When it’s time to scale your business, you’ll often go in search of a tool or resource to help you grow. The term “automation” or “automated” will likely grab your attention in your search. These words have essentially become buzzwords in our fast-paced, done-for-me digital age, but it's important to understand what exactly is being automated.
Your choices for marketing automation platforms seem endless. New players are entering the field all the time, and they all seem to offer different strengths or appeal to different industries. Before setting out on your search, we want to offer some guidance in this two-part blog series on choosing and selecting a marketing automation tool.
Marketing automation means different things to different people. If I surveyed everyone reading this post and asked them to define marketing automation in a sentence or two, I bet I’d get 100 different takes.
At its core, marketing automation is any platform designed to help marketers capture new customers, improve marketing efficiency, and analyze lead behavior and campaign performance. Marketing automation software captures leads, facilitates lead generation, develops relationships with individuals and groups of customers, and moves prospects through the buyer’s journey.
Marketing automation will also combine features like email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, multi-channel marketing, web analytics, and reporting tools.
Marketing automation software is often compared to customer relationship management (CRM) software as they have overlapping functionality. But CRMs currently function as the go-to platform for sales departments, whereas MA platforms are built to scale and accelerate marketing efforts.
The website martechmap.com offers a visual representation of where “Marketing Automation and Campaign/Lead Management” fall in the greater landscape of MarTech (marketing technology). It’s a flooded marketplace, but worth understanding the difference between each tool and what they can do for you.
Marketing automation software automates marketing actions or tasks, streamlines marketing workflows, and measures the outcomes of marketing campaigns. A good marketing automation tool gives you a central database for all marketing information and interactions. It will help you create segmented, personalized, and timely marketing experiences for customers or prospects. These platforms provide automation features across multiple aspects of marketing including email, social media, lead generation, direct mail, digital advertising, and more.
A key consideration is the ability to gain efficiency while enhancing personalization in your marketing. The goal is not just to get more stuff done. The goal is personalized, segmented, and relevant messaging. Fifteen years ago, we’d say, “People do business with people.” We’d emphasize the importance of personal touches and interactions in our marketing. While that adage is still very true, we must add, “But they’ll tolerate a bit of A.I.!”
Remember, the goal is personalized, segmented, relevant…done efficiently. Know your brand DNA and what you can get away with! Consider how human/personal it has to be.
Ready to get serious about marketing automation? Here’s a bit of an audit you can perform on your own marketing.
These are all good signs that marketing automation could work for your business. The key here is understanding that marketing automation does not do marketing for you, but can help scale your successful efforts.
We often have new clients come to us saying they “need to do marketing.” What do they usually mean when they say that? They are usually saying, “Hey, we heard about this HubSpot tool, or we heard about Marketo or Salesforce or whatever, and we need to get that!” So we ask why, then gently lead them to the realization that the tool won’t create the marketing. That’s what humans are for!
Marketing automation can be labeled as failing when leads are not turning into sales. Often the problem, though, is that there is no top-of-the-funnel fuel to keep the middle-of-the-funnel marketing automation fire going.
Even if your database is currently filled with quality leads, how effective will your marketing automation be when you’ve either converted all those leads into customers or when your database begins decaying by roughly 22.5%/year?
It used to be if you wanted the best product, you’d buy the single use item. The early years of all-in-one printers were sketchy. At the time, everyone needed to print documents, make photocopies, and send fax messages. (I know, what’s a fax? I’m old. Don’t hold it against me.) So the likes of Hewlett Packard and Epson rolled out multifunction devices that inevitably would fail on one front and render the entire device useless.
We’ve come a long way. Just think about it. We all carry supercomputers in our pockets that are capable of performing complex calculations, searching the entirety of the world wide web, taking high-end photos, and even shooting cinematic video. We call them phones but they are so much more!
The same is true of marketing automation platforms today.
Dedicated, best-in-class marketing tools have, for the most part, become part of the “all-in-one” technology solution.
“In some ways, the discrete category of marketing automation is fading away a bit. IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Adobe and Teradata have all been involved in mopping up best-of-breed marketing automation companies of various types and so you’re left with a consolidation. The big vendors are pushing marketing automation into part of a bigger, total enterprise stack, associated with digital.”
– Gerry Brown, senior digital marketing analyst at Ovum
It may feel like the right move to find a dedicated marketing automation platform. Something smaller that gives you just what you need without the extras. Maybe cost is the driver and you want to avoid the cost that comes along with the larger software stacks.
This can be a wise move, but you should proceed with caution. A number of years ago, we embraced SharpSpring at The Marketing Squad as an alternative to consider. They were a new and nimble company with a dedicated offering. We saw them as a viable option for those feeling left behind by HubSpot who was actively acquiring, growing, and adding functionality.
What happened? They were bought out! Then we were left shuffling our clients to other viable platforms.
While the first iPhones were really great at taking photos and early all-in-one marketing tools were clunky at best, now smartphones have cameras rivaling DSLR quality and multi-use marketing tools are becoming more seamless to navigate and utilize. In fact, many of the best automation tools today are found in larger packages. The benefit is you don’t have to bolt on multiple different softwares and cross your fingers hoping they will work when needed.
However, my caution is that acquiring the right marketing automation tool is not a decision made in a vacuum. You’ll likely be purchasing a larger package that will impact sales (for sure) and customer service (likely) and HR (likely). You’ll want to consult with all the departments impacted to ensure you’re picking the right tool for your organization as a whole.
Below are some key features that you’ll be looking for as you find the right marketing automation tool for you.
Features to consider in your search
Often, marketers and sales teams find themselves in a tug-o-war at this stage. The marketer is thinking about email automation primarily – building, sending, deliverability, and automation buildout – while the sales team is thinking about lead gen and lead management – lead database, data quality, segmentation, lead scoring, behavior and tracking, CRM integration, automated alerts, tasking, etc.
The good news is you can find platforms that score well in both camps. Websites like G2 offer tools to help you visualize your options and narrow down your selection.
At The Marketing Squad, we recently introduced our own sales and marketing engine for businesses looking to transition from a platform they’ve outgrown or one whose features and/or pricing have left them behind. It’s called Spark, and it’s designed to be adaptable to your business’s unique needs. If you’d like to learn more about Spark or schedule a demo, visit this page.
Our next blog will discuss how you can leverage your selected marketing automation tool to gain the efficiency you desire and fuel the growth your business needs.
If you ever have to stop and consider whether or not your audience understands what your business does, then chances are you're lacking in content. When it comes to marketing your business, there are few greater assets than quality content. It is often your first point of contact with a potential client, be that a blog post, social media post, video, or downloadable offer. These resources show your audience why you have the right product to meet their needs. So let’s look at how your business can begin creating and sharing great content.
Though we live in a day and age where people want to binge Netflix all day rather than read a book, the fact remains that most people are obsessed with buying “the best” product or service. This means that when it comes to making a purchase, especially an expensive one, most people want to know that they are making the right choice. In light of that, you must supply potential customers with the information they need to choose your product over others.
Blogs are often a helpful way to achieve this. Even if it means reading a short article, if it makes someone feel more confident in their decision and trust you as an expert, they will take the time to read it. However, this does not mean you can thoughtlessly put information together and expect people to spend time reading it. Whether you write your own blogs or you bring in someone like The Marketing Squad to produce them for you, it is imperative that you have engaging and useful content from the experts that make up your business.
You may be tempted to ignore social media as a part of your marketing strategy. This might be for several reasons: it takes too much time, you don’t see results, you don’t understand TikTok, and the list goes on for miles. However, whether you like it or not, social media has become one of the most reliable and necessary tools to promote your business. The more you can grow your content, such as blogs, videos, photos, and the like, the more firepower you will have to consistently share content on social media. Here at The Marketing Squad, we have the team and the know-how to take your social media to the next level through targeted ads, scheduled posting, and SEO expertise.
Some of your audience may be best served by receiving emails from your business. This is an easy way to reach a targeted audience at whatever time you specify. You can use newsletters and emails to update, inspire, and encourage your audience to take action. That action might be a downloadable content offer you’ve created or a class your business offers. Email and newsletters are convenient ways to grow your audience and keep up with your most dedicated customers. Along with blogs, The Marketing Squad can assist you in creating engaging campaigns that will bring in leads consistently.
Part of building your content library is having people who understand what your business does and why you do it. Therefore, it’s important to utilize the experts on your team who can best describe your products and how they work.
Imagine you’re a car manufacturer with a new vehicle coming out soon. You either get with your marketing team or one you’ve brought on board, telling them that this car is awesome and it comes in red. That’s it. That’s all the context you give them. Even the best marketing team in the world can only go so far with “awesome and red.” This is why it is vital that your business uses the experts at your disposal to relay critical facts and information about what makes your product great. Perhaps it’s not only awesome and red, but it has never before seen features that have been in the making for 20 years with a long history and fascinating story. That kind of information collected over time is what tells the story of your product and your business.
Utilize resources like case studies, use cases, and portfolios. Each of these will serve to give proper context to any content you may wish to build.
Here at The Marketing Squad, our goal is to tell your story and grow your business. While these are just a few key ways for your business to use content to your advantage, there are plenty more that we can help you discover.
So connect with us today to find out if we’re a good fit for your business.
The idea of a marketing “funnel” is an age-old concept. Put potential customers at the top of the funnel and see how many go through the process and fall out at the end. The problem with this idea is the total lack of momentum. Customers fall out, and then who’s left to go back in? We hope those who made it through would share the word, but who’s to say?
That’s why Hubspot came up with the “flywheel.” This flywheel has three parts to it:
Here at The Marketing Squad, we’ve shifted our focus as a team to this flywheel model. We’ve grown our team by creating a Director of Connections and Developing role and an Agency Support Specialist role. Those roles push us toward our goal: to all be a part of the sales team.
What does that mean exactly?
From our Director of Partner Marketing to our Content Manager, it is everyone’s job to attract, engage, and delight clients. We don’t want our team to be siloed (other than separating coffee consumers from sparkling water drinkers, of course). Instead, we want to fight against internal friction and help each other in our shared mission to tell your story and grow your business.
So check out this video to see how we at the Marketing Squad have moved towards creating a culture based on the flywheel model.
Looking for a partner to help you establish your CRM and marketing systems? See if HubSpot is right for you. Contact us about scheduling a HubSpot demo.
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