is961769234 marketing automation largeIn today’s highly competitive business environment, technology is helping firms uncover mission-critical value in their marketing efforts. In fact: Industry watchers predict that by 2023, businesses will invest $25.1 billion on automation technology in pursuit of higher conversion rates.

Given that this technology keeps changing, your strategy has to keep pace or your approach can quickly become obsolete.

To help you realize the full promise and potential automation holds, here is a guide for developing a cutting-edge marketing automation strategy.

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation refers to using software to computerize your marketing activities.

Many marketing activities involve handling repetitive tasks. [quotesright]Things such as sending out email marketing blasts and social media posting among others can be automated to free up your time.[/quotesright]

For many marketers, it’s not only the efficiency marketing automation brings that appeals to them: marketing automation can help you leverage technology to become competitive.

Particularly, you can use emerging and enriched techniques to personalize your marketing. The more you tune your campaign to speak to a specific audience’s needs, the better the return on investment (ROI).

[quotes]What you need to keep in mind is that the software isn’t magic – using it does not improve your content for you.[/quotes] It’s the marriage between excellent content and effective automation tools that creates value.

is825630876 marketing automation activities smallHow to Craft a Powerful Marketing Automation Strategy

Many marketers who buy into the promise of marketing automation end up not seeing the results they were promised. Part of that let down is the use of an ineffective strategy when deploying marketing automation.

So how can you develop a strategy that will unlock the full potential marketing automation holds?

1. Be More Intentional in Nurturing Leads' Attention

Let’s face it: The primary focus of automated marketing zeros in more on leads further along on the sales funnel.

While that’s fine, you can save time and make your funnel more effective by deploying automation in the attention-capture phase.

For example, in the early stages of decision making, you can help influence a prospect’s decision by offering a free valuable asset. That can be a demo of your product or another asset that helps the lead gain more insight.

In return, you can ask for their information. Once the user opts-in, they can access the asset. The big thing here for the user is that they get to use the asset at their convenience online.

[quotesright]At this point, marketing automation will begin to earn its keep for you. [/quotesright]

As the user checks out the asset at their convenience, the automation you set up will notify you.

You’ll then be able to follow up with the prospect after consuming the asset and not a second sooner.

From there, you can build rapport, engage them, and increase your chances of conversion.

Another valuable area to automate your marketing is social media. Using tools that can help you flag users who share a common need for a particular product you offer, you can save prospecting time.

Once you identify such a user group, you can then draft messaging that answers their frequently asked queries and gain their attention.

2. Build on Rapport You Create

So, what happens once a lead opts in and shows interest after you build rapport? Understand that their opting in is a signal of legitimate interest in what you have to offer.

Hence, you need to take advantage of email marketing automation and build on that interest.

For e-commerce companies (or any business using online shopping carts), cart abandonment emails come into play.

[quotesright]By automating these emails, you can nudge a prospect that has almost converted via an offer that encourages them to complete their purchase. [/quotesright]

You thus increase the odds they may return and complete the purchase.

But that’s not all.

Since at this point you have a clearer understanding of the need a lead would have, you can automate your marketing to send the enticing offers.

These could be introductory discounts or different offers that give prospects more variety to explore as they ponder a purchase.

Remember, you’re not automating your marketing blindly here. These are qualified leads, and therefore, you leverage a degree of personalization to edge them along the funnel.

3. Don't Drop Customers After the Purchase

You’ve done the hard work. You have converted a prospect, and now it’s time to move on, right? Not so.

There is value to unlock when you keep using automated marketing to interact with customers even after they buy from you.

If your customers need support services from you after the sale, post-sale automation can be of immense value.

With post-sale automation, you can time and send follow-up messages to remind your customers of support or after-sales care issues.

Let’s say a professional camera shop makes a sale. To help the customer with after-sale care, the business can use automation to follow up and give the client a heads up when they need to update the equipment's software.

[quotesright]Post-sale automation is also vital in helping you create repeat sales. [/quotesright]

For example, an optician can use post-sale automation to remind each customer on how to clean and protect their spectacles correctly. Additionally, this same automation can help the optician remind past customers of their annual check-up, which can trigger repeat sales.

Moreover, the optician can dig deeper and use customer insurance data to find out how often their plan can enable them to get new eye care items.

Based on the insights they discover, the optician can send out automated alerts to customers only when they qualify for new eye care items with their plan. Inevitably, that will spur repeat sales that the optician could have lost had they ignored post-sale automation.

If your automated reminders are timed, giving customers the ability to delay or reschedule such alerts can keep them loyal to you, even if they can't follow through because of their current schedule.

Find the Right Strategy to Make Marketing Automation Game Changing

Marketing automation technology is continually changing, and you have no choice but to keep pace. Since many marketers know there is value in automation but fail to unlock it, you need to identify insights that can empower you to craft the right marketing automation strategy. Only then will automation lift your top line.

But remember, it’s your understanding of each of your customer personas, their buyer’s journey, needs, desires, and motivation that make marketing automation work. The clarity and your ability and messaging to help them see your solution as the very best for them will determine success.

Want to explore further? Questions?

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Brian Tracy

  

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