How Marketing Technology is Changing Lead Generation

In the changing world of demand generation marketing, the ability to generate quality leads remains the biggest ROI driver. Lead generation, both inbound and outbound, ideally feed your marketing and sales team with prospective customers who are looking to engage with brands like yours. The importance of lead generation in the digital marketing space has led to various marketing technologies focusing on that aspect. This is also why you see companies looking to automate marketing processes to give more attention to analytics and communication strategy. So, with all that being said, how is marketing technology pivoting the way lead generation is done?

Lead Generation Through Automation

As previously stated, the concept of marketing automation has come to prominence with the focus being turned more towards generating various types of leads, rather than creating one-off marketing campaigns. As that idea changed, so did the technology that supported digital marketers; and marketing automation was born. Defined by Salesforce as “Marketing automation is technology that manages marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels, automatically”, marketing automation’s truest purpose is to create more space for strategic planning, leaving the busywork to the marketing technology.

Marketing automation probably effects lead generation the most, taking the work of activating various tasks in the software out of the process altogether. Some might think of this as a bad thing – removing creativity from the equation. However, demand generation marketing is primarily focused on improving engagement and perception metrics for your brand, and lead generation is a positive result of that process. Automating tasks like email campaigns, ad display, content marketing, social media posts, and so much more – one can clearly see just how beneficial marketing automation is to the greater revenue conversation.

Quality Lead Scoring

What else would lead generation be than measuring results of campaigns to a granular degree? It kind of feels that way sometimes. Unfortunately, successful lead generation campaigns are often rife with deep dives into numbers and data. That’s where lead scoring comes in. What was once done on a manual level, now lead scoring lives within your marketing software and/or CRM.

What exactly is a lead scoring process? Well, you generate leads from various channels all the time and they are rarely of the same quality. Through creating a solid lead scoring cadence, marketers can understand what the prospect knows about their brand, their general buying readiness, and just how valuable that lead is to the sales/marketing team. Most marketing technologies can perform this task with little work as you assign variables to each lead that will be uploaded. For more information about this process, check out this blog from PureB2B highlighting a step-by-step walkthrough on lead scoring and even providing a free template.

Marketing Attribution

We’ve talked about a couple different ways marketing technology improves effective lead generation, however, in what way does it enable generating leads? Most companies use to say that sales is the main driver of revenue and that marketing supports the branding of the organization. While that still remains true to some extent today, demand generation marketing is playing a far more active role in the financial success of a company; greater than what might even be perceived. Marketing technology has evolved along with this need to provide more attribution to marketing departments as a whole.

A simple look into your respective software’s data can provide information tracking and linking the success of sales back to marketing, usually connected to lead generation. This can be a serious game changer for some orgs who are struggling to show just how much money their campaigns are generating. Demandjump says that “…The difficulty with this topic is largely due to the overabundance of information and the sheer volume of contact points.” That’s actually a good reason as to why supporting this process through a software solution is so important. Through gathering unique and valuable success metrics from your marketing campaigns, you can now enable further lead generation.

Marketing Technology “Must Haves”

When sourcing the various marketing software that’s out there, you’ll realize that a lot of them may say or do a lot of the same things. That’s common with any tech-based solution that exists, as competitors try to play in the same “needs” space. There are definitely some standout “must-haves” when it comes to marketing technology though. Here’s a quick list we compiled…

• Agility – the ability to automate tasks, track task completion, and report on what those tasks did.
• Analytics – in-depth data insights into what was successful and why.
• Connectivity – does it work with other software you’re currently using?
• Scalability – does this software improve on your campaigns? Does it allow for growth within your company?

Final Thoughts

Really, the most important question to check yourself with, when it comes to using marketing technology, is – does this system enable and improve your campaigns? Lead generation remains the most important part of the demand generation marketing strategy and is the life source of everything that sales does. As a successful marketer, the software you use should reflect the driving need you have for revenue opportunities.

Interested in learning more about lead generation? Check out our solutions page to see how DemandScience approaches generating high-quality leads.