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Although marketing automation is gaining popularity in businesses all around the world, many business owners feel that automation is not a service their company needs. Part of this conclusion comes from being unaware of the full spectrum of services that marketing automation can provide, and part comes from being unaware of what marketing automation is.
So, what is Marketing Automation?
To clarify, marketing automation refers to any programs or tools that are designed to help marketing teams handle tedious tasks, and more effectively market their brand. Marketing automation can cover practically any business aspect that’s related to marketing. When a business uses these tools, its processes are automated by technology, allowing the human workers to tackle the more involved, creative tasks required to keep the company progressing.
So how can we sell marketing automation to someone who doesn’t understand the business benefits and importance of implementing it into their business? We educate them.
Who Needs Marketing Automation?
Practically any business can benefit from the use of marketing automation tools, and this is because marketing automation really can encompass every part of the lead, client, and raving fan part of a customer lifecycle. While it is especially helpful to smaller businesses, most large corporations utilize a variety of automation tools to increase productivity, sales, customer satisfaction, and brand awareness.
Basically, marketing automation gives all companies an advantage.
Marketing automation can help improve any aspect of a company’s performance, and being that automation tools continue to develop all the time, there is something for every company that seeks to improve staff loyalty, company reputation, efficiency, and returns on investments.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
75% of companies are using at least some form of marketing automation, and for good reason. Automation has made great strides in the past few years, and as such, the industry now helps small and large improve business processes, organization, and ROI.
When it comes to small to medium-sized businesses that do not have enough staff members to complete all of the necessary tasks in a workday but lack the expendable funds to invest in hiring or training employees, marketing automation can be an immense relief. The business as a whole can benefit from the use of automated tools because they can take on the work most employees dread.
Business Benefits
Generally, businesses that choose to work with automated tools can see an improvement by:
- Increasing Productivity: By automating certain business processes, owners and employees alike can get more done throughout the workday than ever before.
- Cutting Staff Costs: With the automation of available tasks, a single employee can complete the same work as up to fifty people on a given day.
- Improving Reporting: Automation features can make tasks run smoothly as well as record and report workplace functions in ways that make it simple to understand where improvements are needed.
- Increasing Revenue: By increasing the number of tasks that are automated, businesses not only save when it comes to payroll, but revenue can also increase through various customer satisfaction techniques.
- Allowing Business Creativity: Having automation take care of tedious tasks, businesses can deploy their staff to tackle more creative, exciting elements of their work. With happier, more engaged employees, turnover rates drop, and productivity increases.
Marketing Benefits
In addition to streamlining general business processes, marketing automation can significantly improve marketing team tasks. By automating certain processes, marketing departments can see a significant improvement in:
- Organizing Data: Marketing automation can help keep every aspect of a company’s data organized for easy review. From campaign reports to site traffic and conversion rates, everything can be accessible on one platform, ready at the click of a button.
- Saving Time: By automating social media posts, newsletters, and content releases ahead of time, marketing professionals will no longer be required to continuously log in and post content, or check to determine whether the posting schedule is being followed correctly.
- Operating Multiple Channels: Marketing automation does not apply to only one platform or business channel. Companies can automate through email, SMS, social media platforms, phone calls, and site operations. This means that automation tools can improve business processes across the board.
- Managing Leads: From lead generation to categorization, automated processes can help keep clear lists of lead levels. This way, staff are up to speed when it comes to each lead type’s needs and progress. Even when transferring leads from marketing departments to sales staff, all lead notes are organized and ready to view. Even with massive lists of leads, an automated organization can ensure that leads are properly categorized.
- Improving Targeting: By launching the right content to the right groups of people through automated targeting, the ability to personalize conversion approaches can give new customers a unique experience. Knowing exactly what content to offer to which targeted audience can engage far more people than a general email blast or promotional offer.
Customer Service Benefits
- Perhaps one of the most important aspects of a company’s success is the way the business communicates with its customer base. By automating customer service interactions and tasks, businesses can improve their performances in areas including:
- Communication: By using chatbots, businesses can ensure that the line of communication between themselves and their customers is always open. Even after business hours, customers can reach out and receive quality customer service.
- Productivity: Having automation take care of tasks can help ensure that human workers are better able to be productive in the workplace. By allowing programs and tools to cover incoming message organization, everything is neatly categorized and issues that don’t require a human approach can be handled before they clog up a task list.
- Updates: Instead of having the tech department continuously scan for software updates, automated technology will search for updates, as well as initiate them without having to be told. This way, tools, and programs are always working at their best capacity.
- Response Time: A chatbot or auto-response system can sift through and respond to messages far faster than human staff members. A single bot can handle the workload of almost an entire department, and on top of that, the automated programs are far less likely to generate filing errors in the same way human workers may.
- Finding Errors: Should anything go wrong within the business system, an automated tool can help find the source of the issue in far less time than it would take a department of human workers to locate and correct it. Automation helps identify and resolve issues as quickly as possible.
Marketing Automation Setbacks
While the benefits of marketing automation are vast, there are a couple of potentially negative things to consider. Though the following points may be concerning, the benefits more than makeup for the challenges related to automating business processes.
- Marketing automation isn’t free. There are plenty of automation tools that have free versions, which can help take care of some fraction of automation expenses. However, many marketing automation tools will require some form of subscription in order to make the most out of the features therein.
- Marketing automation isn’t simple. Though marketing automation tools can help simplify a wide array of business processes, learning how to best utilize the features of each program is not going to be easy. There is a learning curve to marketing automation that’s important to master.
- Automation setup is time-consuming. Once an automation system has been set up and the learning curve is mastered, it can save a company countless labor hours and expenses. However, the setup takes time, and it’s important to monitor automated processes to ensure that everything is integrating smoothly.
- The key is to be careful. If automated processes are set up and initiated correctly, they’re usually highly reliable. However, if there are human errors made along the way, a single mistake can be amplified throughout the system. It’s important to review changes before considering them complete. Using the correct metrics to gauge if your automated systems are correctly working is a necessity, and they allow you to optimize and amplify your automation strategy. This is what makes marketing automation campaigns the most successful.
Marketing automation can be a miracle for businesses that do not have enough time in the day to complete all necessary business processes. Yet, these innovative tools are not a substitute for the effort and detail orientation that goes into successful business decisions and creativity.
Still unable to help a stakeholder visualize how it will benefit the business?
We can help. Our team of business experts will review your team strategies and find places where automation tools will supercharge your efficiency and productivity. We can even help you implement them. Book a free call with us anytime.
