Lead Quality

What are you doing about lead quality?

Lead quality is an essential factor in your sales and marketing initiatives. High-quality leads are most likely familiar with your products or services and therefore are likely to convert to customers.

It’s time to prepare for 2023. To ensure that your sales team is set up for success, we need to fill the pipeline with high-quality leads. What is the best way to do this?

So, you can increase your effectiveness and push more leads to close by:

  • Improving lead quality
  • Optimizing the sales and marketing funnels
  • Tracking important KPIs
  • Knowing your tools
  • Staying in touch with your prospects.

Driving quality traffic to your website starts with knowing who your customers are and what motivates them. Yet, sometimes our customers are not who we think they are. We might learn new or unusual things about our potential customers when we analyze web traffic behavior, online and offline inquiries, blog engagement, etc.

Making data-driven decisions involves applying what we learn from our data and optimizing opportunities. For example, if particular lead magnets convert prospects quickly or generate more revenue than others, we should focus on those assets. Or, if we notice a pattern of users leaving the website on a specific page or at a certain point on a form, we should look into the issue. Something may be broken on the page, or if any of the form fields require sensitive information, that might make users pause.

Revenue Ops LLC is here to help you maximize your revenue. Our team of experts can help you analyze your current tech landscape, build an ideal system to align your sales, marketing, and customer service teams, and then train them on how to use it efficiently. Contact us today to schedule a discovery call to set your team up for success in 2023!

How Does Marketing Automation Help?

How Does Marketing Automation Help?

You understand the purpose of market automation is to minimize the mundane and administrative tasks for marketers so that they can focus on fulfilling customer wants and needs. But, you also have to appreciate how the fundamental characteristics of marketing automation help businesses achieve their company-wide strategic goals. Knowing what to expect can go a long way in ensuring that marketers use the system productively and take advantage of all it has to offer.

There’s no shortage of marketing automation tools for marketers to consider. And, by and large, they all offer similar features such as personalization, lead management, analytics, etc. Pardot and HubSpot are just a few examples of marketing automation platforms.

So, the determining factor for your marketing automation software of choice may come down to personal preference or how well the provider applies the principles that their tool is designed to support. Nonetheless, let’s review how the utilities of marketing automation help companies.

Overall Efficiency

 If you invest in a marketing automation tool, it’s not unreasonable for you to expect to see an immediate improvement within your operations. When technology automatically handles menial tasks that would otherwise require a human to manage, you can expect to see quick results and virtually no errors.

One of the most common marketing functions you might want to automate is social media management. For example, you could use an automation tool to post a tweet every time your company starts a live stream. For businesses that frequently manage a large volume of social media posts across multiple platforms, a tool like this would be extremely beneficial.

There are a number of basic marketing tasks that could easily be preprogrammed. You can even automate complex workflows if you have the skills and resources. 

Broad Scalability

As your organization grows, its needs will, too. So, all of your resources will have to adapt to the increasing size of your business.

Fortunately, any capable marketing automation software will be able to scale alongside the business. So it can accommodate organizations at any point in its lifecycle and adjust as operations expand and/or teams restructure.

It’s unlikely that an organization will outgrow its market automation software. More often than not, limiting factors have to do with the other resources and services that you use. So rest assured that your software will be able to adequately handle the dynamics of your email volume, social media promotions, data capacity, etc.

Precise Reporting

Because all of the functions are automatic, the reporting about the marketing activities is very reliable. As a result, you’ll have access to insightful data that will help you understand your audience.

Suppose you ran an automated social media campaign. You can review detailed performance metrics to evaluate the type of posts that your followers found most engaging so that you can continue to deliver content that interests them.

In addition to messaging, you can also optimize your publishing schedule. For example, it would be best to publicize your content when your audience is likely to read and respond. Your marketing automation tool will be able to analyze your posts by day and hour so that you can schedule them accordingly.

And there are a variety of other marketing elements that you can assess to optimize your promotional strategies. 

How does marketing automation help?

Conversion Rate Maximization

No matter how many leads you have, this number won’t mean much unless you strive to convert them to loyal customers. It can be challenging to manage a large number of leads — even for large, resourceful companies.

You can use marketing automation software to track your leads and develop an understanding of their browsing and buying activity. The more you observe about your users’ behavior, the more effectively you’ll be able to target them.

By extension, this will allow you to maximize your conversion rate. You increase conversions by effectively communicating the details about your products, services, and offers in a timely manner.

Time Management

Your marketing team usually has other obligations to handle aside from actually implementing marketing campaigns. One of their core responsibilities is conducting research. Since automation allows them to minimize the amount of time they spend managing a campaign, they can allocate more time toward developing customer personas and assessing market trends. This work can positively affect conversion rates as well.

Ideally, marketers will also have time for their own professional development. Staying current on industry news, attending relevant training workshops, and participating in conferences and events enhances performance individually and collectively. The benefits ripple throughout the organization sooner or later.

Return On Investment

You probably don’t have a limitless marketing budget, so it’s in your best interest to get the most out of every dollar. After all, your cost efficiency plays a significant role in maximizing your return on investment.

Saving money is just as important as saving time. Keep in mind, there are two sides to revenue — income and expenses. It’s prudent to pay attention to both sides of the equation when trying to maximize revenue. As revenue specialists, we find that increasing sales and reducing costs is far more effective than focusing on one or the other.

Marketing automation helps in this effort because it’s inherently designed to apply the least amount of resources to optimize sales opportunities.  

Sales Alignment

If you think marketing automation supports only marketing functions, you’re mistaken. You can help out your sales team by automatically maintaining a steady flow of prospects. Moreover, you can warm the leads for them through a targeted stream of marketing communications that will help qualify the contacts based on interests, urgency, and other useful criteria. And if you’re an over-achiever, you can include valuable interaction data when you send the leads to your sales team so that they can personalize the conversation right from the start.

Oftentimes, sales and marketing teams are perceived as being at odds with each other. However, that doesn’t have to be the reality. When each group understands the needs and capabilities of the other, they can work together to achieve common goals.

Marketing Automation Help

If the idea of automating your marketing tasks excites you, but the thought of actually doing it intimidates you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Revenue Operations experts are here to help!

Our team of experienced and certified consultants who specialize in marketing, sales, and customer experience strategies works with companies and teams to maximize revenue. We apply our deep knowledge of operations management, technology, and data analytics to improve business performance and drive growth.

As a Salesforce Partner, we’re very familiar with Pardot, Salesforce’s marketing automation solution. But, as trusted advisors, we pride ourselves on taking a fresh approach to each of our projects. As a result, we ultimately leverage the appropriate technologies that adequately satisfy short-term and long-term business objectives.

If you need marketing automation help and are ready to take your business to the next level, schedule a free discovery meeting with one of our experts.

What Is the Purpose of Marketing Automation?

What is the Purpose of Marketing Automation?

It seems like everyone in the business world is talking about marketing automation. If you find yourself wondering “what is is the purpose of marketing automation” when you hear people talking about it, we’re here to demystify the practice.

Technology has revolutionized the world of marketing, and one of the latest developments is quickly becoming a mainstay in the industry. If technology tends to intimidate you, don’t worry, marketing automation is not as complex as it may sound.

Consider this your definitive guide to the world of marketing automation. We’re going to cover what it is, how it could benefit your company, and what you can do to start using it.  

Marketing Automation Defined 

If you want to understand marketing automation, you need to think about the concept of automation itself. 

Automation in its purest form uses technology to complete simple tasks, and we’ve been using it for centuries now. Factories could be considered our first foray into the world of automation, and as technology has improved, automation touches nearly every modern industry. 

Marketing automation uses software and other web-based services to execute and manage marketing tasks. Essentially it can take over nearly any manual and repetitive task so you can focus on your high-value work.

A social media management tool you use to schedule posts or automatically follow people who tag your company is considered a form of marketing automation. A program that sends out email newsletters and deletes subscribers who don’t open messages is another example of automating marketing tasks.

You can leverage marketing automation tactics to handle repetitive tasks, but it can also help improve your entire sales and marketing strategy.

As marketing automation becomes more sophisticated, it can do more with predictive analytics and strategy. For example, business-to-business software like Pardot can deploy marketing landing pages to bring in more leads and sort through lead pipelines to determine the best ones to pursue. It can even generate reports that can tell you how your campaigns are performing.

The Benefits of Marketing Automation

Now that you understand how marketing automation works, we can start talking about how it can help your business. 

You may not see the point in investing in a conventional marketing cloud if things are running fine in sales and marketing. However, businesses that truly want to innovate and grow need to spend their time developing an automation strategy.

Want to know why we recommend that every business gets into automation? Once you appreciate the purpose of marketing automation and all of the good it can do, you’ll wonder why you’ve taken so long to get started.

Save time with marketing automation

Save Time

How much time do you think it takes to deploy a simple email and social media campaign about a sales promotion? It may not seem like it would take a lot of time to send out a few emails and post a status or two, but the truth is that deploying a campaign can take a lot longer than you’d think.

One of the main benefits of automation is the time it gives back to your employees. Now employees will be able to spend most of their time on more important tasks while your automation programs handle menial work.

Who will be around to make sure emails and social posts are deployed at the right time? Do you know who will decide the best customer lists to use and the proper targeting for ads?

A person would have to spend a few hours determining send times and audience segmentations. However, a marketing automation program can manage all of that in a matter of minutes.

Personalize Your Marketing Message

Personalization is an essential factor in the marketing world. If you want to resonate with today’s consumers, you can’t take a generic approach. Everyone wants to feel like businesses and companies are producing things specifically for them. And leaning into a personalized approach to marketing could do wonders for your lead pipeline and sales numbers.

It would be impossible for one person or even a team of dedicated people to manage personalizing content for hundreds or thousands of contacts. Luckily for us, the right automation software can handle it.

Marketing personalization can be as simple as adding someone’s first name to a greeting on a newsletter. However, once you collect more data, things can get much more advanced. Imagine being able to push relevant information about promotions and special offers to people with a history of buying your products and services. Think about what you could do if you could automatically send people messages that let them know they still have items in your cart. The right software can do all of this and more!

Improve Strategy

How do you currently measure success with your marketing programs? Seeing sales numbers go up might be nice, but it doesn’t give you insight into what specifically is working with your current campaigns.

If you want to improve your marketing work on a more granular level, automation is a must. You’ll be able to gain deep insight into campaign performance and get specifics into what’s performing well.

A typical Google Analytics dashboard can give you basic information about bounce rates and time spent on pages. However, it can’t provide you with information on how to run a practical A/B test to improve your next round of ads. In addition, the dashboard won’t have integrated artificial intelligence (AI) that can show you demographic information around your best customers.

The beauty of modern automation programs is that you don’t just get a lot of data and analytics. They’ll also help you process the metrics into valuable insight and help you figure out what to do next by making data-based recommendations.

It’s Time to Bring Automation to Your Business

The purpose of marketing automation is to enhance operational efficiency to ultimately maximize revenue. Marketing automation isn’t a “fad” in the industry; it’s the next stage of evolution for marketing. The combination of automation and AI can help your business improve every aspect of your approach to marketing and sales.

Getting started in automation is virtually a requirement, but it’s even more critical to ensure that you manage everything the right way. Finding the right automation partner can do a lot to set you up for success. Fortunately for you, we’re here to help your company every step of the way.

Do you have questions about how marketing automation could help your business? Are you ready to start working with a trusted automation partner? Contact us today to discuss how your company can use marketing automation the right way.

Marketing Automation vs. Marketing Operations

Marketing Automation vs. Marketing Operations: What's the Difference?

We know that the world of marketing can move fast, but sometimes, it seems like it can move a little too fast. Remember when SEO was the next big thing in marketing, then it was social media? Tech has done a lot to transform the industry, and it has recently given us a few more transformative and helpful innovations: marketing automation and marketing operations. 

Not sure what the difference between the two is? Don’t worry, a lot of people have the same problem. Each practice can complement the other, but they have some very distinct differences.

Let us be your guide to the growing world of marketing technology! Read on to learn everything you need to know about the difference between marketing automation and marketing operations.

Marketing Automation Defined

When people talk about marketing automation, they’re not talking about one single thing. In truth, marketing automation could be considered a blanket term for all of the software platforms and technology people in marketing and sales use to bring in leads, spread their message, and essentially, do their jobs better.

In fact, we’d bet that some people reading this are using marketing automation tools at work and may not know it yet.

Do you use Pardot or Marketing Cloud to send emails or distribute leads to your sales team? Is HubSpot your main platform for updating website content and managing social media? Congratulations! You’re a marketing automation expert, and you didn’t even know it!Marketing automation can do wonders for generating leads, measuring analytics, and managing different stages of your marketing funnel. With the right tools, you can score prospects, distribute targeted content, nurture leads, and more.

Marketing Operations Defined

Now that you have all of these amazing tools at work, you’re going to need someone who can do more than just ensure that they’re being used properly. You’ll need someone who can develop processes, implement new technology, and help analyze the effectiveness of your overall marketing strategy to enable you to scale your business. This is where marketing operations come into play.

Marketing operations, also known as marketing ops or MOPs, is the backbone of the marketing team. The Marketing Ops team develops consistent processes to ensure repeatable results, proper integration of all of the tools used by the marketing team, and reliable data collection so that data-driven decisions can be made to increase business.

The MOPs team creates the necessary automations to allow the marketing team to do less work but have a greater reach. The data and analytics gathered and analyzed provide the entire company a transparent view of the efficacy of their marketing activities. Data and analytics collected through appropriate technology and processes implemented by the marketing operations team will be a valuable resource to draw upon when planning and budgeting. They assist leadership with measuring progress against marketing goals.

 

marketing automation vs. marketing operations

Marketing Automation vs. Marketing Operations: What Do I Need Most?

 The answer to this question is simple: you’re going to need both. 

Marketing automation can do a lot to transform the way your business views marketing. You’ll be able to work efficiently, and you’ll have the tools you need to truly bring your marketing game to the next level.

However, if you want to use your new tools correctly, you’re going to need context and insight into the data you’re gathering. A strong marketing operations plan can help ensure that you’re using your tools the right way, and it will let you know if any improvements can be made.

It’s also important to note the significant role both practices can play for revenue operations, also known as RevOps.

Bringing in money is only half of the picture, so those in revenue operations understand how important forecasting and growth are to the company. Marketing automation and operations are both critical to success and provide a solid foundation for setting important company goals around revenue.

Tips For Getting the Most Out of Both

As you can see, marketing automation and marketing operations go hand in hand. Marketing automation comprises the tools and processes used to scale up marketing activities while the marketing operations team implements and drives those systems.

Now that you know the difference between both practices let’s dive into how you can get the most out of them at work.

Prep Your Content Strategy

You might be ready to invest in automation and strategy, but is your content plan ready for the change?

Lead-nurturing programs are the bread and butter of marketing automation. In order to have a stellar lead-nurturing program, you’re going to need different kinds of content that can help people at each stage of the marketing funnel.

Take the time to think about your current approach to content before investing in either operations or strategy. Think about your current content calendar and whether you have the internal resources needed to produce content regularly.

Encourage Cross Collaboration

Marketing operations is one part of a larger revenue operations strategy, which seeks to break down the traditional silos between the sales and marketing teams, improve communication, and increase effectiveness.

By implementing the right technology and processes, the entire marketing automation system will drive the front half of the revenue operation strategy, increase the effectiveness of the entire sales and marketing funnel, and improve ROI.

Get Started Now

Marketing operations and automation can be what you need to truly transform your current approach to marketing. When you have the power of tech on your side, anything is possible in sales and marketing!

You’re going to need an expert in marketing and revenue to help you launch the next stage of your business. Luckily, we’re here and happy to help. Reach out to us today, so we can make a plan for your company.