What is Marketing Automation Software: How Can It Help Your Inbound Marketing?

Marketing Automation and Inbound Marketing

– Most experts agree that Inbound Marketing is the most?effective online method for generating Leads, qualifying Buyers and closing sales. But in order to maximize its effectiveness, Inbound Marketing requires a constant and consistent flow of new content, email out reach and social media engagement. This can be both time consuming and confusing with so many potential channels available. The solution?

Marketing automation software.

Today, there are a number of marketing automation vendors offering products designed to help you streamline sales and replace high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions. Let?s examine some of the pros and cons of marketing automation software. But first?

What is Marketing Automation Software?

Ideally, marketing automation software allows you to use technology to nurture your leads using highly personalized and useful content that will help to turn those prospects into customers and turn those customers into delighted customers. This type of automation generally offers an excellent return on investment.

Marketing automation is the newest buzzword in the industry. Because of this, it?s important to understand what marketing automation software can and cannot do.

Marketing automation software is a ?middle of the funnel? solution that can automate specific high-touch repetitive tasks. It will not create content, you?ll still need to do that, but it can schedule that content for release and then automatically post to social media announcing the new content.

Advantages of Automation

If you are looking to specifically drive traffic, marketing automation can be tasked to generate timed social media posts but you will still need to create compelling CTA?s and content to draw visitors to your site. It?s when a visitor arrives that marketing automation software?s usefulness begins to shine. Marketing automation software allows you to:

? Install tracking codes ? When a visitor arrives at your site they are automatically tracked using cookies. This allows you to track them from their initial moments on your site. Cookies?let you see where they go, what they view and how they respond. These analytics help you to fine tune your site to maximize its effectiveness.

? Create highly personalized communication based upon a prospects actions Using scripts its possible to create a unique user experience for each visitor. This allows you to address a visitors specific needs depending upon how they interact with your site. It gives you the opportunity to deliver specific information to meet those needs, automatically.

? Quickly create, rollout and track highly targeted marketing campaigns across multiple social platforms and channels – Using marketing automation software it?s possible to create compelling engaging campaigns that are targeted to the channels your personas frequent. By automating the response you can build relationships that guide your prospects through the lead funnel and trigger a sales call exactly when they are ready to purchase.

? Track and generate analytics to gauge campaign effectiveness and reach. -? Automation allows you to track web data in near real time. This gives you the ability to instantly analyze your campaigns effectiveness, lead generation, close percentage and revenues.

As marketing automation expands, there are a number of vendors offering turnkey, scalable solutions to automate your inbound marketing efforts. Marketing automation vendors like Hubspot, Marketo and Pardot, to name a few, offer scalable solutions and technical expertise to get your inbound marketing automated and trackable.

Automation is a great middle of the funnel solution to use for developing and nurturing leads and turning them into sales. If you?d like to learn how to choose the best program for your business, download our free ebook ?A Guide to Choosing Marketing Automation Software.? It?s a great resource and a smart business decision!

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, call-to-action mapping and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and traditional media allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.