Marketing automation services

What is marketing automation primarily used for?

Marketing automation ensures the automatic management of marketing processes and several campaigns across various channels effectively.

This is achieved by a set of instructions otherwise known as the workflow.

Workflows are a template of design that is created to ensure an automated delivery of instructions or processes, which you can build from scratch or develop mid-way to achieve a greater result. Workflows are one of the tools of the marketing and sales department which helps to limit the risk of human error when it comes to marketing, and it primarily makes the task easier and faster.

Marketing automation allows you to implement a marketing strategy without having to manually send email messages, texts each time to clients or customers, or to manually comment on posts each time campaigns are rolled out.

It is an effective way to manage time, increase ROI, and focus on other demanding tasks in the organization.

Types of marketing automation

There are different types of marketing automation suited for different kinds of industries. The main aim remains to drive growth and create leads by meeting the specific needs of people who fall in each category. Four types will be briefly described. They are B2B marketing automation, B2C marketing automation, marketing automation for small businesses, and mobile marketing automation.

• B2B marketing automation

Business-to-business has been around for a while when it comes to marketing automation, and this may be as a result of the coming together of customers and prospects to form a small, target market which is a part of ongoing repeat business, and also engage in a multistage procurement process.

With B2B marketing automation, the decision to buy or make a purchase is not always made immediately, rather would have gone through a rational thinking process that will involve more than one person. It focuses on building product awareness and education.

B2B lead nurturing takes a longer time than B2C marketing because, in B2B, prospective customers are allowed to make decisions which normally involves a lot of research on their part before they make contact with any salesperson.

These processes and characteristics make marketing automation software great for the B2B environment.

• B2C marketing automation

B2C marketing automation is almost the opposite of the B2B marketing automation strategy. This is because, with B2C, customers (potential buyers) are convinced within a short time frame, and purchase is made without the customers making too many researches about the product.

Businesses marketing to consumers (B2C) primarily targets consumer behaviors and keeps delivering loads of enticing messages to fast-track their purchase intention.

It is important to note that the customer base is worked on, so they can trust the product or brand and can recommend it to others as well. This aspect is what makes B2C a longer process as well.

• Marketing automation for small businesses

Marketing automation isn’t just for big brands. Small brands and businesses can also benefit from its utilization to drive sales and revenue even with very low spending budgets.

Small businesses should consider marketing automation services because:

1. Identify leads and nurture them:
   You can identify leads online, attract and capture them with great content from the marketing automation platforms. A great automation platform will help you with the creation of landing pages (instead of having to hire a landing page builder), forms, and also ensure engagements to other website pages while measuring the content leads find catchy. This helps with lead management.
2. Give no room for guesswork: Data is made available to you through marketing automation platforms. You have appropriate information concerning your products, and the engagements it gets from the potential customers. Somehow, you can even get to find out about customer experience from their engagements.
3. Quick response: Bigger brands started small. They started with giving attention to potential clients in the form of swift responses to queries. Customers are more likely to buy your products if you respond within an hour that their inquiry is made.

• Mobile marketing automation

These are days where the percentage of people using mobile phones surpasses the percentage of people who use the personal computer daily. Hence, engagements from mobile automation platforms cannot be overemphasized. Mobile marketing automation makes marketing for the mobile era possible as it ensures:

1. Real-time messaging
2. Integration with different apps and data sources gotten from the user's mobile device.

The B2B and B2C marketing automation methods find completion in mobile marketing automation as it connects directly with the user, and allow brands to create personalized customer relationships and deliver real-time messages to the end that the brand is established in the heart of the customers.

What are marketing automation services?

These are basic strategies put in place by the sales team, and it involves marketing tasks to drive sales and increase the ROI of the business. These services help you to have a great sales process. The basic ones are:

• Email marketing: It helps to build and manage personalized email campaigns. Email marketing is a kind of strategy targeted at prospective clients and it is tailored to their respective needs.
• Social media marketing: It ensures great use of social media to promote business goals and ensure sales of the brand's products and services. You can also guide the user experience through the social media tool.
• Text messaging: You can communicate the marketing needs of customers and guide customer experience through MMS, SMS, or push notifications to engage clients and potential customers.
• Ads Management: It ensures that ads by the company or brand get to specific users to increase brand visibility, and generate more ROI for the company.

Marketing automation strategy

With the marketing automation software, the following are carried out:

Lead capture: This feature helps you to identify and know your prospects. A landing page is built to capture prospects. An action is always required by the prospects in exchange for a reward.

Lead scoring, management, and nurturing: With the data generated from lead captures, you can sieve through and know potential clients and customers from those who are just passing by. This lead is graded and scored using different suitable parameters by each company or brand. After scoring, automated messages are sent to reach and track the progress of the product and brand.

Campaign management: This feature manages the gathering and processing of marketing data, and helps you put strategies in place to make the best of the information.

Below is a guide on how to use the marketing automation tools to improve your business needs on any marketing platform of your choice which provides great marketing services. This information piece is important and vital.

• Ensure email automation

Email automation is a great marketing strategy that helps to keep your message in front of prospective clients. This is better than scheduling emails to be sent at random hours when no one is on the computer. As a customer journey progresses, the emails sent will be a go-to thing for them when they have questions or are about to make a purchase. New user data can be automatically generated, and campaigns sent to them can strictly be based on their preferences per time.

• Make messages valuable and short

Your email messages should be automated, short, and with valuable content that doesn't bore the prospects. Using a drip campaign helps you nurture the customers and brings them to where you desire; that is, to make a purchase. Short and valuable automated messages are relevant than random broadcast messages. Valuable messages drive more sales than broadcast emails.

• Integrate with CRM

CRMs perform some magic when you integrate your automation platform with it. It ensures that the sales team are updated about prospect's choices and decisions, helps you to customize personalized messages for each client to grab their attention, nurture leads all through their journey, and identify campaigns that do the work!

Conclusion

Marketing automation services help you to automate repetitive tasks through a marketing automation system by offering marketing services through the marketing teams or the marketing and sales department while implementing a great marketing strategy to drive sales and ensure the continued progress of your brand or organization.

You can achieve your business goals with marketing automation strategies with strict compliance with the marketing automation process.

To make the process easier, contact a marketing automation expert and come up with a marketing plan together, ensuring the incorporation of appropriate marketing tools.

Don’t give up too soon on any prospect. He can just be an email away from making patronage.