Many of you may have heard of the term
MA (marketing automation)
. However, there are many people who are worried that they do not know what MA is or when they should specifically introduce it. By implementing MA, you can communicate regularly with potential customers and make effective approaches, which has the advantage of increasing revenue.
This article provides an overview of MA and its main functions. We will also explain the benefits of introducing it, so please refer to it.
What is MA (Marketing Automation)?
Marketing
activities refer to comprehensive activities to create a market by conducting market research and customer research. Marketing is a very important process. MA is a tool that visualizes and automates this activity. Therefore, by introducing MA, it is possible to “improve business efficiency” and “perform accurate analysis.”
Main functions of MA (Marketing Automation)
From here, we will explain the main features of MA. First, let’s take a look at the functions included in a typical MA.
lead management
The word “lead” in the lead management function means “prospective customer.” Prospective customers have the potential to become your customers, so you need to approach them proactively. The lead management function is a function that allows you to centrally manage information on various prospective customers obtained from your company’s website,
email newsletter
, seminars, landing pages, etc.
You can manage customer information by freely setting attributes such as gender, residence, and age. This allows you to approach each person individually, increasing the likelihood that they will become your customers.
scoring
Scoring, as the name suggests, refers to scoring and giving points to customers. By visualizing the level of interest in your company’s products and services, you can easily understand the level of customer interest. For example, if you visit your company’s website, you will receive +1 point, and if you request information, you will receive +10 points. By using
cookies
using the lead function mentioned earlier, it is possible to continuously track a single customer, making scoring possible.
campaign management
Campaign management refers to implementing various approaches to prospective customers based on scenarios, managing and verifying the results, and inviting them to the next campaign. Specifically, you can approach potential customers with a score of 50 or higher in the scoring above by automatically displaying a campaign coupon as a pop-up when they open your company’s website. Deciding on actions to attract customers in this way is called campaign management.
email marketing
Email marketing is the act of communicating with customers and promoting sales activities by sending them emails. Create an email distribution list based on prospective customers’ demographic information such as their residence, age, gender, etc. We then send out emails for the purpose of attracting customers to events, announcing new products, and cultivating brand fans. Although SNS has become popular in recent years, email is still frequently used, so this method is unique.
Relationship between MA (Marketing Automation) and the market
Did you know that the market size of MA tools is expanding year by year? The adoption rate of companies, both large and small, is increasing. The MA market size is expected to reach approximately 74 billion yen by 2025. From here, I will explain why MA has become in demand, from the perspective of its relationship with the market.
More and more situations are becoming difficult with traditional sales methods
With the spread of the Internet in recent years, the points of contact customers have with products and services have changed. It has become difficult to obtain lead customers using traditional sales methods such as walk-ins and tele-appointments. This is because in recent years, it has become easy to look up information about the products you want on the web, so it is difficult to get inquiries unless the user says, “I want it!”
Additionally, as the market has matured in recent years, it is necessary to take an approach that is tailored to each customer. Therefore, an increasing number of companies are aiming to improve marketing efficiency and maximize results by introducing MA that can perform customer analysis and sales analysis.
Advantages of introducing MA (Marketing Automation)
By implementing MA, you can enjoy various benefits. From here, we will explain the benefits of implementing MA.
Able to efficiently develop prospective customers
Many companies have a large amount of lead information obtained from their websites, email newsletters, seminars, landing pages, etc. However, very few companies are able to centrally manage this information. If each lead information is dispersed, it cannot be used effectively, but if you use MA tools, you can centrally manage lead information.
By managing this information in an integrated manner, you can analyze and track lead customers’ contact with your company and their subsequent actions. By scoring each customer, you can make an approach that is more tailored to each customer. In other words, the strength of MA is that you can nurture lead customers who are likely to become your own customers without overlooking them and develop them into your own customers.
You can dig up leads.
Using MA tools, you can not only approach lead customers, but also reach past lead customers. You can discover customers who have been overlooked in the past, but who may actually become fans of your brand. If you can approach such customers again, you will be able to acquire new customers for your company.
Improving brand value
You can increase the value of your brand by building relationships with your customers. If you can build a relationship of trust with your customers, their loyalty to your company will increase (customer loyalty). Traditionally, advertising was aimed at the masses through TV commercials and advertisements, but in recent years, with the advent of social media, it has become possible to advertise to individuals.
In other words, we are living in an era where one-to-one communication tailored to each individual can be implemented. By providing the most appropriate information for customers and fostering high engagement, a company’s brand value will increase.
Able to analyze and improve marketing measures
Marketing is a process in which it is extremely difficult to see the results unless everything is visualized, as it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of marketing measures due to the complexity of the points of contact between customers and products and the purchase scene. However, by using MA, each process can be visualized, so marketing measures can be analyzed.
Improving sales productivity
In today’s world, purchasing needs have become more complex and the market has matured, making it difficult to achieve results if you use traditional walk-in sales methods. However, if you can visualize the points of contact between customers and products and services, you will be able to conduct effective sales tailored to each individual.
How to choose MA (Marketing Automation)
As mentioned above, we have explained that MA has various benefits. Considering these benefits, implementing MA can be said to be a prudent decision. However, MA tools are polarized into cheap and expensive ones. This means that while some are free to use, many have monthly fees and initial installation costs.
Many have monthly fees or initial installation costs.
Some MAs can be used for free, but when it comes to full-scale implementation, there are many that incur monthly fees and initial installation costs.
For example, “List Finder” is a representative MA tool produced in Japan. This is known for its affordable price, with an initial cost of 100,000 yen and a minimum monthly fee of 39,800 yen. Also, in the case of “Synergy!”, which is also made in Japan, the initial cost is 118,000 yen and the monthly cost is from 15,000 yen, so you can see that both have running costs.
The improvement rate per year is often insufficient for startups.
Landing pages for MA tools often claim that sales will improve by 150% in one year. However, while it may be true that sales have increased by introducing MA tools, in most cases there are invisible indirect costs such as budgets for measures.
In addition to implementing it, how will we proceed with its operation? A certain amount of human resources and time are required for operation, such as planning, regular email creation and analysis. For this reason, although MA has been introduced, it often ends up becoming an email delivery tool.
In other words, implementing MA does not necessarily result in results; rather, it is more important to secure a budget that can efficiently utilize the analysis and policy proposals obtained through MA. In addition, even if you say 150% improvement in one year, it often feels like an unsatisfactory number for startups.
Companies with financial strength can use MA to further increase sales.
If you have financial strength, you can use MA to analyze and spend more money on subsequent improvements compared to a startup. As a result, companies with a lot of capital enter a cycle of further increasing their money, so MA tools with high quality and fees can be used by companies with financial strength, but startups with little capital can only use the minimum MA tools. Masu.
Can inexpensive MA tools produce results?
Even cheap MA tools will not fail to produce results. However, more expensive tools have more features and can analyze more items. Therefore, it can be said that expensive tools are more likely to lead to results than inexpensive tools, as they have a wider range of measures that can be implemented. Startups with limited financial resources should first identify their bottlenecks. We recommend introducing an MA tool that is equipped with the minimum functions that can improve this.
Summary: Achieve maximum results with MA (Marketing Automation)
In this article, we have provided an overview of MA and the benefits of introducing it. When introducing MA, it is necessary to accurately determine what kind of functions the MA should have, taking into consideration the company’s funds. In order to introduce the optimal MA, why not first identify the bottlenecks in your company?