What is Marketing Automation

If you’re serious about lead generation, you need to get serious about the marketing technology tools you use to support this strategy. The right software makes it easier to get the work done efficiently and measure the results, so you can get on with delivering the strategy.

Read on to find out why marketing automation technology is your recipe for results…

Marketing automation is transforming the digital marketing space. Studies show that 91 per cent* of companies successfully using this technology believe it essential to their strategies—and that effective implementation of marketing automation can drive a 14.5 per cent** increase in sales productivity.

On the other end of the spectrum, many companies have invested in marketing automation and been stuck with expensive software that they don’t know how to use. The best way to ensure this doesn’t happen to you is to learn as much as you can about marketing automation before you get started.

We can help with that.

Marketing automation demystified

Any business that wants to increase marketing ROI, generate more leads and grow sales, save time and increase efficiency should look into marketing automation.

In a nutshell, the term refers to the process of automating marketing actions and repetitive tasks using smart software. If it’s implemented correctly, this software allows businesses to nurture customers throughout their buying journey with personalised interactions and relevant content.

The trick to getting these interactions right is to ensure they’re only triggered when they are most relevant to the person or people on the receiving end. This can be done by scheduling personalised marketing actions to trigger when a user takes a specific action on your website or social media page; clicking a link or filling out a form, for example.

The potential of this software is limitless - automated interactions can be going on 24/7, nurturing prospective customers all over the world while you sleep (or get away to the gym on time!).

What tech do you need for marketing automation?

You can’t automate your marketing without the right technology. There are countless providers to choose from, but they aren’t all created equal. What you need is sophisticated software that gives you complete, accurate insights into how prospective customers are interacting with your digital presence. It’s also important that your software allows you to tailor automated communications: they need to be human. The leading platforms at the moment include:

Engaging Partners use HubSpot because it gives you the power to fully personalise every interaction with your prospects and customers, and rolls all your inbound marketing functions into one smart platform. It’s also set up to easily integrate with specialist technology like Salesforce, Slack, Wordpress, Mailchimp, Facebook Ads and much more.

Even if you are one of the unlucky companies saddled with a less than stellar marketing automation platform, chances are it can be infused directly with HubSpot—no tough transfer procedures required.

And what happens if your to-do list is beginning to look a little un-doable? You can always partner with an agency that has the skills that you need to get the job done.

How do you make marketing automation work for your business?

There’s no point implementing a marketing automation platform without a strategy for what you are trying to achieve.

Your marketing strategy should define your requirements. Are are you looking to use content purely for engagement purposes or do you have specific lead generation and sales conversion targets that need to be met? A full-funnel Inbound Marketing strategy that touches cross-channel acquisition and retention touch points and needs to integrate with your CRM, will have very different technology requirements compared to a fast-touch FMCG marketing programme that uses content to drive in-store purchase.

If you’re looking to marketing automation to support lead generation and sales conversion activity then critically, both the Marketing and Sales teams should be invested in strategy development, platform selection and have shared goals in terms of what the programme is expected to deliver. We see time and time again the Marketing team delivering hard-earned, high quality leads, only to see them disappear into the void of the Sales department if the Sales team aren’t equal stakeholders in the programme.

What can you automate?

Engaging Partners' preferred CRM and marketing automation platform, HubSpot, allows you to manage and automate the following marketing functions from one intuitive interface:

Blogging: speed up your content creation by using templates and automatically distribute your blog when a reader subscribes to your RSS feed.
CMS (content management systems): make website design and content management easier with drag and drop, WYSIWIG functionality. Recreate landing pages instantly using templates and page cloning.
Landing pages: ensure your landing pages are optimised on any device and set up “smart content” that adjusts to better suit the viewer based on previous behaviour, location and more.
SEO: automatically measure your SEO efforts with built-in analytics functionality and get optimisation tips in real time as you create content.
Emails: automatically personalise all the details of your emails for each recipient, including subject lines and copy. Automate sending of personalised emails when a prospective customer performs a certain action through specialised workflows.
Lead management: automatically store each contact’s information and record every interaction with prospective customers - use this information to create targeted campaigns.
Social media: track brand mentions and engagements, schedule your posts for publishing at the most opportune times and automatically target consumers who perform certain actions on your website or with ads.
CTAs: automatically record who clicks which CTAs on your website or social media posts and use this data to retarget campaigns, or optimise creative.

Content creation

Marketing automation may be able to automate interactions with customers and leads but it’s up to you to create the copy that forms those touch points. That means establishing a buyer persona (or more likely a set of personas) and writing in the manner which will be most effective at converting them.

To create a useful persona you need to consider:

Who the persona is and what they want.
What stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in.
What type of content they respond to.

When targeted to a specific persona, content is one of the most effective ways to help turn prospects into leads and leads into customers.

Measuring and fine-tuning

Once a marketing automation campaign kicks off, the work has only just begun. The next step is to measure your results, discern what works and what doesn’t and use that knowledge to continually fine tune your approach.

Metrics you need to be paying attention to include:

Response metrics like open rates, click through and site traffic.
Efficiency metrics like cost per customer and sales-accepted leads.
Value metrics like revenue generated and cost of investment VS revenue generated.

This best way to do this is usually to use two or more ads or strategies at once, both of which are similar apart from a small detail like different copy or targeting. This is better known as A/B testing—a functionality that HubSpot has built right into the software. Watch to see which performs better then adjust your strategy accordingly.