There is a high chance of your business suffering because of wrongly placed expectations and understanding of marketing automation as a process, including the usage of automation tools.
Of course, there are no defined rules to this game that ensure success, since the implementation solely depends on your own business’s aims, niche, personalized campaigns, and more; Let’s say, whether an apparel brand or a mobile app development company.
However, marketing automation tools aren’t your one-way-ticket to success. This being said, when used correctly and strategically – your business has much to gain.
A survey conducted by Instapages concludes that nearly 91% of marketers credit marketing automation as the most crucial aspect of their marketing campaigns’ success.
So what could go wrong with marketing automation? Let’s look at five possible threats looming for businesses implementing marketing automation incorrectly.
A dangerous concept to cultivate; as the automation tool may help you with your marketing strategies and implementations, but it isn’t a one-time process, where you let the tool do the job for you, relieving you from all your marketing worries.
Consider this; a marketing automation tool is one of the wheels to your car that helps your business move ahead in the digital sphere – nurturing your sale strategies, guiding you forward with what is working and what isn’t, and assisting you in optimizing your campaigns across all mediums.
Your part is to drive the results and keep track of the possible customer/visitor engagement, instead of leaving them hanging because your tool cannot take decisions and respond.
CEO of Brandish Insights, Josh Braaten, speaking at a conference said, “You want somebody who can curate a journey, rather than just automate marketing tasks,”
So make sure you do not depend entirely on marketing automation tools, but use them effectively to generate potential leads, eventually turning into customers through constant effort of monitoring, analyzing results, and re-strategizing accordingly.
Another misconception of installing several marketing automation tools in hopes of maximizing the results leads to streamlining issues as you struggle to manage them all, ensuring they do not come in conflict with each other.
Ledgeview Partners informed that nine out of ten successful marketers utilize more than one marketing automation software on a regular basis. Another survey showed that 243 marketing automation users described their biggest challenge in selecting between different marketing automation softwares/tools is knowing the differences in functionality.
So instead of downloading too many tools, be critical in selecting the right ones that are in line with your business's work, including the marketing strategies you plan to optimize through automation. There are 100 marketing automation software platforms with verified user reviews to help you identify what works best for your marketing ecosystem.
Do not install just for the sake of automating every single marketing task, abandoning your campaigns entirely - Allow them to do menial work, but be in control of other aspects that can be managed by the marketing team.
As discussed above, automation in moderation will do your business good; leveraging automation for what you need, while keeping the aspect of interacting with prospects and audience personalized and human.
For example, the concept of chatbots isn’t the most effective contrary to the widespread implementation of them back in 2018. Visitors or potential customers are less likely to be convinced in buying your product or take your offer when communicating with a bot. So do not replace ‘communication pathways’ by robots, entirely. This also includes emails – personalization is the key here.
Chris Messina, the creator of Hashtag, spoke about the mistakes businesses make with chatbots, and said, “Too much technology can end up creating a worse experience for everyone — and that can create frustration, resulting in lost business, and hurt your brand”
Brands that are dehumanizing various aspects of marketing in hopes of ‘automating’ and saving effort may be doing themselves a favor – but will drive away their customer base due to their trust-issues with your brand.
This also brings to another point of concern, which is laziness.
Wrong intentions behind the implementation of marketing automation tools will affect your business gravely. Let’s say your sole purpose of utilizing them is because you are lazy and need tools to post your campaigns across all social media channels – without you having to do the heavy job of monitoring, and personalizing user experience where required.
Your laziness will get the primary job done of reaching out to the targeted audience, but then what else? The results won’t be as effective or as high because you didn’t do anything afterward.
Nucleus reported an increase of 20% in productivity through marketing automation. This is achievable when the tool(s) is made use of in the right way.
Remember, automation is effective in enhancing your content strategies further, in streamlining your tasks for maximum impact in generating quality leads and cutting down your work-load. But do not expect it to ‘think’ for you as well.
Surprisingly a largely residing misconception needs to be dealt with, as marketing automation is not restricted to email marketing only.
Contrary to this popular belief, marketing automation does wonders for email marketing but has various other benefits which encompass social media, management activities, lead generation tasks, landing pages, so on, and so forth.
Once you are aware of the time, money, and resource that marketing automation saves assisting in handling of social media channels, in implementation and monitoring of several marketing campaigns, in processing and guiding several leads throughout the conversion process, and more – you are bound to break through the habit of placing marketing automation alongside email marketing only.
For instance, businesses experienced a surge of 451% in qualified leads through automation. In addition, lead nurturing through marketing automation drove 15-20% of potential buyers into robust sales.
So, marketing automation has many benefits – Email marketing; however, can be explained as ‘one of many components’ marketing automation facilitates.
Brands that are driving maximum benefit from marketing automation tools are using it to relieve themselves of the menial bulk tasks, yet staying in control of the significant aspects of their marketing strategy as a whole.
Make sure you are learned about the marketing automation as a concept, it’s respective tools available in the market, and last but not least, which tool(s) will work for your business and how to maximize on it effectively.
To sum everything up- do not try to automate real-time responses, don’t rely entirely on tools and step back, and do not paralyze yourself with technology by over-indulging in several marketing automation tools. Keep the integrity of quality interactions, engagements, and responses from you, alive.
Muniza Ashraf is an inquisitive writer with over five years of experience, specializing in various niches, including tech, creative, and SEO optimized content. She believes in constant-growth and keeps challenging herself to be better at her craft.