Being part of a startup is filled with huge growth opportunity and potential. Startups are also particularly vulnerable, though, because even the most niche startups with a very focused and motivated audience will face competition from someone at some point. Startups can reduce some of their risks by investing in marketing automation processes and software support early on in their journey.
Why does marketing automation hold such potential for startups? Because, as one Entrepreneur article notes, “It works because it allows startups to operate like much larger entities by placing accurate messaging in front of prospects and clients with a minimal amount of work.” This is the measure of good marketing in today’s business environment.
The big brand benefits your startup can get with marketing automation
Integrating automation in your marketing and growth plan can help your business in a number of ways.
1. Streamlines business and marketing operations
Startups often have a manager who is handling the marketing strategy and execution all on their own. This marketing effort is what new businesses are relying on to grow, and so it’s important to streamline and simplify the process as much as possible. Marketing technology like automation tools give startups the sophisticated tools to compete with bigger businesses and convey messaging to customers the same way your larger competitors might. It also helps s to automate your marketing decisions and keep customer communication consistent, even for startups that don’t have as much time to or as big a budget commit to marketing endeavors.
2. Creates a valuable customer database
Marketing automation helps you gather and organize information about potential and current customers. It helps you answer a lot of important business questions, such as what content are your customers interacting with? What ads do they click on? Which content drives the most sales or engagement? Having this data enables your company – no matter the size – to create detail customer journey maps and personas to help you effectively shape strategy and content going forward.
3. Higher sales
One of the strengths of marketing automation is the ability to nurture your leads. If someone clicks through to your new eCommerce website and doesn’t make a purchase, marketing automation can help you retarget those potential clients and remind them of your brand through appearing in ads on other websites they visit. If you have a customer abandon their shopping cart without checking out, marketing automation can help you reach out to those customers through email to remind them to complete their purchase or ask if they have any other questions. Nurturing customer is a key part of growing your business and closing more sales whether your business is B2B or B2C. It makes it easier and more effective to lead your potential customer to their next step by committing to communication throughout their entire buyer’s journey.
4. Saves time and money
The ability to streamline and automate marketing outreach not only saves startups and marketers time, but it can also help save money. Instead of blasting an entire market place with advertisements and content, you’re able to target the audience that is most likely to connect with your product or service. Instead of wasting time and money on huge mass marketing campaigns, you can focus on the most effective marketing methods for your audience. Plus, marketing automation gives you data and analytics options as you go along so you can tweak your strategy based on what’s receiving the most engagement from customers and save money and time by focusing on what works and not continuing to put dollars and manpower behind what doesn’t.
5. Easy to scale
Startups won’t stay startups forever. At some point, the goal is to grow business and onboard new people and complete more work to drive brand growth even more. Marketing automation solutions allow you to scale your business efforts as needed. Most automation software is cloud-based so that you can pay for the services you need now and pay for more access, storage, data, or other features down the line as your business demands the need for them.
Marketing automation makes a big difference for small business
There are of course some caveats to startups working with marketing automation. While automation marketing can absolutely help you stand out among big brands and even help you eventually see a similar level of success in some cases, it’s important to remember that if you’re a small business, many customers may be choosing your brand because of your personal touch and non-corporate feel. It’s important to not let marketing automation processes interfere with the core of your brand. It’s also important to remember that while there is a lot of time to be saved through marketing automation, it can’t be completely forgotten about. Automation is hands-off in some ways, but still requires investments in strategy and creative content assets.
Give your startup a head start by using automated marketing solutions early on and giving your customers and your business a better experience.
