Six Simple Steps To Mastering Marketing Automation

Marketing automation isn’t a passing fad. The technology has completely transformed the worlds of marketing and advertising and will continue to do so in the coming years. While big names like Marketo, Oracle Eloqua and Pardot tend to dominate the conversation, there are countless other players in the marketing automation space, and the market is projected to reach $7.63 billion by 2025. For marketers and agency leaders who want to stay ahead of the competition, the evolution of marketing automation technology will present opportunities that were unimaginable just a few year ago. But diving into it without a plan isn’t smart — it'll lead to more headaches than marketing miracles. Instead, start with a strategy. The Tool Is Not The Strategy Lead generation is the top priority for most CMOs that I talk to, so it’s not surprising that marketing automation software has gained such traction within the industry. It has the potential to make lead generation easier and more efficient than ever. But the success of any lead generation tactic has always depended upon the effectiveness of the strategy behind it. That’s still the case. In fact, strategy may even be more important now that a sizable part of the marketing process can be automated. Yet many of the clients I work with tend to focus (sometimes obsessively) on specific tools or features they’re missing rather than on how their marketing automation platforms fit within their marketing strategies. I’ve had an agency client try out three different platforms before deciding that each was insufficient when the reality is that any of them would have been fine. Rather than looking at marketing automation software as a comprehensive marketing solution, we have to view it as just one mechanism [...]