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Inbound Marketing Blog

What is Marketing Automation and How to Do it Successfully

Posted by Stacie Chalmers on 25-May-2017 07:03:00

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We’ve all had those days; you know the ones where we are so busy we don’t have time to grab a takeaway cappuccino let alone get through a massive to-do list that gets bigger every minute? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. That’s probably what your day looks like more often than not. However, the world is a wonderful place that seems to churn out advanced technological innovations every day. One of the innovations that we particularly love is marketing automation. 

Marketing automation is exactly what it sounds like. It’s software that was created with the goal of automating everyday marketing actions. Most marketing teams spend a good chunk of their day automating repetitive tasks like emails, social media and other website actions. However, the beauty of marketing automation is that it makes these tasks significantly easier.

We’re going to jump straight into explaining everything you need to know about marketing automation and how to successfully implement it into your campaigns.

What is marketing automation?

As we mentioned above, marketing automation is software that automates your marketing for you. Marketing automation essentially helps you manage your tasks and carry them out in a more efficient way. It also helps marketers streamline lead gen campaigns, segmentation, customer retention, marketing ROI measurement and more. Sounds good, right?

Yet, some people worry that marketing automation will make their job as a marketer irrelevant. This is far from the truth! Marketing automation merely helps you free up time in your day without compromising the quality of your content.

As you know, the goal of marketing is to generate revenue for your company. This includes driving traffic to your website, converting it into leads and closing leads into customers. The value of marketing automation really shines in during the nurturing phase to help you close more customers. Let’s look at how to use marketing automation.

Using marketing automation

You probably use email marketing to nurture your leads and stay top of mind, right? A lot of marketers do. But oftentimes, you’re wasting time and money marketing to people who aren’t interesting in what you’re communicating, or you’re sending potential customers running for the hills as you cram up their inbox with untimely messages. This is not a very effective marketing tactic, but here is where things get interesting with marketing automation. 

Marketing automation provides you with the ability to nurture leads throughout the entire buying process. How? By delivering targeted, personalised messages that cleverly communicate the specific issues or topics they’re interested in, or that may be preventing them from buying.

Nobody likes to receive generic, cookie-cutter emails. Today, buyers want to be spoken to on a personal level. They want to feel like you understand them and their needs. This is the crux of marketing automation: providing you with the ability to target contacts and offer them content tailored to their specific behaviour.

There is a lot of noise out there with many companies consistently trying to sell, sell, sell their product or ideas. The thing is, people don’t want to be sold to. They want relevant content that aligns with what they need. And, if you can tap into these needs and tailor your content accordingly, well, you’re much more likely to convert them into a loyal customer. 

 

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Why is marketing automation so important?

Marketing automation will not only optimise your time but also it will improve the relevancy of your marketing message to people – improving their experience with your brand. 

The incredible thing about marketing automation and what makes it so important is that with each step, you can monitor any measure how the system you have in place is performing. This then allows you to make any changes you might need to get better results. 

Common features and functions of marketing automation systems

Marketing automation offers a wide range of features and functions, making the success and ROI of your marketing campaigns that much better. These include: 

  • Email marketing
  • Landing pages
  • Campaign management
  • Engagement management
  • Lead prediction and scoring
  • Social media marketing
  • Mobile marketing
  • Marketing analytics 

The key to successfully implementing marketing automation

There are so many factors that contribute to a successful marketing automation system. It’s a huge topic and a lot can be said about it. However, for the sake of keeping things short and succinct, there are two key ideas you should keep in mind when developing a strategy that balances and grows as your customers evolve.  

Firstly, marketing automation does not do marketing and lead generation for you. You still need to do that work. However, what it does do is scale your marketing efforts. When implementing a strategy, your first step should always be to generate quality leads by creating relevant and helpful content that aligns with your  buyers’ sales process.

Secondly, it improves the customer experience with your brand. You should align your marketing communications with your buyers’ sales process not your business objectives. Remember they are a real human and have a voice online – they too are an influencer of your brand to their network. Ensure that each touch point with your leads is relevant to what they’re looking for, when they’re looking for it.   

Choosing the right marketing automation provider

There are a few excellent marketing automation providers out there, all with different features and capabilities. When choosing a provider, it is important that you choose the software and company that suits your business and its goals. G2Crowd wrote a good article on the best marketing automation software which you can read here.

Other Articles You May Find Helpful:

Topics: Lead Nurturing, Marketing Automation, Get Customers

 

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