Imagine a world where you and your employees eliminate any and all repetitive tasks from your sales and marketing processes that are necessary but are not typically unique.
How much time, effort, and energy would you save?
Could your effectiveness increase?
Would you save a lot more money?
You can get the answer to these questions if you take the time to learn about marketing automation. Using Marketing Automation tools can fundamentally change your business for the better and help it grow.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is the implementation of technology to automate repetitive marketing tasks. There are multiple channels and mediums marketing automation can be used for including:
- Social Media
- Landing Page
- Website
So how can marketing automation help grow your business? To start, simply implementing a form of marketing automation can lead to a 451 percent increase in qualified leads. Companies are always looking for efficient ways to grow and gain leads, and that is what marketing automation can offer.
Growing Your Business with Marketing Automation
Growing a business is not easy. It takes time, energy, and resources. Many business people do not have the time to manually complete every marketing task promptly no matter how hard they try. At the same time, employees are trying to meet separate deadlines and gain leads. It’s exhausting work, but it doesn’t have to be.
With marketing automation growing your business is easier than ever. Instead of wasting your time, energy, and resources on the same repetitive task, marketing automation performs the tasks for you. Whether using paid or free software, marketing automation allows you to finish the race faster, and without the hurdles of tedious work.
Example:
A primary pain point for many suppliers is managing and following up with new leads. Most experts agree that it takes speed and multiple follow-ups to turn a prospect into a new customer. With a small staff already busy, how do you accomplish this?
Using marketing automation tools allows suppliers to create a follow-up strategy. It helps them build a brand, respond instantly, and follow up frequently enough to win business at a high rate. Let’s discuss some of the key benefits of automation.
The Four Benefits of Marketing Automation for Suppliers
1. Time-Saving
Marketing automation can help your business save valuable time. For example, marketing automation for social media is estimated to save people more than 6 hours per week. Monitoring various campaigns on multiple platforms is mentally and physically draining for employees. Marketing automation tools do the work for them.
2. Valid Reporting
Human error is natural, but it can be avoided, especially in high stake parts of your business. Data reporting is vital to every company’s success. A number off on the monthly report could cause unneeded worry, and a number missed can be damaging altogether.
Marketing automation tools can collect, report, and analyze data. It can also use this information to generate valuable insights for future campaigns.
3. Enhanced Customer Experience
Have you ever missed a lead? It happens to the best of us, but there’s no denying it leaves a sour taste in the prospect’s mouth. With supplier marketing automation, you can design and execute an amazing customer experience by timing the delivery of high-quality relevant information for every customer 100% of the time without relying on your sales team to do everything
Supplier marketing automation provides a better customer experience by automatically sending out emails (if set up by the business to do so). Automated welcome letters, newsletters, and social posts keep the lead engaged and in the loop. Never let a lead slip away, and grow your business with marketing automation tools.
4. Efficiency
Adding automation to your sales and marketing process can bring amazing efficiencies. Your salespeople can spend time developing personal relationships with new customers and less time putting together the same templated emails. Emails can be carefully crafted to build your brand and educate the buyer. This allows buyers to come in with fewer questions about your products and services, saving valuable time for your sales staff.
Efficiency = Profitability
By increasing efficiency, your business will save time and resources and gain profitability over time.
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
-Peter Drucker
Supplier Marketing Automation Uses
Social Media Automation
Social Media is one of the most efficient and beneficial ways your company can grow using marketing automation tools. It allows businesses to create, schedule, monitor, and track campaigns. This lets you get a head start on the posts for the week so you can spend time analyzing the data and performance.
- Automate Welcome Message For Prospects Who Visit Your Page
- Schedule Posts in Advance at Peak Hours
- Utilize Chatbots for Quick Response
- Social Media Marketing Automation Software:
- Paid: Hootsuite, Buffer, SocialPilot, etc.
- Free: Facebook Business Manager, Tweetdeck, etc.
Email Marketing Automation
Did you know that email marketing is more likely to drive sales than social media marketing? While both are important in your company’s growth, this is beneficial information for email marketing. According to Constant Contact, 60 percent of consumers said they made a purchase because of a marketing email they received. What does this mean for marketing automation?
Email marketing automation allows businesses to schedule, plan, and track: newsletters, welcome emails, email campaigns, and more. It makes the task hassle-free and allows companies to do the following easily:
- Send confirmation emails
- Send welcome emails
- Monitor feedback
- Send weekly newsletters
- Nurture leads
- Utilize Email Marketing Automation Software:
- Pardot, Hubspot, Zoho, etc.
Here is a case study 360Connect conducted with its client. Take a look at the example and results of a company without automation.
Notice how this follow-up process is sale intensive. After a buyer completes an online inquiry, sales are solely responsible for following up. In this example, the salesperson would typically make three follow-up attempts before giving up. This type of model led to a 5% close rate.
Now, see what kind of results came from adding automation, specifically email and texting, to the process.
See the difference? Adding automation added more brand interactions which improved the likelihood of contacting the prospects, helped build the brand, gave the prospect more opportunities to learn about the product, and most importantly improved sales!
Lead Scoring
Depending on your business, lead scoring can either be simple or complicated. In the world of supplier marketing, it’s important to know where your leads are coming in from and how long they’re spending on the website to rank them in terms of how much engagement will be put into the lead by the sales team. It also gives the sales team a better idea of what a “good” lead looks like so they can rank them as a higher priority.
Lead scoring automation allows businesses to grow by making it easy to collect prospect data and compare it. With lead scoring automation, you assign a score to several lead attributes, including but not limited to:
- Quote Form Completion
- Social Media Engagement
- Free Trial Request
- Opened Emails
- Website Visits
And based on this score, you can prioritize which leads should be called first or if they’re even ready to be sent to sales in the first place.
Supplier Marketing Automation with 360Connect’s Help
You’ve learned more about marketing automation and how it can help grow your business, now let our partner help. MODintelechy is an expert in marketing automation and can help you automate your marketing activities in a variety of impactful ways. Learn more by visiting the MODintelechy website and contact them with your automation needs.