With limited resources, time, and team members, marketing automation can be incredibly beneficial for small and medium businesses. It helps you to do more with less for excellent marketing results. However, while marketing automation platforms do the heavy lifting, you need to have effective marketing automation strategies for better results. In this article, we’ll discuss tips to help you make the most out of your marketing automation efforts.
Choose the right marketing automation tools
There are thousands of marketing automation platforms, and they are not created equally. Most of these tools are great, but not all of them are necessarily right for your business since the buyer’s journey and the sales cycle is different for different types of businesses.
Some marketing automation tools may not have the features and tools necessary to manage the customer lifecycle for your business. Put some time and effort into researching different platforms so you can be sure you are picking the right one. For instance, do you want customer relationship management software, email marketing software, social media marketing software, or an all-in-one marketing automation software such as HubSpot?
Build your list instead of buying it
Your marketing campaigns are only as good as your list. If you really want your campaign to bring the desired results, it needs to be filled with qualified leads. Buying a contact list will give an instant engagement push, but there is no point in having a long list full of people who are not interested in your products or services. You can organically build contact list for your marketing campaigns using the following ways:
- Promote lead generation offers via social media
- Create compelling landing pages
- Host webinars
- Newsletter opt-ins
- Promote an online contest
- Leverage business cards
Segment your list
Segmentation involves separating customer lists or potential customers based on their interests. It enables you to tailor your content to the interests of each specific customer, which helps to drive them further down the sales funnel. Some of the factors to consider when segmenting your contact list include:
- Demographic – Information such as gender, age, income level, and location can tell a lot about a customer’s needs and interests
- Stages of the buying cycle
- Past purchases
- Time since last purchase
- How the lead was captured
Study and hack leaders in your niche
For you to implement the most effective marketing automation strategies, you need to know how top performers in your niche are approaching marketing automation. How often do they send emails? How is their content structured? What kind of content do they send to their prospects?
Measure your efforts
Like with any marketing strategy, you need to keep an eye on the effectiveness of your marketing automation efforts. It helps you identify areas in your marketing automation campaign that need improvement. Some of the metrics you should pay close attention to include:
- Email open and click-through rates
- The generated revenue
- Customers acquired
- Conversion rates
- Unsubscribe rates
- Website engagement
Endnote
Marketing automation is no longer a reserve of the big and powerful companies with vast customer bases. Marketing automation tools are more available than ever before, and you can use them to take your marketing efforts to the next level. These tips will help you get the best out of your marketing automation efforts.
