Marketing automation has the potential to bring your business significant revenue. It must be used carefully and correctly to achieve these results. Some marketers have jumped into marketing automation too soon and experienced the trouble that it can bring, such as robotic messages, lost customers and confusion between marketing and sales teams. Fortunately, you can learn from these mistakes and successfully implement automation into your overall marketing strategy without much trouble.
Whether you’re using marketing automation for the first time, or you’re trying it out after a long hiatus, we have a list of important things to remember when automating marketing efforts.
Establish Clear Objectives
It’s important to establish good goals from the start, as you want to guide your team down the right path and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. By setting objectives in advance, you also don’t have to spend as much time in your daily campaign activities. We recommend creating clear, concise and measurable goals. We’ve included a few examples below.
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Increase the amount of inbound leads by X percent in # days/months.
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Increase overall conversions by X percent in # days/months.
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Collect lead attribution data for a more effective campaign.
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Provide sales teams with a consistent supply of highly qualified leads.
Understand Your Audience
In order to use automation effectively, you must take the time to understand your customers. Otherwise, your attributions, notifications and systems will all fall short. When creating your strategies, define your target audience. Use this audience to shape the content for your landing pages and emails. People like doing business with brands that understand their needs, not ones that deliver automated messages.
Choose the Right Automation Software
There are many types of automation programs available, and some will meet your needs better than others. We recommend narrowing down your search based on your needs and budget and taking advantage of the free trials. This way, you can get a good idea of how the software will work for you. Some of the questions to ask yourself include:
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Will the software help me meet my overall goals?
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Can the software grow with my business?
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Does the platform match my marketing efforts?
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What challenges may arise when scaling the platform?
Create a Documented Marketing Process
Marketing automation requires a documented marketing process. Understand how each of the variables – attention, acquisition, conversion, retention – work together. This allows you to see more from your campaigns and make strategic improvements along the way. To help with this, delegate people from your marketing and sales teams to be responsible for interacting and nurturing customers at every stage of the cycle.
To make marketing automation work for you, the right software and the right team are necessary. Take your time researching the available options to see which one supports your needs. With the proper approach, you can successfully implement automation into your overall marketing strategy.
