According to research, 77% of CMOs agree that marketing automation helps grow revenue.
Marketing automation can include email campaigns, digital advertising, lead generation, and more. In general, marketing automation uses pre-determined attributes and or machine learning to run on their own. With some campaigns, you may need to set up workflows that can run on their own, or you can use systems that do it all for you by using customer data.
The benefits of marketing automation affect all aspects of your business. It’ll help improve budgeting, reporting, sales, and growth. There’s no need to be afraid of marketing automation for small businesses. Most campaigns are easy to implement and will help yield results immediately.
We’ve put together seven benefits for small businesses so you can get started with marketing automation.
As a small business, time is one of your most valuable resources. Chances are, you’re stretched thin by yourself or with a small team. You have limited resources covering everything from accounting, sales, digital, and marketing. One of the most significant marketing automation benefits is the time you can reclaim to work harder on growing your business.
When you begin an automation campaign, there will always be time spent on an up-front setup. The more you invest in setting up a successful campaign, the more time benefits you’ll see down the road.
For example, with email automation, you can set up a variety of automated emails. Each email should have a new focus: birthday sales, abandoned cart, shipping notifications, and more. The more personalized, the less you’ll have to oversee the emails and create more.
If you’re saving time, you’ll be saving money as well. Instead of paying employees to create and manage emails, reserve their time for setup and reporting.
Freeing up time you’d usually spend on creation, you’ll have more time for strategy. By monitoring your marketing automation results, you can make business decisions faster. The results will also help you understand what to do next.
Furthermore, having tangible results helps you see ROI. You can spend more money on campaigns that work and save in the long run.
Marketing automation software almost always has reporting built-in for each campaign. Instead of updating spreadsheets and Google Analytics dashboards, view results as you go.
Many types of automation software also let you set up A/B testing. Through A/B testing, you can run identical campaigns while testing different variables.
Within email marketing, testing might include different subject lines. Your data will show which version gets the most clicks. A/B testing is an easy way to optimize your campaigns and determine what’s the most successful.
By offering easy success metrics, some software is also capable of forecasting future campaigns. Using machine learning, the software can generate campaigns using successful headlines, copy, and creative.
Marketing automation helps you keep a single source of truth for multiple teams to reference.
Stop arguing over metrics and results. Marketing automation lets you agree on metrics of success before you get started.
Marketing automation software only considers how the customer engages with your content. Different teams’ goals or perspectives won’t muddle the data.
Because marketing automation works so well, you can also count on a more considerable amount of leads. If you have a sales team, they’ll have better chances of closing leads that already engaged with successful campaigns. Your marketing and sales functions can work seamlessly together toward the same goals.
Marketing automation helps you make better decisions faster, leading to higher ROI and more customers.
Automation allows you to scale your business faster by working across multiple channels. You can easily set up your marketing to work seamlessly across email, digital ads, social media, and more.
Working faster across multiple channels means you can reach a larger audience than before. Imagine where your business would be right now if you could reach an audience 3x larger without significantly increasing your budget. Meet your sales goals and more by continually sourcing new leads for sales and cultivation.
Small business marketing automation gives more information about customers, including their behavior online.
Your automation software can automatically organize customers within your sales pipeline. For instance, if they’ve interacted with your ads and emails and already spoken with someone on your team, they’ll be sorted as a qualified lead.
Instead of digging through analytics, you can easily see what types of customers engage and how often they do so. Customer data will allow you to see what kind of content is most engaging and why.
One of the most significant small business marketing automation benefits is personalization. Personalization is becoming increasingly important for marketing, and 74% of customers feel frustrated when content isn’t personalized. Personalization helps customers make better purchasing decisions and feel better about those decisions too.
Through automation, you can generate ads that are specifically targeted to your website audiences. Reach customers whom you know are interested and hook them with more personalized content.
To realize the benefits of marketing automation, you need to have clear goals set for your small business. Beyond increasing revenue, how do you want your customers to interact with your brand? You might envision a brand built on social media shares or customer referral networks. Whatever you decide, develop your marketing strategy around individual goals.
Work with a marketing agency that can help you shop around for marketing automation software and set it up to meet your needs.
Contact us today to learn more about our comprehensive marketing services for small businesses. We can help you set up an automated strategy that builds your business and sources, new customers.