The Top Benefits of Marketing Automation

For some reason, whenever I hear the words "marketing automation," I think of the "Transformers" movie with Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox.

It makes me think of the Autobots doing all our marketing -- which would be pretty cool.

But today, we're not going to be talking about the robots from Cybertron.

Instead, let's focus on how marketing automation can benefit your business. Marketing automation is the process of making systems or processes occur automatically within a software.

Essentially, marketing automation can help streamline your marketing efforts and make your department more efficient.

In today's post, let's review the top benefits of marketing automation.

1. Efficiency.

First and foremost, marketing automation makes your entire department more efficient. You can potentially reduce staffing costs while freeing up your team's time to work on more important, strategic projects.

Instead of manually posting on social media every day, marketing automation software can automate that process.

This means that your team can do more creative work, like planning and brainstorming for upcoming campaigns and projects.

Additionally, working in an automation platform will make your team's tasks easier. Your staff can post on social media, create an email nurturing campaign, post a blog, or create a landing page all in the same software. Ultimately, this saves your team time when you're creating campaigns.

2. Marketing and sales alignment.

If you combine your sales and marketing automation efforts by using the same software, you'll be able to align company goals and efforts.

Essentially, it'll make the process of going from marketing qualified lead to sales qualified lead that much easier.

In fact, marketing automation can lead to a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead.

Plus, it can also help you generate more leads and increase sales. Your marketing team will spend more time strategizing ways to increase conversion rate, while your sales team increases productivity. It's a win-win.

3. Increase conversion rate.

Speaking of increasing conversion rates, marketing automation can also make your team more effective.

Marketing automation software can help you increase your conversion rate and manage your leads more efficiently.

Your marketing automation software will track your leads and you can even use it to retarget your website visitors who don't convert, increasing your CRO.

Again, marketing automation should give your team more time to analyze your marketing strategy and consider how to get visitors to convert.

4. Accurate reporting.

Reporting your analytics can seem like a daunting process, but with marketing automation platforms, it doesn't have to be.

You should be able to use your software to generate automated reports. All of a sudden, a cumbersome task is simplified.

Additionally, marketing automation platforms can give you a high-level overview of your overall process. This will help you see complications and friction points. With accurate, streamlined reporting you can see where things are going wrong.

Do leads drop off during your lead nurturing email campaigns? Or is it during your sales process? Either way, accurate analytics will help you spot those points and fix them in a timely manner.

5. Personalized marketing strategy.

As your team spends more time creating instead of doing manual data entry, marketing automation software will allow them to create more personalized content through its segmentation capabilities and reporting.

With marketing automation, you can target your persona on multiple channels. You can target them on social media, with search ads, or through email campaigns.

How does marketing automation facilitate this?

Well, marketing automation turns your web visitors into leads and once you know who your leads are, you can segment them by behavior or characteristics.

The entire lead nurturing process should be personalized -- did someone read a post about sales conferences? Maybe your lead nurturing email invites them to a sales conference your team is hosting.

This way your leads get personalized messaging and you can track their engagement. This will also help with lead scoring.

6. Lead scoring.

Marketing automation software can set up lead scoring for your team which will notify your sales team when a lead goes from marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead.

Again, this speaks to the better alignment between your marketing and sales teams. Plus, it automates the process, which makes it easier and in real-time. This means no time is wasted and your sales team can reach out to prospects immediately.

7. Data management.

Not to repeat myself, but marketing automation platforms will keep track of your leads and their engagement with your site.

That means that managing your data is easier than ever. Plus, it keeps your data up to date automatically.

8. Scalable processes.

Whenever you set up your marketing systems and processes, it's important to keep scale in mind. Can this process grow with your company? If it's not scalable, then it will be hard for your company to expand.

Marketing automation will help you create processes that are scalable. The more manual a process is and the more it depends on one person, the harder it'll be to scale when the team grows.

9. Lead nurturing.

Last but not least, marketing automation makes lead nurturing possible. Marketing automation software is the place you'll create drip email campaigns and track their success.

Without lead nurturing, you'll have a harder time converting leads to sales prospects.

Now, it's not just me who promotes marketing automation. Optimus Prime actually believes that marketing automation is one of the best ways to create a marketing program that will grow with your company. Plus, it can even align other departments like sales and customer service.