Aaah, fall. The time of year for crunchy leaves, football, and pumpkin flavored everything. And let’s not forget Halloween. This time of year is perfect for spooky stories and urban legends. And while you may have heard some frightening tales about marketing automation, today’s blog post is dedicated to dispelling a few of the more common Urban Legends. Here’s to having a Halloween without the marketing automation tricks, only treats!

Urban Legend: Marketing automation is expensive.

Truth: Marketing automation isn’t nearly as expensive as it was in its early days. And SharpSpring costs a fraction of the price of competitors. Additionally, marketing automation adds tremendous value by:

  • Driving higher quality leads
  • Converting leads to sales
  • Optimizing marketing spend

Urban Legend: Marketing automation is a big time investment.

Truth: A good marketing automation company will provide all of the necessary training and support to get you up and running, so while getting started with marketing automation may take a little more time than flipping a switch, it shouldn’t be a scary experience. According to Pepper’s Global Marketing Automation Trends Report 2014, 75% of B2B companies had their marketing automation platform implemented within 6 months. 

Urban Legend: Marketing automation is a set it and forget it solution for your marketing needs.

Truth: Marketing automation can save time and reduce repetitive tasks by automating some processes, like sending an email or building a list, but going in regularly and fine-tuning your strategy is something you should also be doing in order to get the most bang for your buck. With marketing automation, you are able to gain insights from a lead’s process through the sales cycle about where drop-offs occur, determine which campaigns are performing effectively with accurate ROI attribution, and determine the hot topics for leads through behavior-based tracking. It’s entirely possible to set a great campaign right up front and continue to see results, but all of the data that a good marketing automation platform provides could be used to make your strategy even more effective.

Urban Legend: I’ll start using marketing automation and instantly see my leads skyrocket.

Truth: Marketing automation helps capture more leads with dynamic forms, gated content, and in SharpSpring’s case, anonymous visitor identification. You’ll see some effect right away, but in order for it to be a true hit, generating traffic to your website is also important, along with a clear set of goals aligned with what you want leads to do once they get there. Marketing automation makes it easier to capture visitors coming in, which in turn will increase leads.

As you help your customers find you by generating quality content that appeals to different segments of your audience and pushing it out wherever you can, you’ll start to notice even more of an impact. A few ideas include offering quality information, hosting or partnering on webinars, advertising where it makes sense for your company, or joining in on social media conversations. 

Urban Legend: Automated lead nurturing is impersonal and robotic.

Truth: An automated nurturing campaign is great for remaining top of mind for your leads, but the method of “just setting a nurturing campaign and letting it go” is why many people believe this urban legend. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as great marketers know. Thoughtful segmentation allows near one-on-one interactions, with behavioral-based automations providing information on exactly what the lead is interested in. A great nurturing campaign enables meaningful interactions with your leads to move them through your sales cycle, and should be supplemented with personal emails or phone calls based on what that specific lead is interested in.

Urban Legend: Marketing automation vendors will come between you and your clients.

Truth:
For many marketing agencies, marketing automation is an essential service. Agencies often have to sell the idea and then send the client directly to a vendor.

SharpSpring does away with all that. Instead, clients can go directly through their agency for their marketing automation needs, without any interference. SharpSpring goes the extra mile to keep agencies in control of their client relationships by providing an agency pricing model, plus agency features like a rebrandable platform and rebrandable sales resources.

We hope that we’ve turned some of the marketing automation horror stories into nursery rhymes. If you’re still a little afraid of marketing automation, please reach out and we’ll show you that it’s easier and friendlier to use than you think. And from all of us at SharpSpring, have a safe and happy Halloween!

 

Happy Halloween from SharpSpring!

 

 

AUTHOR
Lindsey Sherman