The use of marketing automation has truly transformed the way we as marketers do business. Life before it seems, well, inconceivable.
Our automation partner, HubSpot, defines marketing automation as “software and tactics that allow companies to buy and sell like Amazon — that is, to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers.”
It automates repetitive or time-consuming tasks to allow your marketing team to focus on what it does best: creating top-notch content.
You can choose to automate as many or few marketing tasks as you like, depending on the size and scope of your department. That’s one thing we love about marketing automation; it’s completely customizable to what you’re looking to accomplish.
Common Features Across Platforms
- Lead generation through content creation, social media, and email marketing
- Reduce manual tasks associated with lead entry and management
- Easy to find contact information and track interactions with content
- Integrate your social accounts to post and manage activity
- Manage email campaigns from start to finish, from template design to tracking open rates and click-throughs
What Types of Companies Should Use Marketing Automation?
Almost any company can find value in marketing automation, as long as there is a budget for it. However, the costs of a program are far less than it would be to pay two or three employees to do the same amount of work.
A small-to-medium sized company can make marketing automation work for them because, generally speaking, the marketing department is very small, potentially consisting of only one person. It is impossible to find enough hours in the day to create content, let alone complete the manual tasks of updating a database and tracking how content is performing. This is where marketing automation can make a major impact.
For a larger company, there is value to be found with automation as well. Oftentimes, large national or multinational corporations are managing social media accounts for several divisions or locations. Take Nike for example; on Twitter they have 20 accounts representing different product lines and regions. And that’s just Twitter! How can a marketing team possibly track the activity on all of those accounts?
Having a marketing automation platform can help you schedule when content is posted, track interactions and followers, and show data over time to see how your social media strategy is performing overall.
Aside from company size, the number of target markets you have can impact the value of a marketing automation tool. We like to call these targets buyer personas, or ideal customers separated into groups by demographics, spend, and where they are in the buying process.
If you have a diverse customer base, marketing automation will allow you to specifically target each group with content that appeals to their needs and purchasing habits.
How Our Needs Were Met with Automation
For us, marketing automation became invaluable due to the number of buyer personas we have. We target clients of all sizes, which means we could be potentially working with a marketing department or the business owners themselves.
Knowing which persona a contact falls into, we know what marketing materials to use as well as how to frame conversations based on their relative marketing experience level.
Beyond the peace of mind that automation has brought, our sales and lead conversions have increased as well. Check out the infographic below to see how marketing automation has impacted our bottom line since its implementation at the beginning of 2014.
Marketing automation is only the right tool for you when you’re ready, so I encourage you to do your research, check out several tools, and really crunch the numbers on how much time is spent doing tasks that could be easily automated. You’ll probably be surprised when you do the math; we certainly were!
If you are interested in more information about how marketing automation can work for your business, check out another one of our blog posts!
