Marketing automation could give a leg up to SMEs because they can now modify sophisticated automation software easily – and to tremendous effect, says Larry Kotch. Could we be heading for the age of the automated SME?
Marketing automation has the power to create a massive difference in the fortunes of companies by levelling the playing field. Imagine if a company could have 100 times more quality conversations with its potential customers while spending less money and time on marketing.
This extra boost could be a massive help to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which had, until the turn of the millennium, been unable to compete with larger businesses that could out spend them on commercial advertising with brute force.
Marketing automation could give a leg up to SMEs because they can now modify sophisticated automation software easily – and to tremendous effect; whereas larger businesses tend to focus on enterprise solutions that do not necessarily offer the same relative advantage.
The latest figures by the ONS already show a large increase in mid-size companies and a much slower increase of Large businesses and it is predicted that this trend will continue.
It is always assumed in popular culture that AI and robotics will replace human beings, favouring large multinational corporates but could marketing automation be the key driver of an SME takeover?
What is marketing automation
Marketing automation refers to the tools and processes that companies use to streamline and amplify their marketing activities by using one central system.
Companies will pre-load content, emails, and ads to trigger when new contacts or prospects meet certain criteria. Take the example of an accountancy business selling services to both contractors and SMEs.
They will appeal to these two groups in fundamentally different ways since each group is affected by or interested in different laws, taxes, and accounting services. Therefore, the accountancy business can run ads to each discrete group and send the converted leads to a database powered my Automation such as HubSpot or Pardot.
In the database the contact would enter as either ‘contractor’ or ‘SME’ and would trigger a series of bespoke email conversations each week about the issues that concerned each different group. At some point the system would monitor the leads in the database and track their interactions with emails, web pages, social media posts and online ads, sending them to the relevant purchasing pages when it is clear they are hot leads and ready to transact.
The benefit of this approach is that any SME, using these tools, can have a set stream of content that arrives in front of each prospect precisely when it’s needed – relevant to their specific needs or concerns – and can tell the SME when the prospect is ready to purchase – thus leading it down the sales funnel without human intervention.
The result is a steady stream of hot leads that are already well educated in what the vendor provides, what the pricing will be and why the company’s solutions are better than others. Once the prospect converts to become a customer, marketing automation kicks in again, monitoring the contact for signs on when an upsell is appropriate.
This can increase the return on advertising greatly by making full use of each contact generated by the marketing team.
The benefit to SMEs
The most popular marketing automation tools i.e. HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo and Mailchimp are designed for use in companies with less that 250 employees.
The reason for this is complexity. Eventually once a company exceeds this headcount number they tend to go down an enterprise resource planning system, that is to say bespoke systems that cater to their specific processes which includes sales and marketing but also the recruitment, operations, accounting, and procurement departments. So while SMEs may not have an entirely joined up system across the entire business units, they do have an advanced automation system where it counts – customer acquisition.
Another way to look at the benefit is to consider the law of averages. It is a common sales theory that states with any product or service, the number of successful sales is linked to activity.
For example – If you knock on 100 doors then on average X will buy your product. Similarly, if you send 10,000 emails every month you can expect the law of averages to produce X amount of enquiries or leads. The value of X is increased by personalising your offer and the number of doors is increased by using automation. By maximising the number of quality conversations an SME business can have with potential customers, it brings their law of average in line with the bigger businesses they compete with.
The zero sum game
While each industry usually has many suppliers and many potential customers, a key driver in vendor selection is the effectiveness and timeliness of the vendor’s advertising.
Marketing automation allows a firm to advertise and communicate round the clock in the most personalised way to potential customers. Having smart automation is becoming the deciding factor in how well a business can attract, educate, and convert prospects through its sales funnel and the comparison between non automated businesses and automated businesses will only increase as time goes on. If a business is still using Excel or a static CRM then it is hard to compete with such an advanced system used by a competitor.
Each year there are only a set of consumer transactions in a given industry that can take place, it is zero sum, therefore the more prospects that sit in a company’s database receiving the right information at the right time the more that company stands a chance of winning market share.
The age of the automated SME
While there are many confounding factors in the future developments of the economy, especially to do with AI and job automation more broadly, clearly there is trouble brewing for the companies who do not adapt to Automation.
Gartner’s recent report showed that the top priority for CEOs in all businesses was growth, with nearly 60% struggling to generate enough quality leads. SMEs can use increasingly simple automation tools to challenge even the most well-funded industry giants and leave their SME competition in the dust. We all know that the machines are coming to replace us, and we know that lead generation is the hottest item on the agenda. It just so happens that SMBs have an opportunity to plug into the new system (like one of Elon Musk’s Neuralink patients) and take their business, and humanity one giant leap forward.
Larry Kotch is the founder of Lead Generation Agency The Brains and also Founder of Brainy Capital. He was recently voted #3 in B2B Marketing 30 under 30 and has an active YouTube channel called Brainy Marketing.
