“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates

The term Marketing Automation falls directly under the broader umbrella of Inbound Marketing. It has come a very long way and is undoubtedly here to stay as an effective marketing tactic. Both marketers and businesses entirely have a grasp of how this efficient strategy, if properly implemented, can extraordinarily, constructively impact revenue, efficiency, and productivity by leaps and bounds. Despite being quite popular, a lot of fallacies are floating around about what this technology exactly is and what it isn’t and how it is hard to manage and use. In this blog post, we’d be breaking down the three most common, persistent misconceptions and giving the real fact instead. So let’s get started!

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a real game-changer in the IT and software industry. It refers to automation tools that act as an extra and the most helpful set of hands to help businesses nurture their prospects by developing and executing highly customized campaigns and valuable content. Constantly analyzing and reshaping the strategy allows companies to convert these prospects into leads and turn those potential leads into customers. In layman’s term, it is a revolutionary software that helps you:

find & understand your audience

engage your customers

streamline marketing actions

build a strong brand

generate leads

amp up your engagement

Technically, there’s no end to the list.

What are the Applicable Uses of Marketing Automation?

The technology is ripe for digital marketing companies required to persistently automate and manipulate repetitive tasks in their organization, including emails, prospecting, website, and other social media actions. Every year, the automation marketing offers a slew of inventive tools and successful processes for in-depth prospect tracking, ROI reporting, lead nurturing, and lead scoring plus grading too while reducing marketing overheads. Some of the use cases are:

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Lead Generation

Email Marketing

Lead Nurturing

Metrics and Analytics

Management Activities

Top 3 Misconceptions About Marketing Automation

Myth #1: Marketing Automation Can Solve all the Issues

Many marketers are under the wrong impression that this automated tactic is a quick fix to all their marketing woes. Well, it’s not an immediate solution, and just generating more and more content is not enough. The process surely has the competence to take some rote tasks off your plate and execute those actions more rapidly since automation is designed to run continually in the background. Its goal is to help businesses work more efficiently without a great deal of exertion, and not to eliminate all the processes.

For instance, if your team has generated inbound leads itself and created personalized, high converting content, you are up for nurturing them successfully and also for an eternal, healthier relationship with your future customers. Conversely, using any marketing automation tool to automate the middle of a counterproductive process with crappy, irrelevant content is not miraculously going to make your content any effective or compelling.

It only depends on what you are already achieving and how productively your team is executing campaigns on a bigger pool.

Myth #2: It is Expensive

Most businesses deject the idea of investing in marketing automation technology – claiming it’s expensive or solitary caters to large companies. If we take a look at the early days of automation platforms, this statement could not be more correct. Those platforms and their customized solutions were initially designed for enterprise-grade businesses to use and came with a massive price. As the recent technological advancements precipitously made their way into marketing automation, however, the technology has now become increasingly available and affordable for all-size companies, from small to mid-size, and for even startups.

Many software companies such as Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, and HubSpot are renowned players in the marketing automation space, delivering a full suite of cutting-edge features and many of the similar competencies as expensive counterparts. Since the solutions have a tiered pricing system, businesses can choose from multiple service options, according to their usage profile, to get an adequate level of coverage and management for their requirements.

Myth #3: One ‘N Done

Marketers often complain that despite streamlining their marketing and running automated campaigns on multiple channels, many customers left them hanging in the halfway of the funnel. Marketing automation is not a ‘One ‘N Done’ process, which means if it’s done once, then does no more. Strategizing your sales stratagem with this motive and skimping on these little details indeed compel your users to skip through the cracks.

The very first thing you need to understand is that automation is a long-term procedure that requires continuous care and awareness in order to nurture your leads, same as growing a plant. Just sowing a seed doesn’t mean your lil pip will grow itself into a flourishing, blooming plant. The right process is to seed a kernel, provide fertile soil, give water & light, which requires care and attentiveness.

Ignoring or not reaching out to your users, after the sale closes, crushes your chances of upselling, cross-selling, and repeat seals, so keep the communication channel opened with your users.

Remember, marketing automation is not ought to do all the work or contend with your all business issues for you, in fact, it acts as an addendum to your marketing & sales strategy helping you achieve your goals and ease the route to progress.

Want to achieve the highest ROI through a cost-effective, reliable marketing automation platform in 2019? Fret not because we’ve got your back! Just drop us a line at info@rockonit.com and we’ll take it from there!