Our new blog outlines the benefits of marketing automation tools for tech companies.
Our research has revealed 48 percent of Sunday Times Tech Track 100 companies are using marketing automation tools to attract leads and nurture them through the sales funnel using targeted content.
If you’re working in the tech industry, you’re almost certainly sick of silver bullets, golden tickets, platinum goblets, diamond dogs, quartz…uh…kukris, and anything else that promises a one-size-fits-all solution to your marketing problems. We get it, we do. Who hasn’t heard (and been disappointed) by amazing, life-changing products that ultimately amount to nothing?
So when you hear all about the various benefits of marketing automation, it can be hard to take them seriously. Yeah, okay, it’s much-discussed and insanely popular. Sure, the industry makes $5.5. billion worldwide (MarketsandMarkets), but P.T. Barnum sewed half a dead monkey onto half a dead fish and called it “The Fiji Mermaid”. He made a lot of money too.
Scepticism is therefore understandable. But be assured, gentle reader, when we extol the benefits of marketing automation, we do so with the facts on our side. We used HubSpot’s Competitors Report tool to determine whether or not companies in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 list used automation software or not.
Lo and behold, 48 percent of these companies use it. There are two possible conclusions to draw from this. The first is that a staggering number of companies are buying into the hype – in which case, the Barnums of the marketing automation world deserve a kind of credit for pulling the wool over so many high-flyers’ eyes.
The second is that marketing automation actually works for tech companies – and there’s much more evidence for this conclusion than you might think.
1. It generates more leads
According to B2B marketers, the number one benefit of marketing automation is the ability to generate more – and better – leads (Pepper Global, 2014). The reasons why are pretty obvious: more leads are better than fewer leads, and better leads are better than worse leads. This point will probably not be lost on you.
Marketing automation tools, help on both counts. None other than Forrester Research found that companies which implement them increase their sales pipeline contribution by an average of 10 percent – nothing to sniff haughtily at, and more than enough to potentially make a significant difference to your margins.
2. It makes lead nurturing easier
Of course, the operative word there is “potentially”, because leads are ultimately just opportunities – and it doesn’t matter how many you have if you can’t capitalise on them. Like relationships, children, and shoe collections, they need to be nurtured if they’re going to be worthwhile.
Fortunately, marketing automation makes lead nurturing easier and more profitable for tech companies. Using these tools leads to an average 20 percent increase in sales opportunities and “dramatic improvements to key conversion stages” in the process (DemandGen Report, 2014). If you use marketing automation to nurture prospects, you experience a 451 percent uptick in qualified leads (The Annuitas Group, 2014).
3. It improves reporting and analytics
Marketing automation software also gives you greater visibility into the successes and failures of your strategies. When you know what works and what doesn’t, it’s much easier to make faster progress.
It lets you know which channels are contributing to sales and which aren’t – so if your email efforts are better received than your efforts in social media, you’ll be able to either improve your Twitter outreach strategy, or de-emphasise the channel in favour of the ones that work.
It also provides a real-time and historical window into the behaviour of your leads. You’ll be able to see how they’re behaving on your website, which content they’re responding to, how they’re responding to it, and where they are in the sales funnel – so if they’re getting stuck or losing interest at a particular stage, you’ll be able to take corrective action. When you have this information, it’s easier to sell, cross sell, and up sell your products and services.
4. It increases sales productivity
Finally – and perhaps most importantly – marketing automation saves your company time, effort, and money. The only reason this software exists is because nobody except lifelong masochists wants to sit down and manually email new prospects, manually gather prospect data, and manually analyse it.
Marketing automation can drive a 14.5 percent increase in sales productivity and a 12.2 percent reduction in overhead (Nucleus Research, 2014). More stuff gets done, and for less money. You can’t really argue with that.
If you’d like to try, though, we’d be happy to hear you out. We know our way around these tools and will be more than happy to explain how they can change your tech business for the better. Give us a call today – let’s chat marketing automation tools!