Australian marketers are lagging behind - here's why

Basically, in layman's terms, the company that she now was the CMO of had sales automation and marketing automation, complementing their customer relationship management software and e-marketing. This same company, from startup to billion dollar success story, catapulted to the height of its industry not just because it has a great product, but because the software and systems they use, backed by creative content drove leads to sales people who then closed them.

It's not rocket science, but something that I am afraid to say, three years on, is still a problem in Australia with many CMO's still behind the eight ball when it comes to implementing software to drive more meaningful leads to their sales teams. Marketing is not just about having an advertising campaign, a brochure website and some brochures.

Sitting in the hub of technology in Atlanta, a city that I have grown to be very fond of, I see the newest of technologies being developed in marketing and how they are changing the way in which we interact with our customers and turn prospects into leads and ultimately, a closed sale.

Many CMO's know about marketing automation, but have not implemented it within their companies nor have they allocated budget to it in the next 12 months. This is ludicrous because those who adopt smart, intuitive technologies such as marketing automation will catapult ahead of the pack within 6 months of implementation.

Marketers need to stop having their heads in the clouds, and editing last year's marketing strategy with slight modifications rather than throwing it in the bin and starting from scratch.

It's a new market out there and it is changing in a dynamic way that will necessitate marketers to be technology driven whether they like it or not and old-school creative that is not intuitive will do very little other than "look pretty".