Running a start-up, and everything that comes with it, is a complicated affair. There are multiple complex elements that need attention at all times and this probably has to happen with quite a small number of staff and limited resources. Marketing, whilst vital to the success and survival of any new business, can be tough to master in the age of ever changing technology that has gained the moniker of ‘martech’.

Marketing technology holds enormous potential for start-ups in the form of marketing automation. Adopting and implementing this technology successfully can give your businesses a competitive edge at a time when it’s most needed.

It is important to remember that whilst automaton is there to make marketing processes easier to implement, it should not replace the personal element in your small business – rather lend a helpinghand to make marketing more effective. Below are five ways that marketing automation can help your start up succeed.

• Create a Valuable Database

Data is extremely valuable, particularly when it goes beyond contacts. The more data you are able to gather about your customers the more you can tailor your business offering to target them effectively. Knowing how to approach potential and existing customers will assist you in making better decisions with regards to growing your start up.

Marketing automation can help to determine elements to target your customer base with, some of these are tone and style of language, best time to send out emails, product recommendations, and more. By segmenting your audience through the use of data your business will gain invaluable insights about customer journeys and optimisation.

• Turn Leads Into Sales

Nurturing leads is essential for a new business, but it can get lost in the midst of all the other moving parts. Surprisingly, this crucial part of business development is sometimes not afforded enough attention; Harvard Business Review found that 23% of leads are never followed up and this translates to loss of revenue.

To avoid your leads getting lost in the internet’s ether, marketing automation can help. By setting up a feedback trigger on first customer contact, your business can feel assured that no lead goes uncaptured whilst assisting with scheduling so that all information can be accessed easily when needed.

• Save on Resources

Marketing automation does usually come with sizable initial costs (good software is never cheap) but this is easy to justify long term. Just think of how much time your marketing staff can save if many of the more repetitive and previously manual tasks can be automated – that’s lead follow ups, emails, offers, etc.

Sometimes this can be the difference between hiring a junior staff member to look after these processes or giving your core staff tools to effectively implement it themselves. Marketing automation software can also help with content suggestions whilst evaluating its potential effectiveness.

• Make Data Comprehensible

We’ve touched on this in the first point, but it bares reiterating that data is extremely valuable to any start up. This is easy to implement if you have a dedicated marketer with data knowledge however, in reality, 47% of small business owners handle the entirety of the marketing duties by themselves. Besides taking a crash course in marketing and data, investing in the right type of marketing automation software will be much more effective and reliable long term.

Companies like BlueVenn offer simple to use platforms that bring together swathes of data and customer profiles in accessible and simple ways. Unifying online and offline data, merging and auditing, even pulling reports, can all be done with ease and without extensive expertise needed. It’s a way of accessing and understanding your target market on a daily basis, saving you precious time and money.

• Scalability

One of the many advantages of automation is its scalability. As your business grows, so can the uses and scope of the software, supporting you at all stages of the start up growth process. This is what makes automation software a great investment from the start, usually you only pay for the current number of contacts and can adjust accordingly as your business experiences growth.

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