Marketing automation is a valuable tool when it comes to executing on your overall marketing strategy.
While automation done correctly will build your customer base and strengthen leads, there are common mistakes made when you are trying to rush the process of integrating marketing automation techniques into your campaign.
If you find yourself suddenly working with automation and feeling overwhelmed, it’s time to take a step back and review the entire process.
You’re Not Implementing the Advanced Features of Automation
Automation tools do more than send out emails to potential buyers to build leads.
It’s important to look through the features you can use to make automation a more dynamic part of your overall marketing strategy. You can utilize lead scoring to better understand which leads are strong, and you can become more specific about your marketing techniques when you take a careful look at the advanced features.
Automation should enhance your marketing, not detract from your overall strategy.
To learn how to use the advanced features of your automation software, take the time to read through any tutorials offered. While this may be basic advice, most software platforms are going to want you to use all of the features they have to offer.
This means the features will be user friendly, and generally well explained on the platform itself. Sometimes you may need to bring in a marketing automation expert as a consultant in order to get your business on the right track with your automation.
The Return on Investment Isn’t Being Measured
A common problem with rushing to employ marketing automation is that businesses don’t establish metrics or start to measure the return on investment. If you aren’t measuring your ROI, you can’t know how effective your marketing automation is.
When you don’t have metrics in place, you may end up spending money on your marketing budget that isn’t leading to sales. You need to establish your goals, and this can’t always be accomplished while rushing to utilize marketing automation.
You can start with simple goals.
If your first goal of marketing automation is to bring more buyers to your website, this can be easily measured. As you become more advanced in your strategy, your goals can become more specific. Determine what your marketing budget is, or what you are willing to spend when it comes to reaching your goals.
When you begin to measure your ROI, you’ll be able to be understand how your efforts affect it.
You Haven’t Reviewed Your Marketing Copy
You can’t simply put your old marketing content into an automation system and expect to be effective. When you begin using automation, you have to develop a plan that includes the creation of fresh copy for your marketing purposes.
When you are automating interactions, you will want to develop your buyer personas in order to create content that isn’t too generic. To get the most out of your marketing automation, develop a solid plan and create content to meet the needs of each buyer persona.
To write content that reaches each buyer persona, think about who is buying from your company. You’ll want to address the particular concerns of each buyer persona. For example, if one of your buyers is a likely overwhelmed purchasing agent who has to make decisions on product purchases quickly, you’ll want to offer that buyer easy solutions.
Your marketing content might mention how difficult it can be to be a purchasing agent and make fast decisions, while at the same time offering easy answers to all of their buying needs.
There’s No Marketing Strategy in Place
You can’t bring customers through the journey of buying if you don’t know what that journey entails.
To create an experience that brings your buyer through the buying process successfully, you’ll need to think about the questions your customers are asking. When you learn what your customers are asking, you’ll be able to create useful answers to those questions.
This is done by having a marketing strategy, and reviewing the search terms that bring buyers to your website.
Developing a marketing strategy takes time. While you can implement a basic strategy of, “get more people to visit the company website”, this strategy is going to evolve over time. The only thing constant about a marketing strategy is that it will always be changing. As your business needs change, so will the ways in which you try to reach your target demographic.
When you are adding marketing automation to your overall marketing, it’s important to start small if you are going to try and implement the automation quickly. Look over your marketing content, and make changes in content that is old and too vague.
When you want to successfully automate your marketing, look over the features of the software platform you have chosen and learn how to use them effectively.
