Marketing Automation and Online Marketing

Automate Your Business through Marketing Best Practices such as Email Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

George Pain

• Editorial: Abhishek Kumar
• ISBN:
  9781980796756
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Digital Marketing

Do you have a reasonably successful business? Or do you have a side business and looking to move up a gear? How do you automate your tasks to get to the next level?

This book is your answer. Marketing automation has revolutionized the way business firms carry out their marketing efforts. This has resulted in lower marketing costs, lean and efficient marketing team, higher return-on-investment (ROI) on marketing effort and higher revenue streams. Yet, these and many other benefits seem to be a preserve of the few well-informed large enterprises. Many small and medium-sized enterprises shy away from marketing automation either due to lack of awareness or failure to understand how it can transform their marketing operations. This book specifically endeavors to demystify marketing automation, create awareness of what marketing automation is, and encourage small-scale and medium-sized enterprises to employ this great technology for their very own survival and competitive advantage. We have provided a host of free marketing automation tools so that there is no excuse whatsoever not to grow and earn more. You will not only get to know about the unique benefits of marketing automation that you have been missing, but also get to know which tools are best suited for your type of business, when and how to implement them. There is much more than you ought to know. Kindly download or request a print copy of this book to switch your business to a higher growth gear.

WHICH AUTOMATION TOOLS ARE BEST FOR YOU?

It is great to carry out marketing automation. However, it is far more important to have the right tools. Choosing the right tools depends on several factors.

Factors that will help you determine the right automation tools

The following are the important factors that will help you determine the kind of tools that you need:

1. The size of your enterprise
2. The core marketing functions that you seek to prioritize in your automation endeavor
3. The automation budget at your disposal
4. Ability to integrate with your already existing software infrastructure

Features to look for in your automation tools

Not all automation tools are created equal. Thus, very few will have all the features. This too will be reflected in the required budget match the large size of features. Hence, there are times you will require trade-offs by looking for automation tools that meet your top priorities but within your budget.

The following are features to look out for based on your priority criteria:

• Email marketing automation – This is usually the highest priority area for marketing automation since the biggest potential of online leads comes from email marketing. What you should look for is whether the tool supports drip email campaign, demographic segmentation, and subject line A/B testing.
• CRM automation– Customer relationship management is critical to converting potential leads into customers and building customer loyalty. You should give priority to a tool that has inbuilt CRM system. Alternatively, find a one that has the capability of seamlessly integrating with your preferred standalone CRM tool. This CRM system should be able to allow advanced tagging and lead scoring.
• Content marketing automation – Content is king. Content is what provides potential leads with information that inspires them and directs their buyer behavior into preferred positive action. A good tool should have the ability to enable you to create customized landing pages based on potential leads’ behavioral segmentation, create or distribute webinars, curate content, and distribute content to multiple channels.
• Social media automation – Social media has become extremely important in terms of brand visibility, awareness, and recognition. It has also become a good source of potential leads. This means that social media cannot be ignored in any online marketing effort. A social media automation tool should enable you to handle multiple social media channels (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc) at a centralized dashboard. From this centralized dashboard, you can be able to create uniquely customized posts for various channels and segments, schedule and post them. You should also be able to engage the audience through multiple channels from the same dashboard. More importantly, you should be able to gather marketing intelligence through the various social media analytics report gathered. Lastly, but not least, you should be able to create targeted advertising to various social media channels from the same dashboard. Depending on your budget, you may need to trade-off some features for what works most at your given budget.
• E-commerce marketing automation –This feature is great for you if you are a trader (probably has an online store). However, this customization will not be readily available on all marketing automation platforms since not all businesses are trade-oriented. Nonetheless, if you have an online store, this is a great deal. You can easily integrate and streamline your sales and marketing automation right from branding, lead generation, eventual sale and afte...