Salesforce Automation vs. Marketing Automation

May 9, 2014
Salesforce Automation vs. Marketing Automation

Automation of any business process allows you to save both time and money. When your business uses automation to promote the products and services you offer, it reduces the amount of your investment in each sale, which in turn increases profits. There are two basic types of automation used for the purpose of promoting products and boosting sales: marketing automation and salesforce automation.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation focuses on the processes your business uses to reach out to consumers and generate leads, which are specific consumers who have expressed interest in your products or services. Marketing automation typically involves the automatic creation of promotional materials, such as emails, social media posts, website content and targeted advertisements to be displayed or delivered to individual consumers. Marketing automation may also be used to keep track of leads and other relevant data.

Salesforce Automation

Salesforce automation focuses on the processes a business uses to manage lead and customer relationships. Processes targeted by salesforce automation include anything related to the sales process including sales tracking, lead scoring and activity management

Understanding the Difference

Salesforce automation and marketing automation both exist for a common purpose: the ultimate generation of revenue for the company. However, marketing is all about finding leads and qualifying them, whereas sales efforts are all about lead conversion and customer engagement. Thus, marketing automation focuses on distributing promotional content to large numbers of people in an efficient and targeted manner to find potential customers, while Salesforce automation focuses on improving the efficiency of the sales team which will ultimately help them be more customer focused and yield a better customer experience.  For todays modern marketing Saleforce automation tools and marketing automation tools, like Hubspot or Pardot, must connect with one another similar to the way that sales and marketing teams must communicate with each other is get maximum effectiveness out of their efforts.

Integrated Automation

A 2013 study by the Lenskold Group suggests that companies who are outgrowing their competitors are more likely to be using marketing automation tools in conjunction with sales automation tools.  In fact, it makes tremendous sense to synchronize your sales and marketing automation tools to maximize your lead generation while streamlining the processes of your lead conversions and effectively managing your existing customer relationships.

So what? Although there are clear differences between Salesforce automation and marketing automation, either of these tools can be useful for your business. In fact, by integrating both types of automation, you can maximize the effectiveness of both sales and marketing, thus increasing your overall profits.



Convert Leads to Customers

Blog image courtesy ddpavumba/freedigitalphotos.net 

Author Bio

Kassi Whitman is a Marketing Account Manager with an eye for detail, a love for classic rock, and animals. She is a supporter of quality content marketing and an advocate for proper social media use. Connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn!