If you want to maximise your return on investment (ROI) and achieve the best results from your marketing efforts, you need to use the right technology.
One of the most useful pieces of technology is marketing automation. It has the ability to increase the value and impact of your content to the audience. It can also increase your conversion rates, push for repeat purchases and enhance customer experience.
Read more about marketing automation in this blog post and discover how you can implement it in your business.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is simply the automation of tasks which were once done manually. This can include activities such as management of your social media profiles, mailing list segregation, split testing of landing pages, lead scoring and other activities.
There are a number of different options available on the market which offer all of these or a selection of activities. For example Hootsuite, Twitter Adder and Social Sprout are examples of some of the social media automating tools your business could take advantage of.
Market automation is a big market. In 2010, it was worth $3.2 billion and it is expected to grow 50% by 2015 to $4.8 billion. There are new companies and software packages coming onto the market all the time as well, so constantly refreshing your knowledge of the market and how it can relate to you is important.
What Are The Benefits Of Automating Your Marketing?
Marketing automation can save considerable time for your business. Just using a scheduler for your social media can allow you to save hours of work per week. It can also support the quality of your content by forcing you to write the content all at once and giving you time to check and double check, knowing you aren’t under a time constraint to get the content out.
Other areas of marketing automation can save your business time. For instance list segregation based on a few pre-written criteria can save you from manually from going through your email list and making changes.
Another benefit is the flexibility which automation offers you. If the process is automatic you don’t have to be physically pushing out the content or generating reports at the right time. This allows you to do other work or to write the content when you have time and set it to go at a future date.
This benefit is particularly important as consumers like to see consistency in your marketing campaigns. Automation allows you to stick to that consistency so customers know when to expect new content from you.
What Are The Key Questions For Marketing Automation?
With so many potential partners in the market it can be difficult to select the best option for your business.
If you are looking for a program which allows you to post content at a pre-set time, so you can move forward onto other tasks, then a social media management system might be best for you. However, if you are looking for something that can respond to actions happening on your profiles, websites, etc., then you might need something more complicated.
The end result you are looking for is something to consider. Are you looking to increase your sales and revenue or to save time and therefore personnel costs?
There is also the question of costs and the time you are willing to put into using the system. Some content management systems provide free scheduling and some basic statistical analysis. Others there are charges for. Some really advanced programs can be very expensive, but their rewards are just as high. Determining how much you can afford and what you are willing to spend is an important factor.
Armed with these answers, you can then start to narrow down your choices.
Some of the Best Ways To Use Automation
There are a number of possible implementations of automation for your business. Some of them complete analysis so you can learn more about your customers; others are about releasing content when it best suits your customers. Here are some of the interesting ways in which you can use automation in your marketing activities.
1. Smart Lead Forms To Build Audience Profiles
The uptake rate of long lead capture forms is often low. If your form has 10 or more fields you are likely losing out on some customer details. Some market automation allows you to build a profile slowly of your audience, each time they interact with your brand, more information is collected.
This allows you to narrow the content you are providing to items which are of specific interest to your customers as you learn more about them.
2. Lead Scoring
If you want to know whether a lead is high profile, you can set up a system where a pre-determined set of criteria is checked against the records of a client. When a significantly high enough score is calculated that contact is made a priority with contact details passed on to other parts of the marketing system.
3. Auto-responder series
Actions which take place on landing pages can then be placed into an auto-responder series of emails. These emails are sent at a specific time from the moment they first interacted with the content. Auto-responder emails have a good conversion rate, and once the emails are written and the time frame uploaded, require little maintenance.
4. Build The Relationship Past The Point Of Sale
Don’t stop with your marketing once you have achieved the first sale. You need to continue to be in contact with your clients: up-selling, cross selling and getting them to recommend you to their peers. The latter is particularly important as consumers trust the advice and recommendations of their friends and family and many make purchases based on those recommendations.
Encouraging reviews on sites also supports your SEO which can increase your rank on web pages.
These are just a few of the applications that can be set up through automation.
Conclusion
Marketing automation can save you time and drive flexibility into your business marketing processes. Many automation processes can also offer substantial returns in the forms of market intelligence, increased revenue and diverse marketing opportunities. As such, every business should be using automation in at least some part of their marketing.
Action Steps:
- Expose the business processes you spend a lot of manual time on.
- Decide which of them you would like to have automated in your marketing processes.
- Look at the options available for your business and decide on the best options to suit your goals and budget.
- Start implementing automation in your marketing processes.
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