Marketing teams face unrelenting objectives to keep up with the modern-day marketing landscape. In the fast-paced technological age, businesses with the most effective marketing strategies succeed, but marketing in a targeted way is a time-consuming process. Marketing automation makes achieving critical objectives in a timely way more plausible. Below, find out the true definition of marketing automation and what the most effective marketing automation strategy looks like.
What is Marketing Automation?
In short, marketing automation is using technology to manage certain marketing processes automatically. Automated marketing allows businesses to target their defined audience or customer with automatically delivered messages via text, email, social platforms, and the web. Thus, freeing up time and making personalized, timely engagement much more plausible and efficient.
How does marketing automation work?
Marketing automation works by using software and technology to enable content delivery in a hands-off, automated way. Mundane and repetitive tasks, normally handled by in-house marketing teams, are handled by the technology instead. For example, ad campaigns, social media posting, and email distribution could be automated. Even more importantly, this content can be delivered at personalized stages of the buying journey.
What can marketing automation do for your business?
Research indicates that marketing automation reduces marketing costs by more than 12 percent, while also driving up sales productivity by more than 14 percent. Even more poignant, 80 percent of those using marketing automation experience increased lead generation.
Marketing automation is all about simplifying the often daunting, time-consuming tasks of lead generation and customer engagement to drive sales. Oftentimes, modern-day business owners have a wealth of data and tools at their fingertips that can be effectively used for marketing purposes. However, this collected data and tools are not always put to use as effectively or efficiently as they should be in order to drive sales.
Marketing automation streamlines the efforts of the marketing team to move prospects through the buying cycle in the most effective way possible. It is not uncommon for marketing teams to struggle to manage the workload, which can mean missed opportunities to connect. For example, research indicates that 40 percent of workers spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks like entering data and sending emails. If data collection and marketing emails are automated, this frees up a substantial amount of time. However, automated tasks also mean prospects who should be engaged during certain points of the buying cycle are not overlooked.
How to get the most out of marketing automation
For the most effective marketing automation strategy, two things are most important: software and strategy. However, there are actually four key areas that must be addressed in order to gain the most value from marketing automation.
Hire a specialist
Marketing operations services are the ideal place to start when a business needs marketing automation. Even though marketing automation software is readily available, these programs are not always simple to deploy and use. Hiring a specialist means:
- Support to pick the best software solutions according to the business model
- Support while implementing new technology
- Support with marketing automation tasks and campaign creation
Choose the right technology
Define the most important goals for marketing automation. Make use of data already available about marketing, such as where lead generation is failing or how effective marketing emails are during product deployments. Use those goals and numbers to determine the best technological solutions built with the tools to make those goals possible. For instance, a company that is primarily looking for targeted digital ad generation needs software that makes this possible.
Develop a strategy
A well-developed strategy sets plans in place to weave the automated tasks into the business model. Focus on things like customer journey, potential touchpoints that need to be nurtured, and gathering contact records. Get employees in sync and prepared to make use of the new software.
Deliver content appropriate to the buyer’s journey
Create a content strategy. While tasks like email and social posts may be automated, it is still up to the business to create content that drives leads and conversions. With the more mundane aspects of marketing handled by automation technology, the marketing team can focus on things like ad creation, drafting enticing emails, and targeting buyers with content most appropriate to the buyer’s journey. Build an extensive content library with interesting and relevant messaging useful at different times.
Analyze efficacy along the way
Once a strategy is deployed with the new technology in place, take the time to see what is working. Dig into analytical data and reports to see which automated processes are garnering leads, which processes are converting prospects into sales, and more. From here, make adjustments and changes to the marketing strategy for the best return.
Ready to learn more about marketing automation?
Are you interested in learning more about marketing automation strategy and how it could benefit your business? We offer free strategy audits at FounderScale. Contact us today to get the conversation started.
