Digital Transformation: Focus on Marketing Automation and Sales Tools

Our current series all about transforming your digital presence is really hitting its stride. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, you can get a quick refresher on the components we’ve covered so far, including your website, your content creation and marketing, and your strategy for paid search.

Today is all about technology. More specifically, it’s about the tools you and your team can harness to make you better at your marketing, more intentional about nurturing and supporting prospects, and more in-tune with the numbers and data that help you make really good decisions.

Marketing Automation Software

The term marketing automation software might sound kind of like something out of a dystopian fiction novel, but it’s a lot more accessible than that. Basically, it’s the software that makes lead generation possible. Want to create great content and promote it to prospects? Marketing automation can help you publish and distribute that content, and analyze its lifetime performance. Here are just a few of the benefits of marketing automation.

• Save time. You’re able to schedule out campaigns and release them based upon settings you set in advance. If your audience responds better at 8 p.m., you’re able to schedule your campaign anytime without actually having to be on your computer at 8 p.m.
• Increase efficiency. You’re able to take extremely manual processes (like email follow-ups, thank yous, etc.) and make them automatic. Marketing automation also helps to eliminate errors. No longer will leads slip through the cracks because a human forgot to follow up. Marketing automation can do all of that for you.
• Collect data. Your automation software can collect data from your website visitors and provide insight into what’s working and what isn’t with your marketing efforts.

Sales Technology

The next “kind” of technology you want to really solidify for your digital presence and marketing is focused on sales. This includes a CRM like Hubspot (always our preferred option) or Salesforce, chat capabilities to help close leads who come to your site ready to buy, and more practical tools like video conferencing capabilities. Here are just a few of the benefits that come from choosing these kinds of technologies.

• Intelligence on leads you’ve generated. A CRM will help you take the data you collect during lead generation and put it together to create a more clear picture of your leads: their specific job roles and pain points, problems they have, and how you can meet their needs.
• Ability to nurture relationships with prospects. A CRM or email software makes it simple to communicate and provide value to prospective customers. Did you earn a lead on an offer about identifying the right corporate insurance for a company? Send a follow-up email sharing a relevant offer with them or asking if they have questions and want to set up a consultation.
• Assist in the decision making process. Tools like a CRM are poised to help you give prospects the right information at the right stage of their buyer’s journey. Do you show that a lead is really close to being ready to buy? Send them an email offering a comparison between your different packages, or offer a case study that gives an in-depth look into how your company has solved a problem like theirs for someone else. 
• Close deals. The big winner in the benefits of sales technology is that it makes you better at closing deals with prospects. 

Reporting

Data and analytics have come up quite a few times during this blog post, but mentioning it again is definitely worth all of our time. The majority of the technology that we have talked about here comes with robust data and analytics. This is one of the most important components of these tools: they can provide you with data and insights that help you improve your digital marketing and increase awareness of your business online. And really, isn’t that what this has been all about?

Are you feeling unsure about where to start in choosing your own marketing and sales tools? Have you purchased some of these tools, but don’t feel like you’re getting the most from them? We can help with all of that and more, and we’d love to work with you. Click the button below to set up a consultation with our team and learn how you can get the most out of technology to grow your business.