about investing money in new tools. Marketing automation won’t be suitable for every B2B organisation, but for companies that have a longer buying cycle, or a variety of markets to serve, sending sporadic emails or making phone calls once a week simply doesn’t cut it. There are still a few misconceptions surrounding marketing automation, what it does and how it can be used to its best advantage, and below we set the record straight with some myth-busting.
- Marketing Automation is only for large companies
This really isn’t the case. It’s true that marketing automation isn’t suited to every business but the size of the business isn’t the reason. Marketing automation works best when the business has a clear idea of the markets they want to serve and have the means to serve them with great marketing content and clearly defined products and services providing solutions to their customer’s problems.
- Marketing communication will become generalised and robotic if you use marketing automation
Absolutely not. The first error in this misconception is that this viewpoint assumes that marketing automation generates content. This is not possible (yet) and we’re still a way off having such sophisticated software to make this possible. What marketing automation does do is deliver content that has been created to the right audience, based on a series of automated steps or triggers that can be configured. When a strategy is put in place and managed effectively, marketing automation increases engagement and gives companies real insight based on their visitor’s website behaviour such as form submissions that act as lead capture.
- Marketing Automation software generates leads
It is not the marketing automation software that generates the leads, your content still has to do that job. The platform you choose simply helps you to nurture or process the lead data, to make it more manageable. Marketing Automation cannot work miracles, you still need to produce valuable content that your visitors want to consume. Once you have them interested enough to hand over their personal data, marketing automation steps in, shepherding them through to the next step in the journey. Marketing automation software integrates with most CRM systems which then enables these leads to be nurtured into sales ready prospects. Being able to identify and categorise leads makes for better follow up and a better chance for conversion which will please both marketing and sales teams alike.
Now you know the truth about marketing automation, it’s time to take the next step. See for yourself the success that companies have in using marketing automation with a short overview from Napier client Vicor.
