Marketing Technology Simplified

As marketing has evolved, marketers have had to adopt a variety of tools and technologies. Many of these solutions work independently of each other, requiring a great deal of manual work and a lot of moving pieces. Their results are often varied and difficult to measure accurately. This has challenged marketers looking for a way to prove ROI and refine their tactics.

A full-service marketing automation platform offers concrete solutions to the most common problems marketers face today. In a recently published ebook, SugarCRM put together a list of the 10 most common challenges, along with how marketing automation solves each one.

Here are the first two:

Problem #1: Sales needs better leads
Lead quality is an important consideration when trying to create efficiency in the lead-to-revenue conversion process. When sales states they need better leads, the problem is often twofold: Marketers lack intel on prospect interests and engagement. They target everyone in the firmographic target market, even those unlikely to convert. Sales can’t see actions a prospect took before becoming a lead, and thus, they are unable to target based on priority. Unable to continue the conversation started by marketing, sales cannot personalize for the prospect, creating a disjointed buyer’s experience.

Solution: Lead scoring
Marketing automation offers the ability to score leads based on behavioral and firmographic data. Marketing is able to assign a value to each factor that identifies readiness or likelihood to buy. Prospects accumulate higher scores over time, crossing a set threshold that indicates they’re ready to be touched by sales. Not only does this prioritize leads but also increases lead quality. Marketers understand what types of prospects yield the highest return and then, be more targeted in their efforts to drive more of those buyers into the funnel.

Problem #2: Marketing is not targeting the ideal buyer
There are many cases in which marketing is able to drive a high volume of leads for sales. The sales team may even have quality conversations with those leads but, they still aren’t close enough business. Marketing will compare their ideal customer with a lead profile, and they to seem match perfectly. This is incredibly frustrating for many marketers. The piece they’re missing is the journey the prospect took before they became customers.

Solution: Integrate demographic and behavioral data
Marketing automation offers the ability to auto-populate all available demographic information directly into the CRM. This reduces the manual research needed for Sales to understand each prospect. Automation also provides sales with complete visibility into each lead’s journey. Every email that’s opened, page they visit, and nearly any other activity salespeople find valuable is captured at the contact level inside their CRM. This information will increase sales efficiency and enable them to have personalized, meaningful conversations with leads.

What about the remaining 8 challenges? Download the complimentary ebook to view the full list.