5 reasons your CEO will love Marketing Automation

Posted by: Lisa Cramer | Posted on: January 10th, 2012 | 1 Comments

If you are struggling to get marketing automation justified within your organization and your CEO is one of the disbelievers, you might want to sell him/her using the 5 reasons below as to why your CEO will love marketing automation.

1.    CEOs can finally get metrics they want from lead generation dollars spent – According to Fournaise Group, 72% of CEOs state that marketing is always asking for more money, but can rarely explain how much incremental business this money will generate.  CEOs need the ability to get a sense of the return for marketing dollars spent. It’s a reasonable request and one that has been elusive up until the last few years. Marketing Automation technology and a lead management process will afford companies this visibility.

2.    Cost of sales will decrease –Why do sales teams ignore over 80% of the leads coming from marketing?  Because they don’t value the quality of the leads.  As more prospects research online, more inquiries and suspects can fall into the top of the funnel, making the sales reps job more difficult and costly.  Sales reps are an expensive resource and are directly responsible for the revenue achievement within organizations; therefore, the productivity associated with that resource is critically important.  CEOs are always in favor of making sure that this costly resource is utilized in the most productive way. Marketing Automation can help pass warmer leads to sales (with more sales intelligence), making the sales reps likelihood for success per lead much more possible.

3.    CEOs will understand how marketing impacts the bottom line– This is definitely related to number 1 above.  CEOs are very focused on bottom line metrics of the company.  According to Fournaise Group, 77% of CEOs are frustrated that their marketers keep talking about brand, brand values, brand equity and other similar parameters that management has difficulty linking back to results that really matter: revenue, sales, EBIT or even market valuation.  Although marketing automation doesn’t help directly with money spent on branding, it does help with ROI of marketing campaigns and those things that compliment branding dollars spent.

4.    CEOs will see an increase in revenue – Marketing automation systems are not just for marketers but for a company’s bottom line.  The ultimate goal and metric for marketing automation is increased revenue with the same resources spent.  Over time, marketing automation should be helping to provide warmer leads to sales for quicker closes.  Additionally, with greater sales intelligence and insights (example: real time sales rep alerts), telemarketers, inside sales and sales people will have a better chance of finding people when they are on the website, landing pages and/or interacting with a campaign you’ve sent.

5.    CEOs will see how lead management becomes a competitive advantage – Marketing automation is only one component of lead management. Coupled with a process that spans lead generation through to revenue attainment, lead management can absolutely become a competitive advantage for your company.  We hear this from LeadLife clients all the time. With an increase in revenue, first call contact rates, qualified leads and much more (check out LeadLife’s client page for more stats and case studies), clients are quickly finding an advantage over other companies that are stuck in their costly legacy processes.

For more lead management resources tailored towards CEO’s, visit LeadLife’s CEO Solutions page.