In the digital world that we are living in, it is important for businesses to integrate all it has to offer in order to stay marketable and relevant. One such concept is Marketing Automation. It is the practical use of platforms and software for automating repetitive tasks. You use software for automating and simplifying tasks that usually take a lot of effort and time. This includes tasks like follow-up messages, sending email drip campaigns, and posting on social media. With a marketing automation strategy, you can do everything needed for improved customer relationship management. When you have the right platform for marketing automation, you can get your business organized, save a lot of time, improve the customer experience, and increase sales.
Why should you automate marketing?
If you are not sure whether you should automate marketing, here are a few reasons to help you take a stand on it:
- Personalized Customer Experience – According to a study done by Walker, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by the end of 2020. Using automated marketing, you can create a better-personalized experience for the customers. Personalization can also uplift your customer’s conversion rates.
- Scaled Marketing Campaign – You can use automation to make the marketing campaigns scalable that is beyond your team’s limits. Through an extensive campaign series, you can improve the revenue at all stages of the buying cycle.
- No Repetitive Tasks – If you are using automated marketing, your team won’t have to perform repetitive marketing tasks. With marketing automation, you will be able to see a significant improvement in sales productivity as the team will be focusing on high impact tasks.
- Track Reports – Engagebay’s Marketing automation also provides you with reporting capabilities. With this, your team will become more accountable because you will be able to check how their marketing activities are helping improve sales. Automation reduces the time your team spends on analysis and preparing reports; time that they could spend on formulating strategies for marketing.
- Generate Demand – By using Marketing Automation, you will be generating demand, driving conversions, and increasing revenue. It helps you in collecting data that can predict the next step of customers encouraging them to spend more.
How does Marketing Automation work?
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Begin with your requirements
Before Marketing automation came into the market, there were other ways in which business did things. Employees had to send each email and post on social media manually. They even used to organize group discussions focused on customer insights.
When you start using Marketing Automation, the first question that you have to answer is what you wish to accomplish. Once you have decided that, there are endless possibilities including automating surveys, analysis, and posting blogs. You can even handle content management, lead generation, and fine-tuning research.
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Know your target audience
As a business, you should know what your target market is. Your target audience includes everyone using your services or products and they are the ones benefiting by Marketing Automation. Once you know who your audience is, you have to understand them. By getting an idea of their behaviour, you will know what tasks you have to automate. Furthermore, you should also know where you can find your customers so that you can find the right marketing automation tool. Here are a few factors that can help you in understanding your target market
- Demographic – This includes characteristics like age, race, gender, career, and education.
- Geographic – This factor defines the location of the targeted audience. It is further categorized as towns, cities, states, and countries.
- Behavioural – This factor determines how a customer uses a product and responds. It can be further broken down into mood, price responsiveness, reaction to change, and brand loyalty.
- Psychographic – These factors are associated with attitudes, personalities, values, and lifestyles.
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Select the right tool
This step includes learning about the different tools available for Automated Marketing. Your tools will depend on the goals you have. You should know about each instrument’s capabilities and understand how to maximize it for your advantage. Once you have evaluated everything carefully, you can select the marketing tools that will help you achieve your goals.
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Implement and Improve
When you are implementing a new strategy, you are bringing changes to your workplace. This is bound to create some undue disruptions for some time. However, this change will also bring new ideas, better ways to handle things, and much more. Here are some factors to consider while implementing this:
- A Sound Strategy
A proper execution starts with a sound and relevant strategy. It might be hard, but definitely worth all the efforts. Without the right strategy, all efforts that you put into execution will go to waste.
- The Implementers
These are the employees responsible for putting everything into practice. The employees you put in charge of the implementation process will affect how successful your strategy is. A typical implementers’ team comprises top-level management as well as staff level.
- Open Communication
Smooth communication between the employees can make implementation a lot easier. Through Marketing Automation, there will be a proper communication channel that explains all the roles and tasks. Also, there should be a discussion of guidelines, policies, and open-mindedness of everyone involved.
- Ways of implementation
When you are implementing Marketing Automation, the company will go through different levels of change. This also includes a new way of implementing strategies.
- Intervention – Introducing new regulations and practices for making adjustments.
- Participation – Developing a corresponding approach for the current one.
- Persuasion – Convincing the participants about the results desired by implementing the strategy.
- Commitment
Without commitment, the strategy is simply a half-baked idea. If the participants are not committed or supporting, then failure is bound to happen. You must have the persistence to see the results of automation efforts.
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Monitor the progress
Once you have to implement Marketing Automation, you have to measure its effectiveness and results. Use your preset standards for monitoring your progress. You should also check how you are performing against your competitors.
When it comes to making the routine but important aspects, Marketing Automation can be a real-deal. It can help your business by building relationships, generating leads, and tracking customers. This is indeed a game-changer, especially for small businesses.
