The future of marketing is automation.

Possibilities of automation remain to be seen, but a majority already use it for great impact. This series will show you how you can leverage this incredible tool to increase exposure and engage with more people. 

Whatever stage your business is in, automation, used strategically, can provide innumerable benefits.

First Steps

The startup stage is an excellent place to begin using automation: but that doesn’t remove the need for proper planning and research. It’s important to understand where you are as a company, and what automation can and cannot do for you.

Ask questions, as many as you can think of.

Who is my ideal customer, and what are they looking for?

How will my product be different from its competitors?

What is the need or market gap that I will fill?

Each of these questions are jumping-off points, a base from which you can branch out in several directions. Follow these through as far as you can go.

The first question may lead you to consider the demographics of your target audience: their age, interests, careers, etc. From there, you might consider what types of content they engage with (and on which channels)- things you should know when creating any marketing plan.

Know your customers and how you can best provide value.

Make Specific Goals

Once you understand these things, you’re ready to define goals and a budget for your marketing campaign.

Consider where you want to be a month from now, several months from now, and so on. You may want to define a goal based on revenue or sales volume, but, as always, it should be specific and attainable.

You may not always achieve these goals, but that doesn’t make goal setting any less important. They are the benchmarks you use to measure the success of your company and marketing plan, as well as your personal success.

Pay special attention to the areas where you don’t succeed. The most beneficial thing you can do next is determine why you didn’t reach certain goals. Goal setting allows you to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what can be better.

If you reach a point where you feel you are starting to plateau, it can be helpful to look back on your goals- they allow you to see just how far you have come and whether your pace is indeed slowing.

Create a System That Works for You

As a new company, widespread exposure is normally a great concern, and for good reason. With limited capital to work with, you may not have much of a budget; however, with marketing automation, you can achieve greater return with less money.

Using automation often means changing the way you’re used to doing things.

Perhaps you’ve done some marketing before, prospecting for potential customers and managing a social media account and so on. You’ll still be doing these things, but automation allows you to better spend your time for maximum effect.

Decisions to automate, whether changing an existing system or establishing your business processes, should weigh investment (of money and time) with the returned benefit. Your product, ideal customers, and budget will decide where you should focus your attention and what tools you should use, as well as your current stage as a company: in this case, the startup phase.

Tools to Start With

The following are some examples of marketing automation software to consider.

Knowing your company’s product and ideal customers, you may choose to implement some, all, or none of these- though with many benefits and uses of them, I don’t believe it will be the latter.

Inbound Marketing Tools

As a new business, inbound marketing1 should be your main focus.

If, for example, you have a company blog that solves relevant problems potential customers or clients may have, that’s an inexpensive way to build interest in your product or service.

People coming to you, rather than you to them: that is inbound marketing.

Whatever your business model or product, any company today should budget time and money for SEO. It’s your online presence in a world where most people search for businesses or products online; its importance cannot be understated.

A good SEO tool should help you measure your current website’s optimization, seeing where improvements need to be made, and assist in keyword research. For its price (free) and many functions, the new business owner would be hard-pressed to find anything better than the standard Google Analytics.

This software lets you visualize important information all in one place. A lesser known feature, you can even have automated reports sent to your inbox at a frequency and time that you specify.2 When used with Keyword Planner, you can find all the information you need to get started.

Taking a more hands-on approach to finding customers, CRM (customer-relationship management) software is essential when B2B marketing is the key.

Consider using Hubspot: this software keeps track of lead behavior across several platforms, completing tasks in response to specific actions (such as sending a second email when a user clicks through the first one).

HubSpot also provides crucial metrics on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and more, all of which can be used to optimize your marketing and growth. When you have ideas for social media posts, you can use the software to publish them across all of your platforms at once, rather than posting on each individually.

The greatest benefit of inbound marketing is that it can be personally tailored to your prospects, and is thus more likely to get a response. In addition, it can be very cost-effective: all of the tools above are inexpensive or free.

Outbound Marketing Tools

In contrast to inbound marketing, outbound marketing is often termed “traditional” marketing. Outbound marketing can be more expensive, and many of its tactics are considered outdated (and annoying), but they can still be used to varying effect.

Gone are the days of cold-calling and showing up uninvited on people’s doorsteps- outbound marketing should still be targeted to your customers’ demographics. Your advertisements need to go out to the people most likely to respond.

Reveal is an excellent example of an outbound marketing tool. Many people make the decision to invest in Facebook advertising, and Reveal helps you to achieve the best possible ROI by making actions in response to on-going analytics of your campaigns- automated management.

Think of outbound marketing as a supplement to boost your inbound efforts.

Taking it Further

You know more about your marketing plan and available tools, but that’s only the beginning.

Marketing automation can be invaluable, but, going back to the beginning of the article, you should frequently measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, always asking questions and keeping in mind that what works at the beginning may not work later on.

Also, keep in mind that marketing is just one facet of business in the 21st century that automation can be applied to–workflow management is another of many to consider.

In the next articles, we’ll look into troubleshooting, how to scale your business and marketing efforts, what to do when your business starts to plateau, and more.

The future of marketing is automation.

Possibilities of automation remain to be seen, but a majority already use it for great impact. This series will show you how you can leverage this incredible tool to increase exposure and engage with more people. 

Whatever stage your business is in, automation, used strategically, can provide innumerable benefits.

First Steps

The startup stage is an excellent place to begin using automation: but that doesn’t remove the need for proper planning and research. It’s important to understand where you are as a company, and what automation can and cannot do for you.

Ask questions, as many as you can think of.

Who is my ideal customer, and what are they looking for?

How will my product be different from its competitors?

What is the need or market gap that I will fill?

Each of these questions are jumping-off points, a base from which you can branch out in several directions. Follow these through as far as you can go.

The first question may lead you to consider the demographics of your target audience: their age, interests, careers, etc. From there, you might consider what types of content they engage with (and on which channels)- things you should know when creating any marketing plan.

Know your customers and how you can best provide value.

Make Specific Goals

Once you understand these things, you’re ready to define goals and a budget for your marketing campaign.

Consider where you want to be a month from now, several months from now, and so on. You may want to define a goal based on revenue or sales volume, but, as always, it should be specific and attainable.

You may not always achieve these goals, but that doesn’t make goal setting any less important. They are the benchmarks you use to measure the success of your company and marketing plan, as well as your personal success.

Pay special attention to the areas where you don’t succeed. The most beneficial thing you can do next is determine why you didn’t reach certain goals. Goal setting allows you to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what can be better.

If you reach a point where you feel you are starting to plateau, it can be helpful to look back on your goals- they allow you to see just how far you have come and whether your pace is indeed slowing.

Create a System That Works for You

As a new company, widespread exposure is normally a great concern, and for good reason. With limited capital to work with, you may not have much of a budget; however, with marketing automation, you can achieve greater return with less money.

Using automation often means changing the way you’re used to doing things.

Perhaps you’ve done some marketing before, prospecting for potential customers and managing a social media account and so on. You’ll still be doing these things, but automation allows you to better spend your time for maximum effect.

Decisions to automate, whether changing an existing system or establishing your business processes, should weigh investment (of money and time) with the returned benefit. Your product, ideal customers, and budget will decide where you should focus your attention and what tools you should use, as well as your current stage as a company: in this case, the startup phase.

Tools to Start With

The following are some examples of marketing automation software to consider.

Knowing your company’s product and ideal customers, you may choose to implement some, all, or none of these- though with many benefits and uses of them, I don’t believe it will be the latter.

Inbound Marketing Tools

As a new business, inbound marketing1 should be your main focus.

If, for example, you have a company blog that solves relevant problems potential customers or clients may have, that’s an inexpensive way to build interest in your product or service.

People coming to you, rather than you to them: that is inbound marketing.

Whatever your business model or product, any company today should budget time and money for SEO. It’s your online presence in a world where most people search for businesses or products online; its importance cannot be understated.

A good SEO tool should help you measure your current website’s optimization, seeing where improvements need to be made, and assist in keyword research. For its price (free) and many functions, the new business owner would be hard-pressed to find anything better than the standard Google Analytics.

This software lets you visualize important information all in one place. A lesser known feature, you can even have automated reports sent to your inbox at a frequency and time that you specify.2 When used with Keyword Planner, you can find all the information you need to get started.

Taking a more hands-on approach to finding customers, CRM (customer-relationship management) software is essential when B2B marketing is the key.

Consider using Hubspot: this software keeps track of lead behavior across several platforms, completing tasks in response to specific actions (such as sending a second email when a user clicks through the first one).

HubSpot also provides crucial metrics on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and more, all of which can be used to optimize your marketing and growth. When you have ideas for social media posts, you can use the software to publish them across all of your platforms at once, rather than posting on each individually.

The greatest benefit of inbound marketing is that it can be personally tailored to your prospects, and is thus more likely to get a response. In addition, it can be very cost-effective: all of the tools above are inexpensive or free.

Outbound Marketing Tools

In contrast to inbound marketing, outbound marketing is often termed “traditional” marketing. Outbound marketing can be more expensive, and many of its tactics are considered outdated (and annoying), but they can still be used to varying effect.

Gone are the days of cold-calling and showing up uninvited on people’s doorsteps- outbound marketing should still be targeted to your customers’ demographics. Your advertisements need to go out to the people most likely to respond.

Reveal is an excellent example of an outbound marketing tool. Many people make the decision to invest in Facebook advertising, and Reveal helps you to achieve the best possible ROI by making actions in response to on-going analytics of your campaigns- automated management.

Think of outbound marketing as a supplement to boost your inbound efforts.

Taking it Further

You know more about your marketing plan and available tools, but that’s only the beginning.

Marketing automation can be invaluable, but, going back to the beginning of the article, you should frequently measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, always asking questions and keeping in mind that what works at the beginning may not work later on.

Also, keep in mind that marketing is just one facet of business in the 21st century that automation can be applied to–workflow management is another of many to consider.

In the next articles, we’ll look into troubleshooting, how to scale your business and marketing efforts, what to do when your business starts to plateau, and more.

The road to simplicity is paved with algorithms.

How Do You Use Your Time?

According to a study, up to 45% of all workplace activities in the US can be automated with technology.

Business leaders and entrepreneurs know that one of your most valuable resources, if not the most valuable, is time. Many are notoriously stingy with it: Bill Gates is just one famous example, known for taking it to an extreme and scheduling his time in 5-minute blocks. Ask any successful person what they hold most important, and they’re likely to tell you the same.

Thankfully, automation can help you repartition your time and spend your energy where it matters most.

A Better Way

Most businesses have several tasks that need to be completed daily, weekly, or monthly: automation can complete many of these in the background, leaving you the important decisions that machine learning software or other tools cannot make (and saving you from several mundane tasks in the process).

Take an example from working with big data sets.

It might take someone hours to create a manual report, whereas a piece of software can instantaneously create the same report for a client. All of us make mistakes, whereas computers do not have the same potential for error. Ease of repeatability in this case can also lead to greater insights and increased value to the customer through the use of queries and conditions.

This is just one common example of automation used today. Companies such as IBM are leading the way to even more possibilities with research into A.I. and machine learning and, though still in its early stages, innovations like their cognitive automation software may bring us to a future limited only by our imagination.

Your Solution, Piece by Piece

But let’s take a step back.

Endless speculation can be made about the future of automation, but right now it still has incredible power to completely change your workflow.

Fully comprehensive solutions are available for many aspects of business, but (at least at this point) it’s usually quicker and cheaper to automate pieces of your workflow where it most makes sense and would return the greatest benefit.

The following are tools that you can use today to simplify your workflow and achieve better performance.

Streamline Your Process Management

You may be using a program such as Basecamp or Trello already.

Rather than switch to a completely different project management system, you can use Process Street to add greater functionality and streamline your workflow. This software isn’t just compatible with the two programs listed above, but integrates with over a thousand applications that automatically update as you use Process Street: from file-hosting services to email and more.

In best-case use, their process templates drastically limit the amount of manual data entry you have to make. Conditional logic allows the creation of adaptive checklists that you can automatically assign to your team on a schedule you set, and a unified dashboard lets you to keep track of all activity and progress across platforms.

There’s even a free version of the software may meet your needs, depending on the size of your business.

Achieve Better Sales and Marketing Results

Sales automation is a great next step, especially considering that a majority conduct most of their prospecting and sales online.

Most companies engaged in marketing of any form have already implemented automation, and of those who have a vast majority consider it very important to their success. Conservation of time and increased sales are just some of the stated benefits.

Outreach is perhaps the most complete marketing automation solution currently available. It identifies leads and keeps track of everything from the first email to demo to final sale, and intelligent analytics help you to make the best move and even know when to make it. With much of prospecting’s manual and repetitive work automated, you can spend more time meeting with future customers.

A simpler solution popular with small business owners, Hatchbucks makes it easy to created targeted email campaigns, view lead behavior in real-time, and determine the effectiveness of a campaign (or where it might need to change).

Marketing automation expands beyond the inbox, but it remains one of the easiest ways to reach people and one of the best with high ROI and more opportunities for engagement.

Benefits for Employer and Employee

Payroll processing is another candidate for automation.

For the business owner, tax calculation, filing, and payment services provided by many payroll processing companies such as Paychex allow you to focus on more important things- your service and your clients. If you decide to do the taxes by yourself and make a mistake, you will be liable to pay the subsequent (and often very large) fines.

The company also offers services for better human resource management, including automated renewal into important programs and reports on compensation and benefits. Rather than cashing checks, many employees (and employers) appreciate direct depositing of paychecks on a regular schedule.

Depending on the size of your business and how much you wish to pay, more complete solutions are offered. Their excellent customer service will be happy to help you get started and decide which options provide the most benefit to you.

The Road To Simplicity

Over half of companies in marketing believe that automation is difficult, but it doesn’t need to be.

Automation can be easily implemented into your workflow and return nearly innumerable benefits in many situations. As more research and innovations are made, it will become an increasingly important part of business with incredible potential to change the way people work.

All that’s left for you to decide is what to do with it.