Why do you need marketing automation software, and how to apply it to meet small business needs

 

Why to use Marketing Automation?
To remain competitive in today's digital world, small businesses are starting to turn to automation technology and software. When you apply this in your sales and marketing strategies, not only will increase profits, but also enhance your marketing automation process. Isn't it awesome?

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MARKETING AUTOMATION

                                                                                        

Buying Journey
New customers rarely purchase from a business if they lack knowledge about it. Marketing automation is the best way to spread awareness and interest about your business. Specifically, personalized email campaigns are a vital part of your marketing strategy that can help build and foster client relationships. Thoroughly crafted emails are the best way to encourage lead relationships and stimulate high convention rates.

Through automation, customers who browse your website are usually sent follow-up emails. What goes further is a tailor-made communication in the process of which your customers know that you are there for them when things go well but that you will also be there for them when things go wrong.

Without automation in place to track the customer journey, you are working on assumptions, which is a good recipe for a long-time failure.

Simple automation can analyse critical data on your customer journey and make efficient adjustments to keep increasing the number of leads to your site. This has become even more important in 2020 as the marketing industry adjusts to a surge in online shopping.

The importance of being adaptive and responsive has been more crucial in 2020 than it has ever been. The changing business landscape has required faster communication with clients, reducing costs and less emphasis on lengthy manual processes. Pre-2020, automation focused on email communications, lead funnels and even CRM systems. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on face-to-face restrictions, therefore in 2020 the focus has been on the ability to schedule appointments and manage employees without human interaction. In addition to this, businesses are focusing on cost-saving opportunities and reducing the number of people required in the office. As a result, automation functions have dealt with some of the most teadious processes.

Some of the top-performing focuses for automation in 2020 include:

Often, when we talk about digital marketing automation, people tend to think that it’s just email campaigns, but it is so much more than that. In this blog post, we’ll walkthough four different examples of how you can utilise marketing automation. We will also discuss which free marketing automation tools are the most effective for small businesses.

Why do you need marketing automation software?
In the world of digital technology and automation, your business development strategies must be up to date. To do this, you have to explore influential trends and current business challenges. We can then find out how marketing automation software applications can resolve the issues we are facing to improve our sales and marketing stategies.

One of the biggest influences in modern society is social influence through media channels. There has been a surge in e-commerce which has led to an increase in customers buying online. During these online purchases, 87% of all customers research other customer reviews and friend’s recommendations. This highlights the importance of social influencers and the impact they can have on a successful small business. 

Unfortunately for many vendors, their main challenge is understanding the buying journey. Without this analysis, vendors are missing out on the opportunity to increase sales. Marketers are keenly aware that the secrets of making successful sales online are shifting their focus to organizing digital marketing campaigns. Inbound marketing campaigns, content marketing and social marketing are becoming a popular method for attracting and engaging online buyers.



Marketing alone is not going to solve tactical challenges. Businesses need to ensure that they create high-quality leads through an in-depth understanding of their customer demands. To achieve revenue objectives, a company has to filter out low-quality leads and focus on customers who offer the highest purchase potential. This can be a huge challenge when salespeople fail to do their marketing jobs. Conversion rates fall even further when leads acquired outside of marketing do not benefit from nurture campaigns and other marketing programs. These leads have a much higher propensity to be languished and lost. The solution, in this case, lies in the capability of marketers using repeated processes. Fortunately, marketing automation software can overcome these challenges through efficient and cost-effective campaigns.  Specifically, these intelligent tools can track and score, transfer, and nurture sales leads and deliver them to the sales team.

One of the main strategies for marketing automation tools is the use of web browsing history and user cookies. These cookies store important customer data such as previous buying behaviour, search queries or browsing history to help understand their purchasing habits. Typically, this information contributes to customer analysis through a scoring system. The scoring process involves the process of assigning point values, attributes, and behaviors to measure a prospective customers’ fit and propensity to purchase. Marketing automation systems are looking for particular data points that automatically update lead scores. Upon reaching a threshold score, it automatically forwards the sales lead to their designated destination point. Then the lead goes to a salesperson for timely follow-through.

This system can improve lead nurturing. Marketing automation software uses facilitating campaigns to deliver progressive email communications. This communication usually includes educational content to increase awareness, support engagement and advance leads throughout the sales funnel.  

In B2B sales, research consistently shows that most of the leads received by the salespersons are close to conversion. Approximately 25% - 35% percent of the leads still need convincing. Lead analytics is essential for the continuous processing of lead quality improvement. Marketing systems can tie every lead customer and every revenue dollar to their marketing program that is creating them.



Marketing Automation Platforms for your Business
To save you even more time, our marketing experts at Bitorchestra have already done the hard research. We’ve explored the top five Marketing Automation Platforms for small businesses and listed their key features in this article. These platforms boost email marketing and lead generation tools to help businesses to grow. In this digital age, businesses need to incorporate automation into their strategies to stay ahead of competitors in the industry. Here we’ll go through some of the most popular tools such as Hubspot, Marketo and Pardot and explore their benefits.

#1 HubSpot
The first on the list is HubSpot CRM. Hub Spot CRM is one of the most well-known marketing automation platforms in the world. It uses chatbots for automated conversations. This tool features forms and management tools, customer analytics and the ability to create engaging landing pages.

#2 Active Campaign
Active campaign is one of the leading marketing automation tools with CRM functions. The tool is low-cost and it can be integrated with e-commerce solutions which is a vital function for small businesses. Some of the most prominent features include:

• creating custom audiences
• setting custom subscription forms
• website tracking function to determine customer behavior, dynamic and predictive content
• lead scoring function
• lead probability function
• SMS messaging function
• E-commerce automation function

#3 Infusion Soft
Infusion Soft is a CRM for small businesses. It integrates marketing, business automation, emails, and contact management. The tool has one dashboard that allows users to build automated email sequences. It also keeps the information about contacts, score leads, sales pipeline, contact customers, and invoices. This is one of the most cost-effective solutions and prices start at only 1.99 per month.

#4 Pardot
Pardot is one marketing automation tool geared towards marketing automation businesses. Its features lead capture forms, which are customizable for landing automation and improving lead conversions.

#5 Marketo
Marketo is a great tool to use if you want to track your marketing channels impact along with your customer engagement. The only disadvantage is that you still need an email marketing tool or CRM integration.

However, Marketo is an excellent tool to work out the integration and focus on lead conversion. It also provides a simple dashboard for monitoring analytics in one place. It is most suitable for large enterprise-sized companies and with flexible pricing plans based on the size of the database. Some features include:

• landing page creation
• web forms
• personalization
• behavior tracking
• research marketing
• social media

These are some of the most popular, efficient methods of marketing automation at the moment.

As a leading web development company, the Bits orchestra company is constantly analyzing and understanding who our customers and prospects are. We have strong expertise in marketing automation software and offer more than web development solutions. Instead, we provide ideas to inspire others and to increase awareness about digital marketing tendencies.

With marketing automation, you can do things on a massive scale with relatively small teams. Marketing automation gives a chance to pull everything together and streamline your workflow. Marketing automation tools are an effective method to search for information in a competitive and personalized way.

There are just a few features of marketing automation tools that we are using across our business. One of the most important benefits of marketing automation is a chance to receive marketing automation notifications from the list of customers that are growing with us. Using marketing automation tools can differentiate your business and leverage a competitive advantage against other companies in your industry.

Marketing automation can be sophisticated and scalable because it will continue to grow with your company. Without marketing automation tools, business would be limited in terms of reach and awareness.