We all know how marketing plays the role of blood in businesses today. As the business keeps scaling, it is impossible to be personally in touch with every customer possible or managing these relationships at a very personal level and hence, so many institutions are resorting to automated marketing - which takes a lot of burden off their shoulders and helps them to operate efficiently, professionally - and most uniquely, ensures that punctuality is driven in all communications that take place through their accounts and network.
“Not implementing a marketing automation software, may be the ultimate career-limiting move for today’s marketers. If you haven’t got started, you are already behind the eight balls.”- IDC group.
There is a plethora of software today that provides you with the platform to automate marketing. Most of these platforms are easy to use, can be modified according to your needs, and can be found within a suitable price range. The purpose for which you wish to use this feature depends on the nature of your services and products. For a bank or other financial institution, automated marketing can be used for customer relationship management (CRM), nurturing prospects, turning these prospects into customers, and designing and carrying out a number of other marketing tasks and processes.
Here are some interesting facts about automated marketing.
- Contrary to most beliefs that it is not personalized, automated marketing improves communication and gives you extra time to focus on the quality of your messages and campaigns. It also gives you time to give communication a personal space through regulated one-on-one conversations.
- Marketing automation connects various communication channels. Email marketing is also a part of marketing automation
- It aims at being user-friendly and is used to improve the users' experience, and can also be modified for the same.
But what we need to realize most importantly is that marketing automation is not just a software or technology. It is a medium and a channel you use to perform some of the most crucial activities for your business.
To make the most out of the feature, here are some mistakes you should avoid when you implement marketing automation.
1. No strategy as to Inbound Lead Generation
If you are wise, you will use market automation alongside inbound marketing. Some marketers today rely too much on market automation without having any strategy for inbound lead generation or not giving enough priority to the same. Inbound marketing involves the regular sales funnel likes-leads-sales, while automated marketing is just a means of communication with the existing leads and then converting them to sales. If you do not have these existing leads ready, marketing automation will not be productive for you. Hence, marketing automation and inbound marketing are not mutually exclusive of each other. Instead, it is difficult to make the most out of one without the other. To be able to make the most out of marketing automation, you should have existing leads or visitors, which is possible only when you have an excellent inbound strategy in place.
2. Unclear Goal
When you have no goal or target for your market automation processes, you end up in the middle of a situation wherein you think you are investing with a sufficient input but are not able to leverage the investment. As a marketer, you should have a specific goal and process laid out for every tool that you wish to use. In the case of marketing automation, it can be in the form of - the number of responses or form signups, number of leads, conversion rate, and so on. If you have these clear goals, you will be able to track your progress and adapt your content to the responses that you receive. It will also help you in prioritizing your leads, which is extremely beneficial in situations wherein you want to deliver content according to the characteristics of these leads.
3. Intrusive Pressure Selling of Product
Sometimes, when marketers get hold of potential customers, they tend to get eager to get them converted to customers, and most often become intrusive and pushy with their deals and offers. This means that the leads are not getting engaged before they are pursued with sales pitches and communications. Engaging leads with relevant and defined content is extremely crucial before you move on to selling the product or service. Through engaging with them, you can flow down information regarding your institution, its principles, and how you stand apart from your fellow competitors. You can also engage the leads to your advantage by getting to know more about them through the medium of a call to action like form signups, questionnaires, or surveys.
4. Non-Segmentation of Audience
Having huge email lists but no segmentation of who you are sending the emails to—in other words, no categorization of your audience—will end up in your marketing efforts going to waste. This is because, if you are delivering the same piece of content to all age groups, or people from different professions, different marital status, or different interests, there is a huge possibility that you are sending out content and emails to an audience who is least interested in pursuing it. Sometimes, even demographic or behavioral information can influence the content. It will help if you aim at targeting the right audience before you begin your marketing automation processes, which has a better probability of a better conversion rate. For example, if you segregate your audience into retired and non-retired professionals, you will be able to deliver your content which is concerned with them separately and receive a response which is coming from a person most likely to be a potential customer.
5.Unclear Marketing Campaign
When you are running a marketing campaign, marketing automation and inbound marketing are crucial parts of it and are not exclusive. Marketing campaigns are designed so that the marketer can keep on tracking his progress and performance, ensuring, at the same time, that he is not lost in the middle and continues to remember what the next step should be. When the marketing campaign is unclear, you are missing out on the bigger picture that marketing automation is a part of, and this will have an impact on the efficiency of the marketing campaign altogether. Hence, laying down a supervised and clear marketing campaign is important so that you can be clear in implementing the action steps as well and specify the targets for them in coordination with the campaign.
6. Irregular Data Collection and Interpretation
The best part of any marketing campaign is that it gives you access to data on leads and customers, which you can use wisely in your communications and content. The abundance of data comes with the challenge of collecting it at the right time and interpreting it when needed. Actions that come from information and data analysis are very calculated and give better results than actions that are not backed up by enough data and research. When you are unable to interpret data, you are losing out on relevant information that can help you design great marketing campaigns. Moreover, if you have collected data and used it in processes at a certain point in time but have not done it in recent times, you should have access to the latest information as frequently as possible so that your processes can stay updated.
7. Irregular Communication
The best feature of marketing automation is that it helps you communicate with potential leads and customers on a personal level. You can send them relevant content and messages and expect responses too. Sometimes these leads and customers can get intrigued about a product or service when they first read about it and might expect another email explaining more about it, and another one giving them reasonable offers, and so on. This interest can fade away if the communication is not done regularly or frequently enough, and you could lose out on a potential lead. It is best advised to have a separate team working on market automation and marketing campaigns so that they can give their complete effort and time.
8. Delivering Content Without Call to Actions
It is possible that when you are in the midst of running marketing automation, you realize that there is no possible way to measure or record if the audience is receiving and going through your content and messages. To avoid this situation, all marketing automation content should always contain a certain call to action. This call to action can be in the form of surveys, questionnaires, sign-ups, forms, or simple clicks. They help you to have access to the number of people who are interested in going through your content or are interested in your product or service, depending on the nature of the call to action and the purpose of including it in the content.
9, Prying into Personal Information
When you are too inquisitive about the personal information of leads or customers, you can scare them off or come across as a hoax. They will not be able to trust you with this information. Through marketing automation, although it is possible to get access to such information, this factor of prying into personal information should be kept in mind. However, you can receive this information over a certain period of time through the medium of well-curated content.
10. Implementing Marketing Automation in Silo
It would be better if you had a shared vision across the various teams in marketing so that marketing automation is not run as a distinct function but is in harmony with other operations in the enterprise. For example, when the sales department is able to understand the marketing campaign and the content delivered through marketing automation, they are able to deliver what is promised to the leads and customers. Restricting market automation to the team alone will not help you in using the feature to the maximum and coordinating with other fronts.
Conclusion
Marketing automation is a feature that is continually evolving, and hence, you need to keep up with its pace. To get the most out of the software, you should be able to subject your campaigns to hit and trial methods and sufficient testing so that you always have the best data and are aware of the latest trends. This will definitely play an important role in the success of your products and services.
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