We often get asked the question: how can my marketing team prove their efforts are attracting leads and converting sales for the company? My answer? Marketing automation can help you link both marketing and sales.
Many people hear marketing automation and assume you can only use this platform for digital marketing, but this is simply not true. Yes, you can run digital marketing campaigns through marketing automation platforms. Most platforms will even allow you to build campaigns directly in the platform. Yet many people fail to realize marketing automation platforms function on a much higher level. It involves more than just producing and running digital campaigns.
All marketing automation platforms contain some sort of lead log or customer relationship management (CRM). This means the platform can track every action a lead makes. Even if the lead wasn’t acquired by a digital campaign or website form, marketing automation platforms allow you to create programs based on events, such as tradeshows, conferences or webinars, and import leads from any source. By adding tags to leads as they’re imported or as they take part in an event, you can add their acquisition program to the lead activity log. The platform continues to track the leads as they engage with your company through follow-up emails, website visits, form submissions and more. All this information collects in the “life of the lead,” generating a full log of every touch point the lead experiences. With this lead log, you can determine what is working and what isn’t.
Not only will your marketing team have proof their programs attract leads, but they’ll also be able to hand those leads, with detailed persona information, directly to the sales team.
Tracking your leads in conjunction with engaging marketing effort, allows you to link your marketing and sales. Read more on how you can use marketing automation to link you efforts to convert sales.
