How to Implement Marketing Automation

Sep 1, 2022 12:02:39 PM

How to Implement Marketing Automation?

Is your marketing feeling a little stale? Want to take it to the next level but not sure how to do so? Marketing automation is for you!

This article will break down how marketing automation works and how you can implement it in your business. We'll discuss what benefits come from successfully implementing marketing automation, how it blends sales and marketing, and possible hurdles that are involved along the way.

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the process of automating tasks with the help of marketing software to achieve the desired result. While many companies choose to use marketing automation to decrease costs and increase efficiency, it can also be used as a means to stay up-to-date with how potential clients think and behave.

"Marketing automation is how you get marketing to work smarter, not harder. It's how you generate more leads and revenue with less effort." - Neil Patel.

Marketing automation is how you can take your marketing to the next level. Instead of spending hours on repetitive tasks, let technology do them for you!

How does it work?

There are three types of marketing automation functions: lead generation, customer nurturing, and sales enablement (sales acceleration).

Lead Generation

You create a form on your website that asks for any user information. This way you can get in touch with these leads later on and follow up with them until they become a customer.

Customer Nurturing

You automate how you nurture each lead, so it doesn't matter if they are ready yet or not; marketing automation will take care of this for you. It does this by streamlining the ads each customer receives based on their interests. This is how leads get from being a lead all the way to becoming a customer.

Sales Enablement

You automate how your sales team collaborates with marketing so that they have everything they need at their disposal when talking with potential customers. This will speed up how quickly deals are closed and reduce the amount of back-and-forth between marketing and sales.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

It Blends Sales and Marketing - Marketing automation is how you get your entire company working together seamlessly toward the same goal instead of having two separate departments that don't communicate with each other very well (sales and marketing).
More Leads at a Lower Cost - You can have marketing generate high-quality leads for you, thus paying less money to reach the same customer.
Decreased Time Spent on Marketing Tasks - You no longer have to spend time performing repetitive tasks that are easily automated. This frees up your time so that you can focus on how to improve your marketing.
Increase in Conversions - Marketing automation increases how many people are taking the actions you want them to on your website, thus increasing conversions for whatever action it is. This can be signing up for a webinar or free trial of your product or service, making an online purchase, etc.

How to Get Started With Marketing Automation?

Make sure you pick the right marketing automation platform for how your business is structured. There are many different ones on the market that all have their own specific functions, so make sure to do your research before deciding.
Integrate it into how you currently operate - You don't want to add marketing automation to how you operate and then forget about it later on. Instead, you want to ensure it aligns with your marketing processes and how the company is structured.
Use the right metrics - Make sure how you measure success in sales and marketing lines up with how marketing automation has taught you how to do so. Otherwise, you are just making things more difficult for yourself to measure how well your marketing efforts are doing.
Integrate it into how sales operate - If how you operate is not in line with how marketing automation has taught you, then the way the different departments within your company (sales and marketing) interact will be wrong as well.
Incentivize how the different departments within your company work together - Marketing automation makes sales and marketing operate better, so you should incentivize this type of behavior to encourage it. This will also help other employees catch on and eventually start acting similarly.

Steps on How to Implement Marketing Automation

You've heard all the buzz about marketing automation and you're ready to take your business to the next level. But where do you start? Well, lucky for you, we're here to walk you through the seven steps on how to implement marketing automation in your business. So what are you waiting for? Start reading!

Step 1: Define Objectives and Goals

Develop a marketing automation strategy with how you want to find, engage and convert your prospects. Outline how you want your prospects to be segmented based on their target score.
Determine how much time is needed for each step in the process.
Estimate how much money is needed for each step in the process.
Estimate how many personnel are needed for each step in the process.

Step 2: Assign Responsibility and Accountability

Create a marketing automation team that will not interfere with other teams within the company but will work only on marketing automation software. This way, it will be easier to monitor and oversee their progress towards goals and targets. The marketing automation team will consist of:

A project manager/coordinator to oversee how each step in the process is executed and ensure your deadlines are met. The coordinator should be familiar with marketing automation software to ensure that tasks will get done.
Analysts will analyze how the current marketing strategy works, how they can improve it with help from marketing automation software, and how to set up a marketing automation platform.
Marketing specialists will create content that will drive traffic towards the website, plan promotions on various platforms (Twitter, Facebook), and build awareness of your products or services through social media channels.
Technical specialist whose main responsibility is how to integrate your marketing automation software with existing marketing channels.
A designer to look at how the marketing automation platform looks, how it works and how they can improve it based on analytics data.

Step 3: Set up a Marketing Automation Platform

Select a platform based on your existing budget and the needs of your company
Set how many people are needed for each step of the process.
Identify how much time and money is required to set everything in motion.

Step 4: Implement a Marketing Automation Tool

Watch how the analytics data changes based on how content, products, and services are being promoted through different channels.
Continue to add new features/functionalities to your preferred marketing automation tools for it to be more effective.

Step 5: Measure How Well Marketing Automation Is Performing

Monitor how your conversion funnel looks and what needs to be improved.
Identify how many leads are coming in through different channels, how much time it takes them to convert into paying customers, and how much revenue came from each channel (lead source).

Step 6: Integrate CRM and Marketing Automation

Monitor how your marketing team uses the marketing automation system and make tweaks accordingly to improve its functionality
Monitor how your sales team uses CRM for their daily operations.
Look at data from both teams (marketing vs. sales) and identify what they have in common, how different departments can benefit from each other's work and how much time was wasted on unnecessary tasks.
Identify how your CRM system and marketing automation platforms work together for a more smooth process of acquiring new prospects, converting them into paying customers and how much time is spent on those activities.

Step 7: Develop a Long-term Data Management Strategy

Plan how you will continue to develop a marketing automation platform based on new features and how this data can be used as a base for developing further strategies.

Other Steps You Should Consider:

Integration with other platforms within your company. Ensure that everything is working together, not against each other. Make sure everyone from different departments knows how they can benefit from marketing automation software.

Hurdles You May Encounter When You Implement Marketing Automation

Getting Buy-in from Your Team - It's important how you sell the idea of marketing automation to your entire company and not just how it benefits you.
Changing Job Roles - You may need someone else on your team that specializes in certain areas such as data analysis or visual design if they don't currently exist.
Time - Marketing automation implementation takes time and resources; make sure you have enough of both to avoid delays in the implementation process.
Money - Make sure you document how much money is required for each step/phase in the process (selecting a software, setting it up, etc.) so that everything falls within your budget limitations, or at least there is a clear understanding of how much extra money you will require if something goes wrong.

You can use marketing automation in all stages of the marketing process. It’s not just for sales and lead generation. It also has benefits when you are looking to nurture your existing customers or find new ones through social media advertising campaigns.

If you haven't already begun investigating how these tools might work for your business, we encourage you to do so soon. Automation is one way that small businesses can compete with larger enterprises; if this sounds like something worth pursuing, contact us today! Our team will help guide you towards success by implementing successful strategies tailored specifically to your industry needs.

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