A lot of successful businesses would describe marketing automation as a huge factor in their success. In fact, many of the top performing small to medium-sized businesses are likely to utilise marketing automation in some way. However, the majority of small to medium-sized businesses don’t use marketing automation. This can be for a number of reasons including:
- They think it is too expensive
- Creating the content is too hard
- Configuring the campaign is too difficult
- They don’t know how marketing automation works
While many businesses don’t take advantage of marketing automation, the percentage of small to medium-sized businesses using marketing automation is slowly going up. Why is this? More and more businesses are starting to see the benefits of marketing automation. Right now, however, I’m sure you’re wondering how marketing automation works and how it can actually benefit your business. Well, you can find the answers right here.
What Is Marketing Automation?
Okay, so before we get into how marketing automation works for small to medium-sized businesses, it is important to know what marketing automation actually is. Marketing automation allows businesses to automate certain tasks in their marketing campaign. It refers to the software used to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, direct messages and various website actions. It can be anything from creating personalised emails for specific customers or prospects to suggesting certain products on your website to customers or leads based on their browsing history.
Marketing automation allows you to create a personalised experience for prospects with the goal being to turn them into paying customers. Find out more about marketing automation here.
How Can It Help Your Business?
There are a large number of benefits of using marketing automation including:
- Improved management and nurturing of prospects
- Improved user engagement
- Improved customer relationship management
- Helps to turn prospects into paying customers
- Measurable results
- Gives you the ability to work ahead
To put it simply, marketing automation allows you to nurture and manage your leads. In fact, marketing automation is often regarded as one of the most effective tools for doing this. By increasing the level of engagement and interaction with your leads, you can increase their level of interest in your business. As well as this, being able to work ahead is a huge benefit to a small to medium-sized business as they are less likely to have huge marketing teams dedicated to creating all the content and managing the campaigns. Not convinced? Check out our 12 Reasons Why Marketing Automation Works For Small Businesses.
It is important to note, however, that marketing automation isn’t some magic tool that will get new customers from anywhere and everywhere. You must still integrate other marketing tools in order to generate leads so that your marketing automation can begin to nurture them. Also, it is important to know when to use it and when not to use it.
How Can Your Business Utilise Marketing Automation?
Firstly, before even thinking about marketing automation, you should think about how you are going to generate leads. You need interesting and compelling content out there in order to boost your SEO and promote customer interaction in order to start generating leads. You would then need to utilise CTAs and interactive features such as comments and sharing so that potential customers can actually show their interest in your business.
Once you start generating leads, you can start thinking about how marketing automation can be utilised in order to nurture them. Firstly, you can send out emails to new leads that have filled out a contact or sign up form, for example. A personalised welcome email allows you to tell each new lead more about your business and how you can help them. Don’t forget about your loyal customers, though. It is just as important for many small to medium-sized businesses to hold onto their current customers as bringing in new ones. Thank you emails with offers can be automated to reward loyal customers.
Marketing automation can also be used for scheduling social media posts. Instead of constantly logging in and out of all your social media channels, you can instead set aside an hour or two per week to write and schedule posts. This is perfect for small business owners that don’t have much time to spend on social media as it prevents a business from neglecting its social media marketing.
Is It Time For Your Business To Utilise Marketing Automation
If you’re one of the many business owners who have considered marketing automation but decided against using it for whatever reason, it could be time to reconsider. There are a huge number of benefits to marketing automation and, if you have a good marketing team, you can maximise its lead nurturing potential. Get in touch with a member of our team today to find out how we can help you!
