Marketing Automation Process
Marketing Automation (MA) has been historically perceived as a “magic” tool for marketers to fix any type of growth or marketing issues. Most marketing “experts” are obsessed with tools to automate as much as they can without a clear or realistic goal in mind.
Despite the fact Marketers nowadays get bombarded with “better & cheaper” marketing automations technology companies, 40% of marketers have issues proving the effectiveness of their efforts to their bosses. (Hubspot)
In this episode of Marketing Concepts, I’ll take you the exact process I use to automate marketing activities for my clients and develop a marketing automation system for any type of business.
Forget the "Magic Bullet": A Human-Centered Approach to Marketing Automation
Marketing automation (MA) isn't a magic tool that fixes every growth problem. In fact, many marketers get overwhelmed by the endless options, leading to confusion and wasted resources. But what if there was a better way?
This guide will equip you, the non-technical marketer, with a clear, four-step process to implement marketing automation effectively. We'll focus on understanding your audience and building a solid strategy, not just flashy tools.
4 Steps to a Strategic Marketing Automation System:
Unmasking Your Customers' Needs:
We'll utilize the JTBD Framework to understand the Jobs To Be Done by your customers. Why do they need your product? What problems are they trying to solve?Mapping the Customer Journey:
Let's visualize the entire Customer Journey, from initial awareness to loyal customer. This helps pinpoint the best touchpoints for automation.Prioritize Your Marketing Activities: Not everything needs automation. Identify the key actions that will have the biggest impact on your marketing goals.
Automate What Makes Sense:
Now, let's explore automation tools strategically. Automate tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming, and benefit from data-driven insights.
Beyond the Hype: Practical Benefits of a Strategic Marketing Automation System
Enhanced Customer Experience: Deliver personalized interactions at every stage of the journey.
Increased Efficiency: Free up marketing resources for strategic initiatives.
Improved ROI: Track results and optimize campaigns for maximum return on investment.
Bonus Resources:
Download a free PNG of the Marketing Automation Process flow chart. Marketing Automation Process
Explore "Marketing Automation for Non-Technical Professionals" - The No-Nonsense Guide.
Why Should You Use Marketing Automation?
Increased Efficiency: Automate repetitive tasks like email campaigns, social media posting, and lead nurturing.
Enhanced Customer Experience: Deliver personalised messages and experiences at the right time.
Improved Lead Generation: Nurture leads effectively and convert them into customers.
Boosted Sales: Automate follow-up processes and nurture deals to close more sales.
Real-World Use Cases for Different Marketer Levels:
Beginner Marketers:
Email Marketing Automation: Set up automated email workflows to welcome new subscribers, nurture leads, and re-engage inactive customers.
Social Media Automation: Schedule posts, respond to comments, and run social media ads automatically.
Lead Scoring and Grading: Automatically qualify leads based on their behaviour and assign them to sales teams.
Intermediate Marketers:
Personalised Marketing: Use customer data to create personalised email campaigns, website experiences, and product recommendations.
A/B Testing: Automate the testing of different marketing elements (e.g., subject lines, email content, landing pages) to optimise performance.
Marketing Analytics: Track key metrics and generate insightful reports to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Advanced Marketers:
Complex Workflows: Create intricate marketing automation workflows that involve multiple steps and decision points.
Predictive Analytics: Utilise AI-powered tools to predict customer behaviour and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.
Integration with CRM: Seamlessly integrate your marketing automation platform with your CRM to ensure data consistency and improve lead management.
Key Steps to Implement Marketing Automation:
Define Your Goals: Clearly outline the specific goals you want to achieve with marketing automation, such as increasing lead generation, improving customer retention, or boosting sales.
Identify Your Target Audience: Understand your ideal customer profile and create buyer personas to tailor your marketing messages.
Map Your Customer Journey: Visualise the customer journey from initial awareness to post-purchase and identify key touchpoints for automation.
Choose the Right Marketing Automation Tool: Select a tool that aligns with your budget, technical expertise, and specific needs. Consider popular options like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot.
Create Your Marketing Workflows: Design automated workflows for lead nurturing, email campaigns, social media posting, and other marketing activities.
Test and Optimise: Continuously test and refine your marketing automation workflows to improve performance and achieve your goals.
Remarkable Marketer of the Week: Sean Ellis
Sean Ellis is a Marketer, Author and Founder considered the father of Growth Hacking. He’s the Author of Hacking Growth, CEO of Growthhackers.com and former Marketer of successful startups like Dropbox, Eventbrite & LogMeIn.
Let's find out more about Sean’s most remarkable ideas
Remarkable Ideas
Below I’ll deconstruct some of the most remarkable ideas Sean has discussed in various publications before.
Using Product/Market Fit to Drive Sustainable Growth
Sean popularized the idea of product/market as a leading indicator that helps companies understand if early customers consider their product a must-have.
Scaling growth for a business before having product/market is nearly impossible as you haven’t validate your product or service offering
Sean developed a simple process to determine product/market fit. It requires
1. A decent sample size (30+ active users - do not waste your time on non-active users)
2. A simple survey with the following question - “How would you feel if you could no longer use [ProductName]?”a) Very disappointed, b) Somewhat disappointed, c) Not disappointed, d) N/A I no longer use [ProductName]
To get an indication of product/market fit, you’ll want to know the percentage of people who would be “very disappointed” and this percentage should be close to 40%
What is a North Star Metric?
The North Star Metric (NSM) is a single metric that captures the aggregated core value people get form your product
To define your North Star Metric you must understand the actual value your most loyal customers get from your product i.e Airbnb uses nights booked and FB uses daily active users
Marketers need to understand the relationship between their NSM and other interdependent variables that contribute to your end-goal.
Growth is Simple
Sean thinks the main factors of growth are:
Identify your North Star Metric: Understand the real value your product is providing to your audience.
Grow your North Star Metric via Experimentation: By definition if you have product/market fit you’ll get some organic traction i.e word-of-mouth. However, you must accelerate your growth efforts experimenting with other types of messages, audiences and value propositions (marketing campaigns)
Document tactics until they stop working: When you find something that works for growing your business, it’s important to document how it works and to invest resources to continue
Sean believes that the fastest growing companies are able to build a rhythm and habit of testing to improve their North Star Metric through cross-functional experimentation
Connect with Sean Ellis
You can follow Sean on the following platforms:
Marketing Tool Of The Week : Alexa Marketing Stack
Tool description
Alexa Marketing Stack is a SaaS company owned by Amazon providing a full suite of marketing tools that helps you discover, reach, convert your audience and improve your website’s visibility & performance online.
Let's have a look at the most important features of this marketing suite.
Features
Alexa Marketing Stack offers solutions in 3 main areas SEO Tools, Audience Analysis & Competitive Analysis.
SEO Tools
Competitor Keyword Matrix : Discover Keywords based on your competitors Keywords
Competitor backlink Checking: Run a backlink analysis and find out where your competitors are getting links from.
Analyze keyword difficulty : Save time prioritizing keywords your site can rank for.
SEO Audit : Technical SEO audit and get a clear plan to fix the issues. It will help you with monitoring your progress, where you have tackled the SEO issues, and where you need to put more effort.
Audience Analysis Tool
Audience interests: Discover what sites they visit, which categories of sites they're interested in, and what content they consume.
Audience Overlap: Find sites that share a similar audience with you business.
Competitive Analysis Tools
Content Exploration: Easily identify popular topics and for your site
Site Overview: Analyze your site's performance over time. It includes multiple metrics like engagement metrics, upstream/downstream sites, audience geography, etc.
Site Comparisons: Compare your site against up to 10 sites at a time.
Pricing
Here’s a breakdown of the 2 main plans Alexa's Marketing Stack offers
Advanced plan: Targets Individuals, cost $149 USD per month and offers a 14 days trial period - It can only be used by one user & one site.
Agency plan: Targets Businesses, cost $299 USD per month and offers a 30 days trial - 20 users, 35 sites, and 35 projects
Audience
Alexa is popular among marketers, small business and content creators publishers as it offers a good range of tools that supports the multiple areas of the marketing and content creation process. I highly recommend the set of tools they offer around Audience Analysis as it helps you quickly identify behavioral patterns of audiences similar to yours that you can easily attract.
Alternatives
Here are a few alternatives to Alexa Marketing Stack,
SimilarWeb: It generates an estimate of website traffic, identifies growth prospects, and discover valuable insights about your competitors. It is easier to set up, and but more expensive than Alexa.
SEMrush: An online visibility and content marketing tool that offers similar features than Alexa
Ahrefs: An SEO and content research tool that offers similar functionality from an SEO perspective but do not has the same capabilities in terms of audience analysis and data visualization