We spend so much time and money trying to find leads, prospects, and contacts that demonstrate some interest in our industry, product and brand. Often we come up short, realising that our efforts have come to no avail. No matter how many prospects and leads we have, it’s far from a guarantee that they will convert into buying customers.

So how do we ensure that we take advantage of every lead? How do we ensure that we make the most out of our database and work to qualify leads? How can we make them marketing-ready and, finally, sales-ready?

Answer: we create buying customers with automation.

Automation makes it possible to drop manual efforts in all campaigns, testing, measurement, and profiling. It facilitates the process of driving revenue by creating highly targeted automated processes with relevant messaging that respond to a prospect’s level of engagement in correlation with their customer journey. When we use automation to convert prospects into customers, we are able to do so without wasted efforts, in a shorter period of time, and at a considerably lower cost.

Automated technology makes the marketing and sales process more efficient, more powerful, and basically a revenue-generating machine. While marketers aim to roll out the most qualified leads to sales, they often search for the most efficient ways of doing so. According to Annuitas, businesses that use automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads. So now that we’ve got qualified leads how do we convert them into paying customers? More specifically, how do we convert marketing-qualified leads into sales?

Let’s look at the 2 ways automation helps us move leads through the sales funnel and to a close.

Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with leads and prospects by maintaining a continuous dialogue with them. Not a disjointed dialogue but a continuous conversation that drops our name and brand into the prospect’s mind so that they are always moving through their lifecycle. According to MarketingSherpa, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales – and lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. From suspect to marketing-qualified and finally customer, lead nurturing works to season leads and get them to the sales-ready stage. The more we season leads with automation, the more ready for the close they become.

Lead scoring

Lead scoring allows us to automatically qualify and measure leads by interest and engagement. This is what directly impacts the ROI and revenue growth of top performers and that’s why they use automated technology. By executing multi-step lead nurturing campaigns, and automatically personalising crafted messages and content, we can put a score on each lead and watch it become marketing-qualified. When they reach a high enough score, we can move onto the sales-ready stage and go for the close.

Are you still stuck in the tedious, repetitive tasks of marketing? Do you need a more efficient and effective way of converting marketing-qualified leads into paying customers? Automation tools can get you there.