How many times have you received those emails with details about a product that you were on the verge of purchasing? How did that company know you were looking to purchase this exact product? Isn’t it like someone reading your mind?
We want to reveal the SECRET for you. It is being read; not your mind, but your search history.
We often subscribe to shopping sites that consistently update you on recent offers and preferred products via emails and messages. Have you wondered how they do this?
This is part of the strategy called Marketing Automation.
If you are a budding marketer looking to build a steady profile for your brand online, you will need to be aware of marketing automation and its benefits in digital marketing.
If you need basic information about automation, this blog is for you. Find out all about marketing automation here.
Marketing Automation
You would be familiar with the different kinds of techniques used for digital marketing. Email Marketing and Social Media Promotions are manually performed as part of nurturing brand exposure and garnering leads.
With marketing automation, you can prioritize customers’ preferences while also focusing on profit. Popular companies with a standard digital marketing game are said to have witnessed a 451% increase in qualified leads, according to SalesForce.
Marketing Automation uses software or online services to plan, carry out, determine and analyse marketing activities that run on repetition. Using this technology can considerably decrease the time you denote to recurring promotional activities.
This method ensures that your business is responsible and responsive to customer needs by consistently assisting them throughout their interaction with the company.
If you are still not convinced about the benefits of marketing automation, let us get deeper into the advantages of investing in this digital marketing technique.
How Does it Work?
Automation focuses on simplifying tiresome business processes by saving that manual press on the ‘send’ button. Emails, messages and posts can be automatically sent and posted using automation tools.
A proper automation technique recognizes your potential leads and design exclusive, customer-centred content for them. They are sent emails and messages based on their online behaviour and preferences.
With a well-rounded marketing automation campaign, all you need to do are timely updates. It saves effort, time and resources. Additionally, this technique is a fool-proof way for better ROI.
While resorting to marketing automation campaigns, you need to collect customer data from their web interactions. This includes preferred sites, apps and social media statistics. This will help you understand your customer better. In turn, it helps in crafting customized material for them.
Marketing automation streamlines the segmentation and targeting options to reach out to specific audience group with tailor-made content for their inboxes and social media accounts.
What you will be able to do is hold your customers’ hands through their entire journey with you. You will be able to predict what product/service they desire and when. In return, they become your brand’s trusty ambassadors, advocating your brand all the way. Again, the duty to keep them satisfied with good products and services is another responsibility altogether.
How can Marketing Automation
Benefit your Business?
With statistics revealing numerous benefits of marketing automation techniques in the digital marketing space, we have to conclude that automation is here to stay. It is said to immensely benefit businesses in sales and other respects.
If you are a marketer, the following list of basic advantages will impress you.
1. Better Efficiency
As the 2018 State of Inbound Report suggests, nearly 27% of salespeople spend more than an hour on data entry work as part of digital marketing. This is time that could be put to use in churning out better sales.
With marketing automation to the rescue, the entire efficiency quotient of a brand’s sales funnel can be improved.
Not only does it save time, but is also cost-efficient. You can cut down on employees and assign repetitive tasks to automation software.
2. Higher ROI
According to Pardot, companies have witnessed a boost of a 34% increase in sales revenues on average in recent times.
Increased efficiency provides better ROI for your company. This result is made possible by sourcing on more leads and having more sales representatives. This enables you to cut cost on these areas and invest it on sales.
3. Customizable Content
As you have read, marketing automation prioritizes the requirements of the user and helps your brand bond with them over their preferences. Special, customized content will be delivered to their inboxes directly and consistently.
This ensures a 73% increase in conversion rates. Businesses and bigger brands that resort to marketing automation for nurturing leads testify these statistics, as per Aberdeen’s article.
4. Nurtures Leads
It isn’t easy to direct customers who browse through your products to the cart for checking out. This requires immediate responsiveness to their actions and heavy scrutiny of their actions online.
Harvard’s Business Review reveals that companies that respond to leads within the first hour are seven times more likely to make a profit.
This is made possible through marketing automation, with very little manual effort from the marketer’s part.
5. Retaining Existing Customers
It is of course more difficult to nurture potential buyers than retain existing customers. This does not mean it is negligible. Your faithful customers can help your brand name reach places.
Automation tools that focus on CRM will help you hand-hold your existing customers throughout their association with you.
Such marketing automation tools help you create dedicated interfaces with each customer so that they feel cared for and well-pampered by your company.
How to Initiate Marketing Automation?
Take your time understanding before starting with marketing automation.
There are different automation plans your company can engage in. Whether or not you consult a digital marketing agency for your requirement, it would be necessary to recognize your budget. If you are a small business owner at the budding stages of your venture, you will need to curate your needs more specifically.
Our recommendation would be to approach expert agencies of professionals in your locality for guidance. Not only will they be able to brief you well, but also chart down suitable packages for your requirements.
Summing Up
A recent article by Aaron Brooks reveals that 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for three or more years. Nearly 50% of companies have witnessed a good return for their investment in automation within six months of its initiation.
However, the decision to adopt marketing automation for your business should be finalized after much contemplation. You need to recognize the type of industry your brand is part of. More importantly, you need to recognize and acknowledge your target audiences. If they are not the kind to gravitate towards automation techniques, your investment could go into vain. Their demographics, age groups, social media activities, preferences and everything else become part of this understanding.
Do you have more questions regarding marketing automation? Feel free to reach out to us via the comment section below.
If you are looking for assistance in digital marketing, ring us up!
