Marketing Automation & Why It Is Important to Marketing Strategy

Sometimes, entrepreneurs of start-ups are so sales-focused that they neglect the opportunities to set the right marketing foundation for their business. They rushed straight into the game without practicing and training for it. In your business, if you do not put in the effort to streamline and nurture potential leads, managing and building a relationship with the current and prospective customer will not be of that purposeful anymore.

Until the lead is qualified, no matter how good of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform you have implemented in your business, there will still be a gap left open before sales. Therefore, stop neglecting your leads and start developing them.

What is Marketing Automation?

Introducing Marketing Automation — the sturdy base before any good CRM system can be at its highest efficiency and effectiveness. Marketing Automation is essentially a platform designed for businesses to quickly identify active leads, nature them with automated and tailored marketing assets and eventually turn them into potential sales.

The common misconception is that CRM is similar to edm marketing or marketing automation and marketing automation is CRM but the truth is, they serve two distinct purposes yet they are directly proportional.

CRM, a widely known and used term, is sales-focused and is when a lead is already in the sales process while marketing automation, as the name goes, is marketing-focused and is all about nurturing the leads and funneling them into the sales process.

In short, marketing automation is used before CRM can be put into place.

Generate better leads

Leads generation is a crucial and essential step to growing your business. Marketing automation helps streamline lead management, saving you more time and resources which can be better spent on nurturing the leads that are more promising. And with that, your business will reach and engage the right customers at the right time. In addition, it also records a more detailed insight of active leads that can help you plan your digital marketing strategy according to their own unique buying behaviour.

Following a lead’s path through your website, marketing automation helps you understand their interest and the different touchpoints where it is most favourable to follow up. This, in turn, can create a more seamless marketing process by driving wider and prioritising more important marketing strategies.

Nurture active leads

Lead generation is the first step and what comes next is naturing the active ones. Nurturing leads can be time-consuming and complex depending on the individual leads and their journey. First thing first, not all leads will convert into sales but at least, all leads are worth giving it a shot!

Personalisation is the king’s card to nurturing leads. According to Pardot, 77% of buyers want unique, targeted content at each stage of their research. With the data captured through marketing automation, you will be able to strategically craft your marketing plan to suit the different needs of each lead.

Always remember, everyone likes to feel valued and by personalising your content, you add a personal touch to the connection you create with each and every active lead, increasing the likelihood of them converting to eventual sales.

Convert ready leads

And now, down to the final step, converting the ready leads! This final step is really to just further place more effort into getting them interested to strike the deal and to close it. Just keep working on nurturing them and always, be there. So that in the very moment when they are ready, you will be there to gladly welcome them onboard your business!

Marketing Automation has seen an increase in lead volume and leads conversion so strike while the iron is still hot and market to the leads while you can!