In every organization, the sales and marketing teams are extremely important aspects of the company. These are the people who generate leads or potential clients for the business and ensure that these leads are then directly converted into clients. We have repeatedly heard about marketing automation in the past. What exactly does that mean?

What is marketing automation? 

Marketing automation basically refers to software platforms that have been specially designed for the purpose of marketing ideas or pushing out different marketing campaigns in different forms and are used by the marketing team in the company. The main idea behind this technology is to ensure that different online marketing streams are covered under the marketing campaigns. This includes websites, social media platforms, e-mail or text marketing, etc. The conventional manual labor is now converted into software programs. This makes the whole process more efficient and thus reduces chances of human error. A large number of web-based analytic tools are used for this purpose. The best part about marketing automation is that it is hosted by the web and is cloud based, so no separate software installation would be necessary.

The main concept behind marketing automation works towards replacing repetitive actions by more analytic and automated processes. In essence, it is basically a part of customer relationship management. Along with marketing intelligence and workflow automation, marketing automation helps schedule, track and organize marketing campaigns.

Advantages of marketing automation

Why is marketing automation so important? Why is it required for a company’s marketing team? These are a few good reasons:

  • Time saving

Marketing automation proves to be a very time-saving option for the marketing team. For instance, if you are marketing via your Facebook page, you can actually schedule the posts of the entire month in one day and let the software work on its own to keep updating the page. There can be many similar campaigns.

  • Filtering customer list

Unlike the conventional systems where you would be required to manually separate the customers based on their preferences, marketing automation allows you to filter them automatically.

  • Efficient human labor

Marketing automation helps the employees become more efficient in the business processes. A single marketing team member is now able to connect with many different customers and thus a complex chain of processes is set into motion.

  • Updated social media or a Social Media Management Tool

This software helps keep the social media platforms updated at all times. For instance, if you are manually posting something, you might be more active on some days than the others. With the help of marketing automation, you can schedule the posts in advance.

  • Detailed reports

Since you are focussing on an automated system here, you are at an advantage of getting detailed reports. Every marketing email, Facebook post, or message is kept in the record for later use.

  • Brand presence

By virtue of its ability to cater to different marketing channels, marketing automation helps you maintain a presence online. It increases communication and caters to the needs of the customers. So, you get a one-stop solution in this system.

  • Auto-Responder / Nurture Campaigns

This can be done through e-mail or text message marketing, or both. This is where you have scheduled messages framed around the context they are expecting to receive content from you. Always be sure to have permission to be marketing to them to abide by anti-spamming laws. These are just a few ways to automate on a small level to begin with. There are many other ways to automate as many of your business processes as you can, within a solid CRM or Project Management platform. My challenge for you is to start small & add on 1 piece at a time! 

Thanks as always for reading!