The Importance of Marketing Automation
Did you know that Internet marketing is about more than having a page one listing on Google? On a recent webinar, “back-end” specialist Steve Rosenbaum provided an overview of the current state of the industry and explained a local business “funnel system.” His presentation began with several important industry events trends including Oracle’s recent purchase of Responsys, a marketing software company, for $1B. According to Steve, this made a significant statement about the potential for the expansion of marketing automation to small enterprises.
The marketing software landscape today is dominated by companies like SalesForce.com and recent entry Adobe Systems, who are locked in a race for the marketing cloud. Entrepreneur Magazine, recently called marketing automation the biggest trend of 2014 and projected $4.8 Billion in sales for 2015.
According to cited case studies, companies employing some type of marketing automation can achieve
- 451% increase in qualified leads
- 10% greater revenue within 6-9 months
- Increased operational efficiency
Yet, today, few small business have realized these benefits. Most have only entered the Internet marketing space via a basic website and possibly some dabbling in social media, especially Facebook. Larger companies have already adopted software to streamline their marketing efforts.
60% of companies over $500M revenue use marketing automation software
According to a Raab Associates 2014 industry overview, only 3% of companies with under $5M in revenue and 5% of companies with between $5M and $20M revenue use some type of marketing automation system or software. Today, many small businesses are spending money on ads that are not being followed up. Most do not have any ads tracking system in place, whatsoever.
Jim Green Enterprises offers a complete back-end solution including contact management, email and SMS (text) follow-up, outgoing phone systems with monitoring and recording features, incoming call routing to location-independent sales teams and more.
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