You know that marketing automation works. You know it makes your life easier, it increases sales and productivity, and it’s obviously the way of the future.

But does your boss?

In bigger corporate settings (and even some frustrating small ones, when they’re run by micro-managers), it can be difficult – if not frustratingly impossible – to get company buy-in from management for major systems overhauls. Marketing automation is one of those categories. It’s a major shift that requires commitment and investment from various teams, including customer service, marketing, sales and whichever managers run those departments. Consensus may seem like a pipe dream.

But ask any business expert, and they’ll tell you: the way to achieve change is by proving your point. Arguing that “this will work because I think it will” is not nearly as effective as laying down data-proven statistics that work in your favor and saying, “This will work – and here’s how.”

That’s where we come in.

Take these stats and print them out – or turn them into PowerPoint presentations – or back them up with extra research – or transform them into models for a hypothetically triumphant version of your future company. At the very least, let them inspire you to raise the issue with your higher-ups, in the name of all that is good marketing.

  1. Companies that grow using marketing automation increase their sales by 32 percent. Let’s face it: your boss is going to want to hear about the ROI first. Marketo, a company focused on account-based marketing, performed a benchmark study on revenue performance in 2012 that found companies not fully automating their marketing efforts – which comprised 61 percent of respondents – earned an average of 32 percent less revenue.

The four levels of marketing automation (and number of companies) against percentage of revenue plan attainment. Credit: Marketo

  1. If you need another push: 78 percent of successful marketers cite marketing automation as the leading reason for their improving revenue, according to a report on lead generation by the Lenskold Group, a global marketing consultancy. It beat out lead scoring, testing and long-term strategic planning.

  1. By avoiding marketing automation, you’re staying out of a growing trend. According to a 2016 survey of marketing automation trends by Ascend2, 71 percent of companies are using automating their marketing efforts to some degree. Many that said they weren’t added they had plans to start in the future – meaning that number is almost certainly higher by now.

  1. If your company isn’t convinced of the value for money, tell them that 57 percent of companies told VentureBeat in a survey that they believed marketing automation was worth the cost, or simply not very expensive to begin with.
  2. Why is it worth the cost? Because sales teams that use marketing automation software increase their productivity by 14.5 percent, according to a Nucleus Research study from 2012. That same report found that marketing overhead actually dropped by more than 12 percent, too, indicating that the cost of implementing the infrastructure didn’t weigh down the teams in any measurable way.
  3. Implementing marketing automation won’t be hard, either. Based on a survey co-authored by B2BMarketing.net and Circle Research, 78 percent of marketers asserted they were confident about keeping up to date with the latest tech breakthroughs in the marketing automation industry. Of course, that leaves 21 percent believing they couldn’t, but an encouraging office environment and the right team atmosphere can help fix that.

Image credit: B2BMarketing.net and Circle Research

  1. The results will be worth it. Lenskold’s 2013 survey found that 63 percent of companies were outpacing their competitors with marketing automation. Given that many respondents to these sorts of surveys also admit setting up marketing automation in the first place is difficult, it seems clear that companies seeing the project through reap the rewards.
  2. These companies might be outpacing their competitors because they’re saving so much time. Adestra, an email-marketing company, surveyed 200 senior-level British marketers in 2015 and found that 74% of them believed time-saving to be the biggest benefit of marketing automation. A majority of respondents also believed timely communication, better customer engagement and increased sales opportunities followed suit.

Image credit: Adestra

There’s no doubt that your company can benefit from marketing automation if you haven’t yet integrated it. And if you’ve read all this and still aren’t convinced yourself, get a run-down of what exactly a good marketing automation software is. If you’ve got any questions about implementing it into your current company’s infrastructure, feel free to ask us.

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by Benchmark Team