What is Marketing Automation? A Beginner's Guide

有一天坐下来并为您完成营销会不是很好吗？We’ve all had those days where we have back-to-back meetings from 9 until 5, yet still have a huge to do list (like sending out a bunch of emails to our prospects and getting new blog posts up), and we know there is just no way that we can ever get it all done.

You know the days I’m talking about, right?They’re stressful, they’re exhausting and they can really start to burn you out if you have too many of them.

幸运的是,ere’s a solution. A solution that can not only do a little of the work for us, but can make our marketing process more efficient, without feeling like it’s coming from some robot out in cyberland.

The solution? Marketing automation.

在此处下载我们完整的营销自动化指南，以了解如何掌握营销自动化。

What Is Marketing Automation?

In a nutshell, marketing automation refers to software that automates your marketing for you. The software is designed to help you prioritize and execute your marketing tasks in a more streamlined and efficient way. But what does that mean for you as a marketer?

Unlike automating manufacturing processes, implementing a marketing automation system won’t make your job irrelevant, it will just make you more effective. It will free up some of your time, while not compromising the authenticity of the content you’re producing. And it will help you reach your goals faster.

The ultimate goal with your marketing is to generate more revenue for your company. To accomplish this, we need to drive traffic to our website, convert that traffic into leads and close those leads into customers. Where marketing automation really makes an impact is the conversion and closure stages of this process.

如何使用营销自动化

Thousands of marketers today rely on email marketing to generate results. They send blast email after blast email to their entire list of prospects and customers, hoping the message resonates with some of them and gets them to purchase. But does it work? Hard to tell.

Perhaps it works for you sometimes, but the reality of the situation is this:

1. You’re wasting your valuable time and money marketing to someone who may not be interested in what you’re sharing
2. you could be burning your list (i.e. annoying your contacts and causing them to jump ship leaving you with no opportunity to market to them in the future)

From my standpoint, that doesn’t sound like an effective marketing program. Or at least not one that I want to use. This is why we leverage a marketing automation system. Marketing automation allows you to nurture your leads through the entire buying process, delivering highly-targeted, personalized messages that address their specific barriers to purchase.

As an example, here is what a basic automated email workflow could look like:

Step 1:您发送电子邮件邀请将您的最新电子书下载到有针对性的联系人列表中

第2步：You send a thank you note to all the people that downloaded the offer

Step 3:A few days later, you send a follow up email to the list of people who downloaded the ebook, offering them a case study relating to that topic

Step 4:Finally, when someone downloads that case study, your sales team will get a notification so they can follow up with them (this person is now much more qualified and is likely farther down the buying process)

Now, put yourself in your prospect’s shoes for a moment. If this was you, receiving information from a company about their products / services, wouldn’t you prefer to get emails like the ones above over blasts you can tell they’re sending to thousands of other people? It feels personalized. It feels tailored to you and how you are interacting with that company. It makes you much more likely to trust that company. And ultimately, more likely to buy, doesn’t it?

There you go! Driving revenue for your company with an automated system.

This is the foundation of marketing automation. To provide you, as a marketer, with the ability to target your contacts and send them content that is based on their behavior. You’re giving them the information they need when they want it. You’re easing their buying decision. And as a result, your conversion rates (and revenue) will increase.

营销自动化的DOS和不

现在，我们已经详细介绍了什么是营销自动化，我们想为您提供一些提示，因为您考虑在过程中实施新平台。这将概述您应该和不应该对营销自动化做的事情。

Don’t just automate your current process without revisiting your goals

Because marketing automation can make our lives easier as marketers, for many of us, the first step when integrating this into our strategy is to just automate everything we already do. While this very well might be the right way to go, take a moment to revisit your goals before you get started.

The point here is that we don’t want to let marketing automation lead us to execute strategies that we know don’t make sense for our customers or prospects. We don’t want to slide back into our bad habits and stop listening to what our customers need or are asking us for.

DO integrate marketing automation with you inbound marketing strategy

Inbound is about providing valuable content that aligns with your customers needs and interests. This should not change if you start using marketing automation. In fact, it should enhance the communication, as you can provide the content they need at the exact time that they need it.

DON'T just blast or broadcast general messages

With marketing automation, there is no need to send a general, broad message to your entire contact list that will end up getting deleted or marked as spam because it’s not relevant.

DO send highly-targeted and specific content to a narrowed audience

Provide the content that people are looking for. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes for a moment. Say that you’ve engaged with a company; maybe you’ve downloaded a piece of their content and really loved what you read. The next email you get is for a completely different topic that has nothing to do with what you just read. Wouldn’t it be more impactful if you received an email that continued to dive further into the topic that you are interested in? You’d be much more likely to buy from that company since they’re answering your questions, wouldn’t you? With marketing automation, you can do exactly this.

不要忘记您的客户

出售新业务和结束合同是艰苦的工作。如此众多的公司专注于产生新的收入，以至于他们忘记了当前的客户：已经对他们所销售的东西有亲和力的人群，并且很可能想购买更多。

设立客户参与活动，以使您的当前客户感到高兴并重新以获取更多

我不想在这里赚钱，但是有一件事是真的：向以前从您购买的人出售要容易得多。保持客户参与内容营销是您公司发展的重要部分。bob全站app通过发送细分的，只有客户的内容来培养这些关系，这将教育并鼓励他们继续回到您的公司以进行思想领导和专业知识。bob全站app

Let’s bring it all together

好的，所以现在我们已经钉住了基础知识，让我们将它们全部重新融合在一起。营销自动化就是培养不出售的。我们避免使用个性化，相关且与客户和潜在客户所寻找的内容相符的内容，避免使用硬销售方法。而且，通过实施营销自动化软件，更好的是，此过程变得容易得多。bob电竞官方下载我们能够快速将整个过程映射回我们的营销目标。

记得吸引,转换,近阶段,we talked about earlier? We mentioned that marketing automation plays a key role in the convert and close stages, but what about the attract phase? We won’t dig into the details here (we’ll save that for another post), but marketing automation plays well into a larger inbound marketing strategy.

作为入站营销商，这是我为销售团队成功地关闭客户的高质量潜在客户的目标之一。营销自动化帮助我简化了自己的流程，并使我更了解访客和潜在客户的实际情况。我可以快速找到他们正在下载的内容，对我的电子邮件的响应方式以及他们如何通过销售渠道进行。每一个步骤，我都可以监视和测量我的营销自动化系统如何执行，并向我展示可能需要进行调整以获得更好的结果。

Ultimately, and I feel like many of us will agree, we want to see our companies succeed. And for me, by leveraging marketing automation in the last year, I have seen incredible results. I encourage you to explore your options and find a platform that gives you flexibility, and a proven track record to help you reach your marketing goals.

Alyssa Rimmeris the Director of Marketing atNew Breed Marketing，入站营销机构和枢纽合作伙伴。Alyssa是一位入站爱好者，住在纽约市，在业余时间喜欢做饭。您可以阅读Alyssa和她的团队的更多文章新品种博客or download New Breed Marketing's ultimate guide to inbound marketing这里.