How Sales Can Use Marketing Automation to Drive Revenue. Sales teams are understandably a little cautious when it comes to marketing automation. Once you’ve crafted a buyer profile, you can simply feed the data into your automation platform and let the automated processes do the work for you. Marketing automation lends itself to this culture of perseverance and positivity as it eliminates the need to manually follow up lead after lead. With this in mind, sales teams who utilize marketing automation platforms must be tuned in to the possibility of waste. Know what to automate We can’t automate everything. Still, there are many tasks which sales teams could be automating – and using to drive revenue – but instead are being handled manually. These include collating and aggregating data from disparate reports (most high quality automation platforms will be able to handle this function), or assigning leads and prospects to different reps. You are paying for your marketing automation system, so make sure you are using it effectively. If you’re automation system is firing off generic “dear sir/madam” emails to your prospects, you probably aren’t going to be achieving too many conversions. Consider all of the interactions you need to make on a regular basis – follow up emails, thank you emails, promotional offer emails – and aim to cover all the bases.
Sales teams are understandably a little cautious when it comes to marketing automation. We don’t want to annoy our customers with too much communication – nor do we want risk losing valuable leads by sending out generic interactions with no inherent worth. However, at the same time, we don’t want to let any potential prospects slip through the net.
So, let’s take a look at how sales teams can employ marketing automation effectively on a day-to-day basis, not just to reduce their workload and increase their efficiency, but to generate a demonstrable advantage for the businesses they operate in.
Have faith in marketing automation
Statistics released by Forester Research found that 78% of sales teams described marketing automation platforms as their key revenue drivers. These powerful pieces of marketing automation software are critical to success in modern business, so don’t lose hope or patience if your efforts don’t pay off immediately.
Instead, stick with it. Keep it at the forefront of your revenue boosting sales initiatives and reap the rewards over time.
Let buyer profiles do the work for you
I am a major advocate of buyer profiles because they force us to think more about our customers’ problems than the solutions we are trying to sell.
Buyer profiles require us to take the data we have acquired on our customers and use that insight to build a picture of your customers – what do they like, what do they dislike, what do they want to achieve from your interactions?
Once you’ve crafted a buyer profile, you can simply feed the data into your automation platform and let the automated processes do the work for you.
Figures published on Adobe’s CMO blog show that adverts and sales interactions targeted to specific users are 200% more effective than those which are not targeted. Hone your buyer profiles, understand your prospects, and let automation take care of the rest.
Don’t ever let the trail run cold
Sales success is all about tenacity; all about trying new approaches in an effort to achieve a conversion. Marketing automation lends itself to this culture of perseverance and positivity as it eliminates the need to manually follow up lead after lead.
This is, ultimately, a somewhat soul-destroying task for a sales operative. Not so much for a marketing automation platform. I recommend automated nurturing and scheduling regular follow-up interactions at 1, 2 and 3 month intervals.
These can…
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