* Sponsored content: This article was commissioned by Oracle Marketing Cloud to promote a new guide, ‘Automated Marketing Simplified’ available for download.

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Oracle Marketing Cloud has released a comprehensive yet simple guide to marketing automation.

Automated marketing is a powerful tool if implemented the right way but, with so much to take in, it can seem a little daunting for those new to the technology. To simplify things, Oracle Marketing Cloud has released a comprehensive guide to break things down.

The guide, ‘Automated Marketing Simplified’ aims to assist organisations, by suggesting they implement formal processes to engage with customers in a meaningful way, by addressing the five core competencies of effective marketing:

• targeting,
• engagement,
• conversion,
• analytics, and
• marketing technology.

The modern marketing era requires marketers to constantly engage with a new wave of self-educated buyers and consistently provide a relevant, targeted and value-based customer experience.

Timing and relevance are critical factors for content and sales engagement and as such, it is imperative to tailor content aligned to the buying process in a way that clearly demonstrates the ability of your product or service to help prospective buyers address their needs, challenges and objectives.

This is why it’s important to utilise the power of marketing automation to refine, target and optimise program initiatives such as customised content and automated communications. This technology boosts marketers’ knowledge of buyer behaviour and how it plays out in campaigns.

It may seem like a daunting task at first, especially since it’s an ongoing requirement, but companies of all sizes and business models are revamping their strategies by focusing on specific areas of optimisation.

Oracle’s guide breaks down all the major areas of marketing, explains the importance of each, and demonstrates how automated marketing simplifies the task and benefits business.

Take the role of sales enablement for example. Oracle explains that sales enablement is all about helping sales reps deliver the right content to the right person at the right time, in order to create a more active role in the independent buying process.

Buyers are in control of the sales cycle and, as such sales enablement is a vital component of a successful company. To be successful in this area, sales teams must be prepared to have strategic, problem solving and value-creating conversations, rather than just traditional product, feature, or company-based pitches. According to Oracle, this puts a premium on content and creates a new requirement for both sales and marketing organisations to align in a joint selling effort. This is where automated marketing can be a major asset.

Marketing automation provides sales teams with a variety of tested content for every scenario, which in turn provides buyers with the necessary tools and content to make a purchase decision.

The technology allows sales reps to chose from an array of marketing crafted emails for various scenarios and buyer stages, which not only ensures messages are optimised, but allows them to put a larger emphasis on the selling process, rather than customising email communications.

It also allows sales reps to monitor how buyers are responding to messages as the system keeps track of them, thus optimising the ability to generate a higher standard of custom content.

Click here to download a copy of ‘Automated Marketing Simplified’ by Oracle Marketing Cloud.