When it comes to social media nearly everyone falls in one of two extreme camps. You either love it or you hate it so much you would rather someone else do it for you. For this reason, many marketers love Marketing Automation for the capabilities of that it has. Results which automation brings to the table have been proven for years now that and this trend isn’t decreasing. So, what is Digital Marketing Automation?
Any software that is used to automate portions of your social media marketing action is marketing automation. This type of software is intended to reduce repetitious digital tasks such as email and social media actions. Thus freeing up time and energy to be used for other tasks. With the use of Marketing Automation, you gain the ability to run campaigns on several platforms at once. Such as Email, Social media as well as phone campaigns. It uses your CRM to combine insight-focused capabilities, as well as web analytics and other systems to provide you with powerful lead options.
Why do You Need It?
In the realm of marketing management, speed is king in many regards. If slow tedious portions of your business can be automated, it frees your time allowing you opportunities to engage with your customers more often. These types of engagements can potentially result in new leads and sales. You can then plug these leads into your automated system for email alerts and automated social media campaigns, thus growing your customer base.
Additionally, with good automation tools, marketers are further able to tailor target customers purchasing profiles. This tailored experience will have the added benefit of higher qualified prospective customers spending more time on your website. The longer that they spend on your site, the more data will that you can use to discover more leads and customers in an ongoing cycle.
This information is key to targeted relevant promotions on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. These platforms only focus on relevant new content, making your need for good marketing automation software even more important. The need for a strong CRM database is more important than ever before.
Where do I Start?
Do not be overwhelmed. Start small and see how much automation benefits you and you will be ready to take it to the next level in no time. Build a solid small campaign or two. This smaller scale will allow you to see the things marketing automation does well. As your list of contacts grows, build bigger campaigns to further build your target customer base.
One of the most popular email marketing platforms is Mailchimp. Once you start assembling a database of contacts, you can use this to start a regular stream of content marketing to your audience. You can also use features like welcome messages, birthday messages and notifications of abandoned shopping carts to keep your audience engaged for longer.
Craft an enticing Landing Page
Once you have a customer base built you want to craft a page that will hold your audience for as much time as possible. This must be done in an appealing way, taking in consideration things such as quality content relevant to your audience and a good user experience. Walls of text are a quick way to have your potential patrons clicking over to other sites. Poor developer practices and slow loading pages and poor graphic design choices will also turn your visitors away.
Focus on content that is is build around short paragraphs, bullet points and encouraging short pieces of content that will convince them to fill out forums and sign up for notifications via email and social media. All of your content should be shareable so your consumers can spread the word of your company for you – make sure you include social media share icons and links to your profiles.
Email
You must be sure that once your customers have given you their email that you do not abuse this. You need to focus on finding a pace that your automated systems will send out notifications frequently enough to draw your customers back to your page. At the same time as not to contact them too often and drive them away from your notifications.
Automated calling lists should be treated much like your email list as well. The last thing you want is your customers blocking your incoming calls or sending your emails to the junk folder.
A key to maintaining this contact with your consumers is to do everything you can to make the interaction feel personal. Tailored content will go a long way to repeat customers. This kind of focus on your customers will build loyalty and go a long way to retain your customer base.
Customer Retention is Essential
In the coming years, we will see a stronger embrace of customer retention. This loyalty combined with regular social interaction with your audience will begin cultivate micro-influencers out of all of your happy customers. This will grow your automated marketing files further increasing your brand.
Marketing automation software today can do most of the marketing heavy lifting for you. This can change the way you engage with your customers. You will have the ability to gather much better quality leads as well as freeing you up from tedium of everyday social media activity and enable you to spend the time being the face of your brand.