Benefits Of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is more than merely automating your workflows, even though as the name suggests this clearly is the point. However, if you just do what you are doing now but with the help of a fancy tool, the results will not be that different. Nor does marketing automation mean mass marketing, i. e. providing the same content to all the leads you have got, regardless of their engagement history, progression in the sales process, or preferences, and hoping some will bite.
Instead, if you decide to use a marketing automation tool, you must also decide to do marketing in a new way.
The secret of marketing automation is that it enables you to track contacts’ engagement with your content (newsletter opens, link clicks, landing page visits, etc.) and use that data to create personalized customer journeys. A marketing automation tool gives you full insights into how effective your content and journey are. You can then leverage this data to continually improve your activities.
What marketing
automation is
What marketing
automation is not
Marketing Automation ≠ CRM
Implementing a marketing automation tool especially makes sense if you already have a CRM system in place.
This is a good time to get our terms straight: CRM stands for customer relationship management. A CRM system provides an overview of leads, opportunities and customers and is mostly used by sales departments to automate tasks and synchronize data. However, it also allows different departments, such as service, marketing, controlling or management, to access aggregated data and use it operatively. A CRM system can, and often does, include some marketing functionality.
“Customer relationship management is not the same as marketing automation, however.”
Marketing automation is focused on automating marketing tasks aimed at generating and nurturing leads. A marketing automation tool is used to run campaigns, create assets and manage leads.
However, there is some overlap between marketing automation and CRM, and the tools complement each other. Which is why many businesses use them in tandem. This allows users to get a 360° view of potential customers, from the contact stage to the purchase decision (and beyond).
When combined with a CRM system, a marketing automation tool will help to improve collaboration between marketing and sales, generate more leads and close deals faster.
How marketing automation can improve collaboration between marketing and sales
Aligning marketing and sales is essential. It can lead to 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates. The first step in bringing sales and marketing activities closer together is to simplify cooperation. After all, digital transformation does not mean providing each department with digital tools but to digitally align processes across one’s organization.
How to find the right marketing automation tool
A marketing automation tool may be a standalone solution or a module to be integrated with a CRM system. When evaluating your options, you should prioritize integration into your CRM over the tool’s features. Then consider how easy to use the tool is, what its features are, and which integrations are necessary. Finding the right solution depends on the type of your company (B2B or B2C) and the software you already have in place.
What a marketing automation tool does
Marketing automation solutions usually include data integration, customer segmentation, campaign management and lead management (lead generation, scoring, nurturing and routing) functionality.
These components enable marketers to
send mailings
generate and segment leads
publish and disseminate content
publish social media posts
score leads
increase customer loyalty
Benefits of marketing automation
Marketing automation frees up time and resources and provides data that helps businesses better understand their customers and helps them realize more effective marketing campaigns.
With marketing automation, you can align your processes to your marketing strategy. You have more time to conceive your campaigns, i.e. being creative and coming up with a good strategy, because you can set them up much more quickly.
When lead prioritization is automated, for example, your sales teams can dedicate more time on nurturing promising leads.
You get a clearer view of prospects by tracking their engagement with your content, messages, ads and e-mails. It lets you personalize follow-ups and priori- tize leads according to objective KPIs rather than intuition.
All of which means your marketing ROI will improve.
Why marketing automation is so important for B2B companies
During the non-working hours of their days, B2B buyers are also B2C buyers and as such are used to sophisticated consumer interactions. They should not be experiencing anything different in a professional capacity. In other words, what they are used to as private consumers, they expect as professional buyers.
What if business-to-business marketers treated their potential buyers like their B2C peers do theirs?
Nurturing leads with personalized relevant content along a customer journey until they are ready to purchase.
While B2C marketers seem to have such an easy time selling soft drinks, consumer electronics or sneakers, in B2B industries purchase decision are often a long time in the making. Corporate structure, product complexity and the large investment required all factor into the purchase decision as does customer experience. Every touchpoint matters.
An exceptional, personalized customer journey is key.
And while B2B companies may think themselves customer-centric, quite often they actually are account focused. What should be a customer journey is still frequently treated merely as customer relationship management. Therefore, B2B buyers receive largely impersonal content, and experience inconsistent and conflicting interactions that do not meet them where they are in the sales process.
Marketing automation can have enormous benefits for B2B companies, particularly because their sales cycles are long and decision making is complex. To convert leads into customers requires a lot of interactions and more lead nurturing than in B2C marketing. Providing relevant content at strategic decision points during the research and consideration phase and analyzing the prospect’s engagement with it, allows marketing to generate data that can be analyzed and used for strategic action.
Mistakes to Avoid
To ensure that your marketing automation will be successful, you need to not only find the right tool for your business but make sure it is set up for success. Don’t do the following:
Don’t personalize your content
Workflows will help you communicate more personalized with workflows. However, a good chunk of the work is left up to you. You will have to have the right strategy and build the best customer journey. Leads must not suspect that communication is automated.
Treat every user like a lead
Your goal must not be to generate as many leads as possible but to generate those that are actually relevant to your business. Marketing automation helps you differentiate between qualified and unqualified leads. This way you avoid wasting resources on leads that will never become customers.
Focus on e-mails only
You have more than one channel available to you.
Don’t measure your results
Marketing automation is not just about the automation. This will only save you time, but it does not mean that you will be more successful. For that you need a strategy and you need to make adjustments. Therefore, make you use of the insights your marketing automation tool provides. Take the time to determine KPIs beforehand, analyze them regularly and react accordingly so as to not waste potential.
Over-automate
Your marketing automation tool is a shiny new toy that you want to play with. However, if you overdo it too many mailings, ceaseless tweeting, your contacts will run away scared. Which is to say they may react negatively, i.e. unsubscribe from your newsletter, unfollow you. That does not mean that you may still win them as customers. However, you will have less control over influencing their decision making.
Do too much at once
You will probably be tempted to use all the amazing features and possibilities your tool allows has to offer. However, if you get bogged down trying to master too many things at once, few if any will work out in the end. Therefore, focus on what most made you acquire the tool in the first point. Start off by improving your biggest pain point, achieve that goal, then consider what will be the next logical step.
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