In 2019, French B2B companies declared that only 27% of their leads are generated by their Marketing Department (B2B Lead Barometer, Companeo, June 2019)! The room for improvement is therefore enormous for marketers, while 80% of business and sales leaders identify a faulty Marketing / Sales alignment as the main cause of these poor performances.
In this context, it is not surprising that investing in a Marketing Automation tool is one of the priorities for Marketing directors for 2019 (Adobe Digital Trends Report 2019). However, let's be clear: Marketing Automation is a tool for a global marketing strategy including Inbound Marketing. It will not revolutionize your performance through magic if it is not accompanied by a reflection that exceeds the visions of each department.
To ensure the success of your Marketing Automation strategy, you must have the means: you will need time (6 months to 1 year before harvesting the first results) and resources to produce the content necessary for the proper functioning of your campaigns.
In short, large or small company, get an agency to support you on the following points and optimize your ROI:
1. Marketing and Sales alignment
The agency brings you an external perspective and transversal skills to reconcile the work of marketing and sales teams. First of all, to launch your content strategy, the agency supports you in defining your targets by having Marketing and Sales collaborate to create buyers personas: the two services have the same vision of the targeting your prospect! These personas will allow Marketing to establish a clear editorial line.
Your partner agency allows you to go through this process by taking advantage of its transversal view to put Sales and Marketing together in the task of defining a hot lead (Sales Qualified Lead). Thanks to this upstream work, the content strategy can attract qualified leads (which correspond to your personas) and Marketing provides Sales team with hot leads to increase their conversion rate!
2. A Marketing Automation Strategy at the center of your Global Strategy
It is then the time to build the Marketing Automation strategy with the basics laid downstream. Here again, the support of an agency is precious to bring the necessary distance and consider the customer journey in its entirety. By mapping the customer journey (up to its use of after-sales service, for example), the agency highlights weak or unidentified contact points: this is an opportunity to automate a relationship. Expert agencies in Marketing Automation have often started by creating an Automation strategy for their own lead cycle and lead several similar projects with their clients: they are prepared to advise you on your scenarios, the prioritization of tasks at the start and the set -up technique.
Their experience also allows them to set up rigorous processes, establish relevant KPIs and monitor them to provide you with continuous optimization.
Digital agencies often compile several skills to offer you global strategies: therefore, a well performing SEO will boost the results of the Marketing Automation strategy for example, just like a well thought out website.
3. Resources to power Inbound Marketing
The fuel of your Marketing Automation strategy is the content: it must be relevant, segmented, rich and renewed regularly. If you are not equipped internally to ensure this production, consider having an agency with these resources available to outsource them.
In fact, in 2019, 46% of B2B companies non equipped with marketing automation tools announced that their main obstacle was the lack of human resources to manage the tool (B2B 2019 Lead Barometer, Companeo). For the operational handling of the software, you can choose to have your teams trained by the software publisher or delegate it entirely to the agency that accompanies you. Some publishers (this is the case of Hubspot or Webmecanik) even certify their partner agencies, attesting teams to get regularly trained in the operational and strategic use of the tool.
4. Pushing the tool further
With their expertise, agencies can take you further to maximize your ROI with your tool. Let them guide you beyond simple marketing uses and think of Sales Automation (quote review for example) or Automation of Human Resources (application management).
5. Advise you on the most suitable tool for you
Agencies are generally aware of the main tools available on the market. Each tool has specificities that address different targets and some criteria are very important when choosing a software: the cost, obviously, but also the existence natives plugins to connect your CRM, a more or less open API to respond to your specific needs, or data hosting in France or Switzerland to respect GDPR requirements.
Agencies have the resources, the skills and the time that can be lacking for small-sized companies, as well as the cross-cutting vision and flexibility that large groups often need. For the success of your Marketing Automation project, do not hesitate to hire a specialized agency!
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