Marketing automation takes at least three key ingredients to be successful: process, content and technology. But marketing automation cannot live up to its full potential without skilled marketing and sales people driving the process.
Last week, Software Advice advisory board member Justin Gray named six reasons marketing automation is particularly reliant on the skills of people. How your team uses this technology makes the biggest difference between marketing automation success and failure. I think these points are worth repeating, so I’ve taken the liberty of summarizing his main points below. You may read the full BLOG post at Software Advice.
1. Vision
Software can’t predict what your company goals are, or if your marketing program is staying aligned with those goals. It can’t think of a creative campaign. And it can’t come up with a fantastic new way to go after a hard-to-reach demographic. Before implementing any system, its important users set clear success benchmarks.
2. Targeting
Your audience will engage and respond to targeted and relevant campaigns. Marketing automation software doesn’t know how to target your demographic. Your marketing staff has to identify customer segments and behaviors and instruct the software how best to nurture them. And they’ll have to build personas for job functions, purchase history, website engagement and other factors that are important to reaching your audiences.
3. Content Creation
Marketing automation requires content to be effective. The people who create (and repurpose) content need a strong knowledge of the buyer and the ability to create materials (blogs, email blast text, website content, podcasts, ebooks, videos and webinars) that are relevant.
4. Definition
Marketing and sales must agree on what defines a lead, how those leads are nurtured, and when those leads are passed along. Your marketing automation software can provide the automation, but it can’t provide the guidance – that’s your job.
5. Initiative
Marketing is ever evolving, and your lead-generation efforts should be as well. It takes a team of people to continuously fine-tune your strategy and strive for better results.
6. Results
Generating reports and analyzing results are two different skills. Conclusions drawn from data must be analyzed in the context of your strategy, and new ideas and trends must be drawn from it. It takes people to determine if your marketing program is staying aligned with your goals.
The bottom line is that it’s important to recognize that skilled marketing (and sales) people are the key to marketing automation success.
Google+Tags: Lead Generation, Marketing Automation, sales enablement
