3 Reasons Why Manufacturing and Engineering Companies Need Marketing Automation

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July 11, 2017

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.” – Bill Gates.

To Gain Sales and Marketing Alignment

Manufacturing and engineering companies, regardless of what they design or fabricate, benefit from automation. Automation allows you to move faster, scale your efforts, reach more customers, and increase your revenue. But why should streamlining your processes stop on the production floor? The answer is that it shouldn’t.

You may already do this through Netsuite, Intacct, or whichever ERP software your company may use to automate the management of its supply chain and back-office functions. Streamlining your marketing and sales is just as simple, and it can be done through the use of automated marketing.

Automating your marketing tactics can help your marketing and sales teams to work as one cohesive unit, subsequently improving efficiency and productivity. Through synchronizing your sales and marketing processes, you’re able to ensure your team is tactically addressing your business goals. What most businesses tend to misunderstand is that there is more to automated marketing than saving time. Automated marketing software can provide your team with optimal resources. B2B marketers say that the #1 benefit of marketing automation is the ability to generate more and better leads.

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For Better Lead Qualification

Inbound marketing is one way to align your sales and marketing efforts, saving time and energy for both departments. By providing relevant content, you’re able to begin weeding-out those who aren’t interested in your brand, and educate those who are, on what exactly it is that you do. But even more important, marketing automation software provides you with the data you need to determine what’s working, what’s not, and refine your approach.

Sales filters allow for only truly qualified leads to make it to your sales team by measuring time spent on the page, if they downloaded your content offer, or subscribe to your blog. These contacts can be passed onto your sales team, identified as a marketing qualified lead. Providing knowledge to customers before they enter the sales funnel is also a surefire way to shorten your sales cycle.

Taking it one step further, automated marketing software can notify you when that initial engagement has happened. This gives your sales team a marketing qualified lead as they are actively seeking a solution, allowing you to provide real time solutions – efficiency at its finest.

Making a sale is one thing, establishing a recurring customer is another. For companies in niche markets who manufacture products for large-scale projects, it is important to maintain relations with customers in order to obtain preferred vendor status. Automated marketing will help you begin to establish a long-term B2B relationship.

Improving Customer Nurturing Opportunities

I’m looking at you, industrial manufacturers. The ones who produces parts, materials, and machines that are so far over the head of most people that that gap in their understanding makes the length of your sales cycle look like a crack in the sidewalk. So let’s talk about your sales cycle. It’s probably somewhere in the ballpark of six months – give or take. This provides plenty of time for gaps in communication, and opportunities to let that deal slip between your fingers.  This is what makes the lead nurturing function of automated marketing so valuable, and it applies to any type of lead.

Develop Your Own Ideal Customer Profile

The platform itself allows for marketing and sales to establish a mutual follow-up process for each respective lead. But the lead nurturing functions are what make the biggest difference. These functions cut out the need to re-establish rapport, through automating the process of reaching-back-out to leads.

Nurtured leads produce an average of 20% more sales opposed to non-nurtured leads. Marketing automation has your back when you forget to send that email. It shortens the deadly gap in communication that can slow your sales cycle. When thinking about your current clients, keep in mind that is costs an average of $92 to acquire a new client as opposed to retaining a current.

Marketing automation helps sales and marketing work as a well-oiled machine — one that will decrease your stress about when and where your next purchase order will come from.

We’re industrial marketers that are currently helping many Michigan manufacturers understand how industrial marketing fits into their Industry 4.0 landscape – let us know if you need help!