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Guide to Marketing Automation
Marketing automation has garnered widespread popularity in recent times. And why wouldn't it? It makes life much easier. It leads to higher conversion rates, increases productivity, keeps costs down and improves customer relationship among other things. Marketing Automation is a 1.62 billion dollar industry. 51% of all companies are already using marketing automation while more than half are planning to adopt it.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing Automation is the process by which software is used in a practical way to automate repetitive tasks. The process can be used to simplify, streamline and measure tasks, and workflow. The main aim of marketing automation is to increase operational efficiency while simultaneously growing business revenue. You can do more with minimal manual effort. Marketing automation can enable you to run all aspects of a marketing strategy like email marketing, social media or even complex multi-channel campaigns with ease from a single platform. The platform we recommend for marketing automation is Odoo. Odoo is an easy to use business management software that helps you to run a business efficiently. Odoo's marketing automation module has amazing useful features that can put your business on autopilot. A series of tasks you can automate using Odoo is:
- Social Media Marketing
- Campaign Segmentation
- Email Marketing Automation
- Website Visitor Tracking
- Lead Generation, Analysis, and Management
- Content Curation and Content Management
- Analytics and ROI Tracking
Advantages of Marketing Automation
The advantages that marketing automation brings to the table made it a staple in digital marketing. Let's take a close look at the advantages.
High Conversion rates: You can reach conversion rates as high as 50% if you use marketing automation. You can attract the right target market if you conduct proper lead generation through automation. You are presenting marketing initiatives to the right customers, so the inquiries are all coming from potential buyers. This significantly increases the probability of closing a sale. Odoo has an efficient lead management system that will consistently keep your conversion rates high.
Increased Productivity: Marketing automation enables your employees to focus on important tasks instead of simple mundane ones. It makes their life much easier. A happy and interested workforce means more productivity!
Improved Task Workflow: Everything can be kept in order thanks to marketing automation. It can sort out transactions, systemize activities, create proper scheduling and helps the workforce to collaborate and achieve a common goal. Automation can even be used for corporate planning and budgeting. Basically, it makes things smooth and simple. Odoo can streamline your workflow thanks to an intuitive visual interface to better envision your customer's journey.
Enhance Customer Relationships: Acquiring customers is the first phase of the journey. A marketers duty is to build a strong and lasting relationship with your customers. This can be achieved with marketing automation. Automation software can provide you with relevant customer data and analysis that can provide you with market intelligence. Thanks to automation, you can predict and respond to the ever-changing needs of the target market
Quicker Return on Investment: You can get a faster return on investment with marketing automation. The initial investment in marketing automation will quickly pay for itself. You can expect your revenues to increase about three times (55% to 20%)
How it works
At first, you need to understand what you need. Before you had automated the process, everything was done manually. From sending emails to daily social media posts. With a powerful tool like marketing automation on hand, you can automate surveys, data analysis, and even blog post schedules. Lead generation, content management, and even research can be handled with automation.
As a marketer, it is vital to know your target audience well. They are the ones who'll be using your products and services. You need to know who they are and where they are. You have to understand their behavior to know what your automation tasks need to accomplish. You can understand your target market through these factors:
- Demographic ( refers to characteristics like age, gender, race, education, and career.)
- Geographic (location of towns, cities, regions, states, countries, and continents.)
- Behavioral ( how an individual responds and uses a product. factors include mood, brand loyalty, price responsiveness, or reaction to change.)
- Psychographic(attitudes, lifestyles, personalities, and values.
Odoo can help you create automatic and targeted marketing campaigns by segmenting your database and delivering the right message to the right people at the right time.
Keep in mind that implementing a new strategy like marketing automation will cause changes in the workplace and may cause undue disruptions for some time. However, change is a good thing and can help bring about new ideas or different ways of handling things. Plan and execute good sounds strategies with your team and employ good quality people to implement the strategies. Remember that proper communication and commitment are crucial to your success. Also, make sure to properly monitor your progress.
Good Marketing Automation practices
Make sure to start small and slowly grow in the process. Don't do anything out of your capacity. Create a good workflow without getting lost. The workflow will act as a guide through the automation process. Try to automate an already existing process to lower risks and improve efficiency. Understand the buying habits of your customers. Retain and build relationships with buyers. And lastly, make sure to conduct tests before implementing marketing automation. There are a lot of other things to keep in mind before implementing marketing automation, but these should be enough when you're starting out.
By automating mundane and repetitive things, marketing automation can improve efficiency and save you company time. It will improve your ROI and help you maintain a healthy customer base.
This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
© 2019 Henry Chen