What is Marketing Automation?

You may have heard marketing automation isn’t good for your business, or it’s hard to manage and can get you into trouble—

and while there will always be freak, one-off examples that give TMZ a run for their money, marketing automation is inherently

great for your business.

Not all companies will have a controversial tweet that goes out at the wrong time harming the brand, and not all companies

need to dig into the myths that marketing automation won’t help them convert and close more leads. But what exactly

is marketing automation?

Definition: Marketing automation is a tactic that allows companies to nurture

prospects using highly personalized, valuable content in to a “sales funnel”

to help convert prospects into leads, and eventually turn those leads into

customers.

In addition it is an important piece to your marketing puzzle—and by no way

a means to an end. You need to constantly reshape and analyze your

strategy to discover what’s working, and what isn’t, in order to be

successful.

Nurturing your leads is an ongoing process and marketing automation can help that process

by synching your strategy throughout all of your efforts (blog, social media, email, forms, etc.), helping to

organize your plan of attack. That being said, remember, “your plan of attack” is just that—a plan and you need to take action

to engage and convert your leads if you want to achieve your desired results.

Where Can You Apply Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a great way of guiding potential customers through your website, social channels and email to

generate new leads, all while converting existing ones. Applicable uses include:

Social Media Marketing

Email Marketing

Online Lead Generation

Online Lead Nurturing

Metrics and Analytics

Management Activities

Source: HubSpot