How to Effectively Automate Your Marketing Processes

Marketing Automation Strategy

With flashy ads spread deep across all platforms in the digital age, marketing is the key to successful business ventures. However, marketing can be tough to break the barrier on.

After all, that is why people spend four years studying this phenomenon in universities worldwide. Automating these marketing efforts is the surefire way to streamline these processes for maximum optimization.

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is defined as platforms and software to market products or services across numerous channels more efficiently and effectively.

Automating these systems allows business owners to reduce costs and ensure that there is no stone left unturned to reach their intended audience. There are many ways to accomplish this marketing automation, which you can do through emails, texts, social media, etc.

Marketing automation targets three primary areas of business: business to business, business to consumer, and business to government.

These operations are essentially combining traditional marketing strategies with modern technological means.

The concept of automation is simple. The software will automatically take repetitive tasks that need to be done frequently and set them to repeat on a set schedule, which you can apply to everything from email and text messages to social media posts. 

Automated marketing has some rules of thumb and best practices, like any business operation. Here are some of those. 

  • Have a plan and stick to it.
  • Know your customers. 
  • Use multichannel approaches.
  • Track your progress and performance.

The Benefits of Marketing Automation

As mentioned above, there are numerous beneficial aspects to marketing automation. 

Manual marketing takes a significant amount of time and effort. Automating these systems allows business owners to reduce costs by reducing the size of their marketing team. In addition, this marketing automation software takes the heavy lifting away from the employee behind the computer or telephone. 

These systems allow one or two people to do the same quality job that five or six people could generally do and more efficiently. Once they get these systems up and running, they are only required to track progress and manage small changes to the marketing strategy.

Doing this takes the pressure off of stone age manual processes and will streamline your marketing efforts. 

Many of these marketing tasks are monotonous and take significant amounts of time. 

For example, if you run a real estate company and would like to send out text messages to potential clients about current listings, you must spend hours typing and sending text messages to those prospects. 

Automated marketing message systems allow you to input a specific message and automate the entire process. You will be able to send messages to potential clients at particular intervals for as long or short as you choose. 

When they answer the message, they will be directed to a new message that eventually relays them to your sales team. You will close a sale and have spent minimal of your valuable time in person-to-person contact, spending precious time only when the deal is ready to be completed. 

You can also use systems such as click funnels. These sales funnels drastically increase tail-end sales. There are approximately 347,107 websites that currently use click funnels. When a customer adds an item to their cart and goes to checkout, they will be directed to different things they can add to their cart for an apparent discount. 

You can add as many funnels as you would like, forcing your customer to view other products they did not know they needed while on their way to the checkout screen. 

As discussed, your marketing team will be able to be smaller and still reach a larger audience. You will inevitably pay for the software that you choose to use. However, the scope of customers your automated marketing system will be able to reach will set your marketing ROI at an all-time high. 

These automated systems allow for a perfect customer experience. 

For example, customers can see ads that align with the products or services they are interested in, introducing them to additional products and services they had not considered before. 

Marketing Automation has numerous benefits.

  • Far more efficient than “brick and mortar” marketing.
  • Increased sales conversion rates.
  • Data management.
  • Unbridled scaling.
  • Accurate reporting

As you engage in these aggressive automated marketing campaigns, you will receive sales conversion data that is easily trackable. This data will allow business owners to make informed decisions in many business areas.

You will see which products do not meet the threshold for continuance and which products or services to capitalize on. Along with this information, you will track the effectiveness of your messages or ads. 

If you have a high conversion rate ad, you will have valuable information on how a particular strategy works. Conversely, if you see low numbers that are not producing the desired results, you will be able to decide to shift your focus or strategy into another automated campaign.

How to Automate Your Marketing Processes

Now we know the importance and benefits of automating your marketing systems, which begs the question of how to automate your processes properly. Here are a few ways to accomplish automation.

Lead Generation, Tracking & Nurturing

Lead nurturing goes hand in hand with email marketing. The first step is to generate a lead by obtaining an email or phone number. 

Automate a variety of messages at specific intervals depending on your goal. 

For example, are you trying to engage them or educate them about your services, or are you trying to retain their patronage? 

Tailoring the messages to your specific goal could mean including information about your business or even tempting them with limited-time discounts to use on their first purchase. The objective is to get them in the door.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful strategy. Customers realize that there is no one in front of them pressuring them, which allows them to view your ads and information at their own pace and comfort.

Automating email marketing is a cornerstone of this new marketing tactic. For example, you can automate your emails to follow up with customers after a sale or service. You can also automate emails to advertise special deals that will happen for upcoming holidays or seasons. This extra touch of personalization is important in any email marketing strategy.

Email Marketing Metrics You Need to Measure
Email Marketing Metrics You Need to Measure. Image Source: 14 Email Marketing Metrics You Need To Measure

Customers are more likely to be repeat customers if they feel like they receive special deals that the general public may not receive. By automating your marketing to include exclusive information only available by email, you keep your customer engaged and coming back for more.

Choosing which email marketing tool is right for your business is the hardest part. But if you keep your needs and goals in mind when comparing the tools, you should be able to come out on top.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the most powerful tools in the modern business world. As a result, people across the globe tend to spend hours a day scrolling through social media platforms. 

You can automate social media posts to post at whatever interval you choose. Not only can you automate posting but also monitor messages and comments. 

It is recommended that you still respond to comments and criticisms manually. An excellent human connection will bode well for customer service ratings.

Content Creation & Marketing

You can automate content creation for written content using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to write snippets, rewrite paragraphs, or finish your sentences. Although the technology hasn’t quite been perfected yet, so always double-check your final result.

The information included in your cont may be exactly what they need to see. 

However, the physical presentation may not catch the eyes of your intended audience. Understanding your product and the target audience you are trying to reach with this product will better your chances of success with a paid search ad. Therefore, it should be clear and tailored to that audience. 

Your software will be able to track which types of ads are driving the best results. Then, it can automatically allocate funds to double down on the ad strategies, producing the best results.

Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics is critical for any business because it evaluates the performance data of their prospective market.

Whether you are tracking your influencer marketing campaign or your email marketing campaigns, there is a software tool available to help you. Luckily.

Companies can use it to understand better their target audience and what drives them to make purchases. It helps optimize marketing campaigns to secure a customer’s patronage and repeat business.

Customer Support

Along with customer support, phone numbers or emails, more companies are moving to include web chats on their websites for customers that need immediate help.

Calling customer service or waiting for an email response can take a while to receive a response. Web chats are a smart way to entice customers because many people do not want their time taken up with sales calls or in-person contact. 

Automate your web chats using a live chatbot. 

You can program these bots to respond to basic customer questions and direct them to the proper link to answer their questions.

Push Notification Marketing

A common format for advertising is push notification marketing. Companies can use push notifications that will work for any product or service, sending out transactional or promotional messages to their prospective customers.

SMS Marketing
SMS Marketing – Image Source: SMS Marketing: Important Or Ineffective?

If automated correctly using a tool that allows you to set up notifications that are triggered by certain events or actions, they can be highly effective. You can use them to increase brand awareness or sales and inform customers about the latest news about said company, like new products or features.

Final Thoughts

Market automating is one of the most powerful tools business owners can use to increase sales and maximize results. As a result, business owners can reduce costs, maximize marketing efficiency, and increase sales.

These practices will provide you as a business owner with valuable data that you can use to direct marketing efforts. 

In addition, you will also use this data to track your sales conversion rates. This way, you will have tangible evidence of your marketing efforts. 

Get with the times and automate your marketing efforts.

Featured image source: Freepik Premium

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