8 Questions to Ask Regarding Marketing Automation
Scaling is hard. Marketers have so much going on from email marketing to social media management and other website requirements. These to-do lists for scaling deem to be an incredibly difficult task. That’s where marketing automation comes in. If done properly, marketing automation can facilitate the lives of marketers and business owners. The difficulty arises when you need to make sure it is properly done. Why does everything have to be so difficult? Winston Churchill said it best, “a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity: an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Marketing automation isn’t easy but nurturing your leads in an efficient way will produce actual paying customers.
To make your lives easier, we’ve put together a list of 8 questions you have to ask when implementing Marketing Automation for your company.
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When should I start implementing a marketing automation strategy?
When a company grows, it becomes more difficult to speak to every individual lead at each section throughout the customer journey. Not only that, but it becomes more difficult to track every conversation with your potential leads and record proper follow-up steps after each conversation. You have the option of hiring a few new sales and marketing professionals, however this can be expensive and inefficient. When you find that manually managing your lead relationships is at stake, marketing automation should be your go to!
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What are some features I should look for when looking into marketing automation tools?
Marketing automation is more than just managing email campaigns- it’s a life saver! Marketing automation helps you automate everything from drip campaigns, auto responding to leads, lead tracking and scoring, CRM integration, social media integration, marketing asset management and more! The bigger your company is, the more features you’ll need. So choose your marketing automation tool properly.
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Can both marketing and sales team use it?
Marketing and sales are directly related! So both marketing and sales teams can and should be using the marketing automation tool. When looking for marketing automation tools make sure that you can add enough users for your needs.
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How is marketing automation different from CRM?
Marketing Automation is all encompassing. Automation tools are mainly designed for marketers so they can see where sales are coming from and what marketing campaigns to focus on in order to drive more leads. CRMs are more tailored towards when leads are actually generating and passing them along the sales funnel.
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Can I automate social media outreach?
Social media is a lot in today’s day and age, everyone is connected. It’s a great way to show off your brand and even generate new leads. Automation can help you target the right demographic with an easier and more effective strategy . The underlying question that you have to ask yourself here is can you reach out to more people and the right people using your automation tool? If the answer is yes, then kill it!
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How does lead nurturing play into this?
Not everyone converts into sale right away, so making sure that your marketing automation strategy is able to nurture your leads is incredibly important. Lead nurturing has many actives that are incredibly hard to accomplish manually when you have many leads. The tools you should be looking for should not only help acquire new users, but also help nurture and retain potential leads and clients.
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How important is price when choosing a marketing automation tool?
Budgeting is important. You don’t want to overspend, but you also don’t want to penny pinch when it comes to marketing automation tools…and they’re not usually cheap. Saving at first might cost you more in the long run. Marketing automation is an investment that will help your company grow.
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What sort of data and analytics should I expect from my marketing automation tool?
Without numbers and metrics, marketing automation can be thrown in the trash. Making sure your automation tool gives you the right data and analytics is incredibly important with the right integrations. These analytics will allow you to make the right business decisions in real time to get the most out of your tool.
Every business has different needs and expectations from a marketing automation tool. It’s a long and difficult process, however once set up, it’ll make your business run at full efficiency allowing for business growth and scale. Efficiency and organization? Sign me up!
