Your first task is to acknowledge that your current marketing strategy must not be performing affectively, otherwise you wouldn't be looking to adopt new methods.
We need to be in it for the long haul and willing to put the legwork in, before you see results.
There are a number of obvious advantages to adopting marketing automation software:
- Proven marketing ROI unlocks budget. But you have to be tracking ROI in the first place, which not everyone is doing. [Source: State of Inbound 2015]
- Marketers who check their metrics 3x+ times a week are over 20% more likely to achieve positive ROI. [Source: State of Inbound 2015]
- Companies are 3x as likely to see higher ROI on inbound marketing campaigns than on outbound. [Source: State of Inbound 2015]
Find out more about these benefits in our recent blog, 3 Key Takeaways From The State of Inbound Report 2015.
Integration Methods for Automation and Your Content Marketing
1. Make a modern strategy for your team - combining all departments and skills
There is no point implementing a combined marketing strategy of automation and traditional methods. All of your team - not just management - must be on board and encouraged to get involved with understanding how the changes will affect the company and their individual roles.
Find out more about the Thriveability Plan - our strategic marketing resource.
Automation can have the hugest impact on all sales-facing, marketing and administration staff. Ensure that all of these teams have the option to learn about the changes. Your support team should encourage you to filter through these changes to all teams. Those that will actively use the platform should be tutored and demoed the product and how to use its features.
2. Use automation to perform current tactics
A great point to make about marketing automation software is that it can perform a lot of your current tasks in one dashboard, simplifying the efforts of your marketing and sales teams. Additionally, your administration team can upload and amend your databases via our CRM of choice. This makes it easier for your sales and marketing teams to ensure consistent messaging.
Other methods to perform with our automation software is blogging, social media and email marketing campaigns. The list goes on, but performing these three tasks - and your database - in one place helps to simplify your marketing processes and ensure all departments remain in communication with one another.
3. Optimise current marketing resources
So, it might seem to you that although it's great to perform those methods mentioned above - blogging, social media and email campaigns - in one place, you're still thinking it's not worth the investment?
That's a valid point.
However, we can take these marketing methods a step further by optimising your current marketing activities with the advanced tools in our automation software. Why not use the SEO optimisation dashboard, to see if you've correctly optimised your content and why not check out the estimated publishing times that will work best for your content?
Additionally, you can view more analytics than you'd probably be able to shake a stick at! View who opened your email, whether they clicked through, whether they signed up to your campaign, or did they visit your 'Services' page, but not your 'About' page? The list is endless...!
4. Hold monthly feedback and analytics to tie your strategies together
Don't leave people out of the loop and don't feel like you don't quite know what is happening with automation.
It can quickly run away from you, once you're up and running and the ease of it means it can be enticing to leave it 'do what it does best' (work for itself). However, you should host regular meetings to review analytics - your support team should actively encourage this and help you set these up - and plan ahead for future marketing campaigns based on your feedback and metrics.
What's next?
Automation is a big next step for all companies, which is why we've have a variety of first-step suggestions.
Get in touch to discuss the varying levels of HubSpot packages that you can benefit from or our alternative solutions.
