Study Finds That Marketing Automation Is A High Priority For SMB Firms
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- Published in Demand Generation
A new study finds that marketing automation technology is increasingly important to the SMB market – and that early adopters aren’t just the only ones benefitting from the trend.
The study, conducted by Techaisle, found that 28% of mid-sized firms with 100-999 employees currently use marketing automation technology, and 10% of small firms with less than 100 employees use marketing automation. Another 36% percent of the SMBs surveyed said they plan to use a marketing automation solution, and marketing automation is now one of the top 10 technology investments for SMBs.
Both small and mid-sized firms reported that they use marketing automation primarily to identify new customers, generate additional revenue from current customers and better manage their demand generation activities.
The study also found that five vendors – Marketo, HubSpot, Genius, Eloqua and SalesFusion – have the strongest presence in the midsized business market.
Other notable finding from the study include:
- SMBs report several tangible benefits from marketing automation; 49% say they are better able to manage sales leads and 46% have seen an improvement in demand generation.
- 42% of the SMBs surveyed said marketing automation has improved their marketing ROI.
- Of the 16 features available in a typical marketing automation solution, SMBs use an average of 7.7 and plan to add another 3.6 during the coming year.
- The top marketing automation components currently used by SMBs include email marketing, campaign management, message personalization, SEO and CRM integration.
In addition, the study found that SMBs are making a significant investment in their marketing automation solutions: Depending on a firm’s size an industry vertical, average budgets range from $260 per month to nearly $4,000 per month, with anywhere from 2-25 users per firm.
The study, conducted by Techaisle, a SMB technology research organization, included a global sample of SMBs representing 25 countries. Respondents included B2C and B2B firms with between 1-1000 employees.