Successful business growth is everyone’s prime objective- whether they are global conglomerates or small and medium enterprises (SMEs). For such growth to happen, businesses require solid strategies to provide consistent engagement and value-based customer experience.
To understand customers, you require data, the element that fuels growth. To extract meaningful information from random data, you need to have certain processes in place. This is where Marketing Automation comes into play. In the current situation, Marketing Automation is truly a godsend for SMEs and upcoming players in the B2B (Business to Business) industry.
If you are a part of this industry, this blog is for you. It explains everything you need to know about Marketing Automation- what it is, its role, its importance, and how it can help you. So, let’s get going.
Understanding Marketing Automation & its Importance
The definition of Marketing Automation is very simple. It comprises all the systems and automated processes that help streamline an enterprise’s marketing activities. Basically, it is software that aligns the marketing activities and objectives of a company.
So, there you have the definition of Marketing Automation. But why are we talking about SMEs and B2B enterprises? There is a good reason.
Marketing Automation for small and upcoming enterprises complements direct marketing and sales. Experts offering digital marketing services say that for modern SMEs to climb the success ladder, they need to consistently maintain:
- E-mail campaigns
- SEO upkeep
- Social media engagement
- Content marketing
In SMEs, your marketing and sales team have their work cut out for them. Due to the increase in online sales, marketers must now gauge their customer’s interest in products and services by analysing their online behaviour.
Marketing automation can help change and streamline repetitive tasks like:
- Building targeted leads lists
- Onboarding leads as new clients
- Improving sales outreach through social media platforms
- Retargeting ad campaigns on Facebook Business
- Tracking and measuring data from campaigns
- Publishing fresh and relevant online marketing content
- Managing various campaigns from a single platform
- Ensuring real-time data synchronisation across software platforms
- Notifying teams about important events
Implementing Marketing Automation
It is not just a case of investing in software and embedding it into your system. Marketing Automation for small businesses depends on certain factors such as:
- Current initiatives
- Organisation size
- The customer experience you aim to provide
Correctly done, Marketing Automation gives you better insight into your customer’s behaviour and buying journey. It gives you updated real-time information, enabling you to reach your customers at the right time through the right channel. Once implemented, the software opens a platform to unify your entire marketing and sales team on the same page. Hence, there’s consistent and open communication and better coordination.
Hyper personalisation through Marketing Automation
In the excitement of implementing Marketing Automation, let’s not forget one thing: It’s not only about streamlining processes. It’s also about improving and multiplying the results. The real power of Marketing Automation lies in its ability to foster authentic relationships through personalisation. Better known as Hyper-personalisation, it is the process of personalising how marketers interact with their customers.
Let’s not forget your customers are already well-aware of your company name, product name, etc. They simply don’t want to hear these redundant bits of information. The trick is to harness Marketing Automation to create agile, attention-grabbing, and creative marketing strategies to move your customers down the sales funnel. That is Hyper Personalisation powered by Marketing Automation.
Marketing Automation with AI & ML: What are the Possibilities?
Given the advanced state of technology and science, it would be unfair to not pitch in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) with marketing automation. But before we step into the details, we need to understand their role in marketing for SMEs and B2B players.
ML – captures users’ online behaviour data and uses past data to revamp redundant processes.
AL- helps create laser-focused customer profiles
The duo combined with Marketing Automation is a deadly combination that enables you to:
- Control and use real-time responses
What is the best time to approach a particular customer? A decade ago, you wouldn’t have known the answer to this question. Things are different now with Marketing Automation, AI, and ML. The trio allows you to predict the right time to engage with buyers by analysing their previous behaviour and actions.
- Pinpoint micro-segments of customers
Micro-segments in customers are those who share similar interests and needs. Zeroing in on these micro-segments with traditional marketing methods can be very time-consuming, if not impossible. Thanks to ML, you can segregate customers with insightful details regarding their preferences and choices.
- Test conventional wisdom
Machine Learning can provide insights into conventional wisdom and assumptions to generate prescriptive advice.
We’ve only just begun experimenting with AI and ML with marketing automation. The road ahead looks promising for SMEs. It won’t be long before marketing will all be about engaging with the right audience at the right time, with the right level of personalisation.
Let’s now set all these tech elements aside and put the spotlight on Content Marketing. Yes, content marketing and automation. Highly possible and highly effective. How? Read on to find out.
Content Marketing & Automation: a Formidable Pair
We already know that it is possible to create micro-groups within customers using Marketing Automation. The next step is to develop content strategies for each set of customers. With automation, you can create adaptive content that changes as per customers’ behaviour.
Your marketing teams can stay nimble and meet your customers’ needs by generating reports efficiently and making changes when necessary. Using this approach, you can cultivate leads or move customers more effectively through the sales cycle.
This powerful duo allows you to:
- Expand your content’s effectiveness
- Capture more leads
- Boost conversion rates
- Improve your ROI
User Experience: it’s all that matters
Marketing automation and all the other combined efforts boil down to user experience. It is the prime objective, and automation helps you achieve it abundantly. Automation gives you the power to tailor your customer’s needs and deliver a more relevant and personalised experience.
Want Marketing Automation advice? Get it from Digital SEO experts.
It’s time to optimise Marketing Automation because it is an incredible asset to your business. However, to forge ahead, you will need to implement best practices to engage with your customers and provide that unique User Experience. Sounds like a job for experts? We at Digital SEO, Chennai, can help you with all this and more. We offer a slew of digital marketing services for businesses of all kinds. Get in touch with us, and let’s talk business.
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