Are you a Canadian SME owner looking to grow your business and wondering which technology and automation is best for your business? In this guide, you will learn more about how the right marketing technology + effective sales processes can automate functions within your business and support your revenue goals.
The ultimate outcome for using any technology in your business is will this new investment help drive revenue growth, will it help you scale, and/or will it help you make a bigger impact?
We don’t want to implement technology for technology’s sake – we need it to be a part of the bigger goal around automation of the key processes in your business so you can drive more sales. Let’s start with some basic information about marketing technology.
WHAT IS MARKETING AUTOMATION?
Marketing Automation involves using software tools to streamline marketing tasks such as email marketing, social media advertising, and lead generation.
You want to use technology to do the heavy lifting for you by scheduling regular and consistent nurture campaigns where you can educate your potential customers in all the places they hang out using a variety of methods to reach them.
With automation, you can save time, improve efficiency, and increase revenue.
WHAT IS CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy that focuses on building and maintaining strong relationships with customers.
- By using CRM software, you can track customer interactions, manage prospects through the buying cycle, and provide personalized experiences. It can help you:
- Improve customer satisfaction and retention
- Collect data on your customers, such as their contact information, store buying history, and manage preferences
- Use that data to personalize your communication and sales pitches.
The real magic happens when both marketing automation and customer relationship software work together executing strategic campaigns to transform prospects into customers.
You can streamline your sales and marketing processes, gather valuable customer insights, and deliver personalized campaigns that resonate with your audience.
3 KEY REASONS BUSINESSES CHOOSE MARKETING TECHNOLOGY
Creating Long-term Value: it becomes very expensive, very quickly to manually create, send and respond to emails in order to educate your prospects as they begin to look for answers to a problem they have. There is initial investment to create the business processes and implement the technology but the payoff window is very short; and you will quickly see more qualified prospects once you set up your perpetual marketing engine.
Exploring vs Educating: without a specific strategy in place, you may be in the early phase of exploring technology to understand how it can help you. In this phase you can self-serve content that helps you understand what business automation software can do. Once you are educated on the benefits, you are ready for conversations with vendors & implementation specialists to get a better understanding of how the technology will work specifically for your business.
Readying to scale: by that we mean you know the answers to key questions like what is your total addressable market? What types of customers buy from you? Why do they buy? You have done your research and know more about what you need the technology to do for your business so you can scale and grow.
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO GET STARTED?
You want to begin with building your plan, mapping out where you want to be, and the specific technology and process changes that need to be made. This roadmap gives you the direction needed to reach your revenue goals.
We begin with conversations on your market, your ideal customer, what is working today for your marketing efforts and where we see gaps that need to be addressed.
HOW DOES MARKETING AUTOMATION SOFTWARE HELP?
You use Marketing Automation to get your message to prospects about how you help solve problems they face by creating content that provides answers to all the questions prospects have. You then share this content in a systematic way in all the places your prospects might want to educate themselves.
HOW DOES CRM SOFTWARE FIT?
Once your prospects are ready to discuss and consider more seriously purchasing your products/services/solutions, they are ready to move from leads in your marketing automation to prospects in your CRM where you can introduce a more personalized process for building a relationship with them. Ultimately, this is where your prospects become customers.
HOW CAN ZOHO HELP?
Enter #Zoho, an all-in-one platform that offers Marketing Automation, CRM, and other business tools.
With Zoho, you can automate your marketing campaigns, manage your sales pipeline, and provide exceptional customer service. It’s the perfect solution for Canadian SME owners who want to improve their business processes and grow their revenue.
Zoho CRM allows you to create and send targeted email campaigns, track website visitors, and score leads based on their engagement and behavior. And with Zoho Desk, you can provide multichannel support to your customers, track their issues, and measure your performance.
To conclude, Marketing Automation and CRM are crucial strategies for Canadian SME owners looking to stay ahead in today’s business landscape. By using Zoho, you can streamline these strategies and achieve even greater results.
Zoho’s all-in-one platform can help you save time, reduce costs, and improve your customer experience. Our consultants for zoho crm are always ready for your assistance to provide technical, reliable, and instant solutions.
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC?
This guide is inspired by this video. It is a quick chat with Shiraz Siddique of the CanadianSME Small Business Magazine and Kira Tchernikovsky, Co-Founder and CMO of Customerization where they discuss marketing automation and CRM.
