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Doing Marketing Automation is not easy. It can be intimidating as it implies multiple modules, integrations, and involvement with different teams, team members, and setups to get it to where you need. But don’t stress, we’re here to help guide you in the right direction to making your marketing automation system work better for you.
Not understanding your leads and customers
Why aren't leads coming in? Why are they stuck as leads and aren't converting to sales?
To quote Seth Godin: “Everyone is not your customer”. Though in this case, we would change it more to “Everyone is not a lead”. Just because people have made it into your CRM doesn't mean they are a good fit!
Have you analyzed in-depth who you are interested in having as a client?
Many companies only focus on selling and pushing a lead into buying something that may not be the right fit for them, without realizing that they are speaking to a person with specific problems that may or may not be solved with your product or service. Have you really analyzed their problems in depth? What are their most common pain points?
Understanding who your leads and customers are is key to having success with marketing automation. This will outline how and when you communicate with each type of persona. If you don't know who you're speaking to, then you're wasting your time and the lead’s time.
A salesperson should assist the lead through their learning curve and buying cycle. Add value to your potential client by helping them with the right information to make an educated decision. Nurturing and teaching your leads will keep them engaged with your brand and help them in their buying process. This process will also help your team understand if they should continue to focus marketing efforts on that lead or spend their valuable time on leads with a higher probability of closing.
Do you know what classifies as a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and what classifies as a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)? Or when should you stop trying to sell to that lead?
You don't have the resources you need
Don’t you just turn Marketing Automation on, configure a few things once, and then let it work by itself?
Definitely not! When you first acquired your Marketing Automation system you may have been led to believe that you wouldn't need anything more than a marketer and maybe some graphic design assistance to embellish your content. After some time, you may have realized that this isn't as simple or true as you may have thought at first.
You may need some programming help for your landing pages and your webpage as you change your assets, and may realize your system has limitations. You may also need external programs that give you more information than your marketing automation system can provide. When dealing with a tight budget, this may mean having to negotiate what you can do now from what you´ll have to do later. And sometimes that just doesn’t work.
Bad communication between marketing and other teams
Marketing is not an island!
Marketing has horizontal communication across a lot of different areas in a lot of different ways. The purpose is to add value in every type of communication with the prospector client. That is why it’s important to understand the processes involved in every step of the customer journey, but most importantly, in their relationship between sales and marketing.
The sales team will be the one to give marketing specific details about the leads marketing has brought in and the results they have generated. Since sales will have daily communication with these leads, they’ll also have important insights as to how the customer thinks and acts.
That's why the connection between sales and marketing is so important. Especially in this day and age, where the two teams need to be more connected than ever. A gap in the communication could mean missing insights, missing data, wrong assumptions, duplicate information, and other types of friction that could result in a huge mess unless it’s taken care of.
That is also why processes are more important than ever: they help you understand what information is needed, how it should be done and better yet, how to test and optimize them for better results.
Not documenting your results
You and your team will probably want to know the direct impact of this important marketing investment. You may need projections regarding the return of investment.
Have you benchmarked your results from where you started to where you are now? What were key findings and milestones you came across? Are you aligned with marketing and sales goals?
As we’ve mentioned in many other blog posts before, failing to report and analyze results will result in not knowing what is important and where to go next. And that may mean difficulties justifying your results.
Without proper campaign tracking, it’s likely that inbound marketing won’t be attributing ROI to the leads they brought in and the investment may end up being seen as a waste of money.
You chose a system that isn’t the right fit for you, or it isn't right for you anymore...
Your business changes over time, most of these changes are unpredictable.
You and your team need to adapt to constant changes and evolution in work dynamics and objectives. These changes and exceptions may be easier to implement for people and teams, but may get harder when adapting and improving them in systems that don't always allow for customization, or maybe not to the extent needed. That's when systems start to fail or to feel uncomfortable. And when you start needing several workarounds to get to the solution you need, it can become inefficient and disorganized.
These types of problems can also arise when your marketing automation system doesn’t scale as your business grows and changes: their capabilities may just be too limited for your needs.
What can you do? Analyze how costly these current hurdles are (not only in pricing) and what solutions may help you get over them, at what cost.
Another reason your system may not be a great fit for you anymore is pricing schemes that may end up getting out of hand. Some Marketing Automation Systems charge users by multiple variables that in the long run may be more costly, and make the return of investment more difficult to achieve.
At Intelus, we can solve your marketing automation problems by helping your in-house team optimize your CRM and marketing automation system to generate better leads, qualify them easier and convert them to sales faster.
