Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Marketing Automation Software- A Valuable Marketing Asset


Every organization is trying to come up with marketing strategies that guarantee success. With this aim, marketing teams implement lead generation processes in order to generate quality leads.But these techniques are often based on assumptions about customer intent. Hence, in most cases they do not yield the desired responses.

Since no two prospects are the same, marketing teams cannot expect great results by employing a common strategy for all prospects. Each prospect has to be dealt with individually based on accurate information about their intent, interest level and readiness to buy. And this is possible only by automating the entire marketing process. Marketing automation is based on a software platform that helps marketing teams in generating quality leads by personalizing content, and automating the timing and delivery of marketing messages.

What Prospects Want From Marketers

In the pre-Internet era, consumers had limited or no means to verify the quality of a product or compare it with competitive products. But today they have access to a wealth of information over the Internet, and are very sure about their preferences. They make no compromise in choosing products that suit their requirements. They believe in finding answers themselves, and so they research extensively to understand the different choices available. Therefore, by the time marketers approach buyers, most of them have already made a decision.

Buyers no longer need the advice or support of marketers; what they need is timely information that can help in decision-making. And this is where marketing automation comes in handy.

How Marketing Automation Software Can Help

With marketing automation software, marketers get useful insights about buyers’ likes, dislikes and preferences. Marketing automation software can help by observing and analyzing buyers’ online and offline behavior. By tracking and understanding their digital body language, automation tools come up with details that help marketers comprehend the actual intent of buyers. And by employing lead scoring techniques, which are part and parcel of every marketing automation platform, marketers can categorize and prioritize prospects according to their positions in the buying cycle. This helps marketing teams to decide whether a particular prospect is ready to be passed on to the sales team, or should be held back and nurtured further with personalized messages until the time is ripe for sales reps to take over.
Marketing automation software is therefore the most valuable asset for marketing teams, as it can not only help generate quality leads, but also close deals faster.

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