Marketing automation technology has been a huge boon to marketers by reducing the cost of reaching customers and exploding the number of customers who may be reached with a message. Those factors also have their well-documented downsides as well, as any targeted buyer with an overwhelmed email in-box would tell you.

But technology has inflicted more insidious damage on the marketing profession as well: its made marketers behave as though theyre lazy.

Many marketers will argue about this after all, theyre just as busy as theyve ever been. But in many cases, its because theyre applying the same approach to a larger set of tasks. They seem busier. They feel busier. But has their contribution to revenue scaled in the same way as their reach, as enabled by marketing automation software? In all but a few cases, no.

Marketers arent really lazy theyve just learned to take shortcuts in specific areas. The most prevalent is the use of marketing automation to blast out messages to ever-larger mailing lists. This is now drop-dead easy, and because of the sheer numbers of messages sent, lead numbers and even sales number have increased.

Open rates, conversions to leads and closed deals are all higher when marketers apply segmentation to their marketing lists and target their messages more precisely. The Direct Marketing Association found that segmented and targeted emails generate 58 percent off all revenue. But, for some reason, many marketers dont do this. Some 42 percent of marketers across all the industries do not send targeted email messages, according to a study by MarketingProfs; only 4 percent use layered targeting, incorporating behavioral data to send relevant, personalized email messages to their audience.

Account-based marketing (ABM) falls victim to the same neglect. Almost two thirds of companies employing an ABM strategy report a revenue increase directly attributable to ABM, according to a Demand Metric study. But only 24 percent of companies are using ABM, according to the same study.

Whats going on here? Do marketers want to avoid success? No. Rather, despite marketers frequent claims that they entered the profession because they want to be creative, marketers have a hard time changing their behaviors, just like people in every other profession.

Sales consultant and expert Jill Konrath studied the phenomena of behavioral change in sales, which includes the adoption of new technology and sales techniques. When salespeople were under stress and under pressure to perform, they seemed to get over their apprehensions about change. Anecdotal evidence of this was visible during the recession of 2008-2011; many sales people entered that period still leery or skeptical about CRM. But as sales became harder to come by, the percentage of salespeople who embraced it spiked.

The salespeople still fighting to make their numbers are not the problem, Konrath said. Paradoxically, its the successful salespeople she was worried about. When youre busting your quota and taking home a hefty commissions check, your motivation to change behavior just isnt there. As a result, these successful salespeople are unwilling to interrupt their current processes, even if it was easily demonstrated that changed behavior or new technologies would yield much greater rewards in the end.

So, how do you get marketing to make changes when they are pulling in leads, making their goals, and contributing to revenue in a way that management acknowledges? Its a tough sell but its a sale that marketing leaders need to make.

First, they need to hammer home the point that marketing is all about change changing customer needs, changing channels for reaching them, changing criteria for success. Remaining fixed in a comfortable spot is no way to react to change.

Second, managers have to articulate the argument for new ways of marketing. Think about technology deployments: without executive buy-in, adoption is difficult to achieve and employees continue to work in ways that theyve become comfortable with. Buy-in from marketing leaders is vital to change behavior patterns, followed by an effort to motivate users that includes a lot of carrot (the opportunity to boost lead quality, close rates and revenue) and a little stick.

Third, marketing leaders need to keep an eye over the horizon for the next change in technology or strategy that might help their company maintain a lead over competitors. Unless leadership does this, itll fall into the same trap many marketers are in today, deceiving itself by believing that whats being done today is good enough and will stay good enough indefinitely.

Marketers use their natural understanding of human behavior to influence potential customers toward a sale. In this era of rapid change, they also need to apply an understanding of our natural resistance to change to influence their own behaviors, and to move more quickly to adopt technologies and strategies that will serve them well in the future.

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How Marketers Can Change Customer Behavior by Understanding and Changing Theirs First - MarTech Advisor