What Are the Best Marketing Automation Tactics?

By Marianne Chrisos - Last Updated on March 22, 2019
Marketing Automation Tactics

Since automation is becoming increasingly important to business strategy, it’s important to think about how to build your marketing automation process. Just like any other business process, automation is only as good as the goals that it helps you reach. If you haven’t decided on those goals or developed a working roadmap of how to get there, simply adding automated processes won’t help you see any results.

Developing an automation strategy is part of your larger overall business plan and should be grown from the ground up, encompassing your goals and business timeline. Creating your automation plan means finding successful marketing automation tactics that will work for your business.

What are the tactics you should try to make the most of your marketing automation strategy? This list can help you identify the most important priorities in building or strengthening your marketing automation.

    1. Create engaging content: Automation isn’t simply about deploying automatic processes that push your content into distribution through email and social media. The content itself is also important and needs to be engaging and relevant to customers.

    2. Decide what functions to automate: Not all automation is created equal. It might not make sense for every business to automate every marketing function. If you have a strong e-commerce presence, however, and a comprehensive database of leads and contacts, it might make sense to turn some of your email marketing over to automation and include more lead nurturing and drop campaigns into your content marketing plan. What functions will benefit from being automated will depend on your business and your marketing goals.

    3. Use the right tools: One of the most important marketing automation tactics is to use the right tools and the right automation platform. The right automation plan is executed more effectively when used with the right tools. In modern marketing, there are now tools to help you automate everything, from social media to email marketing to digital advertising and more. When you decide what automation to run, you can more easily identify the tools that will help you reach your audience and monitor your success along the way.

    4. Know when to turn automation off: At some point in your customer journey, it’s likely that they’ll need a more personal connection. This might mean your sales representative calls the customer directly or that the customer is sent a more personalized email. Whatever the approach, what’s key is making sure that customers feel like they’re connected to your brand in a meaningful way.

    5. Test and adjust: Automation isn’t a set it and forget it routine. While it does provide you with some hands-off time, it doesn’t mean you can completely go on autopilot. It’s important to regularly reassess and adjust as needed. One of the key elements of good automation tools is not just their ability to distribute content but to analyze the performance of content. Whether it’s blog posts, social media, email marketing, or other marketing efforts, it’s important to regularly check analytics to understand what customers are reacting to. Automation isn’t helping your business if it isn’t working to more effectively reach and engage your audience. When you have the data and are able to extract meaning from that, make sure you can change your marketing automation accordingly.

Your marketing automation strategy is built on tactics that allow you to understand and engage with your audience based on your goals. It also allows you to adapt as needed without changing the entire strategy or reconfiguring your goals. Marketing automation is an important tool in your marketing toolkit and should be used as part of your overall business marketing blueprint.

Marianne Chrisos | Born in Salem, Massachusetts, growing up outside of Chicago, Illinois, and currently living near Dallas, Texas, Marianne is a content writer at a company near Dallas and contributing writer around the internet. She earned her master's degree in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University in Chicago and has worked in publishing, advertising, digital marketing, and content strategy.

Marianne Chrisos |Born in Salem, Massachusetts, growing up outside of Chicago, Illinois, and currently living near Dallas, Texas, Marianne is a content writer at a company near Dallas and contributing writer around the internet. She earned her master's degree in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University in Chicago and has worked in publishing, advertising, digital marketing, and content strategy.

Related Posts