Marketing Automation supports marketing and sales activities, increasing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. It allows for nurturing leads by improving the company’s sales processes. However, the effectiveness of Marketing Automation activities is based on understanding the needs and expectations of the target group and choosing the right strategy. Sometimes actions do not bring satisfactory results. What mistakes need to be avoided?
- No segmentation or personalisation
The basic mistake when implementing Marketing Automation into a marketing strategy is providing the entire audience with the same content. Therefore, the first thing to do is to segment the target group, taking into account the desired criteria, e.g. demographic, psychographic, behavioural, or geographical ones. At the initial stage, it is very important to create a potential customer’s persona, get to know the needs and preferences of the target group. The marketing persona takes into account a number of features of an ideal customer, being a representative of the target audience. The persona should consist of various data, not just basic information on age and gender.
A division into segments gives the opportunity to send recipients customised content that meets their needs, expectations, or interests. Knowing user intentions (intention mining) provides a lot of information on their preferences that can be used in all types of marketing activities. Then users are much more likely to interact with the brand and there is a greater chance of acquiring leads that can further become loyal customers.
- Lack of targeting and user behaviour analysis
Behavioural targeting aims at reaching users with targeted content based on their online behaviour. Sending content relevant to recipients’ needs is much more effective than lack of analysis of their actions. These include browsing the price list, reading blog posts, or adding products to the cart. User behaviour can provide key information on their interests, and thus – personalised content. Using Marketing Automation to sell as quickly as possible, forgetting all the experiences based on the needs of a potential customer, is a huge no-no. Users may feel confused when being reached with random content not matching their interests.
- Marketing activities do not focus on achieving key business objectives
Every company should set its short- and long-term marketing and sales goals, which will be measurable and show which stage of implementation the company is at. For this purpose, key performance indicators (KPIs) should be used, which can be measured with Marketing Automation systems. One of the KPIs is website conversion, i.e. the number of users visiting the site in relation to the leads obtained. At the next step the sales conversion should be defined, i.e. how many acquired leads turn into customers. Thanks to sales funnels in Marketing Automation, it is even easier to assess the KPI and achieve the assumed business goals.
- Being limited to one communication channel
Marketing Automation systems offer great opportunities to contact current and future customers. It is a big mistake to choose merely one communication channel, but on the other hand, there is no point “attacking” users from all sides at high frequency. The optimal solution is to select the most effective channels based on the analysis of the collected data about users. One of the effective methods to increase sales is the combination of communication via push notifications and email marketing.
