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Do you need help optimizing the results that you’re getting from your marketing automation strategy but don’t know where to start? Without a doubt, automation has had a significant impact on how people do business nowadays. With it, even small companies can compete against major corporations for their share of the market. It all depends on how well you can optimize your marketing automation processes to yield the most profitable results while minimizing expenses.

In this article, we will go over some strategies and insights on how to optimize your automation strategy to maximize your bottom-line and create an efficient sales funnels. Only then can you expect your business to remain profitable over the long-term.

Table of Contents:

  1. Marketing automation audits
  2. Work on Your Leads
  3. Email Marketing is still King
  4. Social Media — a crucial element of modern marketing
  5. Analyzing results — an essential marketing automation job
  6. Conclusion

Marketing automation audits

Where so many business owners get it wrong is that they tend to think of automation as a “fire and forget” solution for all their marketing woes. As a result, they tend to overlook one of the most significant advantages that automation has to offer in the first place — the capacity to audit just about every stage of the marketing process.

Thanks to automation, business owners can get their hands on all sorts of paid and free marketing automation tools. That said, businesses can’t be expected to use all of them and limit themselves to a few of the available features of whatever automation tool they’re using. Of course, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re paying for features or services that you don’t use, then that eats up at your bottom-line.

Hence, an essential step towards optimizing your marketing automation strategy is to audit which features apply, and you’re actively using for your business. In doing so, you’d be able to cut off loose ends that don’t benefit your organization as well as identify areas for improvement and opportunities for growth.

Work on Your Leads

The ability to create leads has been and will continue to be a critical marketing process for any business. Whether it’s storefronts vying for the attention of shoppers on the street or modern eCommerce websites trying to build a good following online, lead generation remains a crucial part of the marketing automation process.

The truth is that it doesn’t matter what type of marketing automation you’re running; it will all be for naught if you’re unable to generate enough leads to make a difference. You can do so by something valuable (for free or at a reduced cost) to your target audience. The idea is to stir up a positive emotional reply from prospects, one that is powerful enough to compel an audience to make a purchase.

In this regard, marketing automation is not that different from promoters handing out free samples in a supermarket.

Some of the best ways to generate more leads for your business is the strategic use of lead magnets like the following:

  • Organizing free webinars
  • Online consultations
  • Online courses
  • Printable materials (checklist, cheat sheet, etc.)
  • eBooks
  • Quizzes 

For many business owners, it can be tempting to breeze through your lead magnets as quickly as possible. That said, it’s essential to come up with something that your prospects would actually find useful.

You can promote your lead magnets using various channels like social media, PPC (Pay-per-Click), and blogs. Prospects can get access to those lead magnets in exchange for their contact information (email).

Creating an effective and high-quality lead magnet will require a significant amount of time and money. Once it’s done, however, your business will be rewarded with a low-cost and timeless solution for automating admissions to your sales funnel and activating a pre-programmed email sequence for nurturing leads as they move through the sales cycle.

Email Marketing is still King

Email marketing has long been (and still is) a crucial factor for building an automated sales funnel on the Internet. If you lack experience on the matter, you shouldn’t hesitate to get help or expand your reach by learning to create an email outreach and how to compose an efficient email series.

If you’re only getting started with email marketing for your automation strategy, then there are several important questions that you need to ask yourself beforehand. For one thing, you would want to set clear goals for your email marketing campaign. What is it that you want to accomplish by automating your email marketing? Also, what do you do with leads that don’t convert? 

If there’s one thing that all email marketing experts can agree on, it’s that one should never waste a good lead. Hence, you would want to “recycle” leads that fail to convert by routing them to a different sales funnel. It’s not unusual for marketers to prepare ten or more emails in advance when running an automated email marketing campaign. This email sequence starts as soon as prospects supply their contact information in exchange for access to a lead magnet.

Another factor that can prove useful in optimizing an automated email marketing campaign is the element of storytelling. Such a skill can be helpful, particularly when it comes to building trust with an audience. Where so many marketers tend to get it wrong is that they ask for a sale in the first few emails. The key lies in using subtle persuasion for promoting a product or service through simple stories that people can relate to and align them with your brand.

Social media — a crucial element of modern marketing

It cannot be denied that social media plays a huge role when it comes to marketing any product or service today. Much of it has to do with the unrivalled ability of social networks to provide insights on how customers feel and think. This grants businesses the golden opportunity to connect with leads and followers in a profoundly personal way, which, in turn, helps build awareness and trust in the market.

Of course, what makes social networks such an effective marketing platform is that it makes it easier for businesses to share content with followers. This, in turn, increases the chances of people subscribing to newsletters, signing up for a lead magnet or whatever conversion goals you have in mind. 

So how exactly do you integrate social media with your marketing automation strategy, you ask? Well, the simplest way would be to use a social media management tool like Hootsuite, Buffer, Canva, and IFTTT (If This Then That). Such tools offer scheduling features that enable businesses to update their social media accounts consistently for maximum visibility with minimal effort.

Some social media management tools take things a step further by personalizing your interaction with leads. For instance, you can set an automated thank you message for new subscribers to your Youtube channel. Such a simple act can make your leads feel valued enough to strike a conversation with your brand and help with conversions.

Another exciting way to optimize your marketing automation with social media management tools is to keep track of any mention of your brand. Such information can help you tweak your online marketing campaign and enact changes based on how people think and feel about your business.

Analyzing results — a crucial marketing automation job

Perhaps the best thing about marketing automation is that it gives business owners a tonne of information about their online ventures right at their fingertips. However, all that data isn’t going to do you any good if marketers can’t make sense of the data.

To make the most out of what marketing automation has to offer, business owners must spend much of their time and energy analyzing and interpreting data from their online marketing campaigns. A thorough analysis means that you don’t just look at present data but, more importantly, what it says in the future. Only then can you expect to make forward-looking decisions concerning your marketing automation strategies. For one thing, you’ll know which methods you can safely do away with and implement new strategies that you believe are most promising based on the data you’ve collected so far.

Conclusion

So there you have it — a few insights on how to optimize your marketing automation strategy! Just as it is with automation in general, the purpose of marketing automation is to make online marketing easier. That said, the latter is no replacement for the human element in building an effective sales funnel. Keep the tips mentioned above in mind as you go through your marketing automation strategies, and you’ll find it easier to create a meaningful relationship with your leads and stand out from a sea of competitors online.