Is Marketing Automation Software the Answer to Your Marketing Woes?

What if I told you that there was a software program out there that could drive your marketing efforts forward while doing all the hard work for you? If you’re like most of us, you’d probably say, Of course it can! I want that! And as luck would have it, such software exists — marketing automation software, to be exact. But does it really do all those things? Is it really worth your time and money? In this article, we’ll learn more about marketing automation and how it can help your business grow faster and smarter than ever before.

What Exactly is Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is basically a fancy name for software that lets you execute a series of automated marketing processes. This means when someone visits your website, an email will be automatically sent to them, or when they sign up for your email list, another email will be sent out with an offer. Marketing automation is most often used for one or all of these three functions: social media marketing, email marketing and SEO marketing. Social media marketing means using software to automate posting on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter — this way, you don’t have to spend time each day posting status updates and tweeting links yourself. SEO marketing means automating your search engine optimization (SEO) so you can focus on other aspects of growing your business instead of spending hours every week trying to improve your search rankings. Email marketing refers to sending automatic emails based off events that happen on your site — for example, if someone purchases something from you online, then email their receipt to them. It also refers to sending emails out in bulk (automatically) whenever a new customer signs up for your email list; such as offering special discounts only available through email.

Pros of Using Marketing Automation Software

1. Efficiency.

To start, marketing automation will make your whole department more efficient. In doing so, you may be able to cut down on costs by lessening the need for employees, as well as allow your team members to focus on bigger, more important projects. Rather than painstakingly posting on social media daily, marketing automation software may automate the task.

This means that your team can work on more creative work, like coming up with campaigns and new projects.

2. Marketing and sales alignment.

If you use the same marketing automation software as your sales department, you’ll be able to align company goals and strategies.

Essentially, it will simplify the process of marketing qualified leads to potential customers.

In addition, marketing automation may boost sales performance by 14.5 percent while lowering marketing costs by 12.2 percent.

3. Increase conversion rate.

For instance, marketing automation can also increase conversion rates for your business and make your team more effective.

Market automation software will help you boost your conversion rate and better manage your leads.

With the right marketing automation software, you can not only track your leads, but also your website visitors who didn’t convert, resulting in better website optimization.

To reiterate, marketing automation can give your team more time to study your marketing strategy and consider what makes visitors convert.

4. Accurate reporting.

Although it can seem daunting, with the right marketing automation platform, it doesn’t have to be.

With your software, you should be able to generate automated reports. Suddenly, the process becomes a lot easier.

On top of that, a marketing automation platform can give you a high-level look at your campaign as a whole. This will help you pinpoint issues like red flags. Through concise, transparent reporting, you can determine what aspects of your company aren’t operating properly.

5. Personalized marketing strategy.

The marketing automation software will also be allowing them to generate more personalized content as they will have access to it through its segmentation and reporting abilities.

With marketing automation, you can cater to your target market by using social media, pay-per-click campaigns, or email blasts.

Lead nurturing should be personalised — was there an article about sales conferences on the person’s profile? Maybe your lead nurturing email sends them to a sales conference your team is hosting.

As a result, you’ll receive individualized messaging and be able to track their engagement. This also makes it easier to assign points to each lead.

6. Lead scoring.

You can use marketing automation software to set up lead scoring for your team, so your sales team will know when leads are from marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads.

This all speaks to better integration between your marketing and sales teams, but moreover it can be done more efficiently. That way, your sales team can reach out to your prospects right away.

7. Data management.

I need to avoid repeating myself, but marketing automation software will log your leads and track their interaction with your site.

This means that organizing your data is as easy as it gets, and your data is automatically updated.

8. Scalable processes.

When you design your marketing systems and processes, always remember to think about their scalability. Will the process grow as your company does? A product that is not scalable will present an obstacle to expanding your company.

Marketing automation will allow you to create scalable processes with just one person. If a process relies on many different people and too much human error, it won’t scale when the team grows.

9. Lead nurturing.

Finally, we come to marketing automation. It’s at this point that you can develop drip email campaigns, using marketing automation software to measure success.

You’ll have a difficult time turning leads to potential customers if you don’t nurture them.

Cons of Using Marketing Automation

1. Not cost-effective

A primary disadvantage of marketing automation is its lack of efficiency. Such expenses would not be incurred in implementing the technology. Thus, it would be hard for many small businesses to spend any more money on marketing, as this would be a problem for many of them.

2. Might depersonalize your brand

There is an opinion that improperly using marketing automation may depersonalize your brand. When companies ignore personalization features and send a standard message to everyone, it’s problematic. When you don’t personalize, you’re more likely to create duplicate messages with spam. So do what you want with automated marketing, but at least try to keep it personalized.

3. Complex process

It is undoubtedly true that marketing automation is a complex process, and that presents its drawbacks. As it is more of a sophisticated solution, inexperienced users may find themselves feeling lost and unprepared. You need to start with learning first, then find a way to implement it in order to obtain a meaningful result.

How It Works

Part of what makes marketing automation so valuable is that it’s not difficult to set up. Once you have a grasp on your target audience, email marketing can be customized with specific campaigns and triggered emails that deliver value at every stage of your buyer’s journey. In fact, according to BtoB Magazine, only 25 percent of companies are using any form of automation at all! But, despite its simplicity, there are still some questions about how marketing automation works. Here’s an overview When you first create your campaign, you’ll need to decide which touchpoints will trigger each automated message. For example, if someone subscribes to a newsletter or downloads a white paper from your website, they might receive one type of message; if they visit your homepage but don’t subscribe or download anything right away, they might receive another; and if they don’t subscribe or download anything but do engage with social media content (liking/sharing/retweeting), yet another message might be sent. The possibilities are endless! And once these touchpoints have been determined — and messages created — you can schedule when each message will go out based on what best fits into your customer lifecycle: for example, sending them immediately after purchase vs. Depending on your industry, you may also want to include social media marketing in your automation strategy. Whether you’re tweeting relevant links and articles or encouraging followers to share content through Facebook likes and comments, social media platforms offer a wealth of opportunities for engagement. By tying social media interactions into your overall strategy, you can ensure that customers never feel like they’re being sold to — which goes back to creating genuine relationships with potential buyers.

Our Top 3 Recommended Free Tools

These are our top recommendations that you can start using today for free with no strings attached

Socialoomph — On the appearance, Socialoomph seems to be one of the more basic social media management tools, yet it has powerful scheduling and queueing capabilities. You will, however, need above-average computer abilities, as Socialoomph is significantly less user-friendly than the competition. It works best with Twitter. Get started with Socialoomph

ProRankTracker –Pro Rank Tracker gives you a competitive advantage by providing you with the most up-to-date, straightforward SEO ranking data on any website you manage, allowing you to acquire high-value, highly practical information to help you fully leverage your revenues and guide your business to success. Get started with Pro Rank Tracker

GetResponse — GetResponse has modified its focus significantly, aiming to be more of a “all-in-one” e-commerce and digital marketing platform than a “conventional” email marketing tool. As a result, GetResponse now offers a website builder, chat capabilities, ecommerce functionality, webinar hosting, landing pages, and automated sales funnels in conjunction with email marketing capabilities. (learn more). We can’t recommend all three highly enough — and they cost nothing to use!. Get started with Getresponse

A Few Quick Tips for Getting Started

Try these three strategies when you’re getting started with marketing automation software. These strategies will get you up and running faster, so you can start reaping all of marketing automation’s benefits for your business.

1. Establish a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Start by selecting accounts that have high engagement, such as LinkedIn or Pinterest, since those places will provide real value for your business in addition to marketing potential.

2. Offer customers incentives in exchange for their email addresses, such as access to online tools like digital downloads or discounts on future purchases if they sign up at your website and opt-in to receive emails from you. They may need some reassurance before they’re willing to give away their information — think about what kind of offer would pique your interest enough that you’d be willing to share yours.

3. Follow up quickly. Once you have an idea of who your target audience is, make sure to follow up quickly. It might take multiple attempts to reach people who aren’t interested in receiving marketing materials from you yet, but don’t give up! It could take several tries before someone decides to sign up for your list, but once they do it’ll be worth it! When it comes time to send out newsletters or other promotional materials keep them short and sweet.

Conclusion

At its core, marketing automation is software that automates tasks that would normally be performed by humans. It’s designed for marketers and digital marketers. Used effectively, it can make your life much easier and (potentially) give you more time for strategic thinking and improving customer experience through innovation. If you’re struggling with marketing today or if you feel as though you’re doing a lot of tasks manually — and not very well — it might be time to consider implementing marketing automation into your process. But there are questions that need answering before signing on: What problem will it solve? How will it work with existing infrastructure? Is it really necessary in my business model? Is there ROI I’m looking for?. So think about that and see if its the best for you and your business.

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