Marketing automation: what to automate first

Talking about marketing automation, people often claim that it can become a key factor in brand promotion. But what processes should be automated first, and why automation is a must today? Let’s find out.

Why the automation?

Marketing automation is based on using a specific software that helps marketing dept save on resources — money, human resources or time. Routine repeating processes become easier, faster, and enable marketing experts to use them more often. This leads to better results, more leads, and more sales. At the same time, the marketing team can work on more creative tasks to enhance processes. Ease your team’s work with automation:

First to be automated

The choice of processes to be automated first depends on your business goals. The main automation idea is to make your processes more efficient to reach the specific goals. Though, there is a list of routine processes automated first in most companies. Here we go:

1. Client communication

First, you have to automate your Emails, SMS, Push, WebPush, MobilePush, and so on. We are living in the omnichannel reality where people use all channels. The number of channels constantly grows, and it becomes impossible to control everything. Automation tools allow you to track delivery and opening rates, see client actions, and analyze all this data. What can help you enhance marketing better than data-based decisions?

2. Advertising

Digital advertising is available on different platforms. Either context or target, social media ads work well for your marketing. Search engine ads may work even better if you create them correctly. These ads remind people of you, trigger them to learn more about your product, and buy here and now. Many platforms offer synchronization of all your ads, thorough analysis and even automated insights on how to improve your advertising for better results.

3. Social media posting

The main idea of social media is always being in the public eye, offering fresh news and content, and posting regularly. But if posting is not your main passion (or you simply do not have enough time to publish constantly), the specific social media automation platforms are a must for you. They help to publish content to different channels timely, even if you work with tens of social networks. Plan them thoroughly in advance, and the tool will do everything by itself.

4. Mobile marketing

In 2022, there are over 6.5 billion mobile users worldwide. It is expected, that by 2025, this number will grow to almost 7.5 billion. This surely means mobile marketing becomes more and more important. Preparing for this mobile boom, you have to create your own mobile apps, and automate your pushes. Pushes are relatively cheap, and marketing automation tools can help you grow your sales, trigger your users to push CTAs, and communicate better.

How to automate your marketing fast?

Building automated marketing campaigns makes your processes easier, you reach the goals faster, and make all the marketing cheaper. The automation process won’t be easy, but here are some tips that can help you win more on this journey:

1. Understand your goals

Ask yourself what can be automated in order to save your time and resources. Form your goals and think about the strategies that can help here. Only after goals are stated, the marketing budget should be built. If you have never done it before, this looks like a perfect moment to hire a marketing specialist.

2. Understand your target audience

Before automating your social networks postings, try to realize if your target audience is present in these channels. The same is true for other marketing tools and strategies, before offering the innovative marketing campaign, hold customer developments, ask your clients what they really need. Create your client portrait, and base your newly automated processes on this data.

3. Build and track your clients’ journey

If something doesn’t work, it’s ok. You can fix it. The bad scenario is when you don’t know what is wrong, and when it started. Make a customer journey from the first contact to sale. This will help you to see the weak points, and to improve them. The role of automation here is to ease all the steps. Until all the steps are clear, you won’t be able to plan your automation thoroughly.

4. Create your content strategy

After building a journey, it’s time to create a content strategy for every step. A detailed plan on what to post or send, when to do it, and how to do it, will help you to understand which steps need automation the most.

5. Plan your solution deployment

Whatever your product is, plan your roll-out thoroughly. Think about every action you are going to take this way. Plan the time to test every step and realize if you need to automate it in the future.

6. Track your marketing results before the automation, and after it

Analyze your processes monthly, quarterly and yearly. Automation is a flexible process, and it should adapt to your results and goals. Before the automation, it can be hard to analyze everything you do, however, it is always worth it — in the future, you will be able to assess if your initial marketing automation plan worked well.

Automation is obviously helpful. It doesn’t only save your resources, but also helps to develop from the idea to the correct marketing decision quickly. Automation tools collect data, analyze it, and help you understand your leads better. The start of automation can be challenging, and that’s why outsourcing these processes can be the perfect solution. MD Cloud team offers all-in-one expert support from initial analysis to automation results analysis. If you are not sure where to start, reach out to our team now to get your free personal consultation.