Monthly Archives: February 2015

Marketing Automation Replaces Salespeople?

“There will always, one can assume, be the need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter F. Drucker

Half a century later in 2015, how prophetic have Peter Drucker’s predictions been? Amazon is already old hat in the B2C marketing automation narrative, and Alibaba is doing the same for B2B wholesale. These giant companies have completely replaced their marketing and sales departments with efficient, market-automated websites that do all the heavy lifting for them. And the result has been skyrocketing revenue.

Marketing automation replaces sales? Surprisingly, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.

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Ask CXOs: Do CEOs Want Marketing Automation?

If you read Part 1 and Part 2 of my Just the Stats: Marketing Automation in 2015 series, you’d know that CEOs and business owners are excited about marketing automation. So excited, in fact, that they’re 25% more likely to be involved in a marketing automation software purchase than other business software purchases (Capterra, 2013).

Do CEOs want marketing automation? Yes. The question is why.

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Ask Sales: Why Does Marketing Automation Help?

In Part 1 and Part 2 of my Just the Stats: Marketing Automation in 2015 series, I went over marketing automation at length and explained how and why it works with detailed stats. But it might be a lot to take in all at once, which is why I’m writing this two-part Ask series.

Earlier this week, I explained why CEOs are excited about marketing automation. Today, I’m going to do the same for Sales. While the answer might seem obvious (i.e., marketing automation leads to better sales), the truth is a lot more specific, and measurable, than just that.

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LEGO

Winning Ideas: 10 Fantastic Uses of Content

It’s quite a challenge for companies today to create engaging content for their customers and audiences. After all, audiences aren’t afraid to point out if a commercial isn’t funny, or the advice on a website isn’t helpful. Quality content is the expectation, and last year we saw some great uses of infographics, websites and videos.

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Just the stats: Marketing Automation in 2015 (Part 1)

Marketing. Automation.

Never have two words inspired so much excitement and so much distress at the same time in the world of marketing.

The old guard worries about what might become of human marketers, while millennials can’t wait until marketing automation software is uniformly adopted across all industries, permanently changing the landscape of marketing for good.

Opinions aside, there are certain hard facts about marketing automation that everyone should know. Statistics that tell the story of where it’s been, where it is, and where it’s going.

I have done due diligence and compiled the most relevant, up-to-date stats (with sources) that we think best represent the state of marketing automation in 2015.

So, without further ado, we give you Part 1 of this story: 17 stats that summarize the current state of the market and its growth.

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