Marketing is one of the most time-consuming aspects of business—and yet it is also one of the most critical. Many marketing tasks take up a lot of time and often require human intervention. Not to mention that marketing is an ever-changing field wherein best practices seem to shift every other day.
That said, it makes perfect sense to apply business automation to this particular line of business. Marketing automation does not only provide increased efficiency, but it also makes tasks more effective, especially when it comes to cost.
So, what are the marketing automation tools that can prove most useful to your business?
Here are a few examples.
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Social media management
Social media management may require more frequent monitoring than other tasks, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be automated. Even marketing companies like Media Crew can take care of all of your platforms for you. But if you only need something to post your content on a preset schedule, a social media management platform is the type of tool you need.
It is simply impractical to manually log in, curate, and post each piece of content, all while maintaining a posting schedule (and on different platforms, at that). By using a social media management tool, you can schedule and curate posts on different social media profiles while using only one platform. Apart from making posting easier, this type of tool also provides a snapshot of what you are posting about on different social media platforms, making it easier to keep content coherent.
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Email automation
Although email marketing has been around ever since electronic mail became popular amongst consumers, it is still one of the most effective marketing methods to date. It is also one of the easiest marketing strategies to apply, thanks to the availability of email automation tools.
Manually sending out emails is a thing of the distant past, even for small businesses. With an email automation tool, you can send out content to your mailing list on a preset schedule with a push of a button. No manual work, no hours spent curating the mailing list—all you have to worry about is making customers think that your message is not just another spammy email.
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Customer relationship management automation
A customer relationship management or CRM program will aggregate all customer data into one place, making it easier for the marketing team to access customer information (e.g., email addresses, contact numbers, locations, etc.) as needed. This type of tool can also allow them to see where a particular lead is in the sales funnel, which can help marketers send out materials and increase the chances of conversion.
Before, CRM had to be done manually, a time-consuming process that is also prone to errors. If you are still doing CRM manually, it is high time to invest in CRM automation software and take advantage of its benefits.
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Blog automation
While most blog automation tools won’t create content for you (although some can), putting one to use can be a great help in managing your blog and maintaining a regular posting schedule. A blog automation tool can help you format your blog much easier (swapping out images, inserting CTAs, applying templates, etc.), sync your blog to email marketing campaigns, share blog posts to social media accounts, and publish blog posts based on a schedule.
Although you still have to spend time creating content, these features can take a lot of the hassle off your hands. Moreover, you can also use integrated analytics to see how well your posts perform across all the platforms you use, helping you adjust your content as needed.
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Analytics and reporting automation
For marketing campaigns to be effective, you have to know how they are performing and modify your strategies accordingly. A good analytics and reporting automation tool can help you with this. This type of marketing tool allows you to track numerous campaigns simultaneously, thus providing meaningful data that you can use to further optimize current campaigns and make better plans for future ones.
Moreover, it can provide your marketing team with easy access to relevant statistics and results without having to spend hours analyzing countless data points, thus making work significantly lighter and more efficient.
Using these marketing automation tools can open up a lot more doors of opportunity for your business. More importantly, it can help marketing campaigns be more cost-effective and for your current marketing strategies to be more efficient.
