Marketing automation has been around for well over a decade. It is becoming increasingly popular as companies jump aboard this growing trend to help amplify their marketing efforts, streamline processes and drive more quality leads into their sales funnel. On average, 51% of companies are currently using Marketing automation, and more than half of B2B companies (58%) plan to adopt the technology.
If you’re not currently leveraging marketing automation (or using it properly), chances are, some of your top competitors are – which may just give them a leg up.
Marketing isn’t easy – and it takes a LOT of time and effort to do it well. While marketing automation isn’t a magic bullet that will do all of the work for you, it can significantly reduce your time completing redundant tasks to help your team work more efficiently and effectively.
Don’t worry, marketing teams, your jobs are safe – they haven’t quite figured out how to get technology to do the critical thinking for us (yet).
Simply put, marketing automation technology helps businesses streamline their marketing processes by automating the deployment of multifunctional campaigns across various marketing channels to reduce redundancies.
Marketing automation allows companies to share personalized content to their target audiences through a combination of their website, email, social media, chatbots, and even text messaging. A well-defined marketing automation strategy can also help with lead generation, lead nurturing, sales workflow management, and measuring ROI for various campaigns.
There are a ton of different platforms out there to choose from, all with varying features, benefits, drawbacks, and price points. Before signing on for a specific marketing automation platform, evaluate your particular needs and how you plan to implement the tool into your marketing strategy.
Make a list of must-haves/nice-to-haves and use that as your guide when weighing your options. Some marketing automation platforms come with a vast array of features that you may never end up using, so the higher cost that comes with all those bells and whistles might not be the right choice for your business. Other tools may be too limiting.
Our team is platform-agnostic, and we have worked with clients on several platforms, including Marketo, Hubspot, Pardot, SharpSpring, and more.
Our preferred vendor is SharpSpring due to the ease of use for our customers, a wide range of capabilities with marketing automation with a CRM included, and it comes at a great price point. As a SharpSpring partner, we also get agency rate discounts that we pass on to you!
Just because we prefer SharpSpring, doesn’t mean we can’t leverage other tools that may be better suited to your particular needs. If you need help choosing the best tool or if you’ve already signed on with a platform but you need help planning and implementing your marketing automation strategy, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
If you’re ready to start the conversation, go ahead and contact us now. If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of marketing automation – keep reading!
A key component to most marketing automation platforms is lead generation forms. These can typically be built directly within the platform and embedded into your website or landing page. Or my personal preference, integrated into an existing form builder of choice for a seamless user experience and easier tracking in Google Analytics.
Leveraging thoughtful forms throughout your website allows potential customers to engage with you by signing up for your email list, requesting a quote, asking a question, or downloading a piece of valuable content.
Once you’ve collected contact information, marketing automation platforms can take on the heavy lift of nurturing those leads. Targeted and relevant content can be automatically shared with contacts based on their sales funnel stage or persona and user behaviors. Email workflow automation allows you to send highly targeted drip campaigns to subsets of your contacts based on how they have interacted with your website, content, and more.
Now, I’m not suggesting that you remove the human touch from your sales funnels entirely. However, someone entering the top of the funnel is probably not ready to get on the phone with a salesperson out of the gate. Customers want to feel like they’re in control.
Marketing automation allows you to court them during this budding relationship to give them time to build trust and confidence in what you have to offer and spark their interest in taking things to the next step. Then, when the time is right, you go in for the kiss (… I mean… call) to seal the deal.
Hey there, [First Name]!
How is the weather over in [City]? Did you catch that [closest city NFL team] game last week? I hope [pet’s name] is doing well! I noticed you ordered [last item purchased] the other day. You have excellent taste!
Okay, that example may have been a bit extreme… but you get the point. By including personalization and customized relevant information in your messaging, you’ll stand out in a sea of catch-all email blasts.
How great is it that you can automatically group your leads based on their behaviors, geographics, and more to send them relevant information they will genuinely care about – automatically?! Plus, who doesn’t like to feel like they are on a first-name basis with a brand they’ve expressed interest in.
One of my favorite aspects of SharpSpring for our own company is the visibility and collaboration between marketing and sales. Integrating our marketing efforts with the SharpSpring CRM allows us to see which specific campaigns individual leads came in through.
We can then further evaluate the quality of the leads to help us better understand where to adjust and refocus our efforts. You can then track the life of the lead throughout the entire sales process and determine if the opportunity was won or lost. From there, you can begin to measure your ROI effectively with more insightful analytics.
Do you want the good news or bad news first? Ok, let’s start with the bad news…
Setting up a fully automated marketing campaign strategy and then implementing it can be a daunting task. I’ve talked to many clients over the years that got excited about a shiny new tool that has hundreds of features, they sign on the dotted line, and it just sits there or is used for about 10% of its actual capabilities, and they don’t see the results they were hoping for.
The truth is, developing a solid automation strategy and implementing it can become pretty complex and quite time-consuming initially.
Now for the good news. If you have a solid strategy in place and the right people to execute that strategy effectively, marketing automation will save you a TON of time and money in the long run.
You don’t have to figure this out all on your own. That’s what we’re here – to make an IMPACT on your business.
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