Marketing Automation, How It Works and How to Use It Properly
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is a way to collect information, trigger events based on that information and produce workflows to engage the human touch. It has revolutionized the way B2B companies and large purchase B2C companies structure their marketing programs. The online marketing world has made it possible collect large amounts of data about your customer’s interactions, which in return is making it difficult to manage all of this data.
Customer Interaction
An online presence no longer consists of building a website and calling it a day. In order to stay competitive you now have to get a share of your market’s web traffic. Then you need your website to act more like an amusement park then a bridge, meaning you want them to hang out for a while. Not only do you want them to hang out, you want them to be engaged and ultimately converting. In the B2B world, most sales don’t happen in an online shopping cart. They visit your site multiple times reading expert advice, downloading white papers and watching videos before they decide to engage with you. With marketing automation you can track what your customers are doing from their first click to a sale.
Automate Your Process
While your customers are hanging out at your site wouldn’t it be nice to know when a visitor checks out your pricing page? With marketing automation you have the ability to identify who’s been to your pricing page and to ping someone on your sales team. You now have a warm lead and the ability to make certain that the sales team follows up on it. Automating these processes eliminates human error and guarantees that a hard earned lead is being followed up on. You can set up triggers to notify sales, engage managers, escalate untouched leads, nurture them once they go stale, and ultimately anything that can help the sales process.
Beat the Competition
Marketing automation tools have become very powerful and can give you a competitive advantage during this adaption phase. Even companies that have adapted to this tool have not quite harnessed the full power of it. Getting your company on board now can leave your competition in the dust. Make sure you do your research and build a solid program to implement a marketing automation solution to its full capacity.
Marketing Automation Tools
Currently, there are many leading tools for automation. Find a tool that integrates well with your CRM. If you are planning to adopt an automated marketing tool for your company it is recommended that you hire a consultant.