Marketing Automation for small business is proving to be an awesome resource.

Why do we know this to be true?

Already, 49% of companies have begun to use marketing automation.

Plus a whopping 55% of B2B companies use the software.

Both percentages are increasing every year!

New companies are seeing the benefits and automating their marketing campaigns.

Within 6 months of implementing marketing automation almost 60% of companies say they’ve seen big benefits.

The point of this article is to help you decide if marketing automation is right for your business.

Come with us as we discuss 6 benefits of marketing automation for small business!

Marketing Automation for Small Business

Before we start singing its praises, let’s first define marketing automation.

The job of the average marketer is filled with mundane tasks like:

• customer segmentation
• customer data integration
• campaign management
• nurturing prospects
• lead qualification

Marketing automation is software that automates these tasks.

In many instances, an automatic system can streamline the process even more than a person can, doing things manually.

For example, most marketers don’t have the time to effectively nurture prospects with personalized content.

An automatic system can do this very well. Take a look at Amazon, it seems to be working quite well for them.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s look at those 6 benefits!

Productivity

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of marketing automation for small business is increased productivity.

Automating repetitive tasks frees up time for you or your employees to spend on other tasks.

Most employees will happily leave behind mundane computer tasks to focus on strategizing and customer interactions.

It also gives your employees the freedom to be more creative.

With some of the repetitive, boring parts of their jobs out of the way, they can focus on the more exciting parts.

This also leads to happier employees and greater job satisfaction in general.

Plus, the simple fact that they have more time to spend with interested customers will drive up your sales.

It makes for a more streamlined and efficient system all the way around.

Revenue Increase

For some small businesses, the cost of marketing automation can seem a little daunting.

It is, after all, a significant investment.

But if you use it well, the increase in revenue will make the investment well worth it.

Not only will your sales go up, but your marketing overhead will go down.

That’s what you call a win-win!

Customer Retention

Good marketing technique includes proper marketing to your current customers.

It is always less expensive to keep customers than it is to find new ones.

Acquiring new customers may be more invigorating, but you can’t ignore your current customer base.

If you already have happy customers, take advantage!

Those are some of the easiest customers to sell to.

To do this use marketing intelligence, a form of marketing automation.

This provides insight into your customer’s intent.

With this information, you can market based on your customer’s real needs and decisions.

This saves you a lot of time in unnecessary and ineffective marketing strategies.

Lead Scoring

The ability to automatically score leads is a big benefit to marketing automation for small business.

What does this mean?

Set up the software to assign each lead a score based on their interactions with your materials.

Then, with one report you can organize your leads by the likelihood of interest in purchasing.

High scoring leads should go directly to your sales team.

There’s a good chance that those customers are ready to buy.

They might need a little direct marketing to close the deal.

Low scoring leads may need more education information about your product to boost their interest first.

Then, if and when their score improves you can move them to your direct marketing list.

The advantage here is obvious. Your sales team will spend more of their time talking to customers that are already primed to close sales.

This earns money in sales and lowers your overhead.

You won’t have to pay your sales team to waste their time with customers that have a low likelihood of buying.

Lead Nurturing

Marketing automation makes nurturing your leads a walk in the park.

You can create several specialized marketing campaigns.  Load those campaigns into your marketing software and set your parameters.

The software will then send the campaigns to your customers depending on the behaviors that you choose.

Voila! Now your customers are each receiving specific content relevant to them.

The best part is, you (or your employees) are not spending a ton of valuable time doing this manually.

The software can even be used to send campaigns to old leads. Sometimes you can use this marketing strategy to renew interest in your product.

Set it to send a new email to inactive customers once every however often. Then let it do its thing!

This type of customized lead nurturing is very effective. It gets anywhere between 4 and 10 times more responses than the typical email blast.

That’s quite a big difference!

Track and Monitor Marketing Campaigns

You want to know if your marketing campaigns are working, right?

The best way to do that is to use measurable data.

Use your marketing software to track and monitor marketing campaigns and gather that data.

Set up specific parameters that register your marketing campaigns as either a success or failure. The software will keep track of all that so you can see how well your campaigns are performing.

It will also keep track of your marketing expenses. That way you can see if your efforts are paying off.

Believe us, if you handle your marketing automation strategy well it will definitely pay off!

Marketing automation is an exciting new step in the ever-changing world of online marketing.

Stay up to date with all the best (and worst) marketing strategies on our blog.

Learn why strategies like Flavor of the Day and Spray and Pray are ineffective.

Marketing automation will help you avoid these mistakes and better target your customers.

Like what you see here? Request your free consult today!

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