Using Marketing Automation Solutions for Aligning Marketing and Sales

Using Marketing Automation Solutions for Aligning Marketing and Sales

B2B marketing depends a lot on how well marketing and sales teams synergize to generate, track and
follow up with leads. This article discusses some important aspects that will help the teams to work in
unison and generate the required return on investment in a timely manner. It also explains how marketing
automation solutions can help in aligning marketing and sales activities.

Scoring is an important process that helps in providing a common platform for both teams to understand
how well qualified the anonymous website visitors are. Teams get to define criterion based on implicit and
explicit lead behavior so that they are able to score leads at every stage of the buying cycle.

Once the scoring process is finalized, teams have to decide on the time frame when leads will be handed
over to sales for lead nurturing. By handing over warm leads to sales teams at the right time, companies
can expect to close deals faster as well. In some cases, leads may not have responded as expected and
hence will need to be returned to the top of the sales funnel to be re-nurtured.

This is where marketing automation solutions come into picture. These tools help to send out lead
nurturing content to prospects on a regular basis so that they become qualified leads in the long run.
Marketing automation software helps to generate metrics and keep marketing and sales teams informed
about the conversion rates and, the revenue spent on lead generation.

Lead intent deducing marketing automation tools can assess the intent of the website visitor and their
background information such as company name, title, email id, etc., and provide marketers with
information on what the prospect has actually looked into while browsing the company website.

These tools also provide a company level view about the prospect which can help in revealing where the
company is in their purchase cycle. Using such background information, sales teams can assess whether
the prospect can be converted into a business opportunity. Also, based on the interest areas on the
website and the buying powers of the prospect sales teams can plan for lead nurturing programs well in
advance.

The analytics provided by these tools help to convert a visitor into a lead and subsequently into a
business deal. These tools provide comprehensive aggregations and analysis at the company level that
can be used to determine ROI on marketing activities as well.

Also read on - lead generation, lead management

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