How Digital Marketing Automation Saves Time, Money, & Gets Results
Digital Marketing Automation is all the buzz these days, but really, the story boils down to the software that automates your marketing for you. Designed to help you prioritize and execute your marketing tasks in a more streamlined and efficient manner, marketing automation software allows businesses to target customers with strategically automated messages across email, web, social, and text. When we can use marketing automation to simplify campaigns and sales activities, we increase revenue and maximize efficiency. In other words, when automation is used effectively to handle repetitive tasks, employees are free to tackle higher-order problems, and human error is reduced.
How can we use it? (And why?)
Unlike automating manufacturing processes, implementing a marketing automation system won’t make your job irrelevant, it will just make you more effective. Take farming as an example. Farmers can now deploy drones to get real-time data on their fields to identify issues such as irrigation problems or poor performance areas. Prior to automation and drone technology, farmers could only collect data on a small portion of their fields per day by physically being out in the field – or flying over in a plane, but that’s an expensive check-up.
So, without automation, a farmer looks at half of his fields and decides to fertilize field 11…unfortunately, field 18 needs immediate attention, but will go unchecked for another day. Manual evaluation doesn’t show the whole picture, which can lead to costly mistakes. Automation allows you to capture data over your entire operation, quickly and efficiently, so you can catch the most pressing issues early and make critical adjustments.
With digital marketing automation, you’ll still be controlling the message, but it frees up some of your time while maintaining the authenticity of the content you’re producing. And it will help you reach your goals faster which can make all the difference! In marketing, our ultimate goal is to generate revenue while creating awareness and guiding consumers/customers down the funnel… in other words, drive traffic to your website, convert that traffic into leads and turn those leads into customers. Where marketing automation really makes an impact is the conversion and closure stages of this process.
Where can we use it? Social, Email, Analytics, Content Strategy… pretty much everywhere!
1. Social media automation tools allow marketers to automate various interactions that would otherwise be tedious to complete manually. These interactions can drive social media users to take actions like following your brand or visiting your organization’s website.
2. Email workflows have been around for some time, but integrated workflows that use other channels (like social ads) in addition to email are a newer phenomenon. It is now possible to trigger retargeting ads only when contacts / users enter specific workflows so that they receive content that is specific to their journey.
3. Predictive Lead Scoring or audience scoring tools allow organizations to unleash the power of machine learning on lead scoring. Using probabilistic calculations, software platforms can reliably determine what leads are more likely to convert to customers.
4. With personalized content recommendations – marketing teams can now run account-based marketing programs with ease. Content marketers can develop content for specific target accounts or types of target accounts, and personalization platforms can display specific pieces of content to website visitors based on IP address.
Don’t Over-automate – Integrate into your Overall Plan
Of course, as efficient as automation is, it can’t be your only marketing strategy. The worst thing your business can do is automate ALL digital marketing efforts, because then you lose touch and stop learning (and machines win, which is never good). In other words, you still have to fertilize your fields for the best performance! By over-automating your marketing, you end up managing a customer journey instead of optimizing it for maximum results. Each consumer is different, and they move through the funnel in their own unique way. Using machines to learn habits and respond with smart, tailored messaging is the best way to reach and convert. Each business is different, but good marketing automation happens when we as marketers consider personal relationships, and are clever enough to curate them effectively and efficiently with a little help from Digital Marketing Automation.
