COVID-19 Geopolitical Chaos Highlights the Importance of Marketing Automation Solutions, 2020

COVID-19 Geopolitical Chaos Highlights the Importance of Marketing Automation Solutions, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way businesses run and how people communicate. Digital is king, and with the social distancing and lockdown rules in place, businesses must invest in digital solutions that enable remote working and automate business processes such as marketing and sales. Without these adjustments, businesses will lose out on connecting to the target audience that digital channels reach.

A marketing automation solution (MAS) comprises platforms that automate marketing and sales activities to drive revenue growth and empower organizations to make data-driven decisions on both online and offline channels. An MAS includes the following 4 functions: lead management, sales enablement, campaign management, and marketing analytics and measurement. MASs either integrate with third-party customer relationship management (CRM) systems or have native CRMs built in. MASs create campaigns and workflows for social media, email marketing, and websites. MAS use is increasing globally, but companies still face some internal challenges. Organizations are still concerned with security, how effective an MAS will be, the investment decision versus hiring more labor, and the fit that a MAS will have in their IT infrastructure.

Understanding the customer journey and discovering how marketing impacts the bottom line revenue of a closed deal has been more of a buckshot approach. Most organizations focus on the first and last touchpoint and attribute the success of a qualified lead and closed deal to these marketing actions. However, this practice is changing with the abilities of revenue attribution solutions that can feed data and show marketers where in the customer journey their marketing efforts are the most effective.