The author points out that some firms are slow to adopt marketing automation. But, the facts are clear. If you are not using this tool then you are not driving sales as effectively as you could.

Marketing Automation: How to Frame the Business Case

The marketing landscape has changed beyond recognition in recent times and target audiences have rapidly evolved to research, identify and select products and services in an entirely new way. According to Forrester, B2B procurement managers are going it alone, with 74% of business buyers conducting more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase.

In present-day market conditions where conventional push marketing struggles to maintain visibility, new and fresh thinking is required to deliver market growth in fast-evolving and ever-more competitive B2B markets. What these new, fast-evolving markets demand is to go beyond conventional marketing techniques, as press and TV advertising, along with hard copy collateral and telesales, are suffering the same fate: oversubscription. This leads to individual marketing targets becoming overloaded with communication to a point where these prospects become resistant to it.

This overload and the resistance it creates is simple to understand. Most B2B executives are increasingly time-poor, so need access to clear, concise and reliable information to help inform business decisions. And when they can’t find it quickly, they will take another route. Customers are looking for value from their potential vendors, so a new knowledge-based approach to prospect engagement is required to connect with them and previous, push marketing-based assumptions have to be redefined.

This is where pull marketing comes in. Pull marketing is not selling, but it is highly effective in creating customer demand for products and services through the development of strong customer and potential customer engagement, thereby providing an effective and readily available sales channel.