For many small businesses, the company’s budget ultimately sways the decisions rather than the owners. And, let’s face it, budgets cannot be overlooked as CEOs demand a lean ship force management to take a conservative approach to any type of decision involving capital or labor. As a result, many small businesses could be at a disadvantage, especially if they have yet to implement the most potent modern business growth engine – Marketing automation software.
This can be the reason a small business is held back from reaching a point of healthy growth. Nothing stifles a new start-up or a struggling mom-and-pop shop like a lack of access to the tools required to nurture leads, better understand customers, and provide a superior customer experience.
The fact is that small businesses will always need the benefits of marketing automation to survive in a customer-centric environment. The truth is that having the best products or services isn’t the key to growth. It’s not even about pricing strategies or customer service.
If you’re wondering whether your marketing needs to be automated, the short answer is yes!
Before researching the right automation platform and designing your workflows, let’s determine how your business would benefit from marketing automation. Marketing automation initiates growth opportunities for businesses, especially if you are new. This post will explain how marketing automation can help your company and why you must implement it at all stages of your funnel.
1. Increased Efficiency
This is the most important benefit of marketing automation – it increases the efficiency of your entire department. You may be able to save money on staffing while freeing up your team’s time to work on more critical, strategic projects. For instance, marketing automation software can automate the process of manually posting on social media every day. This means that your team will be able to focus on more creative tasks, such as planning and brainstorming for upcoming campaigns and projects.
Working on an automated platform will also make your team’s tasks more manageable. Your team can use the same software to post on social media, create an email campaign, write a blog, and create a landing page. Finally, this saves time for your team when creating campaigns. This is when your investment in the software starts to pay off.
Efficiency is an advantage to consider when choosing the marketing automation platform that is best for your company. Marketing automation tools require a financial investment. The key to not exceeding your budget is to identify what you need and begin there. If it seems overwhelming, reach out to the many agencies offering Sharpspring support and seek help to get started.
2. Alignment of Sales and Marketing Goals
You will be able to align your company goals and efforts by combining your sales and marketing automation efforts using this software. Essentially, it will facilitate the transition from a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead.
According to statistics on Invesp, the fact is that marketing automation can increase sales productivity by 14.5% while decreasing marketing overhead by 12.2%.
Furthermore, it can assist you in generating more leads and increasing sales. At the same time, your sales team increases productivity. Your marketing team will spend more time strategizing ways to improve the conversion rate. It’s a win-win situation.
3. Enhanced Personalization For Customers to Get Their Attention
Attention is the buzzword of the digital, social, and mobile world online. In a customer-centric world, it is not a new product, a promotional code, or even a flashy video that will elicit the most reactions from your audience. It is knowing their name and what their preferences are. Hence, the only way to get a customer’s attention is by producing high-quality content that is personalized and relevant to the reader. In a study released by a top marketing solutions firm, personalized emails resulted in six times higher transaction rates and a 29% increase in unique open rates.
When you use a content marketing automation solution, you can divide your customers into groups in order to only send and share relevant content. You can also personalize emails with customer information, such as their names, preferences, and transaction histories. You can give customers what they are likely to be interested in this way, and they will be more likely to respond.
Winding Up
These are just a few reasons marketing automation might be worthwhile. It helps marketing teams by giving them the unique ability to strengthen their efforts through digital transformation, utilizing automation for repetitive tasks, reporting, and top-of-funnel engagement.