CMOs spend a lot of time on digital marketing operations and tools. They have no other choice because the digital marketing and marketing automation landscape has changed significantly in recent times.
According to Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017 to 2023 (Global), it is predicted that spending on marketing automation tools will reach $25 billion by 2023.
More than 77% of CMOs say that the number one reason for using a marketing automation tool is to grow revenue.
But marketing automation doesn’t come without challenges.
When securing budget for marketing automation is the biggest challenge, you need to make sure this hard-secured money is best utilized on right tools and apps that will help your company grow its revenue.
The following marketing automation tips will help you deliver what your company expects from automation.
Choose a marketing problem
According to Dave Husain, CEO and co-founder of Leapfrog:
“To have the greatest impact on your business, marketing strategy should direct marketing technology decisions.”
Don’t use a marketing tool just because it has great reviews and all of your competitors are using it.
Don’t look for tools that fit in your company rather try solving a marketing problem.
Look for marketing problems that your team is facing and choose one problem that you wish to solve with automation.
Your team might have several marketing problems such as:
● Low organic traffic
● Poor conversion rate
● Creating and managing landing pages
● Sending personalized emails to customers
● Getting feedback from abandoning visitors
The list can go on and on.
Now choose one marketing problem that you can solve with automation and then choose an appropriate tool for it.
If you’re buying a marketing automation tool just because it is too awesome or it is being used by everyone else in the market, you’re not helping your marketing team.
If it doesn’t solve a marketing problem, it is useless.
Automate repetitive tasks
You have to understand that you cannot automate your entire marketing department. If you somehow do it, you’ll get fired next day because why a company will need a CMO when its entire marketing is automated and is handled by tools and apps?
Practically, you cannot do it.
For instance, a marketing tool cannot write your next blog post, right?
Or, it cannot create a buyer persona from scratch.
When dealing with marketing automation, try automating repetitive tasks such as sending welcome emails to new customers.
The rule is simple: Any repetitive marketing task that isn’t strategic in nature should be automated provided it is a problem for your marketing team.
If it isn’t categorized as a problem, you don’t have to waste resources on it. Better choose another repetitive task that’s a problem for your team.
Just because a task is repetitive in nature doesn’t mean it has to be automated.
Technically analyze the automation tool
Scott Brinker says:
“The collection of marketing technology products that your company uses and how they’re conceptually organized—are an important part of modern marketing management.”
You cannot (and should never) use a marketing automation tool without analyzing it technically, how it will fit into your marketing mix, and how will it integrate with other marketing tools and apps used by your company.
The way how an app is developed, what technology it runs on, how much space it will consume on your servers, how and where it will be hosted, etc. are important questions that need to be answered.
There are so many things to consider before you can choose an automation app.
Being a CMO, you might not have technical knowledge so you’ll have to take your CTO and technical team on board. For instance, you might not know that containers improve the technical performance and should be preferred but someone from your technical department will understand how containers work and how to check if the app you’re buying uses containers or a virtual machine.
When you use multiple marketing automation apps and tools, these all have to be integrated and work together. This means your marketing team cannot afford one or a few bad tools in the portfolio that will ruin the performance of other tools and your entire marketing department.
Don’t let this happen.
Conclusion
Automating marketing processes isn’t the sole job of a CMO, you have to understand it.
What, how, and when to automate should be decided by your marketing team based on what challenges they’re facing.
The technical team, sales team, and other relevant departments should be a part of the process so as to bring something useful and mutually accepted onboard.
~~~~
