Why automation is important for digital marketing
Automating your digital marketing efforts can help you save a lot of time and money which you would have otherwise spent trying to understand how digital marketing works, set up campaigns, capture leads, etc. Digital marketing automation can also help you focus on other important strategies needed to run a successful business. Time-saving is one of the most important goals in business and automation has really helped business owners with that. Apart from helping you save time, automation can help business owners perform their functions more efficiently and effectively.
Despite all the popularity and fan-following automation is attracting among business owners and bloggers, it faces the criticism due to certain myths. Many business owners believe that automating email marketing efforts is only about sending mass emails and that these email campaigns will end up in the spam folder.
In order to understand marketing automation clearly, it is important for you to know that almost every aspect of digital marketing including social media, landing pages, PPC, lead generation can be automated. Digital marketing automation is not limited to email marketing alone. Moreover, your emails are not going to be marked as spam as long as you don’t buy email lists from some blackhat service provider and get caught into a honeypot. Just make sure that you are generating leads in a proper legitimate manner from your website visitors and marketing campaigns.
Now that we have seen what digital marketing automation is all about, let’s dive a little deeper.
What is marketing automation in digital marketing
In digital marketing, automation means using different tools, software, and services to automate the time consuming, complicated and repetitive marketing activities. It is aimed at giving you more time to grow your business and operationalize communications so that your business can take care of itself without constant attention.
Benefits of digital marketing automation for your business
Digital marketing automation can help your business become more productive, increase your marketing ROI, improve campaign management, generate more leads, and measure your performance more accurately. I am sharing some statistics on marketing automation below for your reference so that you can understand the direct benefits of digital marketing automation and the role it can play in your business –
- 79% of the top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than 2 years and 91% of these companies claim that it helps them function properly and efficiently – Gleanster Research.
- More than half of marketers (56 percent) think the marketing tech industry is evolving faster than their companies’ use of marketing technology – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology (2017).
- 63% of companies successful in marketing automation plan to increase their Marketing Automation budget – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015).
- 63% of companies outsource all or part of marketing automation strategy planning – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
- 33% of the businesses have already implemented marketing automation software within their businesses – Apteco Ltd “Trend Report Data-driven marketing 2015”.
- Marketing automation drives up to a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead overall – Nucleus Research.
- 67% of Marketing Leaders currently use a Marketing Automation Platform – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)
Email Monday has covered this topic in detail – including adoption, benefits, limitations, usage, and the history of marketing automation.
If you’re still skeptical about whether or not you should get into digital marketing automation, it’s high time you decide and choose your side.
Digital marketing automation can save time
74% of surveyed companies claim that time-saving is the most important benefit marketing automation has brought to their doors. Automation software, tools, and services can help you automate your various marketing campaigns including but not limited to social media marketing campaigns, PPC campaigns, email marketing campaigns, etc. It can also help you plan your business’s promotional activities ahead of time which will leave you with more time to spend on larger plans, focus on growing your business and make progress in every sector. Your sales and marketing team also get a lot of time to work on new projects and test new ideas for your business growth.
Automation gives you time and it improves your staff’s productivity and creativity.
No loopholes
When you run and manage your marketing campaigns through a clearly defined process, you will never overlook anything. You will receive instant performance reporting and analysis which will help you to make wise marketing decisions. You will never miss a lead nurturing opportunity and your teams will always be ready to improve the potential of your marketing campaigns. In addition to the improved automated performance optimization and reporting, automation can also reduce unwanted decision making efforts as you can solve everything with split testing.
Better revenue opportunities
Automation of marketing endeavors is an effective move and it can help take your business to a whole another level of growth. By automating your up-sells, cross-sells, appointments, reminders and personalized follow-ups, you can develop a loyal and long-lasting customer-base. Your prospects and customers will be attended with care as it creates a connection between the customers and your brand. Nobody denies the good things that come with personalized customer support – word of mouth marketing. If your customers love your business, they will buy more from you and will talk about you to anyone who’ll listen to them.
Moreover, by coupling automation with attractive and convincing lead magnets and lead generation strategies, your business will get endless opportunities to make most out of the ground investment.
Who doesn’t like a steady flow of ROI? 😉
Reduced staff costs
A small team of digital marketers working on automated lead generation or promotional campaigns can do the heavy lifting for you. You don’t need to hire a large number of employees to execute planned strategies for each marketing department. Once you have automated the functions, you’re set for the coming months and your team will have the time, enthusiasm, and creativity to take on and work on new projects. We all know that automation can do most things nowadays without any external influence but it is still wise to have a good team of digital marketing strategists to manage them.
What can be automated
Almost, everything. Yes, I am not kidding. From answering customer support calls to sending follow up emails and upselling your product without eating up your time and energy, everything can be automated.
Here are a few functions most of the businesses use automation for –
- Publishing posts on social media
- Sending out emails through targeted campaigns
- Dynamic website widget content
- Sending out bulk SMS and phone calls
- Online ad placements
- Data management
- Data analysis, etc.
If you invest $1000 in a good marketing automation strategy, you can make 3x more money from it. What do you think? Have you tried automating your digital marketing efforts before? What was it like? Or, are you going to start testing if it’s the right choice for you? Do let us know in the comments below!
Nicely building up this article. Marketing is very important nowadays because of a lot of competitors. It is also convenient to have your marketing automation.
One thing I want to add, not all can be automated. There are certain things that could possibly be automated and there are not. You should consider any aspect when using automation strategy.
Great share about automation in Digital Marketing.