© Weekend Pictures Inc. |: Getty Images Weekend Pictures Inc. |: fake picturesIn recent years, marketing automation has quickly become a key tool in the technology stack for organizations, including small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), to expand sales channels, improve customer service, and increase revenue. In fact, by law in 2022. In customer relationship management studies, SMB owners report that implementing marketing software and other innovative technologies such as CRM increases sales and business productivity, customer satisfaction and retention, marketing reach, and company growth and revenue. With marketing automation applications opening up markets and growing businesses worldwide, it's no surprise that the global marketing automation market will reach a new high of $5.2 billion in 2022, according to Markets and Markets.
The ability to streamline and streamline a wide range of marketing efforts, including email marketing, content marketing and SEO, has enabled SMB owners to remain competitive amid the unprecedented challenges of recent years, which have resulted in global lockdowns, shrinking job markets and persistent inflation. Additionally, 2023 is the year for SMB owners to continue to push marketing automation to learn how to best optimize their technology and business processes to stay competitive while staying ahead of the competition.
Here are four marketing automation trends that SMBs should embrace in 2023.
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1. Provide funnel-optimized content
Today's customers don't just want a personalized experience, they expect it. In a recent McKinsey survey, 71% of consumers expect companies to offer personalized interactions. Personalized customer experiences have long been an area of opportunity for SMBs, and the explosion of digital channels and changes in the consumer web won't change that. In 2023, adding a customer's name to the subject line of an email or a discount email. But with the right marketing automation tools in place, marketers can gain the knowledge and tools to respond appropriately to the right audience .
By tracking customer website and email interactions and other content resources through marketing automation, SMBs can identify pain points and needs of different customers. It helps marketers understand what content resonates with audiences and allows them to adjust text, images or frequency across marketing channels to improve engagement metrics. Additionally, agents can use sales and customer service data to gain a deeper understanding of customer needs.
Armed with this knowledge, SMBs can better segment different audiences and scale different automated email workflows with relevant content and formats that are proven to appeal to that audience. Then, with the right marketing automation software, teams can create responses that automatically send additional funnel-optimized content based on how prospects interact with that email. Automation allows SMBs to target relevant content in the form of webinars, white papers, video content or on-demand follow-up calls and meetings. It allows small marketing teams with limited resources to guide prospects through the entire sales journey in a fraction of the time.
2. Provide opportunity for strategic decision-making
The appeal of marketing automation software to SMBs began with the technology's ability to improve marketing reach. However, today's SMBs must understand and utilize the vast amount of data their marketing software collects. Data-driven businesses are 3x more likely to improve strategic decisions, the ability to collect valuable data and capitalize on it will be top of mind for SMB owners in 2023.
With marketing automation, SMBs can easily track activity across different communication channels. This allows teams to not only gather insights into customer behavior, but also track how different campaigns and marketing messages are resonating with target audiences. And powerful marketing automation platforms have testing tools like A/B testing that marketers can use to fine-tune and fine-tune their email and web messaging and campaign designs. By tracking data and testing marketing automation, SMBs can streamline data analysis and improve decision-making with insights.
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3. Increase lead generation and nurturing
Generating and nurturing effective leads are critical aspects of business growth and sales. Lead nurturing (once a labor-intensive endeavor) has become a streamlined process thanks to marketing automation.
With automated tools, SMBs can eliminate time-consuming and repetitive manual tasks in all aspects, especially in the sales funnel. With intuitive marketing automation platforms, even a novice designer can easily create high-converting, engaging landing pages for customer emails. to collect emails and phone numbers.
SMBs looking to take their acquisition to the next level can integrate their marketing automation with customer relationship management (CRM) software. This allows teams to further eliminate manual work and improve customer interactions by automatically presenting and targeting pre-determined information and automating profiling and scoring based on potential behaviors.
4. Creation of integrated omnichannel marketing
Integrating marketing automation with CRM will not only help clients generate leads in 2023, it will also provide them with the functionality they need to successfully implement multi-channel marketing.
Omnichannel campaigns often fail due to a lack of consistency between channels and target groups. By integrating marketing automation and CRM, SMBs create a unified flow of information across all areas of the business. The combination of data aggregation and automation will pave the way for SMBs to increase revenue while maintaining a consistent user experience across each of their marketing channels.
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To increase their success in 2022, SMBs must take the next step in their digital journey, starting with marketing automation. By following Marketing Automation Trends 2023 and expanding their knowledge of marketing automation capabilities, SMBs will expand their footprint, increase revenue, and drive business growth.
