In business, the smaller tasks are just as important as larger tasks, and no one knows this better than marketers. Marketers spend countless hours sending emails, sifting through enormous amounts of data, and creating content on numerous channels. Often, these tasks are repetitive. While they are important, they are also incredibly tedious and cut into precious time, finances, and resources.
Fortunately, there’s an answer to this problem: marketing automation.
Marketing automation for B2B businesses refers to software or technology that can automatically complete marketing-related tasks across different channels. The benefits of marketing automation extend far beyond saving time and money. Marketing automation can also vastly improve how your business performs overall. It’s no wonder that two-thirds of businesses are implementing this type of automation today.
This guide will outline all of the advantages marketing automation provides for your business.
1. Increases Productivity and Efficiency
Marketing automation lets your business focus on bigger-picture tasks and goals.
The biggest reason companies decide to take on marketing automation is the increased productivity and efficiency it offers. In fact, businesses that use marking automation are reported to be 20% more productive overall. Allowing automation to send welcome or follow-up emails, make social media posts, and organize lead generation data gives employees the time to focus on bigger tasks. More specifically, marketers can concentrate on crafting creative and effective marketing campaigns that will capture the interests of new prospects.
Even better, you can set up your marketing automation to occur when “triggers” happen. Triggers include actions that users take when interacting with your website. For instance, if a new lead signs up for your company’s email list, you can create a welcome email that sends automatically without you or your team’s assistance. Letting the automation technology take care of this also ensures that you don’t miss any potential lead that comes your way.
2. Reduces Human Error
Human errors are a reality of any business, regardless of the level of expertise. However, marketing automation reduces the risk of occasional human error with completing marketing tasks, especially repetitive ones. After completing the same tasks over and over, it’s easy for workers to lose concentration, and that’s where slip-ups occur, such as typos or sending the same email twice.
The consistency of automation AI and technology ensures that mistakes are drastically reduced and all tasks completed in the same manner. Moreover, marketing automation makes certain that tasks are completed on time. After all, missing deadlines can lead to bigger headaches down the road.
3. Allows for Channel Agnosticism
Channel agnosticism means that the channel in which you contact or interact with a customer is much less important than the experience itself. Instead of concerning yourself with whether to send an email or social media message, for instance, you focus more on the information you need to convey. Marketing automation will take care of getting the information to the customer.
Channel agnosticism is essential because customers expect brands to be present on and through a variety of channels. For example, they want to be able to contact brands through their website, social media pages, email, or phone number. Even more importantly, they want the same experience, no matter the channel.
Keep in mind that channel agnosticism is different than omnichannel marketing. Omnichannel marketing is focused on providing a specific customer experience based entirely on the channel. In contrast, channel agnosticism centers on delivering the exact same experience each and every time. Knowing that a business will give customers the same type of service no matter how they contact them helps build business authority and trust.
4. Assists the Entire Lead Process
Lead generation and nurturing are often the number one goals of B2B marketers, yet some of the most difficult. Nearly 60% of businesses say lead generation is a key challenge for their company. The modern world has allowed potential prospects to discover your company in a seemingly endless amount of ways. Even trickier, there is a never-ending amount of ways to follow up with them and introduce methods that make a sale. Luckily, one of the top benefits of marketing automation is the assistance with the entire lead process.
Acquiring Leads
Marketing automation aids lead acquisition in a wide variety of ways. You can set up an automation system to send out cold or welcome emails to prospects who either visit your site or give you their contact information. Alternatively, you can use automation to track user behavior on your website, creating targeted landing pages that display what the potential lead is already interested in.
Nurturing Leads
Once you’ve picked up leads, you can use automation to nurture them or develop a relationship with the prospect. This is mostly done through email marketing, such as sending follow-up or update emails after a certain period. On the other hand, you can also put effort into content marketing, which involves creating useful, valuable content to post on your website or social media channels. Interested leads will look forward to new content you regularly put out, leading to a greater probability of a sale.
Contacting Past Leads
Using marketing automation as part of the lead generation process is not just about getting new leads. You can also use automation to re-engage old leads. For example, you can set your automation system up to send emails to inactive leads. These emails could include special promotions, discounts, or other relevant offers.
Assessing Lead Scores
Lastly, automation technology lets you measure your lead scores or where the lead stands in the sales journey. Doing this allows you to see where your priority stands with different prospects. Automation technology can assign each lead a numerical score based on factors you and your marketing team assess, such as what steps a lead has taken on your site or through your campaigns. You can then turn your attention to leads with the highest number or those most likely to go through with a purchase.
5. Enables You to Scale Up
Over time, as your business grows, you may find it difficult to continue giving every client the personalization they deserve. A whopping 94% of marketing professionals have stated that personalization is important in retaining customers, after all. The lack of personalization can decrease satisfaction with your company and its products and services, leading to stagnant business growth. Fortunately, marketing automation helps you scale up without the disadvantages.
Marketing automation ensures that you continue to provide consistent, personalized services and communication to every single client in both the short and long term. This consistent personalization will help build your client value over time, leading to a large and loyal client base.
6. Gives You Actionable Data
Collecting data is vital to understanding what is working and what is not working in your marketing efforts. Marketing automation software presents you with large, invaluable sets of data that show what marketing efforts are giving you results. For example, you can get insight into email marketing campaign efforts, such as click-through and open rates.
Equipped with this data and understanding, you can transform your marketing strategies to focus on what’s bringing you success. You can then continue to create similar marketing efforts in the future.
7. Leads to Higher Revenue
Last but certainly not least, one of the best benefits of marketing automation is the possibility of a great increase in revenue. How does automation help with revenue? Firstly, you will greatly reduce costs commonly associated with marketing, including hiring additional staff to take on the administrative side of marketing.
Secondly, automation helps with your overall marketing performance and, by extension, your company’s profits. Improved response times, the reduction in inaccuracy and error, and the ability to personalize every lead’s experience lead to a greater likeliness of sales. In this way, marketing automation can completely elevate your company’s achievements, particularly on the financial end.
Let Marketing Automation Sweat the Small Stuff
The days of spending hours sending and responding to emails are over with marketing automation.
The expectations of marketing teams continue to grow in the modern age, thanks to the wide availability of technological abilities. However, the rise in expectations comes with a surge in mundane but important tasks, including sending follow-up emails, writing blogs and helpful content, and segmenting leads by likelihood of sales. Still, taking care of all of these little tasks adds to overall business success, including a large list of satisfied and loyal clients.
Fortunately, marketing automation is there is to make your and your team’s life much easier, more efficient, and way more interesting overall. The only real issue is figuring out where to begin marketing automation, including what tools and software to use. Redstitch Digital can help you get started and create a digital marketing journey that makes sense for your business. Contact Redstitch Digital today to discuss the possibilities.
