How to Use Marketing Automation

Your marketing funnel is similar to a well-oiled engine. There are many components within an engine that work together to help things run smoothly. The same goes for your marketing funnel. If one component isn’t working properly, the rest will follow. That’s where marketing automation comes into play. Marketing automation will ensure all components are working properly in order to create one harmonious marketing funnel. Let’s take a quick look at how marketing automation works.

 

Learn More About Your Leads

A major misconception with marketing automation is that it’s the same as email marketing. Although email marketing is often used, marketing automation is much more complex and touches on every digital marketing strategy within your marketing funnel.

Marketing automation is a system that allows you to be proactive with your leads, which we call lead profiling. Lead profiling is a strategy to collect important profile information about your leads, such as age, location, interests and more. The idea behind profiling is simply to get a better understanding of your target audience. By doing this, you give yourself the ability to create more relevant content. Relevant content is important, because it’s genuinely what your leads want to see.

Marketing automation can also show you where your leads are within a buying cycle. So why is this important? If you’ ve got a lead that is just entering the buying cycle on product A and another lead that is near the end of the buying cycle for product B, they should be receiving different content that is relevant based on their location in the funnel.

 

Make Your Leads Feel Important

Your goal is to make leads feel comfortable with your brand, and marketing automation can help. A recent study shows that lead nurturing creates 50% more sales leads at 33% lower cost and a 20% increase in sales opportunities.

Let’s say for example that someone viewed a product on your website and then left. A great way of enticing them to come back is by sending them an automated email with a small discount. This is a great example of lead nurturing. You’re simply using marketing automation to further this lead down the marketing funnel.

 

Don’t Slack on Content

It’s easy to slap together any old email and send it out, but that can have negative consequences. Again, you have to know where your lead is within the buying cycle. Based on their location in the buying cycle and what they are viewing, you need to send relevant content to that individual.

Your content in your marketing automation can also be beneficial to your brand awareness. Many leads are not going to know your company, therefore it’s your job to build trust and introduce them to your brand. A great way of doing this is by sending educational content based on what they are interested in. This builds trust and also credibility for your company.

 

How to Determine if Your Marketing Automation is Working

Marketing automation should be providing a positive ROI. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to lock down concrete numbers on your marketing automation campaign, but there are key indicators of whether or not it’s working.

• Leads Generated: Without leads, you’ve got nothing. Leads are what brings your marketing funnel to life. Take a look at the bounce rate and time spent on your site to determine whether or not you’re attracting quality leads to your site. If you’ve got a high bounce rate and low time on site, chances are your marketing automation campaign is pointing your leads in the wrong direction.
• Content Interaction : A heavy majority of the ROI of your marketing automation campaign is going to depend on the content you create. Without relevant, high-quality content, your marketing automation will never get off the ground. So take a look at the interactions your leads are having with your content. This goes for all content, including website, social media accounts and email campaigns. If you’re getting crickets on your site and social media pages and a low open-rate on your emails, that’s a big red flag that something needs to change.

 

What Are We Hoping to Achieve?

Digital marketing is constantly changing. What worked yesterday might produce no results the next day. So it’s important to stay ahead of your leads and predict the next step of your buyers’ behavior. Marketing automation will allow you to do this. By knowing their habits, sending them relevant information and nudging your leads down the funnel, you will certainly end up with a positive ROI in your overall digital marketing plan.