Google’s trends shows that traffic for the term ‘Marketing Automation’ has risen by 40% in the last year, but why and what’s all the argument about?
As a digital agency, we get inquired about this by a lot by customers. If it’s your first time reading about marketing automation, don’t panic it’s not about robot and you’ll still be in a job. We’ve put a few essential steps together to help you understand. Let’s know what it’s all about.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation software allows you to create, deploy and automate online marketing campaign and sales activities that boost revenue and capitalize on efficiency. Think of it as a set of tools that will help to simplify time consuming tasks such as automating a lead qualification process, reaching out to accessible clients with certain behaviors or creating a dashboard for your digital campaign.
How it is usually being used at present?
There is absolutely a massive buzz around marketing automation at the moment. Marketing guys across the globe frequently spend in expensive marketing automation software believing that all of the tools they want to grow their business online will be included. However, this isn’t the case as loads of marketers ending up with very complex and powerful marketing automation tools, which work for existing customers in the middle of their funnel but doesn’t give a solution for generating new leads and promoting those potential prospects.
Number of those working at digital agencies or in-house will frequently buy lists of email addresses and aim them rather than focusing on developing future inbound leads. This may seem like a sudden fix, but it’s a very temporary solution and won’t help to make that established relationship that you need to create with your potential customers.
In spirit, organizations delivering thousands of emails to addresses that have no idea who, how, or why they are being contacted will rapidly become known as spammers and find a unfortunate return on their investment. This is why for your marketing automation to be a accomplishment; you need to construct it around genuine leads.
Functioning with your CRM
If you discover yourself thinking that marketing automation may be what your business needs, then integrating it with your accessible CRM system is a necessity. Your CRM system should by now be a vital part of your business operations allowing you to track and access your client data and other important metrics.
Integrating your current CRM system with marketing automation software can allow you to get a still better understanding of these clients by tracking how they react to your campaigns or their behavior on site, and give alerts if these consumers are showing potential goal completion behavior and much more.
This is why it’s incredibly significant to make use of your accessible data and organic leads rather than purchasing lists as mentioned earlier.
Does your business need to invest in marketing automation?
Let’s crack this down into a few key questions which are worth asking yourself –
Q. Do you at present have a strong flow of organic leads for your business to target?
Q. Have you considered a content strategy that goes hand in hand with a potential user’s journey?
Q. Do you know what discussions need to be had with scenario and at which point?
Q. Are you using any analytics software to track what your leads are doing and where they are appealing with your business online?
These are all great signals to demonstrate that marketing automation could work extremely well for your business. By using it within your current overall marketing strategy, it has the possibility to be very efficient.
How do I know which marketing automation software to pick?
There are already hundreds of startups offering marketing automation services and software for businesses. Many of these are extremely costly and difficult to get a grip of, in spite of how easy they claim it is to use.
If you’re bearing in mind using marketing automation software, these key benefits are worth keeping an eye out for
- CRM Integration – simply integrate with your existing CRM system and assist the marketing and sales areas of your business communicate easier.
- Lead Nurturing – Automate that annoying process of lead qualification and maintain their engagement high with automated content.
- Email Marketing – Aim particular groups with personalized content for additional engagement.
- Analytics and Reporting – know response rates, segment and view behavior of your customers.
- List Management – Organize your obtainable lists into multiple segments for improved targeting.