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| Marketing Automation - Tasks, Tools, and implementation features |
Marketing automation is the optimization of processes for promoting a product, service, or brand using special services. The introduction of additional tools allows you to minimize the volume of routine operations and improve the quality of marketing mechanics.
Many small and medium business owners are in no hurry to implement marketing automation platform services. Often this approach is based on the reluctance to introduce an additional item of expenditure and change already “working” schemes. However, marketing automation is not just about saving time. This is an increase in the quality and speed of work, which is directly related to the efficiency of the business and its competitiveness.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is the introduction of special services to minimize routine work in the promotion of a product/service/brand. Such an upgrade of work processes is relevant not only for large companies but for almost all entrepreneurs, regardless of the size of the business. Ignoring marketing automation often reduces the speed and quality of promotion.
Today, many automation programs significantly reduce costs, increase customer flow, and with it the prospects for scaling without additional investments in staffing and business maintenance.
What marketing tasks can be automated
Among the main tasks of digital marketing are the following:
- increase in lead generation indicators;
- ensuring communication with clients;
- implementation of advertising campaigns;
- processing of customer data (segmentation, personalization of offers, etc.).
Marketing automation systems can be implemented to address each of these challenges. Among the main tools that help digital marketers in their work are the following: CRM systems, chatbots, SMS and Email marketing lists, CDP platforms, online connectors, auto-posting, and advertising management services.
Content Management
It is difficult to present and promote a company, product, or service without a platform on the Internet. A landing page or a website that can be easily assembled using no-code constructors (Tilda, WIX, SitePro) is best suited for this.
For effective promotion, the constant activity in social networks is important. As a rule, several platforms are used at once, and the publishing process can take a decent amount of time. To simplify the creation and posting of content on social networks, you can use services such as SMMplanner, InSMM, Onlywire, and HootSuite.
Email automation remains one of the most important channels of communication with customers. With the help of emails, you can inform about loyalty systems, make personal offers, introduce company news, and build more complex triggered interactions. To work with this communication channel, it is convenient to use email marketing services (MailChimp, SendPulse, UniSender).
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| Marketing Automation - Tasks, Tools, and implementation features |
Launching and managing advertising campaigns
As soon as the offer is published, you need to launch an advertising campaign. There are many options: contextual advertising, social media targeting, affiliate programs, and more. For advertising, there are a lot of tools that optimize its launch, coordination, and analysis:
- auto-bidders (automatic bidding for contextual advertising);
- parsers (data collection for analysis and audience search);
- services for automatic testing of ads;
- platforms for monitoring advertising campaigns;
- connectors for loading statistics into analytics services.
Work with traffic and requests through the site
There are also a lot of tools for converting traffic from the site: lead catchers, pop-up windows with a newsletter subscription, personalized content, and more.
With the help of integrator services, you can set up an automatic transfer of information from the site (for example, from a completed form) to the CRM system. After that, the fixation of the client's request through the web resource will be performed automatically in CRM.
Converting leads into customers
When a person subscribes to the newsletter, he automatically enters the sales funnel. Now the lead needs to be constantly “warmed up” so that he returns to the site or follows your offers on other Internet channels. To communicate with the lead, you can use: email newsletters, push notifications, chatbots, and instant messengers.
Combining the capabilities of the CDP platform and other services, you can build complex automated scenarios for interacting with the client (trigger mailings, personal motivational offers, etc.).
Analytics
After you have built the system, you need to implement analytics services that will help you track performance. Such platforms pull data from a variety of sources and generate statistics and graphs that show the success of the marketing mechanics used.
Benefits of Implementing Automation
Automation is not just a trend, but a tool to improve business efficiency and profitability. Special assistant services can be implemented in various processes, including Internet marketing. What dividends does automated marketing bring:
- effective distribution of working time;
- improving the quality of implementation and analysis of the marketing strategy;
- minimizing errors when working with data;
- increase the speed of advertising campaigns and other interactions with customers.
The work of the marketing department, as a rule, consists of thinking through promotion mechanisms, creating content, and a set of repetitive operations (processing information, transferring data from one system to another, etc.). At the same time, routine actions take up a significant part of the time resource. Automation services allow marketers to focus on analytics and creativity. In addition, the introduction of auxiliary software eliminates the human factor in the monotonous data processing.
Why many companies are in no hurry to optimize
Automation of marketing processes is not an exhaustive condition for increasing sales and active growth of loyal leads. However, marketing optimization allows you to promote a product/company/brand much more efficiently and use more communication channels for this.
However, not every company is in a hurry to implement tools for automation. What are the limiting factors?
- waste of time setting up automation;
- additional expense item for software;
- the likelihood of attracting programmers to work;
- the need for additional employee training.
Each of the above reasons is actually not a serious problem for a long time. The organization of automated processes does require some time. However, this is an “investment” to save an incomparably greater time resource in the future.
Many automation systems are paid, and some tools require quite a solid financial investment. However, almost every popular service has a free package with limited functionality or the so-called “trial period”. Marketers get the opportunity to evaluate the benefits of the service for their specific needs and choose the optimal ratio of functionality/price. Some tasks can be successfully solved with the help of free tariffs. This is a great opportunity for small and medium businesses to start the process of marketing automation without spending money.
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| Marketing Automation - Tasks, Tools, and implementation features |
As for the additional involvement of IT specialists and long-term training, these concerns are also no longer relevant. There are a sufficient number of cloud no-code services for automation. This means that you can work with them without programming skills and directly in the browser. As a rule, the creators of such online tools focus on a simple and intuitive interface in order to simplify the work of users as much as possible.
Conclusion: not just a trend, but a necessity
Probably, for some entrepreneurs, automation is not an urgent solution for business development. Especially if the activity is predominantly carried out offline. However, the vast majority of companies operate using online tools.
Even a small store in the marketplace must process information about its customers, conduct advertising activities on social networks, send emails, and notify customers about delivery or new promotions through messenger. One way or another, employees will have to deal with a large amount of repetitive work that can be done offline.
In a competitive environment, not only the quality of the product plays an important role, but also the speed of service. The advantage is given to the one who processes the client's request faster, is the first to make an interesting offer, and provides prompt feedback. The use of automation services allows you to increase the speed of working with customers and their data, which is a good help for the company's competitiveness.
Automating repetitive workflows is definitely the right solution. However, such optimization requires a careful approach. It is important to determine the set of tasks that need to be adapted to the automatic execution mode. After that, you can select the optimal services. Perhaps there is a platform that will cover all or most of the tasks, which will simplify the work and reduce costs.
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