Automatic transmission.
Automatic car wash.
Automatic coffee maker.
We automate nearly everything.
According to Ascend2’s recent market survey, over 7 out of 10 businesses currently use or plan to use marketing automation. The pendulum has shifted; is your business lagging behind? If you have no plans to incorporate marketing automation soon, you are probably missing out on benefits that most brands have already welcomed.
The top four features used in most marketing automation solutions are email marketing, lead nurturing, integrations such as CRM, mobile, and social for accumulating customer intelligence across channels and cross-channel campaign management. But brand marketing is complex and although these features are the most commonly used, there are a growing number of other marketing components your brand must manage on a daily basis such as:
- Content marketing
- Marketing asset management
- Social media marketing
- Localized microsites and landing pages
- Search engine marketing
- Direct mail and print fulfilment
- Trigger-based marketing
- Ecommerce
- Remarketing
- Reporting and data analytics
- Scheduling
- And many more!
How do you keep track of every marketing initiative and organize them so that they are readily available when the time comes to maximize opportunity–like Batman grabbing a weapon from his utility tool belt?
The answer: marketing automation is your Batmobile.
Still not sold?
That’s ok, we’ve researched a few crucial reasons why established brands and startups alike are choosing to incorporate marketing automation and why you should too this coming year.
A profitable new year is a happy new year
Marketing automation has proven time and time again that it will help you generate more qualified leads and grow revenue. Act-On’s Fast Facts 2016 further echo the trend and report that “businesses that have automated significant portions of their marketing processes generate 34% more of their revenue from marketing-generated leads than average, and 153% more than those not intending to automate.”
If you are trying to make a case for marketing automation, what’s more powerful than the ability to prove your marketing efforts are bringing in cold, hard cash? Perhaps that is why the leading reasons for investing in marketing automation according to US small business marketers are primarily increasing leads, learning more about your audience and being able to convert high quality traffic into paying customers.
This theme directly aligns with the top digital marketing goals for small-business owners. Investing in marketing automation this year can make your life easier and improve sales.
Competition drives opposition
It’s hard to be the first to adopt a new business strategy, but do you want to be the last? Chances are the brands you are competing with are using marketing automation to some capacity. According to ReachForce, more businesses are becoming aware of the benefits that marketing automation software can provide their companies, but some industries are leveraging the software with greater fervor than others.
Top adoption by industry:
B2C:
- Health and Pharmaceutical
- Manufacturing
- Real Estate
About four percent of all B2C marketing automation sales come from the Healthcare industry. The healthcare industry as a whole has seen a large technology adoption over the past decade. Healthcare providers and physicians have spent tens of billions of dollars moving away from their outdated paper filing to electronic records, so it is no surprise that this industry is adopting digital marketing practices at a rate greater than all other B2C counterparts.
B2B:
- Software and Internet
- Telecommunications
- Computer and Electronics
- Financial services
With 76% of the world’s largest SaaS companies using marketing automation, the B2B software and other tech-driven industries have dominated the adoption rates and pave the way for others who are lagging behind. Whether you business targets other businesses or consumers, savvy marketers are finding a huge benefit by managing and automating their efforts to enhance their strategy.
Ovum research recently reported similar industry adoption and investment findings. In the study, they found that the use of marketing automation differs heavily per industry, from those that are experiencing a large rate of adoption, to those who have small to regressing rates of adoption.
- Maintainers (technology, financial markets, life sciences, and oil and gas industries) are fine-tuning their earlier marketing automation investments.
- Transformers (insurance, health insurance, media, retail, and telecoms) are investing in business change, of which marketing automation is potentially a key component.
- Skeptics (manufacturing, professional services, and retail banking) are evaluating how marketing automation can best be applied to their industries.
- Laggards (higher education, education, government, healthcare, and utilities) are yet to actively consider wholesale adoption of marketing automation.
Where does your brand fall? Are you going to transform your brand for success or are you just another skeptic?
Have you mastered social media using a startup mentality? Have you got email down to a science? There are various marketing channel that can be automated to attract business opportunities and convert those leads into sales. Strike while the iron’s hot and bring in the new year with a little more digital marketing firepower.
After all, it’s never too late to get started using marketing automation maximize your 2017 business strategy – your competitors probably already have.
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