ViewPoint | The Truth About Lead Generation

Hi Dan; 
You make an excellent point about relying on technology to do the important work of qualifying strategic accounts. 
We have found that the lure of marketing automation combined with inbound marketing approaches, what we call inbound marketing automation (IMA), often causes people to leap in and implement a system without doing the proper preparations. No matter how sophisticated the technology is, it cannot replace a sound marketing strategy. And given the newness of the inbound techniques, such a strategy must be redesigned to take into account the facets of online or Internet marketing as opposed to simply covering the more traditional outbound approaches. 
As such any company serious about using inbound marketing automation must begin by revisiting their marketing strategy and updating it to include: 
Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing, And If Necessary Pay per Click Advertising, in addition to all that required to implement drip e-mail campaigns and grading and scoring programs. 
But then as you say, even a good marketing strategy and sophisticated technology cannot replace the person-to-person touch needed to suitably handle the strategic account. But done properly in the way am suggesting here, the technology can and will identify the strategic accounts for you when the prospect lands on your website. By appropriately scoring and grading each individual, and letting you know about the important ones, the strategic accounts more or less identify themselves each time they land on your site. And the automation rules within the IMA system can be set to notify the right person each time a potential strategic account prospect arrives.