In today’s super-competitive market, Marketing Automation has become the critical factor to increase the productivity, and efficiency in most industries, and it is only going to become more important as it becomes smarter, more capable, and more sophisticated in the years to come.
Marketing Automation is currently being used by millions of businesses around the world to save time and money and enable them to get the most out of their optimization as effectively as possible.
Why is Marketing Automation so important?
Let’s discuss some of the most important reasons why Marketing Automation plays a critical role in the success of any business in today’s world.
1- Improve Relationships with Existing Customers
Remember when we talked about the most common marketing automation mistakes? We mentioned that ignoring your existing customers is one of the worst mistakes you could make. Your current customers are one of the most valuable assets of your business, but unfortunately, they are also the most squandered asset as well.
You have probably worked incredibly hard to gain the trust of these customers, but just because you’ve made the sale and are searching for new customers doesn’t mean you are done with your existing customers. Far from it, in fact.
You must keep in contact with your customers, and your marketing automation solution can help you greatly with that. They can help you maintain long-term relationships with them through on-going, value-based communication.
2- Converting Leads and Prospects into customers
Whether your business offers a service or a product, the ultimate objective of any company is to generate sales. This is done by what is called ‘lead nurturing,’ which is educating and guiding your leads through the different phases of the decision-making process.
Your ultimate goal, then, is to convert them into customers, meaning; your prospects agree to take action or make some level of commitment to your business.
Marketing Automation can help every step of the way; engaging prospects in meaningful ways and delivering valuable information all through the decision-making process. In other words: It helps you engage more customers, in a more meaningful way, more efficiently, and all of that leads to more sales.
3- Analyze and learn what’s working and what’s not
Forget what you learned from Don Draper, Marketing nowadays cannot be built on a gut feeling or a personal opinion; instead, it is all about data, tons and tons of data, and the marketing automation solution is the tool we use to access, analyze, and understand all this data.
The data will tell you what’s working and what’s not, and Marketing Automation solutions have the tools to show us why what’s working is working with comparisons, patterns, and reports.
It provides insights that would’ve otherwise not become available to use. Insights that are of great help when deciding what to do next and how to improve on your work to get better results shortly.
4- Social Media Monitoring
While you’re reading these words right now, conversations are happening on social media. This is where people spend most of their time now, and it’s where they are now asking questions about your business and service/products.
Unfortunately, our human brains can not keep tabs on all these conversations that are going on at the same time, but fortunately, we have created computer programs that do just that. A Marketing Automation solution can provide social media monitoring.
All you have to do is type in the keywords that matter to you, and the software will start searching, tracking, and listening to conversations on different social media platforms whenever these keywords are mentioned. When the software finds those conversations, it will alert your sales team or a specific sales rep so they can get right on it.
5- Automated Emails, Updates, and Posting
Today’s marketing is about data, that’s true, but it also involves a lot of repetitive tasks that need to be done daily no matter what. People can do this tasks·, and even though each one of these tasks may seem small (such as updating contact info), combined, they can take a consume much of your valuable time.
Instead of wasting your resources – such as time and energy – on these repetitive tasks, you now have the option of having a software handle these repeatable activities automatically. This will not only save your time and money, but it will also reduce human errors.
By having the marketing automation solution handle these tasks, you will be freeing up more resources to focus on more important activities such as creating insights, innovating and improving on the marketing and sales experience, and analyzing your data more deeply.
6- Sales Process Support
Earlier, we’ve mentioned how it is the ultimate goal of every company – regardless of the industry it’s in or the service or product it’s offering – to sell. Assuming you already have a spot-on sales process in place, a marketing automation software will be able to help you much.
It can help you make sure your salespeople are saying the right things to the sales prospects at the right time, it can give you insights into the conversation rates across the entirety of your sale funnel, and it can help you make sure your sales reps are using the right tools and telling the same stories in the same way.
In short, Marketing Automation will make sure your salespeople are actually following the same process and not just figuring things out as they go (which, undoubtedly is needed at certain situations, but these are the exceptions, and we’re talking about the general rule).
7- Gain valuable and actionable insights into the behavior of your leads
This is one of the most important reasons why Marketing Automation is so critical to any business in our modern world.
Remember when marketers and managers had to guess what their potential customers think, do, and want? These days are long gone. Why imagine when you can know, for a fact, what your prospects are doing, what they think, and what they need and want? This is what the technology of Marketing Automation offers; valuable insights into the behavior of your prospects.
Marketing Automation can keep track of the behavior, interactions, and discussions of your prospects. It can monitor their every move since the first time they visit your website and show interest in what you offer, all the way through to when they finally choose your company.
Marketing Automation Software will tell you what website pages they’ve visited, how many times have they visited those websites, what offers sparked their interest, what emails they opened and which ones they ignored, and how many times they’ve interacted with your sales teams (and what were those interactions) before they finally make the decision to choose you of all the options available to them.
8- Update your website easily
We know. We know how hard it is to change things on your site. The design team is not easy to deal with, they don’t always get what you want, and they charge for every single change. They are the ones that build the CMS, and they are the ones that know all about it. You have to keep on paying to them one month after the other to maintain the hosting and keep the website running.
It’s not easy, it’s not something you like, and it’s time things change.
It’s your website; you should be able to change it and update it whenever you feel appropriate. You should be able to build landing pages easily, add pages, adjust workflow emails, change forms, and change text and pictures. And you should be able to do that quickly and quickly.
Marketing Automation allows you to do all of that, and you can learn to do them well and become just as good as the pros if you’re willing to put in the time and effort. It is easier than it seems, and the advantages of being able to do them in-house will make it worth it for some. You can still leave the more laborious, more complicated tasks (such as created professional landing pages) to the pros if you like, but it’s certainly nice to have the option.
As you can see, Marketing Automation can play a huge role in the success of your business nowadays. Luckily for you, there are plenty of Marketing Automation platforms available for you to choose from.
If you have a question or a comment, we would love to hear them. Just Making sure you leave your thoughts in a comment below, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. As always, feel free to share this article with friends or colleagues who might find something useful here as well.
