Why is digital marketing automation important in 2019?

If you aren’t currently using marketing automation, you probably will be in the immediate future. According to recent studies, marketing automation on average drives up to 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead.

Automating your digital marketing efforts can help you save a lot of time and money which you would have otherwise spent trying to understand how digital marketing works, set up campaigns, capture leads, etc.

In this increasingly competitive and high paced world, every advantage matters. It’s time to say goodbye to the mundane tasks at work, automation is the future.

The image showcases the crucial role Marketing Automation will lay in the near future, according to a research conducted by the digital marketing institute. Something to bear in mind when reskilling employees and hiring new staff in 2019.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation in digital marketing is the use of different tools and techniques that help you to streamline and pre-program the flow of marketing activities.

It is aimed at achieving operational efficiency that enable smooth automatic flow of activities. Marketing technology saves you time and helps you spend your money where it’s needed most.

It also helps to scale your business more effectively, and break down the silos between sales and marketing. Even better, marketing automation tools are becoming increasingly accessible to businesses of all sizes.

Benefits of digital marketing automation for your business

Data is the oil that fuels the digital revolution, something that the entire industry is in consensus of. Marketing is increasingly driven by data and technology. Nowhere is that more evident than in marketing automation.

This increasing importance of data has made it readily available in large quantities. More than ever, all business decisions are taken by analysing the data. Now the time when marketers have to use this data to automate their digital marketing practices.

Automation of marketing brings along with it a variety of benefits. Some are discussed below:

• Increased Lead Generation:

  

  If you have a process to generate leads on your website, why not automate it? This could save you tons of time and help you to concentrate on more important topics.

  For example, the popping up of a CTA can be automated, and when the person fills in his email in the box, an automatic mail regarding discounts and offers can be sent to him via the email they entered in the form.

  E-mail automation can be done using marketing automation platforms like Mailchimp.

• Boost local SEO:

  

  Quite possibly one of your biggest goals and main focuses as a business is to achieve the highest local SEO ranking that you possibly can.

  This is because people will be searching online for businesses within a specific area, such as yours, and you want your selection to be their first choice.

  Local SEO is all about customer engagement which means taking to social media to expand your presence. To make this more effective, there are tons of options and processes you can automate that relate to your social media.

• Automated Sharing and Publishing:

  

  This point is directly connected to the previous point. You can make use of tools like Crowdfire, which suggests content based on the keywords that you set.

  You can then select the content that you like and schedule it for publishing automatically to your favourite social media platforms at specific time and date.

• Streamline your content processes:

  

  By streamlining your processes and automating your business, you can save yourself some valuable time and money.

  Something that can be spent doing other relevant things that require more of your attention. Like enhancing another area or even business expansion.

  Online writing services, such as Grammarix, can help you proofread your content, either by teaching you how or by completing the task on your behalf. Likewise, services like Boomessays can be used to help with your editing process, or by completing it on your behalf.

What can be automated?

Spend time in setting up good initial campaigns. Multi-channel is extremely important today, so think about where your customers are, whether they are on google, fb, Instagram YouTube, where are they? And then what’s the type of content they want to see.

• Automate the ad funnel

  

  Once you set up the initial campaigns, you can automate the ad funnel. Imagine you’re running a Google ads campaign, and they search on google about you or your vertical and come to your website, they’re automatically added to a retargeting campaign.

  Now that they are in this retargeting campaign, you have an automated funnel of showing them different ads. For the next 7 days you can show them a specific promotion and for the next 30 days you show them a different promotion.

  These promotions must be relevant to the consumer in his specific buying stage. If they don’t do anything after the second or third promotion, then show them a YouTube video. It’s like a drip campaign of ads they’re seeing in an automated way. And eventually as you’re doing that over time, they’ll convert.

• Automate Social Media targeting

  

  Let’s say you run a Facebook video ad, you can then set up a campaign that if somebody watches that video above 50% of its total length, they’ll be entered into a retargeting campaign.

  This campaign retargets those people with a different ad or a different video and if they watch a certain percentage of that video, they can be entered into another campaign.

  This ensures that they’re seeing different content over time, which is helping them through that buying process which helps them convert.

• Automate E-mail Communications

  

  When someone subscribes or they convert on your website or your social ad, rather than just showing them digital ads, you can actually send them an automated E-mail.

  For e.g. you have a CRM and you convert somebody form a cold lead to a hot lead, you can automatically set up a campaign that can send them an E-mail that talks about xyz, and follow it up 7 days later with another email, and then again a month later you can send them a reminder mail. This is completely automated.

  So, when somebody converts on your site, you can build a drip campaign of emails in an automated way that keeps the communication going until eventually they convert.

• Automate Analytics

  

  Analytics dashboard tools help you streamline your data analysis tasks by bringing a variety of insights into a single dashboard. Different tools provide different types of insights to help you improve your marketing results while saving time.

  For e.g. you track a wide variety of data related to your website’s performance, including visitor behaviours, conversion funnels, forms, feedback, and more. You can also bring analytics from a variety of web and social media platforms into a single dashboard.

Selection of the right Marketing automation tools

A variety of marketing automation tools are available in the market, we’ll help you to select the one that best suits your business’ needs

• Artic PinPoint

  Aritic PinPoint, a fully integrated permission-based marketing automation platform, is more popular for its advanced automation and customer engagement features. It enables businesses to nurture anonymous and identified visitors based on their browsing activities.

  Following this, features like ad targeting and behaviour tracking help to fill in the sales-marketing pipeline.

  Dynamic segmentation, multichannel marketing, advanced filters and tags, progressive profiling, SEO and analytics, and a huge list of integrations have helped Aritic PinPoint make a strong digital foothold despite strong competition.

• HubSpot

  HubSpot is an inbound marketing software company that helps businesses transform their marketing from outbound (cold calls, email spam, trade shows, TV ads, etc) lead generation to inbound lead generation enabling them to “get found” by more potential customers in the natural course of the way they shop and learn.

• Pardot

  Pardot, a salesforce.com Company, is an easy-to-use B2B Marketing Automation suite that helps sales and marketing teams maximize efficiency and increase revenue.

• Marketo

  Powerful and easy marketing software that helps marketing and sales professionals drive revenue and improve marketing accountability. Marketo provides the leading cloud-based marketing software platform for companies of all sizes to build and sustain engaging customer relationships. They offer a free trial and no set-up fees!

• Oracle Eloqua

  Oracle’s B2B Cross-Channel Marketing solution, Oracle Eloqua, enables marketers to plan and execute automated marketing campaigns while delivering a personalized customer experience for their prospects.

• Sales Fusion

  Salesfusion is a leading provider of marketing automation software that is designed for B2B companies who are committed to driving more revenue by aligning marketing and sales.

  Salesfusion helps companies build a large revenue funnel for marketing and sales by creating customized digital conversations that are seamlessly transitioned between departments.

  Marketing and sales teams participate in and measure these digital conversations to deliver more lead-to-revenue results by communicating with the right leads, at the right time, with the right message.

• SendPulse

  SendPulse is an automated marketing platform with different channels (SMS, push, email) that allow you to reach your customers on all devices at any time.

  The channels can be efficiently combined for the best results You can configure all types of notifications to be sent based on customer actions (so called triggered emails).

  As an added bonus, the service offers free unlimited browser notifications, quality 24/7 support and a huge free plan.

Frequently Asked Questions about Marketing automation

• How can a marketing automation platform help me nurture a prospect through the sales funnel?

  As you know, when a prospect is first introduced to your product or service, they’re not necessarily in a buying mode. It’s more likely that they’re in an information-gathering mode. Marketing automation helps you identify prospects that are in the information-gathering mode and differentiate them from prospects who are further down the sales funnel in the buying mode. When you have a prospect at the top of the sales funnel, you’ll want to talk to them differently than someone who is at the bottom of the sales funnel.

• What is the best marketing automation tool?

  The answer to this question really depends on your company and business requirements. Check the ‘Selection of Marketing automation tools’ section of the blog to take a look at the leading tools in the industry and identify the right one for your needs.

• When should I start implementing marketing automation platform?

  Well, this is one the most crucial marketing automation questions related to implementation, as your company grows, it becomes difficult to continue one to one interaction with lead or prospects and keeping a record of the conversations. Even if you hire a bunch of marketing and sales professionals, it will ultimately be more like the drain of wealth. That time when manually managing your brand relationship seems to be at stake, marketing automation will save the day!

• Can both the sales and marketing team use it?

  Sales and marketing automation go hand-in-hand. Hence, the application will be required by both your teams, the sales, and marketing. Dig in deep, do a lot of research and see if the application you purchased will be useful for both your teams. You should check how many users can add and how emails can be sent out from the tool.

• Will I get analytics integration with marketing automation suite?

  Marketing strategy has its backbone in analytics. Without the numbers and metrics of your competitors, how can you possibly etch a full-proof marketing plan? Make sure your automation application has analytic integration in it.

The entire digital industry has had an exponential growth in the last decade, and it doesn’t seem to stop anytime soon.

To prepare your organization to keep up with this fast-paced environment, it is imperative that you inculcate leading procedures, tools and technologies of the digital age within your organization.

This is where EmQube can help you achieve your business goals and realise your company’s true potential. Focus on your core competencies and leave the rest to us.

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