Take a close look at the digital society right now, and you’ll see billion of users and millions of competitors. To keep up with the race, marketers need to be smart, if not, prudent. Utilizing substantial human resources for manual labors may work in traditional marketing. However, when it comes to digital marketing, this approach doesn’t work at all.
People quickly forget the ads that they see after an hour because of the bulk data on a daily basis and the large user count transferred on a regular basis. Competition becomes tighter that you have to look for another avenue to upgrade your marketing efforts. Hence, you have to reach another base of potential audience.
The industry is not as simple as making affordable business cards. It’s intricate and complex. You have to work three times harder, and it’s something that you can’t do all the time. For this, automation is the only solution that will work best.
Fresh Take On Marketing Automation
What Is Marketing Automation?
Automation Marketing refers to the software or tools that automate any marketing actions. The need for marketing departments to automate repetitive chores like email, social channels, and other website activities. Marketing automation technology makes these tasks painless.
It combines marketing campaigns across different platforms, from phone campaigns, direct emails to online, mobile and social initiatives. Marketing automation integrates lead management system, insight-focused abilities from your CRM, the platform for web analytics and other systems to make a practical approach.
Your Business Needs It
Marketing automation is not just a fancy buzzword in digital marketing. It’s a medium that’s going to stay for a long time. It’s rich history started with Eloqua way back 1999 which continued to grow strong as years pass by and gives birth to latest platforms in every nook and cranny of digital marketing.
Fast-forward to modern-day marketing; marketing automation is all about marketing management. It’s all about who gets more advantage, who converts leads faster and who engages with customers more.
As you know it, digital marketing set a quick pace to lead conversion which drives businesses to act quickly so as not to lose clients who have a high probability to convert. Screening through leads takes a considerable amount of time and effort.
The same thing happens for organizations when they juggle between multiple platforms. It takes their valuable time. This scenario is the time where marketing automation is entering. It allows the marketers to change their focus to the best convertible prospects. Thus they save time and energy.
In addition to its growing benefits, marketers can engage with their customers with contents from purchasing behavior and profile data. It means that the more personalized your leads receive, the more time they will spend on your website. It will also make way for valuable data that helps you convert leads into customers as well as future cross-selling.
Its Perks and Potential Issues
Marketing automation disperses contents in a more organized and smarter way. The primary goal here is to entice potential leads to visit your site, profile and track their interests and present more relevant contents and convert them into sales.
It’s the beauty of marketing automation, something that is comparable to a cheap business card maker. However, there are some potential issues too. Below are the perks and potential issues of marketing automation that you need to consider before you invest or change the current system of marketing automation that you have right now.
- It creates an upscale database for leads in your CRM system. After connecting with your CRM system, it will help you upgrade and update the information of lead’s over time.
- Determine and permit more leads. Marketing automation allows firms to qualify leads, target potential customers quickly, and forward them to the proper sales representative.
- Enhance sales coordination. Marketing automation helps firms to coordinate team activities. For instance, a firm can advertise a single product and follow the efficiency by looking at the quantity of the generated qualified leads and compare it to the number of leads converted to sales.
- It Creates efficient campaigns. Marketing Automation allows firms to measure the efficiency of their campaigns and adjust the scale of those campaigns according to the data which they learned.
The only issues with marketing automation software stem from poor implementations and unrealistic expectations.
For instance, this software can’t convert a bad product or service to a good product or service. If the collateral product is not good or misses the point, marketing automation will only just import a bad message. If the wrong target is selected, operative delivery to that particular market will not help.
Market Trends To Understand
Along with the benefits and potential issues that you need to comprehend. There are some trends in marketing automation that you need to learn too. Below are the following trends.
- SaaS or Software as a Service. In the marketing automation sector, SaaS is more of a dominant model for deploying software than a trend. You will find that the majority of solutions are moving through online marketing software model. It is where the system is accessed over the Internet by the user and hosted by the software vendor.
- Social Media Platforms. Social networking provides a new channel for managers. Firms post special offers to friends on Facebook and tweet coupons to customers. Video contents are successful if they go viral on YouTube too. Marketing automation is embracing all of these factors.
- The purpose of two-dimensional barcodes. Two-dimensional (2D) barcodes are present on billboards, bus stop benches, and print ads. Customers use their smartphones as code readers to obtain information about a particular product or service.
- The Marketing Automation vendor. Big CRM and ERP vendors will acquire some firms, while some niche providers will merge to stay competitive. Take your cue from Teradata and IBM, and both made a significant accession by picking up Aprimo and Unica, respectively.
Best Marketing Automation Softwares in 2017
As the demand for updated marketing automation tools rises, more marketing tech companies are specializing their MAPs or marketing automation program to meet the primary needs of their clients.
Below are by far, the best marketing automation platform that you should acquire this year.
Marketo
Marketo possesses a strong marketing software that aids in sales and marketing professionals in driving revenue and improving marketing accountability. This software is cloud-based and helps small to large scale companies to establish and sustain healthy customer relationship.
The important features of Marketo include search marketing, lead generation, email marketing, website visitor tracking, web and mobile personalization, campaign management, etc.
Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft supplies marketing and sales software for small-scale businesses. It enables these businesses to enhance their sales, save time and stay organized. Bloggers can also use this platform to conjure email marketing, marketing funnels as well campaigns.
The marketing and sales automation solution of Infusionsoft allows organizations to automate different repetitive tasks such as follow-up, billing, and payment, contact management, etc.
HubSpot
Hubspot is one of the pioneering brands who commercialized the concept of automation in digital marketing.
It’s a prevalent marketing platform that possesses exclusive marketing automation capabilities and features. This platform offers a complete set of integrated marketing tools such as email marketing, SEO, social, etc.
SharpSpring
This platform is also a cloud-based marketing automation software that possesses next-generation functionalities and features.
SharpSpring offers a variety of features such as third party CRM integration, integrated call tracking as well as universal CMS compatibility and other applications.
Act-on
Act-on is a cloud-based marketing automation software that mixes inbound, outbound and leads nurturing programs.
The key features of Act-on are account based marketing automation, inbound, integration, CRM, outbound, reports, automation, analytics, etc.
Pardot
Pardot is a Salesforce product that lets B2B companies harness its advanced tools for marketing automation to drive large sales using intelligent marketing.
It enhances marketing team and productivity of sales through facilitating a robust lead management software with cutting-edge features of lead scoring, CRM integration, sales intelligent, lead nurturing, email marketing, sales intelligent, etc.
Net-Results
Net-Results provide complete marketing solutions to help organizations in the lead nurturing, email marketing, lead generation, sales automation, social media automation, and management as well as CRM integration.
Oracle Eloqua
Oracle Eloqua provides a complete set of marketing automation tools like lead management, targeting, segmentation, campaign management and much more.
The groundbreaking features of this platform are the up-sell campaign, event automation, and management, webinars, email marketing, multi-channel marketing, automated demand generation, etc.
Experiture
This platform allows the marketers to make, measure, transport, and maximize multi-channel marketing programs through offering a revolutionary platform in customer experience marketing.
Experiture provides a set of comprehensive services such as customer experience, marketing automation, customer engagement, landing pages, email marketing, social media marketing mobile marketing, multichannel campaign management, dynamic personalization and so much more.
Takeaway
Before you decide to jump on the bandwagon of marketing automation, make sure that you know why you need one. Avoid investing on it without any backup plan that keeps in line with your business goals or you will find yourself floundering in the sea of failed marketing ventures. It’s not as easy as making cheap business cards. It requires substantial efforts and time. Obtain well-trained resources and skills that fit into your marketing automation agenda.
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