5 Bottlenecks Implementing Marketing Automation

5 Bottlenecks Implementing Marketing Automation

Implementing a marketing automation strategy is an excellent way to create a steady stream of good leads. With more leads, you can generate more sales which will help grow your business very effectively. However, there are challenges for companies when they start to implement a marketing automation strategy. Often, without the correct processes put in place, your marketing automation strategy can quickly be blocked by typical bottlenecks.

Only by setting up processes to prevent problems in the future can you be sure that your business will not suffer.

So what are these bottlenecks and what can you do about them?

1. Lack Of Content

While marketing automation helps you publish and promote your content, it does not create it for you. Everything to do with marketing automation starts with on-page content (i.e., landing pages, blog posts). Many businesses struggle with generating content in sufficient quantity to maintain publishing schedules.

Without content development, the top of your sales funnel cannot be filled. It reduces the number of leads reaching the bottom of the funnel for your sales team.

Outsourcing your content marketing is one way to help solve this problem. Another way is to create your content in advance and scheduling it to release at future dates, giving you time to create more each week.

2. Sales and Marketing Teams Not Talking

Despite that they are at different points in the sales funnel, the sales and marketing teams still need to speak to each other. They need to collaborate on creating offers, determine which leads to target and when it’s the best time to market to them. The conversation between the two teams needs to go both ways, and if it doesn’t, then, vital information can be lost which stalls your marketing plans.

To help with this, place your two teams reasonably close to each other and start holding joint meetings. It should help with building links and improving communication.

3. Not Knowing When Leads Are Ready to Talk to The Sales Team

Another major issue that you might not be aware of is when a lead is ready to speak to a member of your sales team. Here are some signals they could give:

  • Visiting your website more
  • Communicating with you on social media
  • Opening your emails and clicking through

The only way to help solve this is to sit down with your sales and marketing teams and determine what signals you are looking for. If you don’t reach the customer promptly, then they may lose interest.

4. Not Analyzing Data

Another problem is that you don’t always have enough time to manage the data aspect of your marketing software. It could be because you assume that marketing automation is about putting your marketing on auto-pilot and doing less. That’s not true; it merely helps you to achieve more with limited resources.

Instead, you need to find time for data analysis to see latest lead trends and when leads are ready to speak to your sales team.

5. Closing The Loop

Your sales team might be receiving information related to leads that are willing to talk to the sales team, but they are not closing them. It could be because the sale calls are being mishandled, the sales team is not large enough to handle the level of leads, or the lead quality is not good enough.

These problems can be solved by staff training, increasing the workforce, or refining the definition of what is a quality lead. Again, clear communication between your marketing and sales teams is required.

Conclusion

Marketing automation software is one of the best ways to help you generate leads and sales that will grow your business. However, there are certain aspects of the process that can bottleneck and prevent you from being successful. By putting procedures in place to defeat these bottlenecks, you can improve the return on your marketing automation investment.

Do you use marketing automation software? Where are your bottlenecks?

Let us know in the comments.

If you have a bottleneck in your marketing strategy, contact us to see how we can help you.

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