Are you a marketing specialist tired of doing repetitive tasks? If the answer is yes, then your department must implement marketing automation. This tool offers big opportunities as an increase in leads, conversions and sales; all coming by hand of efficiency.
Fitting in automation
Marketing automation is all about using software to avoid repeating tasks such as email marketing, social media postings or even ads. It reduces the cost of realization of these tasks and gets a better personalized customer experience.
According to SharpSpring’s “Investor Presentation Jan 2019”, marketing automation is one of the booming industries of the moment and it is expected to double in size by 2023. So this might be the perfect moment for companies to benefit from it.
If you are wondering which are those benefits we mention, here are some pretty helpful examples:
Collect relevant analytical data
The software helps gather all data regarding leads, sales, campaigns, etc. All this together helps predicting the strategies that will work better in the future.
Reallocate budget
With automation the whole marketing department will be able to get the most of its specialists as they stop doing unproductive repetitive tasks. Being more efficient means projects becoming implemented faster without the need of extra investment.
Automation, how to achieve it?
You should get familiar with the term workflow as it is usually the first step before establishing automated marketing. A good workflow has to have these four elements:
Recognising the right tasks
Look for the tasks your team is most tired of, as it will for sure be the most repeated ones. From this list choose the ones that are most compatible with automation.
Select the suitable software
Researching for the best automation software is a tough task but very rewarding in the long-term. There are many softwares in the market, but you should identify the one that works better for you. One advice is to use softwares specialized on the sector you are in.
Prepare the team
Automation makes marketing efficient but it must be followed by training for the team members. They should understand how their role inside the department might be refocused for them to smoothly transition.
Evaluate effectiveness
Once you implement it, is it over? Not quite, you should review periodically how everything is going and if the automation is working correctly or it can be improved.
The reality
However, in reality you should be aware of some aspects. Due to its popularity and wide application, many marketers are mistaken about the functionality of marketing automation.
The idea has taken hold that automation can be a solution to any bottleneck in marketing growth, including the need to drive new leads. This erroneous idea leaves many marketers automating the central part of their funnel, but not generating new leads in the first place.
Another problem is that when a lead is generated, it is added to the automated email list and passed directly to Sales. This means that instead of constructing an efficient and personalised experience as initially desired based on the needs of each customer. Marketing automation becomes a means of forcing customers through a funnel with standardized content.
Have you learned something new? The topic is more complex and there are many more facts to learn. With our Master in Digital Marketing, you will be able to dominate all the tools needed for an effective marketing.