As a B2B marketer, life can be hectic—and that’s an understatement. At any time, you’re probably juggling a million different tasks, from email marketing to babysitting the lead funnel to content creation. And just when you think you have a second to catch your breath, another dire request gets sent your way.

Sound familiar? Then it might be time to invest in marketing automation software, which takes over some of the heavy lifting for you. Marketing automation has quickly become the “go to” tool for B2B marketers, as it allows them to streamline, automate and measure various marketing tasks and workflows. If you’re currently using marketing automation, and your work life is still crazy, stop reading this blog and click here for a small respite.

Okay, back to the MAP newbies. Apart from being able to save time and increase efficiencies, the software can assist in things like nurturing relationships with leads, building alignment with sales, proving marketing ROI and increasing customer retention. But enough about what it does… how do you know you need it? Below are six telltale signs you’re ready for marketing automation:

  1. Your leads require nurturing: If you’re like most businesses, the majority of your leads are not sales-ready. You may have a nurturing process in place, but if leads are continuously falling through the cracks, this is a strong indication that you need marketing automation. The software allows you to push your non-sales-ready leads into nurturing tracks and continuously communicate with them via automated, perfectly-timed messages.
  2. Your reporting is nonexistent: Now more than ever, marketing is being held accountable for its spending. If you’re struggling to accurately calculate your marketing ROI, then you may want to consider marketing automation, as the software helps you seamlessly track lead-to-revenue time and measure program ROI.
  3. Your sales team sees you as the enemy: Tension between your department and the sales team is at an all-time high because sales can’t tell a good lead from a bad one. If this sounds familiar, then marketing automation is right for you. The software helps marketers accurately score leads based on demographics and activity, so sales won’t waste time actively pursuing unqualified leads. Your data quality might also contribute to this, but I’m not here to sell you on marketing data management… well, not in this blog anyway.
  4. Your team is overwhelmed: If your marketing team is spending so much time performing repetitive manual tasks like building manual workflows or recreating programs, that they don’t have time to concentrate on new strategic initiatives – you’ve got a problem. And, your team is probably very bored. Marketing automation mechanizes your most common marketing processes so you can save time, allowing you to spend time on the important stuff, like taking the latest Buzzfeed quiz on What’s Your Ikea Spirit Name?
  5. You take a “one size fits all” approach: Your engagement levels are down because you send the same tired message to everyone in your database. Your excuse? You don’t have a way to prioritize and engage your prospects. Marketing automation centralizes all of your marketing data including detailed prospect and customer interactions/behaviors, so you can segment the right message to each customer.
  6. Your content is going stale: Do you have a backlog of content that you’re not using effectively? Don’t worry, even us marketers using marketing automation have trouble with that one. But creating standard emails, landing pages, and automated programs that you can clone for each piece of content will definitely help. Developing and cloning your ideal marketing campaigns for each channel will become your new favorite thing. I promise.

Those are the six telltale signs that you’re ready for marketing automation. The good news is that this skillset is in high-demand, so getting your hands dirty with it now should yield excellent results for your career in the future. Have other reasons you think you desperately need automation? Share them in the comments below!