Learn How Marketing Automation in an Important Component of Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a permissive tactic that lets consumers discover you on the web. Its strategies include content marketing efforts, such as blog posts, email newsletters, eBooks, and white papers, providing valuable content to audiences and positioning your brand as a thought leader.
The advantage of inbound marketing over more traditional efforts is that it casts a targeted net. Individuals who find brands online thanks to inbound marketing are already a good match. They are interested in the topic and had a reason to look — actively or passively — into the niche to begin with. In fact, inbound marketing efforts are so effective that 79 percent of companies report ROI when using such tactics. Business-to-business brands that blog just once or twice a month see 70 percent more leads than brands that don’t blog at all, for example. Organizations can boost ROI even further by leveraging automation to increase the effectiveness of inbound marketing campaigns. Here are five ways to do so.
1. Create an Integrated Experience
Automation tools let you integrate channels in intelligent, effective ways that leave users with an enjoyable experience. They also let you gather data from multiple channels, including social, and put that information to use in basic AI technology for optimal marketing, customer service and product placement decisions — all without constant manual effort.
2. Test Marketing Efforts
Analyzing marketing efforts is the only way to know whether something is working or improving lead generation or conversions. Best marketing practices come from launching multiple versions of a campaign, such as a landing page, and ultimately choosing the one that works best. Automation lets you set up campaigns and tests and simply sit back as the numbers come in; the right analytic tools handle calculations for you and present data in visual chunks that make business decisions easy.
3. Qualify Leads Before Taking Action
Inbound marketing efforts that general massive amounts of leads are great, but what if your marketing services generate the wrong leads? Even a targeted campaign typically comes with both good and bad leads, and sorting through to qualify leads can be time consuming. Automation lets you filter leads before putting in labor on them, increasing your ROI for each lead worked.
4. Serve Up the Right Content
Time spent on your pages means more time to consider your services, products or brands. It’s hard to paint your brand as a leader in the space if visitors bounce shortly after they arrive, which makes site architecture, internal links and content recommendations essential. Automation lets you recommend various content to visitors based on factors such as their browsing history, social media interaction with your brand and activity on your site. By service up customized content recommendations, you increase the chance that someone stays on your site.
5. Trigger the Right Emails
Finally, whether you’re targeting businesses or consumers, email marketing still offers one of the best returns on investment, and personalization can increase that return. Personal subject lines can spark 26 percent more opens, for example. Marketing automation tools let you launch the right emails to each consumer, catering to where they are in the buying process. Automation also lets you quickly and easily personalize subject lines and other elements for better performance.
Inbound marketing has been a critical tool for online brands for years. With the continuing evolution of automation tools, inbound marketing is only become more cost-effective and powerful for companies.
