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Traditional marketing and sales take money and manpower to really make a difference. That’s why many small businesses have looked at how Medium to Enterprise level companies do it; they’ve found that not only do they spend advertising dollars and hire many sales reps, but they also depend on Marketing Automation.
So, what is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is the term used for software that enables businesses to create marketing, sales, internal workflows (and more) that will be executed automatically via logic and conditional-based technology.
You can think about it as an employee that executes tasks for you, 24/7.
There are many benefits of utilizing proper automation techniques, including operation cost reduction, creating a productive environment, and increasing brand reliability. When it comes to trying to market a business online, it’s in a company’s best interest to make use of at least one automation tool.
Why Automate Your Marketing Efforts At All
Businesses that successfully utilize marketing automation software can get the right content in the right people’s hands, at the right time. Instead of waiting for a lead who is ready to purchase to email you, wouldn’t it be better to recognize a lead and automatically pop up in their inbox with a special or hyper-focused product feature?
Automation platforms like Ontraport, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and Marketo can do this automatically using their lead scoring tools. This type of tool will increase the “lead score” of a contact every time they interact with your content. By pre-setting rules, your platforms will communicate with these contacts once they hit a specific lead score, or as we say in the sales world, become a “hot lead”. This prioritizes your hotter sales leads who are actively engaging with your content, thus boosting your chance at a sale and your overall marketing communication efforts.
Automated Marketing vs Manual Marketing
When comparing automated marketing to manual marketing, it’s like comparing a Nokia flip phone to the latest iPhone; applications on the iPhone are the tools in marketing automation that allow you to access your most-used websites and communicate with your network.
In reality, many day-to-day repetitive operations do not have to be completed by a team of human beings, a single marketing automation platform has all the apps (tools) that can work together to complete these tasks in minutes.
Automation platforms save you money on employee wages and can actually improve most business practices while increasing efficiency.
Operation Cost Reduction
Running a business is costly, especially for small businesses that have yet to achieve their desired profit margin. While decreasing overhead costs may appear simple in theory, there are many ways to do this that could negatively impact the business down the line. For instance, cutting down on social media and advertising efforts can produce a short-term reduction, but affect long-term lead flow.
Thanks to automation tools, companies can reduce the cost of running the business without affecting long-term goals negatively.
Automation has come a long way in recent years and these tools can handle an even wider selection of business processes than before. Meaning, companies can have automation handle more than marketing funnels and free up team members to focus on decisions that will push the business forward.
Creating a Productive Environment
Employees that are required to complete tiresome jobs daily find it difficult to stay productive. Automation systems like Ontraport use Tasks, which are embedded into automated workflows to essentially serve as reminders to your team to perform something manually at the proper time. When a team member completes a job, he or she can mark it as completed to trigger the rest of the automated campaign.
Ontraport can help you automate a variety of processes. Internal duties that are tiresome may be automated just as simply as external marketing using Ontraport. When these tasks are completed in an orderly fashion or are completely automated, your team can use this new free time to work on new projects and feel less stress at work. As a result, it’s a useful tool for managing projects and also sustaining staff relationships.
Increasing Brand Reliability
Automation keeps businesses on track, ensuring that leads don’t fall through the cracks and also that the brand is posting interesting, timely content regularly.
We as consumers have become increasingly impatient. If we download a coupon or guide from a site, we expect to receive it in our inbox or on-site immediately. No longer is this an exceptional experience, but the expected. Keep leads happy by using marketing automation platforms that will handle both immediately, and every time.
We also expect to receive overwhelming value from what we spend money on. This may include educational blog content, newsletters, video tutorials, webinars, promotions, or social media posts that will help us with our problem. All of this may be handled via automation, eliminating the need for a full-fledged marketing department. While it may take human workers to compose the content that will be posted, automation can aid in scheduling, pulling content into emails automatically, and even launching content during the optimal timeframe to gain the most engagement.
Marketing automation tools also provide analytical information about the company’s audience and engagement. As a result, businesses can gain a better understanding of their customers’ habits and tailor their strategies to suit them (such as posting during certain days or using specific keywords in posts).
Better Performance with Fewer Employees
Some marketing automation tools interact with customers in a way that very closely mimics human behavior, meaning that as far as customer service is concerned, a chatbot can satisfy a user’s need for contact. Chatbots, like ManyChat, can interact, personalize, answer questions, and assist customers using hyper-focused logic that was only possible to be done by human workers in years past.
Companies can perform at their best with highly developed automated services, even when they do not have more staff members. In fact, marketing goals that may not have been attainable before can be realized with constant data collection and action taken by automation tools.
While optimizing your marketing efforts may appear difficult at first, know that automation software will greatly assist you. They help reduce operation costs, boost productivity in the workplace, and increase the reliability of your brand image. Learning your way around each platform, as well as going through trial and error testing to figure out how your marketing and business automation flows function, can take a long time. Reach out to Automated Dreams for a free 30-minute consultation and create your marketing automation plan today.
Wondering how marketing automation can help your business specifically?
Automated Dreams can help with our Strategy Package. We’ll review your business model, identify areas that tools can help streamline, map out your automation paths and line out projects that you or a freelance team can implement to get the most out of marketing automation tools.
Book a free discovery call to learn more about our Strategy Package and services.
