It’s not uncommon for businesses to have trouble staying on top of all their marketing efforts, including managing leads or ongoing email campaigns. Running a business is enough work on its own — at times, it can feel like marketing only adds to that work.
Fortunately, this is where marketing automation, which uses software to automate marketing activities at different stages of the marketing funnel, comes in.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation means streamlining lead generation, lead nurturing, customer lifecycle marketing, cross-selling, up-selling, as well as improving customer retention and measuring analytics to see where your campaigns can be improved.
Marketing automation can take the form of targeted email campaigns, paid ads, strategic social media posting, among others. The main idea is that once content (ads, or emails, for example) is created and attributed to a certain stage of the buyer’s journey, it rolls out in an automated fashion according to where the buyer is in that journey.
Why use marketing automation?
Let’s look at 6 ways marketing automation can help streamline and improve your business’s marketing results.
1. It Saves You Time
As every business owner knows, following up on leads takes precious time and energy. It can be difficult to balance persistence without pushiness.
However, instead of manually following up on these leads, which can be mundane and time-consuming, marketing automation makes it possible for leads to follow an established path you have created that guides them directly toward making a purchase. This means much less time spent checking in on your customer pipeline, as marketing automation does that for you.
As a bonus, time saved on these mundane tasks can lead to increased productivity as you’re not overwhelmed by closely following every single lead.
Overall, using marketing automation means you can redirect your energy to other areas of your business that need your attention, allowing you to grow at your own pace.
2. It’s Cost Efficient
When running a business, you want your money going to the right places to maximize profit and efficiency. Marketing automation does this for you.
Instead of spending precious paid minutes on small tasks, many areas of your marketing strategy can be automated while also easing potential customers along in their journey toward making a purchase.
Additionally, with marketing automation, you can see where leads are gained or lost along the buyer’s journey or which processes are the most profitable, allowing you to make informed decisions regarding the future of your overall marketing strategy.
You can also find B2B leads by scraping Google, using specific lead generation platforms and software, etc
If something doesn’t work, it can easily be adapted and tested until it does! As a result, marketing automation truly is the next level of lead conversion due to its easy adaptability and effectiveness.
3. It Expertly Nurtures Your Leads
Marketing automation makes a customer’s journey toward purchase as easy and fast as possible. When combined with an efficient inbound marketing strategy, this purchase becomes a no-brainer for customers.
Your automated marketing campaign might involve triggered email follow ups, personalized text messages, or specifically placed social media ads. Whatever form the campaign takes, each action you prompt a potential customer to take toward ultimately making a purchase is an effortless step in the right direction.
As a result, marketing automation quietly works on nurturing your leads while developing other important areas of your business.
4. It Provides a Personalized Marketing Strategy
Since marketing automation takes care of the somewhat mundane ins and outs of following up on leads, this means more time can actively be spent on determining who your audience is, and how your business can best serve them.
Marketing automation allows you to target your customer where they like to be — whether that’s on social media, in emails, or in search ads. As a result, you can provide them with relevant information in the right places to increase their trust in your business.
For example, when someone spends time on a page on your website related to a specific topic, you can later retarget them at another location with a search results ad or strategically placed social media ad. Effectively, your business stays top of mind when they are looking to make a purchase.
5. It Increases Customer Retention
Through detailed data monitoring, an effective marketing automation strategy allows you to know exactly who your customers are and what they want, ensuring that they are kept happy and easily find value in what is being offered to them.
A few ways marketing automation can improve customer retention is by reminding customers to schedule appointments, alerting them to sales or offers that might interest them, or providing how-to videos on products they already own.
Following up with and re-engaging customers via marketing automation is simple, personalized and truly effective. It follows a clear path that you determine in line with your overarching marketing goals.
6. It’s Scalable
Not only does marketing automation help your business grow, but it also grows with you!
Marketing automation processes involve little manual interference, which allows them to adapt to changes in business size and structure.
For example, triggered emails can potentially reach tens, hundreds, or thousands of people.
Once you have mastered your marketing automation strategy, it’s simply a matter of checking in on it here and there to make sure it’s supporting you in the best way possible, or where adjustments can be made.
Marketing Automation is a No-Brainer!
If you’re not using marketing automation for your business already, you’re surely missing out on nurturing leads and supporting returning customers.
Saving time and money is essential to every business, and marketing automation provides a scalable, efficient option.
If you have questions or want to get started on marketing automation for your business, TechWyse can help with that.
