Us marketers who are up to speed with current trends know that marketing automation can do wonders when it comes to helping us do our job much more effectively and efficiently. And not only that, it can lead to better marketing/sales alignment, resulting in more conversions and a higher ROI. In fact, stats show that marketing automation leads to a 14.5% sales productivity increase. And who doesn’t want that?

But if you’re new to to marketing automation, or considering implementing it at your organization, you might be struggling to figure out what you need to have in place to make your new platform work for you. At the end of the day, your nurture programs and marketing efforts are not going to run themselves.

And, aside from adapting your current marketing efforts to your new platform, you might want to consider adding a thing or two to your marketing strategy. And with that, you’ll also need somebody to execute these efforts, which may end up being a larger investment than you had previously thought.

But, I’m here to tell you that building your marketing automation team can be much simpler and cost-effective than you think. After all, marketing automation is supposed to reduce your marketing overhead by 12.2%. And chances are that you already have many of these roles in place within your organization. The trick is to get these your team to start thinking about how to use their skills and collaborate as you roll out your marketing automation program.

So are you ready to build your marketing automation team and start seeing results? These roles and responsibilities are essential to ensuring your program’s success:

Ensure Someone is Managing Demand Generation

A business can’t run, and you’re not doing your job as a marketer, if you don’t generate interest and have leads coming in through the sales funnel. Luckily, marketing automation takes out much of the hassle of implementing campaigns and programs to help you do that.                                                                                         

But whether it’s building landing pages, running paid social media campaigns or promoting webinars, you need to have a point person to manage all or some of those initiatives. However, if you have multiple people managing aspects of your demand gen, we recommend having a cohesive strategy so all your efforts complement each other.

Get a Good Content Creator

Did you know that content marketing results in 6x more conversions than other methods? And 47% of B2B buyers look at 3-5 pieces of content before deciding to touch base with sales. So, whether your focus is inbound or outbound marketing, hopefully both, engaging content is essential to attracting and reeling in your audience. And, the great thing about marketing automation is that it ensures that content gets seen in the first place, resulting in a greater ROI.

So, if you don’t already, you should consider having a person on your team dedicated to creating content and guiding your content strategy. Don’t think of this role as simply serving as a content writer. You’ll want to have a variety of content for each stage of the sales funnel. Try writing blog posts to drive traffic to your website, creating videos that you can promote on social, and eBooks that you can use as gated content for your demand generation programs.

To ensure your content is effective, make sure your content people collaborate with demand gen, so everybody at your organization has an understanding of your audience.

Make Sure to Involve Sales

At the end of the day, your job as a marketer is to get your leads to convert into customers. And stats show that having strong marketing/sales alignment results in a 38% higher sales win rate. Therefore, it’s a no-brainer for your sales team to play a role in implementation and success of your marketing automation program.

A great way to keep your sales managers in the loop and activate them when the time comes to seal the deal is by integrating your marketing automation platform with your CRM. This will provide your sales team with the insights they need to schedule a phone call or demo, and convert your lead.

Have Somebody Track and Measure Your Progress

A key part of running a successful marketing automation program is checking in from time to time to see how your efforts are performing and whether you’re seeing the results you want. Luckily, having the right data and analytics tools will take out some of the guesswork. And, with the right marketing automation tool, you’ll be able to compile insights easily and seamlessly.

Of course, you need somebody on your team that can help you compile this information, analyze it and make recommendations for changes and new initiatives based on the results. If you don’t have the budget or need to have a single individual dedicated to this role, you can assign it to various member of your team. Just make sure they all consolidate their findings, and gather from time to time to ensure that any new initiatives align.  

We hope these tips help you build your marketing automation team and put you on the path toward marketing success! Of course, there is an array of things you can do as a marketer with marketing automation that you haven’t done before. And, as your marketing automation platform allows you to get better results and grow your team, you may want to consider adding a few more roles to your team. But these essential roles should help your team get started.