The nature of modern marketing is not constant. The ever shifting nature of communications, now the corner stone of modern consumerism, means that marketing techniques have to remain at the cutting edge of technology. Automated marketing software (AMS) is designed to streamline a whole host of repetitive and time consuming jobs but more importantly, its real function is to maximize a company’s presence in the market by focusing on quality and targeted content to generate new leads, to nurture clients, to increase revenue and to grow the business.
There are a number of programs out there that offer this Software-as-a-Service (SAS) including the better known Hubspot, Marketo and ActiveCampaign. With a similar variety of technological applications on offer all of which are designed to increase your company’s ROI in marketing, it would be wise to examine these in closer detail before taking the AMS leap.
The following is a list of some of those tools offered by SAS companies that are designed to increase efficiency of time and resources, and identify real potential clients so that any leads that are captured stand a far greater chance of being converted into sales. Importantly, your ROI in your marketing effort is easily spotted and calculated.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a way to place the value of possible customers to the business. Determining this is a significant method of reducing time wasting when it comes to pitching your brand at the right people.
Web activity tracking
Web activity tracking is how you follow visitors on your site. You can see which pages interested them the most and which the least. This helps marketers effectively analyse the behaviour of visitors and consequently direct relevant pitches at them. In addition, you are able to gage how well the website is performing.
SMS marketing
Is basically sharing promotional messages with a targeted group of clients. In order to receive these messages, clients are asked to opt-in thus giving the marketer permission to contact them. It is relatively cost-free advertising of new products or new services tailored for a targeted audience without the stigma of spam.
Personalized web content
This is a way to individualize parts of your site to suit each visitor’s unique interests. Storytelling, intuitive and interesting graphics, action buttons and search facilities are all part of attracting and keeping visitors on site as long as possible. Visitors who can’t identify with your brand or your message will leave within seconds and, more importantly, will not return.
Predictive analytics
This is where statistics and incoming website data is used to find patterns in the behaviour of site visitors such as gender, age, income and marital status. The information is relevant to all of the techniques in this list and without it a website would soon become redundant no matter how aesthetically attractive it is.
Bi-directional CRM syncing
This is the syncing of different ‘apps’ within the same system in order to facilitate the sharing of data. It is crucial that relevant information is easily shareable from one app to the other to reduce time wastage and to ensure that customers are more clearly ranked and quickly reached.
Event management
This is the marketing campaign’s project management department with its vision reaching out to brand values, storytelling, the choice of channels and the choice of venue. In fact everything involving your company’s internet communications about a new product, a special offer, or a seasonal event. Good organization and good coordination are inherent to the company’s ultimate ROI results.
Split testing
This is the testing of a website’s practical facilities such as purchases, link buttons, click buttons or form filling efficiency. Offering these facilities is a given but they also have to work seamlessly. Split testing is the technical way of testing whether or not they do. Pin pointing and then repairing or improving glitches is paramount to keeping visitors longer on a site.
Bulk social media posting
Social media sites are no longer socializing hubs reserved exclusively for the young. They are now, par excellence, flagship venues for brands that are looking for an unrestricted presence in today’s markets. Aside from their multiplicity, they are active, fast moving and unforgiving and therefore require a data exchange system that can faultlessly handle large volumes at speed.
Sales reports, Real-time sales alerts, Mobile app accessibility and Social CRM
This handles the customer end of the marketing effort by producing up-to-minute sales reports, sending out real-time sales alerts to listed customers, making your website mobile friendly and facilitating a brand’s engagement with its customers on the one hand and the broader web on the other.
So choose your SAS company wisely. Some may be more popular than others but the choice is yours, and will invariably be dictated by the requirements and size of your business. One thing for sure, the returns on an investment, big or small, in inbound marketing is financially quantifiable to please the most old fashioned of CEO’s who never could see the value in having a marketing department.