Marketing can become surprisingly time-consuming for an SME. Enquiries need following up, prospects need nurturing, emails need sending and customer data needs updating – often while the same team is managing dozens of other responsibilities.
Marketing automation can remove many of these repetitive tasks while helping businesses communicate with potential customers more consistently.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation uses technology to perform predefined marketing actions when particular conditions are met.
A simple example is an automated email sent when someone completes a website form. More sophisticated workflows can respond differently according to the person's interests, behaviour or stage in the buying journey.
The objective isn't to remove people from marketing. It's to automate repetitive processes so your team can spend more time on activities where human input adds genuine value.
Respond to leads more quickly
When someone makes an enquiry, timing matters.
Automation can acknowledge an enquiry immediately, provide useful information and alert the appropriate member of your team.
For example, somebody downloading a technical guide could automatically receive related resources over the following weeks, while a visitor requesting a quotation could immediately be routed to a salesperson.
Both prospects have interacted with the business, but they require very different follow-up.
Nurture prospects who aren't ready to buy
This is particularly valuable for B2B businesses with longer purchasing cycles.
A prospect may discover your company months before they are ready to appoint a supplier.
Automated email workflows allow you to maintain useful communication during that period, sharing relevant case studies, technical information, company news or service information without somebody manually managing every interaction.
When the prospect is eventually ready to buy, your business remains familiar.
Connect your marketing systems
Automation becomes even more powerful when systems work together.
Website forms, CRM platforms, email marketing systems and other business applications can potentially share information, reducing manual data entry and helping create a clearer picture of each prospect.
The right implementation depends on your existing technology and business processes, which is why automation should start with the process rather than the software.
Where could your business automate?
A useful starting point is identifying repetitive marketing and sales administration.
What does your team do every time an enquiry arrives? Which emails are repeatedly sent manually? Where is information being copied between systems?
Those processes may represent opportunities for automation.
BBI Brandboost develops digital solutions that connect websites, marketing platforms and business processes. By identifying the right opportunities to automate, SMEs can reduce repetitive administration, respond to prospects more consistently and create a marketing operation capable of generating and nurturing more opportunities without simply adding more manual work.