Marketing automation is a trend that has rapidly caught up. Businesses big and small are now investing in automation tools to simplify their marketing tasks. Should you? Let’s find out.
Adopting new technology and getting your business ready for what lies ahead is definitely a worthy decision. But it is all about the timing. After all, when it comes to marketing, there is no one-size-fits-all option. Strategies that work for one business might not deliver similar results for another. And marketing automation platforms come with a cost. So, before you make a major decision to invest in marketing automation, it is good to be sure that your business is ready for it. Otherwise, it might not deliver the intended results.
So, how do you know if your business is ready for marketing automation? Here are a few signs to look out for.
4 signs that your business is ready for marketing automation
1. Repetitive tasks are taking up a lot of your time
Do you ever catch yourself customizing the same email template several times a day? Don’t worry. You are not alone. As your business grows there comes a stage where monotonous tasks and communication routines start eating away a lot of your productive time. This will be time that you could have otherwise spent on other value-adding tasks. So, if you see this happening a lot, it could be a sign that you need to consider marketing automation.
Repetition also makes tasks appear tedious. As a result, there are chances of human error. And that’s one more thing you should avoid in order to maintain your company’s reputation. Using automation to take care of repetitive tasks and eliminating human errors improves the efficiency of your marketing tasks.
2. You do not have enough resources to handle all your marketing tasks
You might not always have enough funds to keep growing your team as your work requirements grow. And for a rapidly growing business, marketing tasks start piling up quickly too. Lead capture, lead nurturing, following up with existing customers, and a lot of other activities have to be executed on an ongoing basis. What can you do when your team size is too small or your team is overloaded with other activities? Marketing automation can be your answer.
3. Your business is ready to scale
When you start out, your primary goal might be to introduce your business in the target market. You might have a few strategies for identifying leads. And when you manage to convert these leads to customers and make sales happen, your short-term goals are met. But is that enough? Don’t you want your business to be ready to scale new heights?
Scaling can be in the form of expanding to new markets or exploring new product lines. Growth comes in all shapes and sizes. So, one way to prepare your business for growth is to find a reliable marketing automation software. Also ensure that the chosen software or tool brings a scalable solution. As you explore new markets and product lines, you need to adopt new kinds of marketing campaigns. You might also have to fine-tune your targeting strategies as you go. For all this, a rigid traditional or manual approach to marketing might complicate things. And in some cases, it can slow things down. To be sure that you can quickly scale and to be ready to grab any new opportunity that comes by, marketing automation can help.
4. You have clear goals and great content but no way to make them work together
You have great marketing collateral, and you also know what your marketing goals are. But somehow, they do not seem to meet at a common point. Does that sound relatable? This could be because you are not planning and publishing your content at the right times. Or because you are not keeping a close watch on the analytics data of each post or ad on social media. To overcome setbacks like these, automation is a great choice. It ensures that your social media posts go live at the optimal times.
And with marketing automation you can be sure that you do not miss sending a follow-up email to gather feedback from a customer who recently made a purchase. Marketing automation helps address cart abandonment and tries to convince customers to come back and place that order they were trying to place. In short, marketing automation helps fill the gaps in your marketing plan.
Wrapping up
To make the most of marketing automation benefits, you need to be sure that your business is ready to make the move. Otherwise, you end up spending on something that does not yet make sense for your business. Monitor the progress of your business and take the plunge at the right time. Done right, marketing automation can improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
tamatay
Kushal Ponnappa
