Getting Growth On Steroids With Effective Marketing Automation
Marketing and sales are going through an (r)evolution - one as drastic as what Ford did for the automobile industry. Lean growth teams and the tech technology stacks are beating enterprise counterparts by miles - and it all starts with moving from ‘hours invested’ to ‘impact’.
What once took hours can now be accomplished within minutes. While engaging with mass audiences used to be an uphill task, today, we can automate everything - from personalized email and social sequences, A/B testing on landing pages and emails, client prospecting and allocation, and almost everything else.
Good marketing and sales automation is soon becoming the conventional route for companies with a client-first approach. It’s moving from becoming a good-to-have to a standard expectation - brands that are not using the right martech are playing highly competitive fields with a handicap.
Why automation is essential to your growth strategy
While the digital revolution has helped create different avenues for companies to connect with prospects, it has also led to an unprecedented struggle to grab the attention of the right customers. Customers today don't want to receive a message, but they want to be talked to.
Marketing automation enables marketers to send out timely messages while keeping intact the context for the customer. It allows you to adapt the messaging with a customer's specific needs and align it with the lifecycle stage. It helps brands convert potential prospects into loyal customers and brand advocates.
2. Scalability
While investing in a comprehensive marketing stack at the offset may not sound like a great idea, it is the only way to avoid getting stuck right in the first spurt of growth. As the initial marketing efforts generate results for a company, the next step is to find a platform that can help sustain the growth and facilitate the acceleration.
The value of having the right marketing automation stack can't be overstated. With a good marketing automation stack in place right in the beginning, it becomes possible for businesses to maintain one single source of data while growing the contact base.
3. Sales-Marketing Alignment
It is not rare for the sales and marketing teams to play the blame game at times. While the sales team may not be happy with the quality of leads marketing is passing over, the marketing team may be upset with the quality of insights they're getting from the sales team.
However, it's all about handling data and maintaining a level of sophistication in the system.
With the right marketing automation platform in place, you can easily ensure a seamless data transfer between these two teams. When no data falls through the cracks, your teams get empowered to handle significant volumes of leads and produce better results.
4. Robust reporting
It's a data-driven world. You may put in the best creative work in a marketing campaign, but unless concrete results can back it, you can't rely on the methodology. A sophisticated marketing automation solution offers you not just reporting but also forecasting for your campaign performances. With compelling insights into what works and what does not, a marketing automation platform arms you to produce better results going in the future.
Essential marketing automation practices
Your automation tools should align with your brand's growth goals. These tools and practices are individual workflows that can perform distinct tasks within a marketing strategy.
●Email automation: From onboarding emails to drip campaigns, you can set up a series of automated content that your customer receives upon a specified rule. Email automation works on behaviour-based triggers and customer journeys, so make sure you define these triggers carefully.
●Customer journeys: What happens after a customer is onboarded? A customer journey tool lets you visualise a roadmap for your customer engagement strategies and personalise the one-on-one experience.
●Segmentation: Marketing teams have a slew of data and content lying everywhere. A segmentation tool allows you to segment your audience based on stored information for a more targeted and personalised engagement.
●Accurate Retargeting: It's incredible when you think of a product, and a brand's name pops into your mind. That's precisely what retargeting tools help you with. By retargeting social posts and emails to customers who visited your website/social handle, you can endeavor to acquire the top-of-the-mind space within customer segments.
●Real-time optimization: Marketing automation platforms allow you to create dynamic content (great for attracting audience), a/b test emails and posts (perfect for gauging what type of content works best for your audience), and send time optimised messages (great for attracting leads across the globe) to make every interaction with your audience beneficial and worthwhile.
How HubSpot has emerged as the leader in marketing automation
The job of marketing has never been tougher. Until the recent past, it has always been a gruelling choice between juggling different systems and opting for one complex tool leading to a steep learning curve. A comprehensive marketing automation platform like HubSpot has been the answer to companies' struggles against scattered customer data and disconnected marketing. Built for companies of all sizes, HubSpot allows businesses to keep all their marketing tools and data on one platform. It empowers you to save valuable time and leverage rich context into offering personalised communication that helps generate and retain leads at scale. Moreover, since the Marketing Hub is built on the HubSpot CRM, marketers get to keep track of all data. With tools to establish effective alignment among teams, HubSpot offers all that businesses need to arm themselves to grow in today's competitive global market.
