The Best Automated Marketing Tools
Sales are the corner stone of business. You make or you offer something that is useful or desirable. However, getting that something out to potential customers is not always an easy proposition which is why modern business practice has turned to Automated Marketing software. It is the new industry standard for finding and converting potential and existing customers for your product or your brand. In other words, optimising your marketing team’s time and optimizing your chances of growing your business.
There are a number of programs out there that facilitate the process of lead attraction, nurturing, conversion, and transition from marketing to sales, and beyond. Three major SAS (Software as a Service) players are, Hubspot, Marketo and Salesforce. The trick is to determine which one simplifies your marketing needs, connects with your systems, and targets your real potential customers.
Where to start
There are three main conditions to look at when comparing Automated Marketing Software systems.
-The first is the price. Most are priced on a sliding scale with training and add-ons costing extra. More expensive is not necessarily better
-The second is the usability. The easier it is to use the less time and money you spend training your staff. This is one aspect that will directly affect the inevitable down time that comes with installing and operating a new business tool.
-The third is how its integration will affect your existing system. Again, the better it integrates the less time and money you will spend on getting it up and running, not to mention the long term accessibility options you may have to face in the future.
One-stop-shops
Probably the best known of the three is Hubspot, largely due to the interesting and very useful content – they publish on a regular basis. Their drag-and-drop system and their mail software are a breeze. social media marketing, on the other hand, is the best for clearly integrating incoming social media data. The integration of Pardot with its clear charts showing which parts of your video users skipped, watched, and re-watched with means a seamless link-up between the two sets of data. It all comes down to where your own very particular needs lay.
What’s on offer
-All three offer a variety of Lead scoring, Web activity tracking, SMS marketing, Personalized web content, Predictive analytics, Bi-directional CRM syncing, Event management, Invoice creation, Quote creation, Split testing, Membership site creation, Bulk social media posting, Sales reports, Real-time sales alerts, Mobile app accessibility and Social CRM.
-They all offer Android, iPhone, iPad, Linux, Mac, Windows, and Web-based services.
-They all offer, with slight variations, integrated options with Lead integration, Outlook integration, Gmail integration, Salesforce integration, SAP integration, Oracle integration, Netsuite integration, SugarCRM integration, Microsoft Dynamics integration and Zapier integration.
Support
All three offer variable degrees of support depending on the size and the extent of your integration needs. However, Hubspot stands out amongst them all for its above average support service.
How to choose
Essentially, no matter how much research you do, the only real way to know which one is best for your business is to try them out. If possible, before going ahead and committing, have a go at a trial period. This is the fastest way to find out just how user friendly your marketing team finds the software. Once you make a choice, don’t go for the longest or most expensive contract. If after a while you find it does not suit then a short term commitment will allow you to withdraw without the needless expense of training up your team. A side bonus that comes from short-term subscriptions is that you tend to get more support when setting up in order to keep you for the long term. This reduces the down time your company will have to undergo in training and time wasted when first learning the ropes.
Online marketing is simply not effective without the above listed tools. In today’s world you need to reduce your staffing costs, increase your revenue, improve your marketing results by targeting relevant customers across multiple channels, keep existing customers satisfied, find out what’s working and what isn’t and prioritize your leads.
At Saba Consultants we are enthusiastic users of Hubspot because, aside from its all-inclusive options, its intuitive content creation tools and its support system are second to none. For more information: