Marketing Automation and Why it's important for your Business
Marketing systems keep evolving from one method to another so as to keep meeting the marketing goals. One of these pieces is marketing automation.
Marketing automation is software that manages set marketing tasks in the absence of human action.
According to HubSpot, it was confirmed that about 76% of marketers use marketing automation more than sales. They went on to report that 58% of marketers use marketing automation for task management. In the next section, we delve fully into what marketing automation actually is.
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Marketing Automation
These technologies save the stress of going through the whole marketing requirements in an organization or company. Its beauty is in its ability to cut across multiple channels or mediums in an automatic way.
This enables business owners to reach their target audience with automated messages either via email, web, social media, or text. It involves email marketing, behavioural targeting, personalized advertising, and lead prioritization.
Imagine the company you work for doesn't employ marketing automation, and you're handling the position of marketing officer. You are required to reach a large target audience in a geographical area.
You discover it gets tiring, and you sometimes deliver poorly, and in the end, you get scolded for a job poorly done. This is why marketing automation is a bird at hand that's worth more than the stress of the formerly laid down methods.
What is marketing automation?
Simply put, marketing automation involves the use of software to automate and simplify tasks. Instead of wasting your time doing small jobs like follow-up messages, sales calls chronology, sending invoices, and posting on social media, get marketing automation software.
The first step involves you collecting as much customer data as you can from various channels like emails, website visits, social media, app data, etc. This way, you collect as much data as you need for the whole automation process.
Once this is done, the software automates monotonous marketing work. It streamlines, segments, and targets processes to aim at the right audience (no matter their size), and that too, at a faster rate.
How to set up marketing automation software
"The global marketing automation software market, on the other hand, is projected to grow from $3.60 billion in 2020 to $11.46 billion in 2027" (Motor Intelligence, 2021)
According to Motor Intelligence, the global marketing automation software market could grow from $3.60 billion in 2020 to $11.46 billion in 2021.
Having known how marketing automation works, you sure want to set up marketing software to make your work easier, faster, and more professional. Let's explore how to set up marketing automation software.
- Choose an already existing template or start a custom automation for lead follow-up, invoice reminders, booking consultations, etc.
- State the 'when' to start automation.
- Go on to define the 'then' that proceeds to the next action.
- Program an end option that terminates the automation when the process is complete (optional).
For instance, Mrs May is the marketing director for a notable company called XYZ in her area. She decides to set up marketing automation to invite new leads for an upcoming sales webinar.
She aims to market the company's product. Mrs May is expected to set up a form for new leads who wish to attend the webinar. This is sent to the collated mail lists of the supposed attendees.
The automation then sends a thank you message to each of the participants of the occasion and an opportunity to download a copy of the video or audio recording of the webinar.
This can be where the marketing automation terminates.
The Importance of Marketing Automation
The ZHAW School of Management and Law grouped the advantages of marketing automation as 49% of the time saved in doing repetitive tasks, improved efficiency of 45%, and a 49% increase in personalized communication.
This helps sales, marketing, and executive officials meet deadlines and relieve stress. However, in this article, we will take a look at some other benefits of marketing automation.
Building relationships
The main reason for marketing automation is to build customer-buyer relationships. When new customers make a purchase or pay for a service, they are reluctant to patronize it again for some known and unforeseen reasons.
Research by Ascend2 and Research Partners in 2022 stated that 43% of marketers say that customer experience improvement is the number one advantage of leveraging marketing automation.
Marketing automation through personalized emails builds and fosters the customer-buyer relationship, aiding them in getting to know more about your products and services.
It helps keep the sales lead
Oracle, 2021 stated that marketing automation dropped marketing expenses by 12.2% and increased sales productivity by 14.2%. Let's give an instance below.
Mr A makes a purchase from company XYZ. It's the work of company XYZ to keep sending him follow-up emails.
This can also be automated in such a way that just by visiting a company's site, you get follow-up mail to convince you to give their product or service a try.
You can also remind them through the mail to keep buying and, later on, set up some amazing offers for top customers in the company.
This way, the whole cost of sending the same message every day is reduced, and the right audience is reached.
About 65% of marketers proved the effectiveness of their marketing automation strategy (HubSpot, 2021). Marketo also added that marketing automation drives 33% growth in revenue and drives 28% sales productivity compared to other companies.
They also affirmed that sales leads could be increased by 50%.
Keeps Track of Your Customers' Journey
When new customers begin to buy a company's product or services, the sales manager manually keeps track of their name, location, and all the necessary customer details. This ends up stressing the sales manager or accountant.
Oracle, in 2021, stated that 8 in 10 marketing automation users see an increase in the number of leads. All thanks to marketing automation, you don't just keep track of their journey but also increase the number of leads.
What marketing automation does is that a company gets to know more of its customers. You can easily tell when they started buying and when they took a break.
This way, you can reach out to them and know why they took a break from patronizing and get to know their pain points. You also know how long it takes them to make a purchase and who your top customers are.
Updates your company's social media platform
In the case of advertising or publicizing the company's products or services, automation makes the work easier. We all know news spreads faster via social media, and this has also been a medium for so many companies rising.
This is why Ascend2 and Research Partners 2022 ascertained that marketing automation has its second largest platform in social media. They went on and stated that from 2021 to date, the percentage of markets that use marketing automation on social media platforms grew from 39% to 44%.
There are available marketing automation tools that help in this role. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer automate all your postings along with their captions, copy, images, links, and hashtags. This way, you consistently and deliberately increase your company's publicity and have more time to do other important.
Automated reports
The stress of having to carry around record books can be reduced by marketing automation. You have your reports and records automated and the analysis concluded that too, at a lesser time.
According to Ascend2 and Research Partners (2022), "7 in 10 marketers say that measuring the success of marketing automation is either somewhat or very easy".
This is due to some already set-up marketing automation tools. Through tools like Google Analytics (used for both data collection and report analysis), Tableau, and PowerBI, report automation is made easy. They do, however, need to be connected to a data source, so they just have to conduct the necessary reports.
Feedback efficiency
On most company websites and login interfaces, there's a way for customers to update how they feel about the company's products or services. The chatbot is programmed with answers to some frequently asked questions by customers.
HubSpot in 2021 reported that about 31% of marketers employ the use of chatbots. This is an interactive platform for customers to get along with the company's offers and prices for goods and services. Not just that, it goes on to sometimes capture the customer's data.
Conclusion
As a company's marketing manager or sales representative, you don't have to wait till work chokes you up or generates poor sales before you adopt marketing automation. You tend to reach a larger audience via automation. This way, you deliver on time and maintain a perfect customer-buyer relationship.
