For many businesses, ‘marketing automation’ are two very scary words. Taking tasks that have been done manually for years and entrusting it to technology may seem scary, but the benefits in running automated marketing campaigns are massive. This blog defines marketing automation and unpacks 7 benefits of marketing automation for your business.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation helps reduce the amount of mundane, repetitive, time-consuming tasks that you or your staff spend time doing. It also helps increase your business revenue and retain customers. How? Read on to learn about the benefits of automated marketing…

• Increase revenue
• Customer retention
• Saves you money
• Helps you segment your customers/audience
• Saves you time
• Increases productivity
• Tracking and monitors

Investing in marketing automation will increase your revenue. How? It helps nurture all leads in your pipeline until they purchase a product or service. It does this by segmenting your potential customers/leads and sending them personalised or tailored messaging encouraging them to convert. This lead nurturing process in turn builds trust, credibility, and relationships with your customers.

Retaining customers and attracting new ones is a tough balancing act. It’s easy to do too much of one and not enough of the other. Marketing automation helps you retain existing customers so you can spend time attracting new ones. Automated content with information, help guides, events, specials, etc, can automatically be sent to your existing customer database so they are constantly informed and engaged with you. You can keep in touch with your customers without having to manually make contact.

It may seem like a costly investment initially, but you’ll soon see the money it saves once your campaigns are up and running. Marketing automation reduces the need for staff as it actions many tasks that your team may be spending time on: emailing or following up with customers, calling leads, invoicing, etc. Of course, there will always be a need for human interaction, but if you’re small to medium business that needs to reallocate your expenses, marketing automation might be something to consider. It also saves you money on printing things like flyers or brochures as this information can be stored and emailed electronically.

If your answer to ‘who are your customers?’ is ‘everyone’ you need to revaluate your business strategy. An effective marketing campaign doesn’t talk to everyone. It needs to talk to your most valuable customers (the ones who spend the most with you, most often) in a tone that they understand and with content that they need. Automating your marketing will help you segment your audiences and then build custom messages or customer lifecycle journeys for each of them. By doing this, your business has a higher chance of converting them.

If you read our blog 5 signs your business needs a CRM you may remember the reference to how time-consuming some of your day to day business tasks can be. Even though we don’t like doing them, tasks, like invoicing, follow-ups and updating data bases, must be done for your business to function and grow. Marketing automation software cuts down these business tasks so you can spend your time on things that are going to help grow your business: building relationships improving products, increasing services and more.

Because your team isn’t spending time on monotonous tasks, they have more time to focus on building up the business or on personal development. Staff can focus on projects that bring in revenue for the business, rather than menial tasks that don’t.

Ever invested loads of money in a print campaign that left you completely in the dark when it came to results? You’re not alone! Although print still plays a very important part in the awareness phase of a marketing campaign, digital helps you to track and monitor campaigns a lot closer. Running automated campaigns allows you to see what’s working and what isn’t almost instantly. This means you can adjust your marketing campaign as soon as you notice a trend. Your campaigns are always a work in progress driving towards the most optimal outcome!

 If you’re a small to medium-sized business owner looking to increase business revenue, save time and money and retain your customers you’ll need marketing automation. Get in touch with us today and receive a FREE call to discuss your business needs with Throttl.