Your marketing strategy is more than just a document outlining the things you’d like to do and achieve through various tactics. Eventually, it evolves into actionable items that need to be carried out in order to achieve the overarching goals that were laid out from the get-go. As today’s digital landscape continues to shift and adjust to the needs required by integrated strategies, it becomes more and more common to use marketing automation tools to help produce and deliver the best results.
But what’s the point of using these tools if you don’t factor their use into the creation of the strategy itself? The failed use of marketing automation tools is tied directly to failing to create a solid foundation before utilizing the tool. If you do not align your marketing automation tools with your marketing strategy, you could be missing out on key tactics and functionalities that could take your efforts to the next level.
Take into account the following marketing automation features when creating your next campaign.
Workflows
The greatest part of marketing automation tools lie within the “automation”. You’re able to trigger the delivery of different types of information based on user behavior. Incorporating this functionality into your strategy will dictate how much you create, the types of content you create, and how you’ll measure it for success down the line.
Sales-Focused Marketing
Marketing automation tools, such as HubSpot, provide lead scoring and qualification functionalities that help tie marketing efforts directly back to sales. Measuring the ROI of your efforts is essential and this helps do exactly that. When a lead reaches a certain point in their buyer’s journey, automation tools allow users to notify sales teams to reach out directly to that user for the hard sell. Determining when this needs to happen in your marketing strategy is key.
Integration
One of the best parts about a marketing automation tool is its ability to house all of your marketing assets in one home, tying them to one another through the use of things like campaigns. You’ll be able to categorize social posts, emails, landing pages, and more underneath one large overarching umbrella. Knowing this, you’ll be able to determine different cadences and things of that nature.
Segmentation
Segmentation is a powerful tool when it comes to marketing, as it allows you to “break your audience into groups of like people.” By doing this, you’re able to define specific topics, tone of voice, sheer volume, and more that apply to a pre-determined group of people. Through the use of a marketing automation tool, you’ll be able to do this seamlessly.
Nurturing
Marketing automation tools allow users to nurture leads through their buyer’s journey. Developing initiatives that fall beneath the Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, and Retain buckets is essential – and marketing automation tools allow users to lead potential customers through this funnel in an effective and efficient manner. For example, you don’t want to send something promotional or sales-oriented to a user who is in the Awareness stage. You’d want to send something educational and informative. Marketing automation tools help you do this more effectively.
Tracking
An essential aspect of any marketing strategy lies within the need to measure and track the success of the tactics you plan on disseminating over a certain period of time. Laying out your goals in relation to your KPIs is key and marketing automation tools take that type of tracking to the next level. Everything is centrally located and you can even measure different marketing tactics in terms of campaign performance. You’re provided with different ways to make your campaign work harder for you, whether that’s through optimization advice or A/B testing.
All in all, what I’m saying is that creating your marketing strategy while being aware of the different functionalities of your marketing automation platform is the first step toward successfully implementing a tool like this into your organization. Make sure these go hand-in-hand and reap the benefits down the line.