Despite the differences across the multitudes of companies and industries around the world, there are two constants which most, if not all, businesses live by: lowering costs and increasing profits. If you are struggling with where and how to cut costs from your business processes, look no further. Did you know that automating your marketing processes can be a great money-saving tool, while boosting employee productivity?
What is Marketing Automation?
Examples of Marketing Automation. Credits to Single Grain
To start, marketing automation is defined as software and technology that help you optimize and automate online marketing actions. Well-known software include Mailchimp for sending mass email campaigns, and Marketo and Pardot that track visitors and measure ROI. Simple, more mundane tasks can be automated, leaving your marketing teams with more time on their hands to work on more important tasks.
Overall, a major cost in marketing is usually the labour. And no, we are not hinting at costs saved with marketing automation because people are getting fired, but rather, a lot of resources can be saved due to the improved efficiencies. For example, a manual task that took 4 hours can now be completed within 1 hour due to automation, and the remaining 3 hours can go to client projects or strategising. Although you are not necessarily paying your workers any less, the cost per project goes down, which is a pretty big win.
1. Save time on lead generation and nurturing
Curating email lists and working on maintaining them is no easy feat, and is often a rather time-consuming process. Not only can automation programmes help you to find leads in targeted industries, you can also follow up on them through automatic drip campaigns that can be programmed to be sent within a choice number of days from the previous email in the event of a nil reply.
Automation can also be used to analyse the duration and content of email replies from your drip campaign, and this is useful for you when you produce content for future drip campaigns as you have a better understanding of your users’ mindsets when approaching your products.
2. Maintain your existing customer base
Acquiring new customers can cost 5 times more than retaining existing customers, and the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20% (Source: Outbound Engine).
Similar to lead generation and nurturing, marketing automation helps you to analyse the preferences and habits of your existing customers while building on digital touchpoints with these groups.
Channels for Digital Touchpoints. Credits to Conductor Searchlight
Campaigns through channels such as content, social media, and email marketing can also be automated. Build relationships with your customers by always keeping an avenue where you can stay in touch, simultaneously recommending them post-purchase email guides, content blasts, and any new promotions or loyalty programmes. In general, you get to achieve the aim of fostering a bond between the customer and your brand.
By ensuring that your customer base is taken care of through automation, you can then use your time to explore strategies to secure new customers to grow your business.
3. Constantly update your social media sites
Say goodbye to the days of fretting about whether or not you updated the company’s social media pages because with automation, you get to schedule your posts ahead of time, and go about your other tasks with peace of mind, knowing that your content will be uploaded on autopilot for the next few days or weeks.
Automating your social media marketing means you will be able to post consistently at the peak engagement hours of your audience, and provide frequent and valuable posts to your followers. Stay at the top of your consumers’ minds, while mundane tasks like uploading posts can live in your’s subconsciously!
4. Increase your conversion rate
Other than saving time from mundane tasks, marketing automation also can help you generate more profits, because you get to show customers the products that they would actually be interested in. Automation can deliver personalized content through adaptive Call To Actions, customized visuals, and personalization tokens that can be used in emails and website pages.
Additionally, programme your content management system to showcase dynamic content, allowing visitors to view a personalised version of your product page. This gives your business the best shot at securing more conversions.
5. Segment your customer base with automated lead scoring
Examples of ways that can contribute to lead scoring. Credits to Salesforce
Automation allows you to analyse which stage of the buyer journey each customer is at, and subsequently set up triggers that automatically update their score. You can then send out content that is relevant to consumers at that stage to push them further down the sales funnel. Since this lead scoring system is set by you, it can be easily scaled to suit your business interests.
Lead scoring also helps you to distinguish the groups of customers and the extent to which you should extend your marketing outreach, allowing you to better allocate resources to customers that have a higher likelihood of purchasing from you.
Conclusion
Marketing automation might not be a fit for every company, but for those planning to invest in digital marketing strategies for growth, it would definitely be a strategic long-term investment.
If you’d like to discuss whether marketing automation would be beneficial for your business, give us a call.