There are some things that just work better together. Pen and paper. Soap and water. Mac and cheese. In the business world, there’s no more effective combination than marketing and sales. According to the experts at Forbes, “When the two work together, it leads to more effective content creation, more qualified leads and better success overall.” Today, there are many automation tools available that will not only make the integration of these two teams easier, but they can also help to “potentially convert more prospects into qualified leads quicker and more effectively” (HubSpot). As the typical purchase journey in the tech industry is characterized by committee decision buying and long sales cycles, marketing for tech companies can benefit from building a strategy around automation.
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5-Second Summary
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What is Marketing and Sales Automation?
Marketing automation uses software to automate monotonous marketing work to increase efficiency and provide a more personalized experience for customers. Marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks such as the distribution of content (i.e., email marketing, social media, or online ads) and reporting analytics (i.e., pulling data on website visits, emails read, etc.).
Sales automation is the mechanization of manual, time-consuming sales tasks using software, typically customer relationship management software or CRM. Sales teams use CRM software to manage their pipeline and lead qualification process by tracking customer data such as dates and notes of meetings, past purchase records, and email interactions as they go through the buyer’s journey.
According to Salesforce, companies who use automation can see conversion rates increase by 30% or more and have also experienced increases in sales productivity and overall reductions in marketing overhead. Integrating your CRM with your marketing automation will help you provide a smooth, consistent experience for your prospects as they go through their journey to becoming customers.
Why Tech Companies Need a Strategy Based Around Automation
The B2B tech buying process is complex. Gartner reports that many organizations struggle to buy tech effectively; nothing significant is bought without a business case and each purchase needs to be approved by a committee of decision makers. By using automation when marketing for tech companies, you can more effectively move your prospective tech buyers through their journey because it:
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Creates an engine for generating leads that can be nurtured over time which fits the long sales cycle of a tech buyer. |
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Automates formerly time-consuming tasks, reducing administrative tasks and giving your sales team more time to meet with key decision makers and your marketing team more time to create valuable content. |
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Allows you to get to know your prospects better and deliver a more personalized experience. By tracking prospects’ behaviour and interests, you can deliver timely, relevant content in the right place. |
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Provides detailed reporting that automatically gives you up to date analytics of your marketing and sales efforts, allowing you to adjust tactics in a timely manner. |
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Enables lead scoring which automates notifications to the sales team when leads move from marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales qualified leads (SQLs), resulting in timely follow-up with prospects. |
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Creates marketing systems and processes that make it relatively easy to adjust tactics based on your target audience’s behaviour and even scale your efforts as your business grows. |
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How Automation Fits into Your Overall Marketing and Sales Strategy
Automation fits into your overall marketing and sales strategy for marketing for tech companies because it:
- Provides more transparency and alignment between marketing and sales by giving both teams the ability to know where prospects are in their journey and what content and communication they've received.
- Helps you scale your ABM model which is an important strategy when selling high-value tech products with several decision makers.
- Ensure consistent messaging with your target audience which helps you build trust with new prospects and enhance their overall experience.
- Gives you a better understanding of why leads aren't moving from MQL to SQL or why prospects aren't closing, so you can determine what actions may be needed to convert them.
- Help you justify your marketing spend to company leaders by measuring KPIs such as ROI.
By building a strategy around automation, tech companies can offer a streamlined and customer-focused approach to building and growing their relationships.
Interested in finding out more information on how you can build a strategy around automation?
