The Benefits of Using a Marketing Automation System for your Inbound Marketing Strategy

Inbound marketing can be a mess.

Lead generation, segmentation, buyer personas, lifecycle marketing?who has the time to keep track of it all? Wouldn?t it be great if there was a software that would allow your business to deliver value-driving, personalized content to prospective customers at any point in the sales cycle with little effort on your part?

The answer may be nearer than you think:

Marketing automation software.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

The B2B Digital Marketing Strategies Benchmarks Report conducted by Marketing Matters Inbound showed that 76 percent of B2B organizations either have no marketing software in use, or have limited use of software for their digital marketing strategy.

If marketing automation is so great, why do so few businesses employ it effectively?

Well, it can get complicated. Many businesses utilize automation strategies for only segments of their sales funnel without keeping the big picture in mind. It may also involve businesses that go about automation in the wrong way, expecting it to generate a host of new leads for their businesses and wrap it all up with a neat bow on top.

Don?t be fooled?if you want your automated marketing to succeed, you?ll need a steady flow of leads coming in to give your system something to work with. Automated systems won?t create leads for you, but what they can do is segment and organize those leads into an easy and efficient package.

1. Better Lead Management

No inbound marketing strategy will be successful without proper handling of leads, and marketing automation can be a great tool for streamlining the process of lead management for your business. Automated systems will help you:

• Score the value of each lead you have
• Nurture them for higher quality
• Provide segmentation to ensure that the right content gets to the right people

According to a 2014 State of Automated Marketing Report by Regalix, 86 percent of respondents?listed?improved lead management and nurturing as one of the top benefits of automation for your inbound marketing strategy.

2. Personalization

When leads are effectively ranked and segmented into categories, content personalization is only a step away. Targeting content to specific groups of buyers (buyer personas) provides them with more specific value and improves the odds that they?ll stay within your sales funnel. It also has the benefit of enhanced customer engagement for your content, and can be a highly effective way of building loyalty for your brand.

3. Improved ROI

What?s the natural result of personalized content delivered to well-nurtured leads? That?s right?shorter sales cycles, more sales closed, and a better return on your investment. The best part of this is that once your automated system is up and running for your inbound marketing strategy, it?ll require very little financial input on your part. The value it provides will only increase over time.

Improving Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

Automated systems aren?t a magic bullet solution to all of your marketing woes, but the value they can bring is substantial.

Effective marketing automation requires effort, dedication, and a steady stream of new leads to work efficiently, but make no mistake?with the right inputs, automated marketing can do wonders for scaling your inbound marketing strategy and providing revenue boosts to your bottom line that you never thought possible.