Marketing Automation Strategy - B2B | Ecommerce

Why Should You Use Marketing Automation?

As digital marketing technology and information technology continue to advance, marketing automation has become another option for business leaders looking to advertise and grow their business. In fact, over half of today’s companies are already using marketing automation as part of their marketing strategy. In another study, close to two-thirds of participating companies are planning to expand their marketing automation budget within the next year.

But What Exactly is Marketing Automation and How Does It Work?

Marketing automation is an innovative process of delivering quality advertising campaigns across many different channels automatically. Often, regular marketing can be time-consuming and repetitive. When business leaders start using marketing automation, many of these tasks can be automated, reducing overhead marketing costs and saving significant amounts of time.

If you want to start driving traffic to your site and increasing your company’s conversion rates, it’s time you added marketing automation to your digital marketing strategy.

What is Marketing Automation Software?

Most business leaders and marketers can access marketing automation services by purchasing access to marketing automation software. A variety of marketing automation software programs are available depending on your business’s unique needs, size, and marketing budget.

Marketing automation software is designed to automate many of the tasks related to reaching out to prospective customers and turning them into real customers. Digital marketing currently takes place across a wide variety of streams, including email, social media, and the web. Ad campaigns, email marketing, and social media posting are all features of marketing that can be automated using the right software to free up your time for the tasks that only you can do.

Marketing automation software can also sift through large volumes of data related to your ad campaigns and customer engagement with your ecommerce site. Their findings are often full of insight that can help you make smarter decisions for your business moving forward. You can more easily keep track of who is visiting your site, their consumer history, and their likes and interests. Access to this kind of data allows you to more precisely target your marketing efforts to reach the audiences most likely to engage.

Popular Marketing Automation Software

Some of the most popular marketing automation software examples include:

Hubspot

HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. You can use their tools to host web and landing pages, create blogs and email sequences, and manage interactions with your leads and customers—all while analyzing the success of campaign and tracking user behavior. (Simplestrat)

Marketo

Marketo is an engagement platform. And it’s one of the most connected and open marketing platforms on the market. The marketing technology enables you to do lead management, marketing automation, lead scoring, account based marketing, digital advertising, email marketing, real-time personalization, reporting, marketing ROI, campaigning, event marketing, and so much more. It’s that thing marketers use to start their day. (Chapmanbright)

Outreach

Outreach is a sales engagement tool that works to engage leads and prospects across a broad set of interactions, with support to make your staff more efficient and effective. Think of it as a next-gen CRM and enterprise communication tool. (Interrupt Media)

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a category-defining Customer Experience Automation Platform that helps over 150,000 businesses in 170+ countries meaningfully connect and engage with their customers. It creates optimized customer experiences by automating many behind-the-scenes marketing, sales, and support processes. Businesses of all sizes have access to hundreds of pre-built automations that combine email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and machine learning for powerful cross-channel orchestration, segmentation and personalization. (ActiveCampaign)

These platforms offer a range of features and can help you start automating many of your marketing tasks.

Best Marketing Automation Software by Company Size

Every business can benefit from marketing automation, but the best marketing automation software depends on the size of your business. Large enterprises will need software that can power large-scale marketing efforts, while smaller businesses will need marketing automation that stays within their budget and meets their organization’s specific needs.

For smaller businesses, recommended software programs include HubSpot Marketing, Drip, Sendinblue, and Constant Contact. These programs offer considerable email marketing, data analytics, and drip campaign creation services at more affordable rates for smaller businesses.

Larger companies may consider Marketo, Eloqua, and Silverpop. These software programs offer some more advanced data analysis features and can manage larger volumes of customer data, which gives larger companies the power to start reaching their target audience and turning them into customers.

SEO Design Chicago will work with you to choose and implement the marketing automation software that will work best for your business.

Why Choose Marketing Automation Software Over Other Software Options?

Marketing automation offers many digital marketing features all in one centralized platform. The scope of most other digital marketing software is limited to individual marketing tasks, such as email marketing, social media campaigns, web-based advertising, business intelligence/market analytics. Marketing automation software combines all of these unique features in one powerful workspace, making it easier for those in your business to manage your marketing strategy and get access to the insight you need.

Benefits and ROI of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation can lead to some key benefits for your company. No more manual task completion and all the lost time and high cost associated with it.

With marketing automation, your team only needs to set up the initial automation without the later repetitive work of posting on social media or designing email marketing campaigns from scratch. You’ll also be able to keep track of all the related data your business generates to get a clearer picture of your customers’ behavior and what they want.

In terms of your return on investment, you can expect a successful return with marketing automation. Lead nurturing, automated marketing campaigns, and increased attention to customer data are all sure ways to start increasing your business’s revenue.

Keep track of how much you spend on software versus how much you’re saving from eliminating much of the manual marketing work to get a clearer idea of your ROI.

Technology Trends Impacting Marketing Automation

Digital marketing technology advances quickly. Here are some of the key trends that are changing the way marketing automation works:

Artificial intelligence: As machine learning continues to progress, marketing automation software has begun to incorporate elements of AI to predict which customers will engage with your site and learn to interact with your customers on your site.
Behavior-based workflows: You can monitor how your customers who are most likely to engage with your site so that their behavior will automatically trigger follow-up actions that can help drive up your conversion rates.
Evolution of software as a service (SAAS): SAAS continues to constantly expand, meaning business leaders always have the opportunity to monitor their software subscriptions and purchase only what makes the most sense for them.

What You Should Look For in SMB and Enterprise Marketing Automation Software

Small and mid-size businesses need to look out for marketing automation software that matches their specific needs, without extra unnecessary features. Most software sellers offer different plans depending on your company’s size. For SMB, it’s most important to stay within budget and to minimize additional software expenses.

Larger companies often have some more room to experiment with different features and should be on the lookout for marketing automation software that integrates automated campaigns, analytics, and reporting to more comprehensively guide your company’s decision-making.

Marketing automation

Getting Buy-In for a Marketing Automation Implementation

For companies who haven’t tried marketing automation, it’s important to highlight its benefits to all levels of the workforce. Business leaders should look to the increased revenue that follows from more strategic and persistent marketing campaigns.

Marketing professionals will have more time to focus on their bigger picture campaigns, instead of dealing with routine marketing tasks. Those who manage your business’s social media or create its original content will be able to target their work more effectively with access to better customer data.

Communicate these advantages clearly to everyone in your company so that everyone knows how marketing automation will improve and streamline their work.

Typical Marketing Automation User Types

A variety of marketing professionals rely on marketing automation to simplify aspects of their workload. These can include:

Marketing managers/directors
Social media managers/specialists
Content creators/managers

Common Marketing Automation Features

There are some common types of marketing automation:

Email Marketing

Great email marketing these days takes more than a great subject line. Get the word out about your brand through email automation services. Automated emails make it easier to connect with your customers. There are several email marketing platforms that can take your contact list and generate templates for email messaging, and then segment your audience so that prospective customers receive emails that match their interest and reflect their prior interaction with your site. Segmentation helps your business build a stronger relationship with potential customers, drives more traffic to your site, and increases your conversion rates. Make email sending easier and get a higher number of subscribers with SEO Design Chicago’s automated email newsletter marketing services! We help you choose the right email marketing tool.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is another goldmine for business leaders looking to expand their influence and get more attention. But social media-related tasks can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Marketing automation can save your business considerable time since you’re able to schedule when and where posts will be released all in one place. The software will also automatically monitor what users are saying about you on social media and can help you manage direct messages and other social interactions.

Converting Leads Into Paying Customers

If a user seems to be a promising lead for your business, you want to try your best to convert them into a customer. Without marketing automation, this process is often fairly challenging. Marketing automation software allows you to nurture leads based on high-quality consumer data to help your business achieve higher conversion rates.

Marketing Data Analysis

Your business generates vast amounts of data every day from the people who open your emails, interact with your site, and make purchases from your store. Don’t let that data go to waste. Marketing automation software can start turning that data into meaningful insight that can inform your business’s marketing strategy.

Choosing the Right Marketing Automation Software with SEO Design Chicago

There are so many versions of marketing automation software that it can be hard to select the best marketing automation tool for your business. That’s why we offer professional automation services for businesses in all different industries and of all different sizes. SEO Design Chicago is here to help with our professional automated marketing solutions. We are experienced digital marketing professionals who can help you select the best marketing automation software and start using it to your business’s advantage.

Getting your marketing automation software up and running and monitoring the data it produces can be an overwhelming task. With SEO Design Chicago, you can trust the professionals to help you make the best decisions for your business. We offer the best marketing automation solution and services to help your business function at a higher level. Contact us today to get started!