On the fence about marketing automation? You’re not alone…
Marketing automation can seem intimidating for those unfamiliar to the process. But I’m here to tell you it’s nothing to be afraid of, in fact, it’s something to be celebrated.
But before you put champagne on ice, let’s take a closer look into marketing automation and the diverse, cost-effective and lucrative benefits it can provide your business.
What is Marketing Automation?
In a nutshell, marketing automation (MA) is software that streamlines and distributes personalized digital marketing content to the right audience, at the right time, in the right format, without actually having to be there.
When executed correctly, MA is an essential piece to the customer relationship management puzzle—enabling businesses to have an intuitive and efficient marketing mechanism improves brand awareness, customer loyalty and lead generation.
Here are several eye-opening statistics on MA:
• Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)
• 84% of top performing companies are using or plan to start using marketing automation between 2012 and 2015. (Source: Gleanster)
• Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (source: DemandGen Report)
• Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (Source: Nucleus Research)
To help give you a broader understanding of marketing automation, consider this hypothetical scenario:
One night, just before you’re about to fall asleep, you hear something quickly scatter above you. The next night, it happens again, and again…
You buy a flashlight, and realize you have a mouse living above you. So, you get some peanut butter and cheese out of the fridge and place it onto a mouse trap. The next morning, you evaluate the situation and find the furry-little culprit trapped and departed.
Marketing automation works in a similar fashion:
• You realize you’re having trouble staying on top of marketing (you realize you have a mouse).
• You create digital content in advance (you put peanut butter and cheese on a mouse trap).
• The next morning, you evaluate the results (your marketing is completed and leads are in the pipeline).
• You’re up-to-date on your marketing (you’re feared in the mouse community).
Here’s 4 reasons why marketing automation is good for your business:
Rejuvenate the Buyer’s Journey
No, this may not be a riveting realization, but it is important. Marketing automation brings consistency, precision and organization into your business’ revenue strategy. When a (potential) customer downloads a whitepaper, reads a newsletter or responds to an email, you can seamlessly nurture their ‘buyer’s journey’ into the exact content or information you think will best lead them to conversion. Without automation, your lead generation strategy is chaotic and scrambled, and lacks a clearly defined objective.
Prolong Value of Post-Purchase
Old knitted sweater? Create a pillow. Leftover salmon? Great for seafood gumbo. Unused coffee grounds? Enrich your garden’s soil as plant food or insect repellant.
What in the world does this have to do with Marketing automation? A ton!
Here’s why:
Ever stop and ponder about the amount of revenue lost when you failed to connect your product/service to cross-selling or up-selling? No? Well, you’re not alone. Cross-selling and/or up-selling are two of the most underutilized strategies in marketing. If you’re not thinking of ways to extend your product or service’s value, you may want to consider redirecting your after-purchase angle.
But, in the case of MA, customers that forgo to take advantage of your “said” opportunity on their initial purchase can be a sent an email reminding them of the missed chance (on a later date). Customers don’t always want to consider a bonus after the initial purchase due to overspending. But when the dust settles, and once they get familiar with your product, they may rethink the offer.
Detailed Reporting
Manual marketing processes don’t always give you the who, what, when, where, why, and how regarding your efforts. Due to the largescale ambiguity of manual marketing, it becomes incredibly difficult to understand your audience’s response and/or whether or not how a specific campaign is performing. But with MA, you have a clear and objective database into your audience, leads and marketing efforts—helping you to make tangible and efficient decisions that either help you to reinforce or reevaluate what it is (or isn’t) you are doing.
Know When to Approach a Lead
Marketing automation is made particularly valuable when it is used to apply direct marketing to your strategy. By possessing insight into what time a lead engaged with your content, you will have a better understanding in knowing whether someone is on the fence of a purchase. This crucial piece of data allows you to strategize a personal direct message targeted towards their pain points, needs, business and objectives.
Ultimately, marketing automation allows you to stay on top of your marketing while prioritized with other business needs; in other words, it’s kind of like having a real-life stunt double, but instead of jumping out of buildings and car, he is helping you market your business.
Get your real life stunt double and start automating your emails and social media today!
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