What changed?
In order to better understand the need for a technology like marketing automation in an organization it is important to look at the main drivers behind the growth of the technology and why companies need to look for a solution.
Throughout the interviews the participants stressed 4 important points here: the changing consumer behaviour, a more demanding sales organization, the increased number of available communication channels, and a shift to a more accountable and revenue driven marketing.
A lot of discussions around digital marketing and customer experience management talk about the changing consumer behaviour and how businesses need to switch focus in order to stay on the top of the competition in today’s digital world: “The world of the marketer has changed… consumer journey is changing... they are looking for information online.
“(R4)
Buyers are looking for information online, where they can compare solutions, check prices and share their experiences via multiple channels at the speed of a click. “the thing that drives any technology is technology itself, so users themselves are engaging themselves further and further in their buying cycle. I don’t need to talk to anyone to decide what I’m going to do until I’m almost ready to buy, I research online… Brands needs to engage with me while I’m making my research, engage with me while I’m going through my buying cycle.” (R2)
People today have the ability to easily do their research via different channels and get in relationships with different brands online: “there's a growing list of channels out there that you need to exist on or integrate with.” (R8)
Marketers had to substitute the old ways of doing marketing with a new approach, where they have to be omnipresent across channels - “there’s so much more technology and different channels” (R10) - and they have to find a way to stand out in the sea of competition out there: “So basically before, when companies would be shouting their own names on TV, but now we’re just used to see other different channels and everyone is doing it on that channel. I think it’s important for consumers today to be able to see that the company knows you or in some way understands you… if you send very broad communications towards the consumer, it might not have a very high effect. It’s important for customers to know that the company is actually cares about them in a way, and knows them. I think the way to stand out is to show that you know your customer.” (R7)
The buying cycles are getting longer, but at the same time a smaller number of people in the marketing database will be in an active buying cycle at any one time. (Ernst J., 2011.,
how many ads a day, we download how many content piece a day. You need to engage first, then you know if you want to buy it” (R2) Buyers will make their decisions much faster based on their previous experiences and relationship with the brand, so marketers need to be able to listen for buying signals, kind of predict if a buyer is in buying mode, and send those worthy of sales attention to sales. (Ernst J., 2011., p2)
These changes in the consumer behaviour have a huge effect on the work of the marketing department. Many of the interview participants mentioned these circumstances to be the primary driver behind searching for a solution like marketing automation: “Technology advanced the buyer so much, that we don’t necessarily want to engage with someone until we are ready, but usually it’s pretty far down the buying cycle. So marketers need to understand this, and need to change according to this.” (R2)
Next to the changing consumer behaviour and changing the landscape where today’s marketers are working, there is also a shift in the role of the marketing department, where the marketer’s work needs to be measurable, and they collectively need to contribute to the revenue more than ever before: “Marketing’s role is becoming much more sales driven, marketing is not about doing nice videos or banners or just creative advertising, but it’s becoming measurable, and a really critical part of the business.” (R4) “Old school marketing as an everyday thing is only a cost centre and there is very little attribution of marketing activities to actual outcomes.” (R10)
R10 also stressed the need to have visibility on the performance of the marketing team: “I think companies need more visibility to their marketing activities, so how it’s performing…I think that companies want to have transparency, complete transparency into how much activity is actually performing and you can only do that with Marketo or more marketing automation tool.”
(R10)
The marketing department has to be prepared for revenue and data driven marketing:
“There is much more focus on data driven marketing, on basing our communication on data. So
we are predicting, like predictive data. We are able to to target our consumers based on an action that they did or will do. That’s kind of the driver behind the technology” (R7); while they are also pressured by the sales teams who are demanding more and better quality leads: “Sales has become more demanding about the kind of leads that they’re willing to accept in a call.” (R1) Why do companies look for MA?
I have asked the interview participants to share their experiences on why companies turn to marketing automation, and what is the main reason they look for a solution like this on the first place. I would like to identify a few main factors that can play an important role in this question.
As mentioned before, marketing leaders are under tremendous pressure to increase their marketing team’s contribution to generating revenue: “clients are realizing the importance of marketing automation because they cannot really measure their ROI (Return on Investment) with the old methods” (R3) But with using a marketing automation tool“for the first time marketers were able to properly track the activities marketing is doing, and tie it back to specific activities, and if it’s done correctly you can really see how your efforts have impacted the pipeline and the revenue generation” (R1)
At companies servicing buyers that make high-consideration purchases, marketers need to communicate with potential buyers at every stage of their problem-solving cycle, providing them with information that is targeted to their needs, role, intent, and interest level. To manage this depth of engagement at scale requires marketing automation. (Ernst J., 2011.
p2): “marketing automation enables you to communicate at scale and genuinely automates sales processes to drive revenue especially…what marketing automation is doing is, giving you more channels and more marketing channels means more leads” (R5)
There is also a big focus on increasing efficiency and saving time via using automation tools, which is many times a primary reason organizations turn to this technology: “Because of the competition, people want to be more efficient … important time saving factor… we are able to increasingly focus on analytics, understanding which pieces ae working better, and be more creative by creating more content in areas and we have time for that now. “(R1) Also being able to do more with less people: “there's so much more that marketing can do, but it’s this smaller number of people is less, so you kind of have to become more efficient” (R10)
There is also emphasis on shaving down the amount of manual work via these systems:
“saw the challenges of deduping lists, uploading records from a marketing event or how do you get your data you are looking for and it was very difficult and very manual… MA solves many of those manual labour problems in marketing. Things like lead scoring, adding leads, deduping, adding lists … nurturing and automate all sort of tasks like delivery of content…. things that were not done before because there were not enough people” (R4) R10 also mentions here the need for more and better personalization which, at a certain scale, can only be done via automation: “There’s probably a huge need for personalisation as well in different channels, email, web personalisation, as well as personalisation with sales or within sales channels.“
(R10)
Another reason mentioned for companies to look for an automation tool is when marketing realizes that they need to increase the quality of leads they are passing to sales: “when they start seeing that sales and marketing are not in line, so sales are always complaining that they don’t get qualified leads form marketing… So MA system can bridge that gap, so marketing and sales are working together to follow upon leads, to provide quality leads” (R6)