How Marketing Automation can boost your Toronto business

MARKETING AUTOMATION

How Marketing Automation can boost your Toronto business

Posted June 16, 2017 by admin

Marketing Automation is already big in the Toronto digital marketing sphere. With almost 50% of businesses already investing in it. And while this number keeps growing, a lot of companies are still confused by Marketing Automation. What about you. Do you actually know what it is? What it does? Or what it can bring to your business?

This article is here to help you finally answer those questions. But before we go any further, take a look at the stats below. They will give you a good idea about what Marketing Automation is all about.

What is Marketing Automation?

While those stats look good, to make the most out of it, you will need to understand what Marketing Automation is. So let’s get to grips with what Marketing Automation is.
Marketing Automation are online software that will automate your marketing efforts so that you can spend more time on important projects and not worry about repetitive tasks.

Say goodbye to having to send thank you emails every time someone registers or subscribe to your products or services. No need to pick up the phone or send an email to your sales team to let them know they have a new lead. Your Marketing Automation software will take care of all of this and more, automatically.

For a concrete example, think of Amazon. When you purchase a product on Amazon, you will likely receive an email with related products you may like. Amazon nurtures their leads with highly personalized and valuable content that is likely to converts browsers into paying customers.

Because people engage with content that’s relevant to them. Amazon is able to generate new and faster revenue. The big plus is that all of this happens automatically thanks to a Marketing Automation software.

But how exactly can Marketing Automation do that? Well, it’s thanks to three central parts.

How does Marketing Automation work?

Every Marketing Automation tool is composed of a central database, an engagement and an analytics engine:

  • The central database means that you won’t have to switch from one tool to the next to see all the details about your customers. You will have a detailed profile page for each of your leads, including their interests and behaviors. From this, you’ll be able to segment your database to send the right communication to each customer.
  • An engagement engine is a place where you can create, and manage all of your automations and online/offline conversations, kind of like an orchestra conductor but for all of your customer interactions.
  • An analytics engine is an engine that will show you exactly how much your ROI is, what has worked, what hasn’t, and what should be adjusted or optimized.

Overall, using a Marketing Automation tool can help you become more efficient, save you precious time, and increase your revenue at a faster pace. You will be able to automatically reach out to leads with content they want to see. You will also know when to offer top, middle, or bottom-of-funnel content depending on where your leads are in their sales cycle. The goal of Marketing Automation is to serve the right content that will convince your leads to advance to the next stage of your sales funnel until they ultimately convert.

 

Aren’t Email Marketing and Marketing Automation one and the same?

A common misunderstanding is that Email Marketing and Marketing Automation are basically the same thing. However, Marketing Automation has all the features of traditional Email Marketing software on top of many other features. You won’t find a landing page builder in Campaign Monitor, for example.

Marketing Automation is basically Email Marketing on steroids. It can send mass emails and give you the basic email reports that MailChimp or other Email Marketing services offer but it can go so much further. It can follow after-the-click behavior for example. With any email marketing platform, you will know how many clicks you have. But will you know where your customers have gone after that? Did they leave your website? Or did they continue browsing? And if they did, where did they go and for how long? Marketing Automation can answer all those questions.

Here is a side by side comparison that should help you understand the basic differences between Email Marketing and Marketing Automation:

Email Service Provider Marketing Automation
Sends Mass Emails YES YES
Email Reports YES YES
Landing Page Builder   YES
Form Builder   YES
Lead Score   YES
Qualify leads   YES
Nurture leads based on behavior   YES
Calculate ROI   YES

 

Now that you understand what Marketing Automation is and how it differs from Email Marketing, the next question you may be wondering is if Marketing Automation is for every business?

 

Can anyone use Marketing Automation?

While both big businesses and SMEs have found value in Marketing Automation, let’s make sure you too can get value from a Marketing Automation tool. The following questions, however, will help you understand if you would, indeed, benefit from Marketing Automation:

  • Are you generating a steady flow of new leads or want to?
  • Are you generating a steady flow of qualified leads or want to?
  • Do you write new content on a constant basis?
  • Do you nurture or want to nurture your leads?

 

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then Marketing Automation could be beneficial for your company as it can help you generate leads, nurture them, and ultimately convert them.

Generating, Nurturing, and Converting

Through features such as landing pages, social media marketing, and forms, you will be able to offer more opportunities for your leads to come back to your website and identify themselves. This will result in an increasing amount of traffic to your site.

Once leads are identified, you will be able to send each of your potential customers content that he or she wants to see thanks to features such as segmentation, email marketing, and lead scoring. The segmentation will help you divide your database based on your leads’ behaviors and interests. The lead scoring will allow you to know how engaged or unengaged a lead is. From there, you will be able to send each of your leads content that is tailored to where he or she is at in your sales cycle.

Finally, once your leads are qualified enough, you can automatically notify a sales person and start using the CRM feature. With a customizable pipeline, detailed sales report, and leads that are sales ready after the nurturing stage, your sales team will be able to convert more leads faster.

You should now understand where Marketing Automation could fit within your business. However, sometimes, even if a business answers yes to one or more of the questions above, common mistakes can make it difficult to make your Marketing Automation tool truly shine.

Common mistakes and why Marketing Automation sometimes falls short

Too often, companies purchase a Marketing Automation tool without being ready for it. Marketing Automation will send the right emails to the right leads, for example, but you will still need to write the content. Without the right ingredients, Marketing Automation won’t work.

You shouldn’t expect to get a Marketing Automation tool and for it to just start working right away. Yes, Marketing Automation can bring in more revenue and boost your ROI but you will also need to put in effort and time if you want to see it shine.

There are two major mistakes that too many companies do with Marketing Automation: the lack of strategy and the lack of software knowledge.

Lack of Strategy

You have to remember that, no matter what Marketing Automation platform you choose, Marketing Automation won’t work by itself. You and your team will be behind each move, each decision. Therefore, if you don’t know what you want to achieve, or what strategy to put in place, your Marketing Automation software won’t do it for you.

Once you understand what Marketing Automation is, and what it can do, you need a strategy – what you want each feature to achieve, what kind of drip campaign you want to implement, what content should go to which segment of your database etc.

Lack of Knowledge

The implementation part of your Marketing Automation software is also paramount. No matter if you choose to use a platform with limited features or something with many more functionalities, such as Hubspot for example, Marketing Automation is complicated from the start.

If companies have the strategy part down but don’t take the time to learn and correctly implement the software that they have bought, a lot of the features that could be very powerful will not be used to the fullest of their extent.

In Conclusion…

Now that you understand what Marketing Automation is, what it is made of, who should use it, and why many that do use it fail, you are probably left wondering what the key to succeeding at Marketing Automation is.

There are two very important principles to keep in mind at all times while you work with Marketing automation:

  • Understanding that Marketing Automation will not do the marketing and lead generation for you but, once you implement the right strategy and the right features correctly, it will allow you to scale.
  • You should always put yourself in the mind of the customer when writing your marketing messages. Marketing Automation gives you the ability to create a one-on-one communication. It is up to you to write the right message.

Now that you understand what Marketing Automation is, how it works, and how it can fail, team up with an expert to make your Marketing Automation journey a successful one.