Top-performing companies are nearly 70% more likely to use marketing automation technology. Marketing automation is a cloud/web-based service that helps marketers automate, segment, nurture and ultimately optimize, online customer engagement. This, in turn, drives more revenue for businesses.
Yet even with all of its benefits, automation is often considered a tool for only large organizations. The reasoning is that larger businesses have more sales and bigger marketing teams, as well as more prospect volume. They’re more likely to require technology that can optimize operations and improve communications. Meanwhile, marketing automation has typically been positioned as unnecessary for smaller organizations – especially SOHO businesses – who manage fewer prospects and with leaner outreach.
But today, this is no longer the case. Gartner finds that 98% of all small business software buyers are shopping for automation software for the first time – it’s no longer just for big organizations.
But why? Here are three reasons why more small businesses are turning to automation.
1. The customer journey is more complicated than ever.
Regardless of the size of your customer base, the online customer journey is now more complicated than ever – there is no straightforward path to purchase. Instead, shoppers are engaging with businesses across a growing and diverse set of online forums – from email and ecommerce to brand websites and third-party review sites, all at a given time. These forums are creating more touchpoints for marketers to manage. They also need to identify the most critical ones for driving a purchase decision to the next stage.
Of course, smaller organizations are already stretched thin. It’s virtually impossible to effectively navigate this flood of interactions – as well as the data created from each one – without some type of automated tool. Automation not only maps out the customer journey from initial trigger to purchase, but it also supports tailored outreach across each stage to drive movement through the funnel. And as the number of channels continues to rise and add even more complexity to the buyer journey, the need to embrace automation will only grow among SOHO businesses.
2. With lean budgets, small businesses must optimize digital spend.
Marketing budgets for small businesses are obviously tight. 50% of small businesses spend less than $300 each month on internet marketing and the majority – 68% – handle all marketing in-house. To protect against exhausting resources unnecessarily, it’s helpful to lean on automation tools, which can help drive down costs and optimize overall digital budgets.
Small businesses also can’t afford to waste time and money marketing to those who may not be interested or never engage the messages (win-back campaigns are another animal, focusing on lapsed customers that have previously bought in). Likewise, they need to avoid bothering valued customer contacts with irrelevant emails. This could forfeit the opportunity to market to them in the future.
Given its ability to target and evaluate customers based on granular marketing interaction data (most automation services can “score” buyers – higher scores indicate that the individual has a true and specific interest in what a company is selling), marketing automation is a cost-effective way to optimize digital spend for SOHO businesses when every dollar counts.
3. Poor lead quality is a challenge – automation can help.
By far the biggest challenge facing small-business marketers is quality lead generation. Among marketers, more than three-quarters cite improving the quality of leads as the most important goal. Marketing automation can be the positive intervention small businesses need, enabling more effective, responsive and data-driven touchpoints with customers. This improves lead flow and quality. For this reason, more and more small businesses want to invest in automation.
According to a 2015 VentureBeat study, 77% of marketing automation users saw their number of conversions increase, highlighting an overall boost in lead quality. Weeding out the bad leads makes it easier to make better use of your time and focus on actual potential business.
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Marketing automation can play a vital role in businesses of all sizes – no matter how large or small. Now more than ever, small businesses – especially home-based businesses – are beginning to understand the potential in marketing automation, and how these tools can be a cost-effective way to do their outreach more successfully.
