Is it time to invest in marketing automation?
Marketing automation has been one of the top buzzwords in digital marketing for quite some time now. Many companies are looking to align their marketing and sales with a platform that helps these often separated departments work together more seamlessly. They also want to deliver their customers a personalized experience at every stage of the purchase path. But why do many struggle to justify their investments in marketing automation?
What marketing automation promises you
More leads, better customer relationships and huge growth. Marketing automation software promises to be the solution to the marketer’s limited resources and the large amounts of lead data collected, as it helps to find and nurture the right leads at the right time. Tracking, scoring, and segmenting leads is essential when you want to expand your business, but this becomes more challenging as the number of leads grows. This is where automation comes into play and helps you scale your lead generation efforts easily and focus on the relationships that matter.
Marketing automation can help you create engaging marketing campaigns and retarget the leads who didn’t convert the first time they visited your site. The purchase process often takes some time, especially in B2B business. Marketing automation allows you to create personas based on the behavior of your customers. With retargeting techniques, you can remind them about your products or services and reach them when they are ready to make a purchase.
Marketing automation also brings sales and marketing professionals closer to each other. A stronger partnership between these two teams or departments creates synergy and helps achieve company goals together more effectively. Automation can free the resources of teams, which means spending less time on unproductive, repetitive tasks and more time creating strategies for a more successful business.
Automation software vendors promise you huge growth in revenue as well as new client acquisition. The benefits of marketing automation are clear and many companies have achieved great success by implementing automation technology. However, many also find it difficult to justify their investments in automation software. While the advantages of these tools are obvious, a lot of companies fail to get the desired results from them. This can happen if you invest in automation at the wrong time or at the expense of something more important.
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” -Bill Gates
Does marketing automation serve your goals?
Before implementing any new technologies, it’s a good idea to sit down and carefully think about your needs. Every company is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. Remember that not all automation tools will fit into your particular business. Sometimes you actually need a technological solution other than marketing automation.
When wondering if automation is for you, think of these:
- Take a look at your current marketing processes. Are you doing a lot of repetitive tasks that consume too much of your time?
- Are your marketing efforts generating enough quality leads for sales? Do you encounter problems when handing off leads from marketing to sales?
- Are there any gaps in communication between your teams or departments?
- Do you have a method for measuring the successes of your team?
If your leads are low quality, you can’t follow through with all leads, you are not sure why leads disappear, or you have too many tools and systems in place, you probably need more data and insights about your customers. In these situations, marketing automation can help you move forward as it provides an integrated approach to generating leads, nurturing them, as well as converting them into customers. In which situations of you actually need an automation tool?
Is an automation tool worth your money?
There are many reasons why you might want to invest in marketing automation:
1. You want to generate more leads
Most businesses simply want to generate more leads. There are many reasons for wanting this: maybe you simply haven’t done digital marketing before and you’ve only got new clients through referrals. When you’ve recognized the need for a professional online marketing strategy, you should learn about content marketing and search engine advertising. You can use marketing automation tools to automate some of the more repetitive processes, but at this stage, you should carefully consider your budget and resources. If you think you might benefit from marketing automation but are not sure if your whole online strategy will be built around it in the future, you could consider a combination of WordPress and HubSpot as an option.
2. You want to generate better ROI
You might also need automation when you are already doing a lot of online marketing, but you want to do it more efficiently and generate better ROI. In this case, marketing automation can make entire marketing processes more efficient and productive. If you’ve already invested in inbound marketing and leads are coming in, marketing automation can really take your business to the next level.
3. You need a tool to handle all your leads
If you have way more leads than your business can handle, it is a good time to invest in automation. You should congratulate yourself, because having a lead overflow is a positive problem – all you need is a tool to handle these leads better.
4. You want to improve your conversion rate
You might also be in a situation where traffic and even leads are coming in, but conversion rates remain low. There are many reasons for why this might be, like a confusing navigation structure, insufficient information on landing pages, or an online store checkout that has too many unnecessary steps for the user. To improve the conversion rate, you should improve the quality of leads – and this starts by investing in your site’s content and user experience. You might also want to improve your lead follow-up process by investigating how your leads behave and sending them relevant content at the right time. In this situation, marketing automation software can be of great help.
In conclusion
If you are experiencing the issues mentioned above and want to be ahead of your competition, it might be the right time to invest in marketing automation. Before purchasing expensive automation software, try to look into the future. Do you think your marketing strategy will change? Will you need a larger marketing team to accomplish your goals? Do you have the time and skill to work on automation processes now and in the future?
Marketing automation can be great in streamlining your marketing efforts, but it does not magically fix problems. Content marketing needs to be at a good level before automation can be a part of your strategy. Choosing the right automation tool for your specific business is important – a good tool not only takes care of your needs now but also scales alongside your company.
If you want to learn more about marketing automation or find out if automation is a good fit for your organization, you can contact us anytime. We’re here to help!
