If you are not from a traditional marketing or digital background there may be some skepticism that marketing automation using digital channels and content can actually work. Companies who invest marketing dollars in digital content marketing and specifically using a leading marketing automation platform such as Hubspot does help generate more qualified leads. Higher ROI for lead generation can be achieved using inbound marketing and sales methodology than traditional methods like telemarketing.

This article from Marketing Mag: Is Australia ready for inbound marketing? highlights an good example of the kind of results it can help a professional services business increase their sales and marketing leads with prospect engagement.

"The best part about inbound? Customers love it. Look at a business like CFO On-Call, an Australian-based company comprised of skilled CFOs that offer insights to struggling businesses. Just six months after implementing inbound marketing, they saw nearly 10 times as many leads, a 200% increase in traffic, and 153% increase in sales-qualified leads."  - Ryan Bonnici, Hubspot APJ Marketing Leader

If you asked me twelve months ago about the digital marketing approach as a sales person, I would still assume that many of our sales opportunities are still developed through the traditional channels of network referrals, direct sales engagement and picking up the phone to talk to prospects.

Now, if I fast forward twelve months later now, the first step was shifting my mindset to using content driven Digital Marketing channels with the concept of Hubspot inbound sales methodology. The second step was understanding how using the Buyers Journey can drive quality leads and data capture to help filter your prospects and find your more compatible prospective clients.

Source: Hubspot

See below how using the Hubspot CRM, Marketing Automation and lead data captured helped us sign a new client deal in just 10 days ( which would normally take about 30 days) 

This was demonstrable proof of how it helps lead generation, lead nurturing using marketing automation to generate quality leads. An important point to note is this is only one method out of the multichannel approach. This doesn't replace other lead generation strategies which are still working, however an integrated approach has been proven to work best.

It starts with a visitor to the website, then a getting a lead conversion via a landing page, the relevant published content and form triggers the prospect buying stage to a marketing qualified lead. Once this can be seen, the prompt for a sales representative to initiate a follow up call can be made.  Lead scoring or qualified can be verification has been made from their digital interaction with us and associated reporting available.