Whether you are a small business or a large corporation, marketing automation has many benefits. To be frank, in this current marketing environment, a move towards a marketing automation strategy is a must.
For small businesses, marketing automation is a powerful resource allowing a limited staff to run complex campaigns successfully and efficiently. Larger companies using marketing automation are able to connect with each of their customers in a highly personalized way. Whatever your business size, marketing automation is going to provide highly valuable benefits.
What is marketing automation?
According to Hubspot, a leading marketing automation software company, marketing automation is:
“At its best, marketing automation is software and tactics that allow companies to buy and sell like Amazon – that is, to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers. This type of marketing automation typically generates significant new revenue for companies, and provides an excellent return on the investment required.”
So, that sounds good in theory. But what does that actually mean for your marketing team?
1. Productivity
Marketing automation allows the simplification of routine organization and marketing tasks. Repetitive manual processes are eliminated by substituting automated solutions. With the ability to easily create and manage this quantity of tasks, operating a full campaign or multiple campaigns becomes totally feasible. One person can become the equivalent of multiple marketing employees, allowing other personnel to focus on tasks that required more manual monitoring.
Along with the ease of use (no coding or design experience is required), marketing automation also improves lead qualification as leads can be prioritized within the software. This makes it easy for the sales rep to rank their contacts by interest level or action.
2. Workflow Automation
A wide range of assets are needed in every successful inbound marketing campaign — forms, calls-to-action (CTAs), landing pages, etc — but the automated workflows are what bring it all together.
The ability to smoothly move a potential customer through the buyers journey is incredibly powerful. The nurturing ability of workflow automation allows for follow up emails and increased information to be sent as needed on a pre-scheduled basis. This nurturing helps to bring in leads and delight current customers.
3. Increased Revenue
As with any software investment, marketing automation can be a big purchase at the onset. But if used to its full potential, marketing automation is guaranteed to be well worth the initial investment.
Marketing automation allows you to nurture and educate your buyer. This delighted, knowledgeable customer will stick around, and even bring others to your business by referral – resulting in increased revenue and profit margin per sale.
Using marketing automation, marketers are able to provide content that addresses whatever issue a potential customer is experiencing at each point in the decision making process. By the time a lead reaches the sales team, they are not only much more qualified and ready to buy, but they are also typically more willing to make larger purchases.
4. Customer Retention
Customer acquisition is important to any business, but for continued growth, a company must have strong customer retention as well. The cost of keeping an existing customer is much less than that of acquiring a new customer. Obviously, customer retention is a huge benefit of marketing automation.
The marketing intelligence of automation allows you to have a greater understanding of customer intent. This gives you better insight into what the customers next move might be. Then, being one step ahead, you can satisfy those needs before they even know to ask for it.
5. Tracking the Value
Marketing automation software gives you the tools necessary to track and monitor each step of a campaigns process. Tracking your campaign closely allows you to see what is working and what isn’t. For example, what CTAs are converting well, and what CTAs are a flop.
In order to optimize the results of a campaign, full transparency is key. It is important that the sales and marketing team are aligned throughout each campaign. With the tracking abilities of marketing automation, keeping your data fully visible to sales and marketing teams is easy.
Author: Ali Beyer
Courtesy: www.fannit.com
