Marketing Automation Systems Said to Assist B2B Content Marketing Revenue Contributions

December 4, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | B2B | Content Marketing | Data-driven | Digital | Return on Investment

LenskoldPedowitz-Primary-B2B-Content-Marketing-Revenue-Drivers-Dec2013While B2B marketers are having some trouble measuring the ROI of their content marketing efforts, they’re fairly clear on which capabilities can best improve the revenue contributions of those efforts. The recently-released 2013 Lenskold Group/Pedowitz Group Lead Gen Marketing Effectiveness Study separated respondents into two groups: those who describe themselves as highly effective and efficient (13% of the sample) and the rest. Both groups were most likely to say that marketing automation systems are responsible for improving content marketing-derived revenues.

Among the highly effective and efficient marketers, 78% pointed to marketing automation systems’ effectiveness in this regard, while 68% said that lead scoring based on content and engagement was responsible for improving content marketing’s revenue contribution. Among the rest of the respondents, those 2 capabilities also ranked atop the list, cited by 54% and 43%, respectively.

This year, 58% of respondents said they use “full-featured marketing automation that is integrated with sales/CRM automation,” a significant uptick from 50% last year. Another 19% use full-featured marketing automation that is not integrated (fairly unchanged from 18% last year), while only 23% aren’t using marketing automation (down from 32% last year).

There appear to be some significant differences in attitudes between those respondents and the group using fully integrated marketing automation. The study authors detail a number of discrepancies between the two groups, pointing out that integrated marketing automation users are:

  • Almost 50% more likely than companies without marketing automation to use marketing ROI to assess at least some of their campaigns (41% vs. 28%);
  • Roughly 3 times more likely to measure content marketing using results tracking with attribution to multiple touch points (36% vs. 11%); and
  • Almost 4 times more likely to report being highly effective and efficient at marketing (18% vs. 5%).

Those results shouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as causal – marketing automation users may simply be more effective marketers than those who don’t use an integrated system. However, coupled with the results showing that marketers attribute better revenue generation to use of marketing automation systems, it’s reasonable to suggest that their use has a broad impact.

A survey released at the beginning of this year by Acquent and the Association of National Advertisers found three-quarters of respondents saying they would focus more on marketing automation this year.

About the Data: The data is based on a survey of 323 B2B marketers, 85% of whom are based in the US and Canada. All results presented are at a 95% confidence level.

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