You’ve recently upgraded your website to utilize a marketing automation (MA) system such as HubSpot, Pardot or Marketo. Your marketing team is now able to gather some great insight into your contacts, including how they found you, what topics interest them and what types of content they are engaging with. In addition to giving you the data you need to determine which marketing efforts are having the biggest impact, your MA system can also make the handoff of leads from marketing to sales seamless.

Your online brand is as important to your business success as your website itself. In fact, a website that looks good but doesn’t have a strong brand may prove to be a detriment to your business, both online and offline.

Marketing automation systems are used by leading businesses to streamline operations, generate more leads and measure ROI—67% of marketing leaders currently use a marketing automation platform (Salesforce, 2017), and global spending on marketing automation technology is expected to continue to grow.

While the best marketing automation systems allow several ways to combine strategy and software to get the most out of your marketing budget, there are three key benefits that companies getting started with marketing automation should know.