When you begin a start-up, wisely determining where to allocate your budget is a pressing concern. In the marketing world, you will likely find yourself trying to analyze multiple competing channels, trying to determine which is most likely to contribute to your success. It can feel as though you need a team of marketing professionals to effectively establish a brand.
Marketing automation, however, can be your key to running marketing campaigns with your limited personnel. Using this technology can increase sales productivity while drastically reducing marketing overhead. This creates the favorable environment a start-up needs to thrive. Here are six reasons why you should use automation in your start-up.
You will not need a large marketing team to run effective campaigns.
When you have marketing automation tools ready to use, you do not have to worry about recruiting and hiring a large marketing team. Instead, your marketing automation platform will be able to take care of many of the regular tasks that you might have delegated to marketing professionals, such as contacting prospects after certain behaviors, segmenting email lists, and otherwise nurturing relationships between the brand and the prospect.
It is cheaper than you think.
The demands placed on new companies today can feel very intimidating. Brands are expected to incorporate a strong online presence into their overall marketing strategy. They need to meet and interact with consumers on a personal level, and they need to be responsive to customer concerns across the different platforms. This often results in brands spending a significant portion of their resources hiring and training the relevant professionals.
Marketing automation, however, is generally much cheaper than even one marketing associate. Using the software effectively, allowing you to conserve your budgetary resources while still nurturing relationships with clients, will be an efficient way to protect resources without taking shortcuts.
You can A/B test different aspects of your marketing strategy.
With marketing automation, you can easily compare different designs of campaign components, such as your website, your email, or your landing page. With A/B testing, you can see which design generates more attention and revenue, thus making your strategy even more efficient.
Create your marketing materials with a drag and drop template.
Any lean start-up knows they should ‘work smarter not harder’. Using a marketing automation platform, like Experiture, will allow you to develop elements of your campaign with a simple drag and drop format. This allows you to build effective campaigns while maximizing the time and resources you have available.
Connect with customers using their preferred platform.
Today’s customers interact with brands on a variety of platforms. Email remains popular, but many also prefer messages that they can receive directly on their phones through SMS. Others want to connect through social media, where they can also communicate and share with family and friends.
A platform like Experiture offers complete integration with the variety of different marketing platforms. This makes it easier to reach out to prospects and customers through their preferred channels when they hit particular touchpoints, nurturing the relationship and bringing them closer to conversion.
Reporting and analytics will let you know what works and what does not.
One of the biggest challenges for many marketers is identifying what aspects of their digital marketing strategy is successful and which areas need more work. When you use a marketing automation platform, everything is tightly monitored, including user behavior, their responses to your attempts to connect, and which strategies result in the highest engagement rates and conversions. You can then use this insight to guide your future campaigns, helping to eliminate some uncertainty.
Marketing automation is a powerful tool for those who want to amplify their efforts to connect with and engage their audience. For those just starting to make a mark in their industry, it will allow you to run mature campaigns despite your limited funds and manpower.