Marketing Automation for Team Efficiency
Marketing automation isn’t something that takes care of all your marketing for you; it boosts your existing processes. Do you have processes? Because you can’t automate a process if one doesn’t exist…You do? Good, you’re off to a great start.
Back to basics: What is marketing automation?
Maybe it’s one of those terms you’ve heard a million times but never really thought about. No problem, that’s what I want to dig into today. Marketing automation refers to software whose primary goal is to complete marketing tasks or actions without manual effort. Don’t worry, it won’t make your marketing job irrelevant, simply more effective.
In this digital age, technology is the backbone of marketing. The ultimate goal of marketing is to generate more revenue, right? To accomplish that, we drive website traffic, convert traffic into leads, and then turn those leads into customers. Marketing automation is super impactful in the last two stages of that process – conversion and closure.
Everything from sending emails to publishing social posts can be automated. Marketing automation has the power to nurture prospects and provide highly personalized, useful content. This content, in turn, helps move leads further along their buyer journey and, ideally, turn them into loyal, delighted customers. Generally speaking, marketing automation generates new revenue and provides good return on investment (because, yes, it costs money to implement).
Check out these marketing automation examples:
- Pardot (B2B)
- Salesforce (Also have non-profit version)
- Marketo
- HubSpot
- Mailchimp (Small business email marketing)
- Constant Contact (Small business marketing solutions)
- Salsa (Non-profit software)
Why is marketing automation important?
Marketing teams worldwide are overworked and constantly seeking out opportunities to maximize ROI. Automation tools and workflows can enhance marketing efforts and help achieve more results. Small businesses or non-profits with limited staff resources can successfully run more complex marketing campaigns. Larger companies benefit from marketing automation as well, by connecting to their customers in a highly personalized way (something much too difficult to accomplish manually).
It’s a time saver!
Business owners and CMOs, you know how chaotic days can get. From an onslaught of never-ending meetings, to keeping your team on track, plus all the daily things that need your attention, it’s hard to balance it all and still put energy into making sure your marketing is successful. It can be stressful and exhausting and sometimes leaves no room for sending out emails to prospects or getting new blog content up. Marketing automation remedies this by helping you hit the right people at the right time with the right messaging.
It allows marketing teams to manage time efficiently and make the most of staff resources. A single staff member can create and execute numerous campaigns and connect with more customers. They can schedule posts for a future time and date, all at once. In one day, I’m able to create a month’s worth of social content!
Marketing automation also saves time on identifying and scoring leads while making lead nurturing easier. Connecting with each and every lead manually is, quite frankly, time consuming! Marketing automation solutions help you reach a potential lead from the first interaction. For example: I visit your company’s website. I sign up to receive your newsletter and you connect with me immediately with a welcome/confirmation message. Maybe send me a discount coupon or a survey about my preferences (so I continue to get content that is actually useful to me, personally).
It aids in consistency.
Having automated Facebook, Instagram (thank you, Instagram, for finally opening up your platform to third party integration), Twitter, and LinkedIn posts scheduled means your company’s accounts stay up-to-date. Rather than sporadically remembering to post, you are providing your audience with consistent content, which looks good! It shows your company is able to do whatever it is you do and keep up with all social media communications.
Marketing automation also makes it possible for businesses to create a consistent brand presence across multiple channels. With automation software you can expand campaigns across email, Facebook, text, and more – making it easy for people to connect with you in whatever way is convenient for them. This increases your visibility and draws in new leads.
It enables personalization.
We know that it’s all about sending the right content to the right person at the right time. Marketing automation is powerful in that it supports personalization and scaling all the existing, successful marketing efforts.
There’s no need to send a generic message to your entire email contact list because it’s just going to end up getting deleted or marked as spam. Sending highly targeted, specific content to a narrow audience is the way to go and marketing automation is there to help.
Anyone can automate.
One last great aspect of marketing automation is that you don’t need a whole lot of technical know-how to succeed. Most automated solutions available now don’t require any design or coding experience. They are full of ready-to-use templates, easy editors, and plenty of helpful education resources to guide you through the creation and distribution process.
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Remember, marketing automation is not a cure-all for your communications. It doesn’t do everything for you but it’s a great tool for amplifying the marketing tactics you have in place. If you and your team are already creating valuable content and generating traffic but are overwhelmed with leads, then your organization or company is ready for automation.
