What Is Marketing Automation?

Have you ever visited an online shop, which then followed you around Facebook and other channels? Well, this is one example of marketing automation in action.

So what is marketing automation and how will it work for your business?

Whether you are running an ecommerce business, or a Software as a Service Business or a B2B consulting business, you will benefit greatly by automating many of your admin princesses.

The benefit is normally captured around saving money and saving time, and sometimes even increasing revenue without trading more time!

But many people we meet, tend to be overwhelmed in identifying how much automation they need for their business, so they never roll out any marketing automation systems for their business, leading them to miss out on many opportunities. 

According to Forrester’s marketing automation forecast from 2017 – 2023, they predict that spend on automation technology will grow from $11.4 billion USD to $25.1 billion USD by the year 2023. While this seems to be the case, most marketers are still in the “early adopting” phase. 

Over 58% of marketers are finding that they are not succeeding with automations because they lack effective strategies. 

(Source: ThreeDeepMarketing)

However, many business owners are not taking advantage of using technology to create their own marketing growth systems, so there is a massive opportunity for the ones who do. 

For every $1 you invest in marketing automation, it generates about $37 return on investment (Source: Litmus)

Our definition of what marketing automation is, it’s as simple as thinking about your sales and marketing processes and then identifying which CRM or email marketing platform to use in order to help you execute your sales and marketing strategy. 

Marketing automation shouldn’t replace your existing marketing efforts. It should help you amplify your marketing efforts and streamline your sales process.

The most simplest things you can do to automate your marketing is to consider your customer journey around:

• What should happen before your customer makes a purchase
• During their purchasing phase
• And then what should happen after they make a purchase. 

Equally important is the fact that we need to also identify what should NOT occur when your customer purchases your products or services, or signs up to your SaaS platforms. If you don’t identify this step early on, you may be at risk of losing your customers by automating wrong areas of your business. 

Is marketing automation the same as email marketing?

The short answer is no. It goes beyond email marketing. It includes different channels and technologies that will help you close the deals with your clients or customers faster. 

The future of marketing automation is about improving customer experience. If there are many ad hoc tasks that require the human touch, then it’s still not going to be a task that you should automate. 

Knowing what to automate in your marketing and what not to automate, is the key to a successful marketing automation plan. 

We specialise in helping businesses create their own customised marketing automation plan, so they can capture more prospects and convert them into customers. We call this The Bumper Blueprint – you can learn more about this here.