Finding new, digital marketing strategies has become increasingly important. At one point it was a nice add on for businesses but now it is an essential part of any company’s business plan. The phrase “marketing automation” went from being a new idea to being a buzzword to turning into the Holy Grail of many businesses’ marketing strategies.

Decide what you want to accomplish with your marketing automation campaign.

It may be a good way for you to grow your business. Before you decide what applications you will use, you have to decide what your goals are for your marketing automation campaign. Not every tool will help you advance your campaign. Some social media platforms are good for some marketing objectives while others can help in different areas. Facebook and Twitter are better for reaching consumers while LinkedIn is better for reaching other companies, for instance. Knowing what your goals are can help you decide what platforms you will use to accomplish them.

Map out your strategy.

You may want to have at least some kind of presence on all of the social media platforms but you need a strategy to use the platforms that are best able to help you advance and achieve your goals. You may want to take the following into consideration when mapping out the strategy you will follow for your marketing automation plan.

• What platforms will be at the heart of your marketing efforts?
• Who will manage your content?
• How will visitors be tracked? You should have a way to track who is visiting your website, what they are doing while they are there and how long they stay. Look at how they found your site to determine what is and is not working in your marketing automation efforts.
• Do your landing pages match up with all of your messaging? You need everything to complement you messaging and branding efforts.
• What resources will you need to carry out your marketing automation plan?

It is all well and good to develop a great plan for your marketing automation but if you cannot allocate the resources to implement it, what really is the point? If you produce a product, if increased traffic to your website creates the interest you want it to, can your manufacturing department keep up with increased orders? You will have to determine what your budget for the implementation of your plan and make sure you have the human resources you need for all aspects of the campaign and the other follow through that will be needed. If you need to, you may want to bring in an outside consultant to help you streamline the process.

Test new systems before you jump in.

When you start to work on your marketing automation plan, you will see there you have a lot of tools and applications that you can use to make the process easier and more efficient. When confronted with these options and tools, many companies are tempted to jump in and try to create and implement many different campaigns but that is a mistake. When businesses do this, they end up spreading themselves way too thin. None of the campaigns get the attention or resources that they need or deserve and all suffer as a result. The best thing is to start with one, limited campaign, see how that goes and then build on that. This way, one success can lead to another and another. Start small and build to have a successful marketing automation campaign.

Consider getting some outside help.

Working with small business marketing companies may be the best way to design and implement your marketing automation strategy and campaigns. You are an expert in your industry. It can be helpful to bring in marketing experts to help you design your campaigns. They can help you with strategy, content creation and the implementation of the campaigns. They can help you plug any holes in your strategy before they cause real problems. When you hire a consulting firm, try to learn as much from them while you are working with them as you can so your staff can take over at some point.

Combining a great marketing automation campaign with a great content creation strategy can help grow your business.

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