4 Marketing Tasks You Should Already Be Automating

Feeling bogged down by all of the tasks necessary to grow your business?

I've got good news.

Things are getting easier. 

While 2015 certainly isn't as technological as Marty McFly and Doc Brown defined in Back to the Future II, tons of advances have been made that are designed to make our lives easier. 

Our favorite? Marketing automation.

By transforming the way that marketers carry out their day-to-day tasks, marketing automation has quickly become a viable option to help businesses grow. 

In fact, we've found that we've reached a point where we either adopt some form of marketing automation, or start to fall behind, which is why we're here to lay down the groundwork. 

To help you get a grip on this whole thing, we've identified 4 areas of your marketing that you should already be automating. 

Blog promotion

How do you get the word out about your latest content?

With the help of marketing automation, our subscribers receive an automated email notification every time we publish something new on our blog. 

Serving as an effective way to introduce them to the post, we tried to focus on several key areas when devising the copy for this instant notification:

• Personalization: The Science of Email Marketing report revealed that emails including first name personalization had higher click-through rates than those that did not (5.8% vs 7%.)
• Clickable title: The key to creating content that stands a chance lies in the way that you present it to your audience. Make it actionable, sharable, and benefit driven. 
• Interesting visual: A high quality visual not only helps to break up the text, but it adds an element of interest. 
• Intriguing preview text: You want to be sure that you give the reader just enough to make them want to read more. Make the cut off wisely.
• Read More CTA: Speaking of reading more, we include a 'Read More' CTA that directs people to the full article. Want to add 'Read More' buttons to your email? Check out our HubSpot COS tip here.

Social media

Are you spending a considerable amount of time trying to keep your business' social media accounts fresh?

While consistently uncovering, organizing, and and publishing relevant content is certainly time-consuming, it's also highly important. 

With more and more people turning to social media for research, updates, and a chance to engage with their favorite brands, the opportunities within these platforms continue to grow. 

To help ensure that you're taking advantage of these opportunities without sucking up all of your time, consider automating part of the process.

The keyword here being part of the process, because while it's certainly possible to automate highly engaging tweets, the concept of real-time interaction is not to be forgotten.

At the end of the day, social media calls for not only content, but also user engagement with help nurture leads and push new visitors back to your website. 

Lead nurturing

Leads that go through automated workflows have a 23% shorter sales cycle. (Source: Market2lead)

With that being said, automated lead nurturing workflows serve as a game changing tool to help marketers work smart, not harder.

To ensure that your business stays top-of-mind, you'll want to focus on creating workflows designed to educate and advance leads stuck in the funnel. 

To get started, follow this process:

• Set a goal: Workflows can be used to help move leads closer to taking the next step, however, it's up to you as the marketer to determine what that next step is. 
• Set the timing and frequency: Before you invite leads to enter a workflow, it's important that you determine an appropriate length for the campaign, as well as a plan for both the timing and frequency of the emails being sent.
• Map out the content: Visualizing the content that you already have in your library will make it easier for you to determine what you'll need to create for the sake of this lead nurturing campaign. 
• Write it: For more on how to write persuasive marketing emails that people actually want to read, check out this article (and this one.)
• Track, measure, & report: To inform your future efforts, you'll want to revisit your workflows to determine when and where people dropped off or took action. 

Testing

Perhaps one of the biggest blunders marketers make is jumping to conclusions without consulting any cold, hard data. 

While basing your efforts off of what you think your audience wants is one way of doing things, it's certainly not the most effective. 

Marketing automation software often provides the means necessary to conduct marketing experiments, also known as A/B tests, that are designed to help you identify which approach resonates best with your audience. 

Whether you're testing one CTA button color against another, or a landing page with a visual against one without, this "scientific" approach will help to surface the best option to make converting your leads and optimizing your sales easier.

Wondering what you should be testing? Consider the following:

• Timing
• Email subject lines
• Forms
• CTAs
• Navigation bars
• Visuals
• Headline text
• Placement 
• Color