From simple subscriptions to paying bills to complicated tasks, it’s clear, now more than ever, just how useful automation can be. In marketing, this typically involves using software to automate tasks like email sending, social media posting, and other actions depending on your needs. However, even though marketing automation is so widespread, marketers and business owners still make mistakes about how to use this approach effectively.
Here are some of the most common things that people do wrong—and how to fix them:
1. Problem: You don’t have clear goals
As an entrepreneur, you’ve probably invested in software that can automate some of your marketing efforts and make your life easier. Your automated processes—whatever they may be—are putting your messages in front of your audience, but you haven’t noticed many results. This is because you don’t have set goals. Without goals, you can’t measure exactly how successful your efforts are, and you’re just marketing for the sake of marketing.
Solution:
Before you start using your automation software, you should figure out what your goals are. Do you want to generate leads? Do you want to retain users? Do you want your users to return to their abandoned carts? Do you want to promote customer loyalty? Or is it something else entirely? Whatever the answer is, you have to be clear about what you want to do.
2. Problem: You send people too many messages
Even though you may think that this is the best strategy, sending too many messages can be pretty annoying for your users. You think that sending email after email will result in a sale, but it doesn’t – instead, the user just blocks your emails.
Solution:
Be careful and strategize when it comes to putting your messages out there. If the same user above sees one of your emails once or twice a month instead, he may actually care about what you have to say. He may even look forward to your message. Instead of focusing on quantity, focus instead sending high-quality, well-written, useful, and entertaining emails.
3. Problem: You use too many tools.
Almost half of all marketers use automation tools – but many of them also use other tools to support those automation tools. For instance, you might be using a whiteboard, spreadsheet, flow-chart makers, and other online and offline tools to develop your strategies, craft plans and gather data. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s time-consuming and data could get lost in the process. Plus, all of this manual effort means that you’re not using your automation tool to its full potential.
Solution:
Use an all-in-one marketing automation tool. This lets you take care of all the tasks you need to do with just one tool—which makes your business more efficient and your life easier.
4. Problem: You’re underusing your software
This often happens – people buy expensive software and then use it as a glorified email-marketing tool. Even if you recognize that you’re underusing it, if you never do anything about it, your money just goes to waste.
Solution:
Do some research on how you can actually use your expensive tool before you buy it—then take advantage of all its robust features.
5. Problem: You don’t experiment
You’ve automated your processes and now you believe that there’s no point in further development and experimentation, let alone updating. However, you need to be aware that your leads, customers, and market will change over time.
Solution:
Constantly test and optimize your processes. For instance, if you’re using formatting automation tools like Study Demic and Revieweal, you should test different variations of the formatting and see which one works better. Once each test is done, write down your findings and think about how you could use them to improve your business. Make sure to think about both what works for you at your current stage and what you think will work later.
6. Problem: You don’t segment your market
You’ve automated various aspects of your marketing process, but there’s still one problem: the same messages are going to all target groups. An advertisement or post about male shoes is not likely to grab a woman’s attention.
Solution:
What if that same woman actually saw an advertisement or received an email about female shoes? What if it was even more targeted and pointed directly to her age group, location, education level, etc.? This would make her much more likely to click. Without segmentation, a great automation process won’t make as much of a difference. You need to get the right messages across to the right people.
7. Problem: You are selling instead of nurturing
Your heart is set on generating more leads and getting them to purchase from you. That’s what your automation process is focused on – getting as many sales as possible. You may not see this as a problem, but it is.
Solution:
Rather than selling, you should focus more on nurturing your leads. Take them slowly through the process from being aware of your existence to being an advocate for your brand. You can do this by providing information about your company, your products, and your goals, helping them solve their problems with your content, and so on.
Automation is a great way to make your processes easier and more efficient. However, you can still make mistakes with it or learn to use it better. Start by watching out for the common marketing automation errors above, and you’ll be on your way to marketing success.
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