Marketing automation appears to be heating up, as marketing departments work to do more with less during this downturn in the economy. That's good news for companies like Eloqua, Marketo, Pardot and Active Conversion which offer tools for marketers to deliver timely, relevant content and offers on products and services.
I read a great post this week by Lauren Carlson with Softwareadvice.com describing some of the macro-trends that are pushing buyers toward marketing automation. The biggest issues I believe include longer sales cycles, and the need to deliver timely, relevant content, keeping your product or service in front of buyers and consumers. We're now seeing advances in making these systems easier to implement and administer as a host of new players come on the market.
Marketers who implement marketing automation will enjoy streamlined messaging, and closed loop reporting unavailable when other channels are siloed throughout the marketing organization. In many large organizations we're still seeing traditional marketers trying to deliver the quality and volume of content manually which can actually be automated.
In the past, much of the lead nurturing was left up to the sales team, which would develop content and send articles and industry news to prospects in the pipeline. While those activities are crucial to the sales process, they aren't closing deals. In addition, you have all the issues with controlling the content and message that countless sales people are sending out. I think ultimately we're already seeing a shift within marketing departments to create Lead Nurturing and Demand Generation teams which specialize in marketing automation.
If you're looking to implement Marketing Automation software, please contact me to discuss. Squeeze Media offers implementation of various tools including; Eloqua, Active Conversion and Pardot.
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