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Automating your marketing is one of the smartest things you can do for your business.

Marketing is everything we do to create, communicate, deliver and exchange offerings that have value for our customers.

Marketing automation is everything we do to leverage marketing. By using software and tools to automate repetitive tasks, send relevant content to our customers and track behaviour we can save time, money and increase our conversion rates.

51% of companies are currently using marketing automation, with more than half of B2B companies (58%) planning to adopt the technology.

It’s hot, it’s happening and we’re going to tell you why.

Tell us more about Marketing Automation

Marketing automation can help you increase the quantity and quality of your leads, follow up with new leads, keep existing leads engaged and react to their behaviour, increase your productivity and help you follow up and react in ways that would not be possible manually.

All businesses can be automating something.

All businesses need to have a solid marketing automation strategy.

Marketing Automation is more than a clever platform. It is:

• A collection of tools capable of delivering your content in an automated way across any or all of your chosen channels. Eg: email, social, sms, direct mail, apps, ads.
• Software that allows you to react automatically to engagement with that content – An email was opened, a link in an SMS message was clicked, a prospect saw an advert in a magazine and texted your keyword to your SMS number.
• A way of streamlining your sales and marketing teams, to reduce manual tasks and increase the chance of conversion to a customer.
• A platform that can take all your incoming leads and segment them based on their interest.
• A tool that enables you to link your CRM to your advertising platforms to give a more personalised and highly targeted collection of messages.
• A method of simplifying the customer experience, reducing the number of steps involved in a purchase, scheduling content to be there at the right time, with the right message, and on the right channel.
• A nifty widget to act on those contacts that are engaging the most: Lead Scoring. How hot your leads are.
• A system that gives you business intelligence; allowing you to gauge the engagement of your prospects and customers. Report on your sales; tell you which channel delivers the best customer lifetime value, and measure the success of your sales and marketing team’s efforts as a whole.
• An integration with all the other tools you use, like your project management system, your internal communication system, your fulfilment company, or just your printer.

Some Marketing Automation tools

There are so many marketing automation tools and unfortunately a lot of businesses get burnt when choosing the right one.

The amount of times “marketing automation” has been searched per week has almost tripled over the past five years. (Google Trends)

The tool is just that, a tool. Without your decision making, planning and action it will just lay around gathering dust. Keep this in mind when you decide to migrate to automated marketing.

In no particular order, some examples of marketing automation software:

• Infusionsoft
• Kartra
• Constant Contact
• Hubspot
• Mailchimp
• ActOn!
• Klaviyo
• Marketo
• Convertkit
• Eloqua
• io
• Pardot
• Buzzbuilder

If you spent ten minutes each on the websites of the top twenty platforms; without planning your ideal customer journey first, we pretty much guarantee that you would be no wiser than when you started, and may have a headache.

Instead, focus on what you need to achieve, and what steps you need to take to get to that goal. Then choose the platform that suits you and your desired journey best.

What Marketing automation can do

When used effectively with a customer focused strategy in place, marketing automation can:

• Create an omni-channel environment
• Deliver lead magnets and lead nurture
• Track behaviour and lead score
• React to that tracked behaviour – automating your response to their interactions with your content
• Develop a relationship with your prospects
• Remove manual tasks
• Automate your sales and sales pipeline
• Run reports
• Increase your conversion rates and customer lifetime value

Did you know that businesses that implement marketing automation experience an average of a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Business2Community)

Our marketing automation questions to get you thinking

1. What is your marketing process?
2. What are you missing from your marketing strategy?
3. How much could you be automating?
4. Where could you start?

Thanks so much to Kenda McDonald from Automation Ninjas for this great guest blog! We work with the team at Automation Ninjas for marketing automation. They are experts in behaviourally intelligent marketing automation. This means they have the technical skills, psychological expertise and strategic genius to make your marketing automation platform a lean mean money making machine.

Tell us how you are using marketing automation in your business on hello@adpr.co.uk!

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