Marketing automation is fantastic (if done right). It helps turn your leads into revenue and helps time-strapped small businesses use their marketing more effectively.

Are you still teetering on whether or not you are going to use marketing automation? Here are some interesting things (you may not already know):

Think back to your teens and early twenties, when you were paddling around in the dating pool. There were some real weirdos in there, right? (Maybe you were one of them.) 

What Is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a method of prioritizing leads - usually by their level of interest in your product and how good a fit they are for your company - to maximize the use of your sales and marketing resources.

In other words, lead scoring keeps you from wasting your time and money on leads who aren't likely to make a purchase.

According to Software Advice's 2014 Marketing Automation Buyer Report, 85% of manufacturers cited the need to nurture leads due to a relatively long sales cycle associated with their product. 

In fact, Sirius Decisions reports that the average sales cycle has increased 22% in the last five years due to more decision makers being involved in the process. Lead nurturing is essential for industries with long buying cycles (like manufacturing). B2B companies should be making consistent contact with prospects at all stages of the buying cycle to receive all of the awesome benefits of lead nurturing.

Having a small marketing team (or even a non-existent one) doesn't mean that you cannot be successful with marketing. With proper planning and implementation, small to medium enterprises (SMEs) can destroy their competition, especially online. When trying to make your small marketing team efficient and EFFECTIVE, start with these 3 tips.

Content marketing cannot be something you do for 3 months and then forget about it. A proper content marketing strategy WILL be successful, but it must be ongoing. Here are 10 tips to maintain an ongoing content marketing strategy.

Do you frequently generate leads through your website? If not, you may be struggling with one of many potential roadblocks to lead generation online. That is, assuming you are driving the right traffic to your site in the first place!

Content marketing is the process of creating targeted, valuable content for your website visitors in the hopes of converting them into leads. Content pieces for content marketing come in many different forms including ebooks, guides, checklists, whitepapers, webinars, etc.

If you have an email marketing list, you no doubt have sent the common newsletter email. Maybe you send it once a week, month, quarter, etc... Email marketing newsletters tend to have newsy topics in them, along with some hopeful action for a sale.