Tips for Avoiding These 9 Marketing Automation Mistakes
Every entrepreneur today has tried swimming in the marketing waters. It is barely impossible to have a business and not have a marketing plan for your product to reach as many clients as possible. The very soul of that plan is the marketing automation – the software that will automate some marketing tasks previously done manually, like sending emails, posting on social media, SEO, blog posts, etc. It has proven to save the resources, namely money, and help your business grow. That’s only if used correctly. If not, it can do quite the opposite and smudge your reputation and brand in the process.
But don’t worry, because here we’ll show you how to avoid the most common marketing automation mistakes.
9 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Doing Marketing Automation
1. Lack of goal
Nothing can be achieved without a plan, the same goes here. So, determine your goals first before sending any content. They will help you measure the success of marketing automation as well to prioritize your leads. This means that you’ll know the percentage of contacts each goal reached and how to adjust the strategy to focus on those leads.
2. No inbound lead generation strategy
When there’s not enough leads attracted to the website, the most common mistake to make is to buy email contact lists. This will bring negative publicity since you’ll be contacting people who do not want to be reached.
The better thing to do is creating an inbound strategy to target your audience. Hiring qualified personnel from all over the world to write blog posts or to optimize your website for SEO are only some of the measures to help you reach the desired audience with your content. After gaining more leads, then you can preserve them with sending emails and posting on social media.
3. Not having defined marketing content
Without the content you don’t have the marketing campaign let alone its automation. That doesn’t mean that you should exaggerate with it, but well defined and appropriate for its audience. You can achieve this by being patient when reviewing your potential audience, determine topics that will interest them and define their profiles. And lastly, take time to prepare the content. Unrelated stories and posts may make your product lose relevance for your business, so make sure that your content is framed in your overall message perfectly.
4. Spelling mistakes and typos when personalizing
Properly addressing your emails with “Dear Mr./Mrs.”, having respectful tone, typing the names correctly and using correct grammar, are just some of the things you can do to be presentable to your leads. Also, double check the data you have on the contacts, just to make sure you won’t be sending messages to the wrong recipients. You can also be a beta-tester for any personalized content like for instance subscribing to a newsletter. This way you will have the client’s experience and a first-hand insight in what needs to be amended.
5. No segmentation of your audience
Not all marketing contents are appropriate for the same audience. Surveys show that segmented emails bring 58% of all revenue, but that only 42% of marketers send targeted messages. Segmenting your contacts means that you’ll take into account demographic and behavioural information, as well as other relevant factors for your product.
6. You’re focused on only one aspect of your marketing automation
This is a fairly common mistake and usually has to do with not choosing the right marketing automation software or not using it properly. In order to use your software efficiently, you should learn all of its characteristics and how to fully use them to your advantage. Implementing all the features will save you time and performance of unnecessary tasks, and also leave space for some other processes, such as strategizing and editing content, as well as working on other aspects to help you attract more viable leads.
7. Your campaign is left unsupervised
Don’t be lazy and leave it all to the wonders of automation. You have to perform regular checks of automatic messages and supervise your campaign. Keep track of the response rates and if they fail, consider editing and improving the messages. If you leave your campaign unmonitored, it might go to a completely different direction than you intended, and even be detrimental.
8. You restricted your marketing automation only to your team
For your marketing campaign to be successful on the scale you need, you should also include sales representatives in your automation process. Namely, consider what processes could be automated to help sales, like an automated alert system to notify the representatives that leads are checking content on your website. This will help them concentrate their sales pitch on a specific matter or topic. Don’t forget to show the sales representatives the features of setting follow-up tasks and to-do lists, too, since these can help them keep track of their leads.
Remember, using the maximum of your marketing automation software will help you reach the set goals while working on several fronts to promote your product or services and coordinating several staff members and teams.
9. You go directly to selling your product
A common mistake is trying to sell your product immediately by being intrusive and overly pushy towards your potential buyers. Instead of that, take their interests into consideration and send them content related to that while also incorporating your company’s principles. Starting the presentation of your product in this manner will ease your buyers and help you engage them with the campaign through reading blog posts and emails, for example. Once they’re engaged, you can start sending them product-related content.
In the end
Marketing automation may not seem as automated as you’d like, but it will make your campaign more effective and far-reaching. Setting the values properly and with constant re-testing of the automated aspects, you can improve your business and save money at the same time. It can also have a significant role in the success of your product on the market, only if you implement it in the right way. To make the best out of your marketing campaigns, keep in mind to set up metrics in advance and to measure them all along the journey so that in the end, you can compare them with your initial objectives. These specific marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will help you grasp the status of your campaigns at any time to make the right data-driven decision when necessary. For a greater comprehension of the metrics you track, implementing professional marketing dashboards is key, as they will enable you to convey complex data information intuitively and efficiently. They also bring a more interactive approach to presenting data, which will engage everyone immediately.
To conclude this article, let us just remember that marketing automation is constantly evolving and improving, so try to keep up the pace in order for your campaign to be up-to-date with the newest trends.
About the author
Chloe Smith is a cycling enthusiast, business consultant, and a part-time writer always willing to share tidbits of advice. She believes that passion, courage and, above all, knowledge breed success.