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Marketing automation is the process of using artificial intelligence and machine learning to handle key marketing processes automatically. This type of automation can be used to develop, design, and launch multi-functional marketing campaigns across numerous channels, using little to no human input.
The right marketing automation tools allow businesses to target their customers with automated campaigns and messages across social media, email, digital, and text-based platforms. Marketing messages are sent out automatically at optimal times for visibility and engagement, as determined by AI.
Each workflow added to an automation tool can be defined by a template, created from scratch, or modified at any point to produce the best possible ROI (return on investment) rates for your organization.
In this marketing automation guide, we’ll share everything you need to know about marketing automation, from its importance to your business, to best practices, and mistakes to avoid.
Why Is Marketing Automation Vital for Business Growth?
Marketing automation has become absolutely crucial for modern businesses for a number of reasons. Firstly, automation tools can create captivating, highly effective campaigns using data and predictions rather than dozens of hours’ worth of work of a human team.
Marketing automation increases revenues and maximizes efficiency while freeing your team from handling repetitive, time-consuming tasks. These benefits will save your team time and save you money too. Plus, the features of most marketing automation tools can quickly scale with your business as it grows.
Additionally, automating your marketing processes assists with lead generating, lead nurturing, and lead scoring. All of these can have significant impacts on your profit margins and campaign ROIs.
How Can I Use Automation In My Marketing Campaigns?
Marketing automation is designed to be exceptionally easy to use, allowing you to generate campaigns with just a few clicks. Trusted automation platforms also enable you to manage and adjust every aspect of your digital marketing strategy from a centralized dashboard. At the same time, they incorporate drag-and-drop features that are as simple to use as your favorite everyday apps.
Automation tools can be used to manage and simplify virtually every one of your marketing tasks and responsibilities. From sending out emails to launching complex marketing campaigns and tracking their progress, every step can be automated.
Most tools will allow you to create campaigns and content, schedule bulk email send-outs, manage your subscription base, and run A/B tests when needed. Additionally, tools can measure key metrics like timing, click-through rates, conversions, and more.
Clearview Social allows you to use AI in your social media marketing to make your life easier, without needing to use multiple tools to get the job done. We know that AI cannot perfect your brand voice, but it can help you come up with iterations on an idea and speed up the content creation and posting process considerably.
Learn: How to Create a Personal Yet Professional Persona on Social Media
The 5 Marketing Automation Best Practices to Follow
Follow these marketing automation best practices to ensure maximum growth and ROI for your business.
1. Clearly Define Your Goals
It’s essential to use real data to assess whether investing in automation tools will truly benefit your business.
Use this data along with your clear, concise goals to persuade your stakeholders to move toward automation.
2. Visualize Your Processes
When implementing marketing automation for your business, use detailed, visual diagrams of your workflows to portray your bigger-picture goals to your business as a whole.
The more visual you can make these processes, the more efficiently you will be able to keep your entire team on the same page.
3. Collaborate Across Teams and Departments
Your marketing automation solutions may affect the workflows of various teams and departments in your organization.
Be sure to contact relevant departments and teams before and during the implementation process. This ensures they are ready and willing to adopt any new technologies you invest in.
4. Segment Your Database
Carefully consider the customer data that your marketing automation tools are providing your business. This data is valuable when it comes to identifying the exact target audiences you aim to approach and why they are your brand’s ideal fit.
5. Create a Content Strategy
Your marketing automation practices will work best when guided by a concrete content strategy and marketing automation checklist.
Build up your brand’s content library and generate engaging, fascinating, and relevant messages that are designed to reach every stage of the customer life cycle with ease.
Common Marketing Automation Tool Setup Mistakes to Avoid
Keep your business on the path to success by avoiding these common marketing automation setup and implementation mistakes:
1. Implementing Automation Too Quickly
Remember to plan for a slow, steady, and controlled roll-out of your marketing automation tools for the best results. If you implement your tools and strategies too quickly, you could risk overwhelming your team members. This will impact their eagerness to adopt new technologies.
Even the world’s most well-known marketing automation companies roll out their new tools slowly and methodically. Test your implementations early on and improve the next batch of platforms and programs to ensure that your business can use machine learning optimally.
2. Failing to Measure Success
If you don’t measure your progress toward your goals in a concrete way, your business simply won’t have the clear roadmap it needs to reach its core objectives and grow as an organization.
Thankfully, most marketing automation tools include metrics and dashboards that allow you to view your progress and potential challenges in a holistic way.
3. Not Analyzing and Updating Your Strategy Regularly
It’s important to gain a clear picture of what’s working for your business and what needs adjusting when discovering the best practices for marketing automation.
Automation frees up plenty of time and resources. Use some of this time to assess your analytics and clarify your strategies so that you can make the best use of your investments and efforts.
How Clearview Social Can Help
Clearview Social offers a variety of advanced tools that make it easy to put your social media marketing and employee advocacy campaigns on autopilot. Our unique features are designed to save you time and drive maximum ROI while requiring less effort from your team.
Automation tools like PeakTime™ use AI to identify the optimal times for posting. Social Shuffle AI and Automated Content Delivery enable you to distribute blogs and marketing media in shareable newsletters to drive traffic and save time, and Virtual Assistant allows administrators to post content to employees’ social profiles without prior post approval needed.
Use Clearview Social to discover marketing automation best practices, master your marketing efforts, and boost your business’ growth while amplifying your content and brand.Learn more about how Clearview Social can help your business automate its marketing. Contact us and book a free demo today.