Marketing Automation 101: An Introduction to Marketing Automation

Marketing automation has become a game-changer for businesses. With the help of marketing automation software, you can automate repetitive tasks to spend time on more strategic activities like your business or brand marketing strategy. Marketing automation could save you hours spent on tedious tasks day in and day out!

Before diving into Marketing Automation, make sure you have a set strategy!

What is Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the process of using software to automate repetitive marketing tasks.

When you are just getting started, it can be challenging to know what marketing channels will prove prosperous for your business and how much time you should spend on them each day. Marketing automation can help by automating certain parts of your strategy, allowing you to focus on more important activities like growing your audience or developing new ways to contact potential customers.

The most important thing about marketing automation is that it doesn’t have to feel overwhelming or complicated. As long as you’re willing to dedicate a little bit of time at the start (say an hour) learning about which tools might work best for your company’s needs and what some basic strategies are, then you’re on the right path.

Why use Marketing Automation

What are the advantages of marketing automation?

Marketing automation software like HubSpot is a game-changer for marketers because it helps manage and automate the repetitive tasks that come with building connections and relationships with customers. It also enables you to do more strategic work, like cleverly testing out new campaigns without actually running them live. A significant benefit of marketing automation is that it integrates seamlessly into existing sales and customer service infrastructure, so you aren’t doubling up on time-consuming efforts.

It’s worth taking some time at the start (say an hour) to learn about which tools might work best for your company’s needs and what some basic strategies are. Still, once you’re beyond this stage, there isn’t anything overly complicated or complex about marketing automation. On the contrary, it can save you hours on tedious tasks so that you can spend more quality time working on other strategic activities like sales and customer service!

How does Marketing Automation work

Knowing the ins and outs of marketing automation is a great way to boost your skillset. And as a marketer, you must have every tool in your arsenal to help you find success in today’s challenging digital landscape.

The truth is that marketing automation software has come a long way from what it used to be just a few years ago. For one thing, these days, people expect marketers to be experts at everything from social media management, email marketing, content development — the list goes on and on!

It doesn’t matter if you’re new or seasoned — no one can keep up with all those demands without the significant time investment. But luckily for us, there are tools out there designed exclusively for streamlining this process, like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign.

Marketing automation platforms automate the process of collecting leads, contacts, and customer data from your website, email marketing and in-app messaging, trigger an engagement based on that data, and more!

It gives you a complete overview of all prospects at once. You can see what they’ve done on your website, where they came from, and which content or products interested them in the process. Then, customize each experience based on that information that allows you to focus on high-quality prospects instead of wasting time chasing down leads that aren’t worth your time!

No need to manually send emails anymore; automate your email marketing! You can now employ your digital marketing strategy at scale.

The most important thing to understand about marketing automation software, such as ActiveCampaign, is that it enables a company to automate routine tasks like building contacts and customer relationships. It also makes an organization more strategic by allowing them to conduct clever marketing campaigns without actually having the campaign go live!

Although marketers are still involved in some aspects of this type of software, marketing automation frees up time for more engaging efforts. Ultimately helping grow your business’s bottom line.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is an incredible time-saving tool. It’s worth taking time to start learning about which marketing automation tool might work best for your company’s needs and some basic strategies. Once you’re beyond this stage, there isn’t anything overly complicated or complex about marketing automation. It can save you hours on tedious tasks so that you can spend more quality time working on other strategic activities like sales and customer service!

So how does Marketing Automation benefit my Businesses?

On a high level, marketing automation allows you to:

• Manage B2B customer engagement in real-time
• Implement Multi-channel Marketing Strategies
• Collect and analyze customer data from all your marketing channels to see how you can improve performance across the board
• It increases the productivity of a business by automating repetitive tasks.
• It makes it easier for businesses to make media buying decisions by collecting all marketing data in one place.
• Builds relationships with customers over time through automated nurturing campaigns — such as content upgrades and drip emails

To give you an idea of how to use marketing automation, here are some examples of what kind of activities the software can seamlessly automate for your business:

1. Email marketing campaign creation — You can set up Automations from lead capture forms or landing pages to get your emails out quickly and easily.
2. Interview scheduling — Quickly schedule interviews with qualified leads and close them as deals.
3. Coupon creation — Create coupons from leads in a matter of minutes, creating a more personalized experience for each customer.
4. Marketing list segmentation — Group like-minded customers or deals together to allow for better-targeted email marketing and messages.
5. Customer relationship management — Combine your customer data to make it easy for you or the sales team to access any time. Marketing automation tools give you access to all your marketing data in one centralized location. Thus, allowing you to refine your messaging and provide a better customer experience.
6. Nurture Leads Automatically — Your email campaign generates leads, but now it’s time to follow up. While you can do it manually, automated lead nurturing allows for more straightforward pinpointing of potential customer prospects and their stage in the sales cycle. That means never missing a golden opportunity to engage.
7. Content creation — Pull relevant and current content from your website, blog, social media, and more to send out current information to help customers feel appreciated and valued.
8. Social media presence — Monitor all of your accounts on social media, send direct messages and posts to your followers. Storing all your social media data in one central location, you can scale your content across multiple channels.

Marketers can use marketing automation sequences to achieve multiple objectives at once. For example, suppose you want your contacts to receive ten emails over two weeks from different departments within your company (marketing, sales, customer service). In that case, this is possible through automation sequences! You’ll also be able to send them emails based on what they click on, such as downloading content or watching a video — all without having to lift a finger.

Marketing and Sales Alignment

Businesses have a lot of moving parts and obstacles that you must manage accordingly. Marketing, sales, operations, finance, the list goes on and on. If all your business aspects are not aligned — including your marketing and sales teams — chances are something is holding you back from achieving success.

So if your marketing and sales team don’t have a transparent system for integrating marketing with sales, that’s a big problem! Teams working independently of one another without communicating can lead to some significant issues within the company that will only cost money in the end.

That’s why competitive businesses use marketing automation!

Marketing automation makes it easier for businesses to make sales decisions by collecting all data in one place. With Marketing Automation, you can bridge automation tools like CRM and email into one place so your marketing and sales teams can see what’s going on with every customer! Now time isn’t wasted when emails go unanswered because you get real-time responses from prospects who might need something to move forward with your company.

If there’s one KPI worth tracking, it’s marketing ROI. It can be especially tricky for digital companies that don’t have complex data on hand! And if you aren’t working with a marketing automation platform, running A/B tests on your campaigns isn’t possible. However, using marketing automation enables you to automate these tests and see what works best with your business. The data you collect can provide valuable insights to help inform your sales efforts and gain more purchase qualified leads (PQLs). Not only do you get more leads, but the leads you collect are sales-ready!

Market Automating improves your business’s sales processes by streamlining sales channels for marketing and sales teams to generate sales leads to ensure you’re getting a return.

The old days of blindly running campaigns with little to no data are over. Using a marketing automation tool provides you a 360-degree view of your customers, allowing you to make intelligent marketing decisions and scale your marketing efforts. Based on the data and insights you collect, it will be easier to see what campaigns are working for your business and which ones need tweaking or even the ax!

For marketing and sales teams to work together, they need a platform that allows them to come together in one place. That’s what makes marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot stand out as a marketing automation tool. You can easily integrate your CRM and email program to create seamless customer journeys from landing pages to sales-ready!

Leverage Marketing Automation Tools Effectively

Marketers know that time is money, and software to automate tasks in a campaign is working smarter, not harder. That’s why marketing automation can be such a game-changer for businesses — saving hours of work every day. Now marketers can focus on what matters most: engaging prospects and customers.

What makes specific marketing automation SaaS different from other platforms?

Marketing automation platforms provide:

• A user-friendly interface.
• Real-time analytics dashboards.
• Integrated CRM systems.
• Social media monitoring.

These tools allow users to manage their database and content without any difficulty. But that’s not all — they also include numerous out-of-the-box tools such as templates for email campaigns, landing pages, and Google Adwords campaigns.

So which Marketing Automation Platform is the best?

If you choose to use marketing automation, you may be overwhelmed by the amount of marketing automation platforms and tools available. ActiveCampaign and HubSpot are the two main alternatives when it comes to marketing automation. With ActiveCampaign, you can automate every aspect of your marketing. The platform presents a user-friendly interface, real-time dashboards, integrated CRM system, and social media monitoring with few limits in what you can do. This platform is best for those who want total control over their business by using automation tools beyond what HubSpot offers.

HubSpot, one of the most popular choices for marketing automation solutions, offers a more comprehensive suite of marketing automation tools with advanced features. In addition, the platform comes with a content management system and integrated social tools to make your life easier.

The platform is best for small businesses that cannot pay thousands of dollars in software and still need something user-friendly. Even if you add in a few paid add-ons, the average cost will come out to around $100 per month — not too bad for what you get.

But which is best? Here’s how they stack up against each other:

Although both ActiveCampaign and HubSpot have their strengths and weaknesses, you should consider what your goals are when deciding which one to use.

Depending on your business goals, either of these tools could be the best solution. Both offer a significant amount of features and can help marketers streamline their processes. However, if you’re looking for higher-end automation or need something more flexible than standard templates offered, check out ActiveCampaign as a solution.

HubSpot is a more basic tool. However, it’s easy to use, has great templates, and can help automate your marketing efforts from start to finish. Still, if you’re looking for something with more power than that, ActiveCampaign may be the better option for you.

You can even try both tools for 30 days and decide which one you prefer. Who knows? You might start automating the entire process in no time!

Learn more about how specific marketing automation tools can help your business by booking a call with our team for a free consultation on setting up automation for your business.

Tips for using marketing automation software

Marketing automation services such as HubSpot are a tremendous time-saver. Here are some tips for implementing marketing automation software to your advantage:

1. Get started with an hour of learning the basic strategies and tools by looking over the platform’s documentation and resources. Many platforms offer an introductory course that provides an abundance of information!
2. Utilize marketing automation to save yourself hours on tedious tasks so that you can focus more energy elsewhere (such as sales or customer service). Or setting up an automated welcome email for website sign-ups!
3. Create personalized experiences with tailored email campaigns, upcoming events, and other pertinent information using the power of marketing automation. w
4. Use sequences to coordinate multiple objectives at once! For service-based businesses that require a pre-consult meeting, let automation do the work for you. Integrate a scheduling tool with a platform such as ActiveCampaign to push that booking into a series of automation that follow up with email confirmations and reminders.

The Future of Marketing Automation

As the amount of data continues to grow, marketers will use automation software like HubSpot to make smarter decisions. Until now, insight was a limited resource, and those who had it could charge whatever they wanted for it. As we all get access to more data, however, the price goes down for insight and marketing in general.

In the future, you’re going to see a lot more collaboration between marketers and developers, much like how HubSpot sells its products through its marketing automation platform. It’s not just about getting customers into your funnel anymore- it’s about getting them through the whole process of becoming a customer with maximum efficiency.

The marketing automation industry has made it possible to nurture leads and generate more sales from existing customers without expending additional time or energy. Marketing automation software solves the problem in traditional lead nurturing of providing insights into a company’s prospects’ journey.

Marketing automation tools help businesses by enabling them to focus their efforts on the relationships that have the highest return potential. It won’t be long before we see more marketing automation tools that connect with other platforms like CRM, ERP, QA, etc. So all your data is always in sync across the different platforms you use.

Thus, allowing you to focus on essential elements, such as creating content, maintaining relationships with partners and customers, or providing insights into what the organization can do better.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is an essential component of any digital marketing strategy because it helps automate many tasks that would otherwise take up a lot of time. It also enables you to do more strategic work, like cleverly testing out new marketing campaigns without actually running them live. This type of software could save you hours spent on tedious tasks day in and day out!

Marketing automation benefits businesses in many ways because it helps them manage and automate the repetitive tasks that build connections and relationships with customers.

If all this sounds intimidating, don’t worry — our team can help get your business started with the right plan for success! We’ll dive into a custom strategy considering how your customers think and what they need from their interactions with your brand. So book a call with us today for a free funnel and marketing automation consultation!