Automation in marketing is like dousing a fire in petrol. You may boost sales and scale your organization by automating marketing processes and incorporating customized campaigns. Businesses that use marketing automation enjoy a 14.5% increase in sales productivity. Automated social media postings and marketing can save more than 6 hours a week.
80% of marketers report that automation has led to an increase in leads, and 77% report an increase in conversion. Marketing automation solutions are used in marketing automation to automate advertising campaigns, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns. Businesses can automate processes to streamline marketing efforts and provide a smooth consumer experience through the purchasing process.
Depending on the customer’s engagement and behavior, it is important to optimize each touchpoint. When used properly, marketing automation may promote strong, long-lasting relationships with your prospects and clients.
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What situations call for marketing automation?
When to use marketing automation may depend on various factors, including the development stage of a company. An early-stage startup, for instance that hasn’t tested its business idea, might not give business automation top priority.
A well-established business, in contrast, requires clearly defined automation systems to scale its operations and maintain growth. The ideas of each stage continue to be relevant regardless of whether you’re a solopreneur, SaaS business, or digital creative.
Seed Stage
Ideation is the initial stage of a business when it is only an idea or thinking. At this point, the main goals are:
- Create a concept that offers a resolution to a practical issue.
- Use pre-launch marketing to generate traffic, prospects, and top-of-funnel demand.
- Build a prototype or minimally viable product (MVP).
- Validate the concept with your ideal customers to achieve product-market fit (completely or partially).
- Discover your company’s and your product’s “aha” moments.
Most entrepreneurs bootstrap their businesses using their resources, time, and money because they lack a track record of success. Marketing automation normally shouldn’t be focused on during the seed stage because marketing and growth aren’t priorities.
Seed-stage businesses frequently lack leads to work with and haven’t yet developed their sales funnels. Marketing automation is necessary Only when you have a sales funnel with obvious top-of-funnel interest (such as website traffic and leads).
The co-founders and core staff should personally prospect leads, speak with potential customers to get feedback, and make high-touch sales during the seed stage. For instance, by renting out air mattresses in their flats, Airbnb demonstrated that visitors were willing to spend their nights on airbeds while traveling. The temporary “bare-bones” solution showed that Airbnb had a product-market fit and aligned with peoples’ problems.
Because they weren’t sure if their product was truly a marketable option, Airbnb didn’t need any marketing automation technologies in this case. As a result, they weren’t yet ready to launch a public marketing campaign. At this stage, determining demand for your idea is the main goal rather than automating operations.
Early Stage
The firm is ready to launch once your ideal clients have approved the minimum viable product. The emphasis right now is on building a customer base and brand, combined with cash flow management.
An early-stage company’s top concerns are:
- Obtain new clients
- Receive quick feedback so you can keep improving your product.
- Establish commercial alliances and hire the right personnel.
Most early-stage firms simply lack the funds to hire devoted HR consultants to assist them in hiring suitable employees. Instead of hiring a new employee, tasks can be automated using software technologies. This brings down your costs and enables you to maintain profitability, which is good for the well-being of your business.
Additionally, 47% of small business owners manage all marketing initiatives independently. A marketing automation platform can compensate for lack of knowledge and save stress from completing these time-consuming chores alone. Most contemporary marketing tools are responsive, logical, and simple to use.
Growth Stage
When a business enters the growth stage, there is a significant market for its goods. The company is prospering in terms of attracting new and returning consumers. Growth companies frequently deal with problems that demand additional time and resources. Business owners must learn how to train and delegate to succeed at this stage.
Businesses must meticulously systematize their sales pipeline. Minimizing the time required to acquire new clients and implementing efficient team procedures entails concentrating on what generates results and removing as much waste as possible.
For growth-stage businesses, marketing takes priority. Marketing and sales account for 50–75 percent of their costs. Additionally, 89% of these businesses think creating a positive customer experience is essential to increasing retention and patronage.
You may improve the customer journey by creating content marketing funnels, landing sites, email marketing flows, retargeting advertisements, lead magnets, etc. Establishing a sales funnel focused on the customer journey is essential for growing businesses. To nurture leads from warm prospects to purchasers, a company should maximize the touchpoints of each stage of the funnel.
Expansion Stage
Established companies reach a mature stage in the business lifecycle when they have attained a large market share.
Business leaders in this period concentrate mostly on the following:
- Putting money into innovation to gain market share.
- pursuing the potential for cross- and up-selling with their present customers
- To guarantee that all departments’ actions align with the company’s mission, values, and goals, create alignment across all departments.
- Cross-departmental alignment, which means that each department aligns its efforts and strategies to complement one another, can benefit growth and enterprise firms.
Consumer behavior has altered, and sales and marketing have merged. 90% of buyers won’t take cold calls, and 92% of consumers start shopping online. Additionally, 75% of customers use social media to find the best source.
There shouldn’t be two segmented experiences for leads with expanding companies. Your business should instead provide a smooth consumer experience.
Everything should be connected, starting at the awareness stage at the top of the funnel and moving down to the customer retention stage. Your team can follow a prospect throughout the customer lifecycle if marketing and sales are coordinated.
Additionally, while working with hot customers who are already familiar with your brand, your sales force may complete deals more effectively. Software integration is essential at this point for the business’s overall automation. Aligning your sales and marketing teams will increase the number of leads you convert and assist you in drawing in higher-quality leads.
Conclusion
Marketing automation lets you position your business to benefit the most from prospects and consumers. You can use Marketing Automation to scale, increase profitability, and make everyone’s life in your company easier regardless of if you are in the early stage, growth, or expansion stages of your company.
