If you’re a marketer and reading this, you’re probably one of the many people that are looking to automate marketing tasks so they can spend more time on more important things. Good for you! Marketing automation is a powerful tool that can take your marketing and business management skills to the next level.
However, before you start asking yourself why the world would ever need another app called “Marketing Automation” (answer: just about every business), let me explain what marketing automation does and doesn’t do for you. In this article, I will list down some best practices for using marketing automation tools to reach your goals and make the most out of every opportunity.
If you’re looking to improve your marketing workflow and make the most of every opportunity, read on!
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is the use of automation to boost your marketing efforts. It is the process of automating processes and tasks that are usually done by hand to increase efficiency and make time for more important things.
Automation makes it possible to scale back on your marketing efforts so you can focus on growing your business. Marketing Automation is a two-fold process. On the one hand, you first need to understand your audience and what they want.
Then, you need to create a marketing plan tailored toward them. And last but not least, you need to automate as many parts of your marketing plan as possible.
Why is Marketing Automation Important?
Marketing Automation helps many business owners increase their revenue. It allows them to focus more on what they do best by automating the rest. Marketing automation also allows marketers to save time and money by automating the entire marketing process.
They can save themselves the trouble of having to manually respond to every customer concern, respond to every media inquiry, or track down each lead. In short, marketing automation improves your business by automating the things that would normally be done by hand.
Marketing Automation Tips
If you’re reading this article, you’re probably wondering what marketing automation tips you can give to make the most out of every opportunity. Here are a few tips to get you started:
Find the Right Automation Tool
There are many different types of automation. Some of them are for monitoring endpoints (such as your server health or current load), some are for managing processes (such as Latin-to-English translation or email archiving), and others are for creating digital experiences (such as customer onboarding software).
1. Start With Email Marketing
Marketers that are new to email marketing should start with the basics. Email marketing is a mix of technology and creativity. It is not only about sending emails but about creating an email marketing strategy and having an overall marketing plan for your business.
First things first. You need to set up an email marketing campaign and a marketing automation platform. You can use Google Apps for email marketing or any other email marketing software. You can also use tools such as Hubspot’s Content Marketing Automation or Wunderlich’s Email Marketing.
2. Personalize the Customer Experience
One of the best ways to make your customers feel special when they purchase your product or services is to personalize the experience. When a customer first walks into your office, your marketing team will want to make that customer feel at home.
This can be as simple as taking your secretary’s advice and hiring a few locals to help out with your marketing. By personalizing the experience, your customers will feel more relaxed, informed, and confident in your company. This will lead to more sales and referrals, which will in turn make your company more profitable.
3. Nurture Sales Leads
Another way to make the most of every opportunity is to nurture your sales leads. This is the process of keeping your salespeople happy by giving them the tools to build appointments, get customers, and close deals.
By planning out a routine for your salespeople so they don’t feel stressed and confused about how to close a deal, you’ll boost their revenue and get more leads into the funnel.
Streamline Your Social Media Presence
As a business develops, it will start to interact with more and more people. As such, it is important to build and maintain social media followings. However, building and managing social media pages can be time-consuming and require significant skill and expertise.
As a marketing automation engineer, you can streamline the process by creating social media automation apps. These apps will help you create microsites, manage social media presences, and engage with audiences on social media.
4. Build Your List
The best marketing automation tools have a “rich list” feature. This means that you can easily create email campaigns or social media presences with just a few clicks. If you’ve ever tried to create a custom list for a certain service or product, you know how frustrating and time-consuming it can be.
With a rich list, however, the process is drastically simplified. All you have to do is enter the relevant details about your business and/or products, and the tool will automatically create a rich list for you. You can easily create multiple lists with different settings to reach different target audiences.
5. Automate the Right Content
As you expand your marketing efforts, you will start to notice a difference in your revenue and customer satisfaction. Customers will start to notice the difference when they are first made aware of your product.
This is when your marketing automation strategy must be tailored towards this transition. You can use automation to create content that is specific to your market.
For example, you can create videos that explain your company’s benefits to your existing and potential customers. You can also create blog posts that are specific to your product or service and include useful information for your customers.
6. Follow Up With Customers
After a customer purchases your products or services, the first thing you should do is offer them a free trial or promotion. This is a prime opportunity to reach new customers and get them on the path to purchasing your products or services.
This is the best time to reach out to existing customers and ask them how they feel about the product. You can also get customer feedback on how they found your brand or website in general.
7. Have Some Creative Fun
Automation is often a serious business. It requires you to think about how your business works and what is required to make it work. That’s where automation comes into the picture. You can use it to create digital experiences that engage your customers and bring them back again and again.
Zapier Marketing Automation Platform
If you’re not quite ready to make a full switch to the new year yet, we’ve got some great news for you. We’ve found the perfect marketing automation platform to help you reach your goals.
Zapier is a powerful collaboration of businesses that allows you to create seamless integrations between apps. It helps you automate tasks such as sending email campaigns, managing your CRM, sending/receiving push notifications, triggering events, and more. There are a plethora of benefits to using this platform:
You can create integrations between any number of apps. This makes it super easy for your team to use the same tools for different businesses. Patsy, the platform’s founder, helped start her career by building integrations between marketing automation tools.
This means that she knows exactly what it takes to make your business successful. You won’t have to spend hours going through different documentation or websites looking for information. This makes it super easy for your team to keep up with the latest trends and learn from the mistakes of others.
Conclusion
Marketing automation is a powerful tool that can take your marketing and business management skills to the next level. It is important to know what marketing automation does and doesn’t do for you and your business. With that, here are a few points that you should keep in mind: Marketing automation is a two-fold process.
On the one hand, you first need to understand your audience and what they want. Then, you need to create a marketing plan tailored toward them. And last but not least, you need to automate as many parts of your marketing plan as possible.
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