The New Role of Automation in Marketing
In simple terms, marketing automation includes automating digital activity and communication. This is usually for tasks that require little expertise and need to be performed repetitively. With the digital age growing at a rapid pace, this marketing strategy is fast becoming popular among all organizations, big and small. Let’s look at what marketing automation and the role of automation in marketing.
What Exactly is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is simply a way to make the marketing process faster and more efficient. Common tasks that are automated include:
• Mass email campaigns
• SMS messaging
• Posting on social media
• Digital ad placement
• Data analysis
By streamlining these simple tasks, you can reach more of your relevant target audience.
How Marketing Automation Positively Impacts Your Organization
To make this simple, let’s look at this through a common example. Everyone sees different ads on their social media based on their browser history, their likes, and the pages they follow. In some cases, the ads may be because you’re in the right location at the right time. Basically, if your ad is only reaching the relevant target audience, then it’s likely to be more effective. This will translate into better sales growth.
It is expected that billions of dollars will be directed by organizations to marketing automation in the coming years. Through constant exposure to relevant content, you can build a loyal customer base for your business.
How You Can Automate Marketing
Many people have the misconception that marketing automation only works for mass emails and text messaging. However, it includes so much more:
• Automated, timed social media posts
• Targeted social media ads
Apart from these two areas, automation can help businesses in a number of different areas.
How Do You Know You Need Automated Marketing?
There are certain signs that will help you decide whether your company needs automated marketing or not. If you notice the following symptoms in your company, then the answer is yes, you do need marketing automation.
• The marketing and sales force don’t see eye-to-eye
• You don’t have an exact profile of the demographics and nature of your customer base
• The ROI (Return on Investment) is fuzzy
• You haven’t been able to capture your target market’s attention
Endnote
It’s easy for large scale corporations to allot a significant portion of their marketing budget to automation. Small setups, on the other hand, need to be more careful when it comes to how much they spend on their marketing efforts. However, the ROI with automated marketing appears to be greater due to the improved reach. This is a strategy that is becoming popular among businesses of all scales, from sellers on Etsy to global giants like Amazon.
Many organizations incorporate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in their automation strategy to gather more customer insight. This can be turned into statistical data to find out which strategies are truly effective.
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