Drive Results and Efficiency in Your Digital Marketing
Scaling marketing efforts while still approaching leads in a personalised way can be a real challenge for marketing teams. In the recent years, however, marketing automation has emerged as a way for businesses to streamline their digital marketing and complement marketing and advertising campaigns across the board.
But what exactly is marketing automation? And what are some of the trends that are shaping its evolution? Let’s take a closer look!
What is Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is a powerful set of tools and technology that help you automate your marketing efforts. It enables you to better target your audience, send more personalised messages and improve the overall experience of your customers and prospects.
As a result, marketing automation can help you:
- Save time on repetitive tasks
- Increase revenue by maximising customer lifetime value
- Reduce costs by eliminating wasteful processes
With the right marketing automation platform, you can convert leads into paying customers while saving time and money on targeted email, social media, online advertising and inbound efforts and campaigns.
The State of Marketing Automation in 2022
Marketing automation has come a long way since its early days, and it's still evolving. Here's a look at where we're at now:
The most powerful evolution in marketing automation is the ability to create advanced automated workflows akin to programming but using a visual interface that’s much easier to comprehend without a technical background. This gives marketers the power to automate their responses to different types of email, website, ad engagement and more, doing it at a scale that was previously available only to few.
Another major development is the increased focus on personalisation. As marketers have more data about their customers, they're able to better tailor their messaging for each individual customer. Content personalisation is no longer limited to sending targeted emails but can also include serving dynamic website content based on visitor activity and behaviour, for instance, personalised pricing, discounts, and offers.
One of the biggest changes has also been the rise of AI-powered chatbots as an alternative interface for interacting with brands online. Chatbots enable businesses to provide personalised interactions with customers while reducing costs associated with hiring human agents or managing customer service teams.
HubSpot is the undisputed leader in marketing automation. According to Datanyze, as of 30.05.2022 HubSpot owns a staggering 35.41% of the global marketing automation market share, placing it second to none in the space. Its market share is three times that of the second most popular platform! Coupled with its mature CRM, Sales Hub and Service Hub capabilities, the value of Marketing Automation from HubSpot becomes hard to beat. The platform makes for an easy choice for those who want to feel supported in streamlining their efforts across marketing, sales, customer service, and operations.
Marketing Automation Adoption & Spend
Marketing automation has exploded over the last decade, with HubSpot leading the charge. In 2022, it’s clear that businesses have adopted marketing automation as a major part of their digital marketing strategy. 51% of companies are currently using marketing automation. Even as global marketing spend kept falling during the pandemic, Forrester predicted that CMO investment for marketing automation would only increase, offering a smart way to approach the issue of limited marketing resources.
Why Marketing Automation Is Key to Marketing Success
It’s no secret that today’s marketers are struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for lead generation and revenue growth. Consumers have more choice than ever before, and they expect brands to respond quickly and provide value at every touchpoint. Your competitors are already using marketing automation—if you don’t, you may find it hard to engage your customers before others do.
In order to keep up with this pace, businesses need to be using marketing automation tools that allow them to create compelling experiences and provide value at every stage of the buyer journey. Here are some ways marketing automation can transform your results:
- It allows you to create content for various types of interactions once, then measure its performance over time and apply your learnings to tweak it and maximise results.
- It helps you deliver personalised experiences based on customer data, including past purchases, abandoned carts, and other interactions with your brand or your competitors.
- It gives you an opportunity to complement marketing or advertising campaigns and maximise return, e.g., with mail drips triggered by paid campaign sign-ups.
- It makes it easier for you to capture new leads and nurture them through the sales funnel on their own terms, staying in touch until they are ready to buy; making sure every relevant interaction is followed up on, no matter how busy you are.
Using Marketing Automation to Transform Your Digital Marketing Results
Automation is such an integral part of business success today, for B2B and B2C companies alike—it helps automate repetitive tasks, which frees up time for your team members to focus on strategy and creative work. And if you're not using it yet? You should be! Contact us to discuss how our MarTech experts can leverage the right marketing automation to drive results for your business.
