Using Automation in Marketing
Thanks to the constant improvements to digital tools, we now have software that enables us to run content across multiple channels and automate tasks with ease. Marketers use these platforms to manage everyday activities, such as scheduling tools and email and social media management dashboards.
So, how can you take advantage of automation within marketing campaigns?
Automation in social media
Scheduling tools, such as Hootsuite or Content Studio, are essential social media platforms for a marketer’s tool belt. They will automatically pull and upload data on your behalf from your other profiles and show all this information on one central dashboard. You can post social media content to multiple accounts simultaneously, saving time and effort compared to traditional posting.
Many of these scheduling apps also offer automated suggestions based on your past data and trends shown by your audience. You can see suggested hashtags and, more importantly, suggested times to post. By taking advantage of this machine learning, you are increasing the chances of your content being seen by the right people at the right time. This is what strategic marketing is all about.
Other tools, such as Phantombuster, can automatically grow your social media audience based on your set rules. They can follow and unfollow social profiles to manage and maintain a steady audience based on the information you provide, such as the number of followers you want to add or remove per day. You can also specify that you want to follow profiles that frequently use a specific hashtag or fit within a category, including gender or interests.
So now that you have followed accounts, how do you interact with them? Well, tools like Phantombuster also have automatic commenting features. The machine learning elements will pretend to be you and comment on profiles on your behalf. You will be seen as active and online, even if you are sitting by the beach with a cocktail in hand.
A popular feature that many businesses use on social media is auto-responses to direct messages. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram will reply with a “we will reply in 24hrs” type message to let followers know that you got their message, their business is important to you, and reassure them that you will reply as soon as you can.
An issue with the automation of social media is the algorithm. Many social media platforms are set up for the user’s needs, not necessarily a business. They often show content that the users will find helpful rather than recently uploaded posts. Therefore, you need to fight against thousands of other posts to be relevant to the algorithm. That’s’ why when creating any content for your socials; you need to focus on creating copy and images that will fit the leading tone of voice. It must be unique and, essentially, something worth showing.
Automation in Online Ads
A productive way to push content you want to get out to your audience is through paid ads. You can post these on social media or through search engines like Bing or Google. When creating the ad content, you can choose to have 100% control over what is shown to your target audience, or you can set up Dynamic Ads.
With Dynamic Ads on social media and Display ads on Google and Bing, you can supply a collection of copy and images.
(If you are creating a standard Google Search ad, you can only supply copy to Dynamic Ads)
By choosing this automated feature, you will utilise Machine Learning. The ad platform will work out which combinations provide the best performance and prioritise the serving of those combinations to increase the chances of a successful campaign. Overtime, the platform will use past data to find the best headlines, copy and images and only display these variations. You can then use these successful variations in future campaigns.
Another automated feature is suggested budgeting and bid strategies. The tool you use to post will suggest a recommended budget based on the audience you want to reach and the keywords you implement. However, you do have the final say before this goes live. As this is just a suggestion you can choose to ignore this as sometimes the suggested budget is far higher than what you are willing to spend.
The automated bid strategies behave in alignment with your goals. For example, if you decide you want the ad to focus on traffic and select ‘Maximise Clicks’, Google will loosen its targeting and provide you with as many clicks as it can within your budget.
Whereas another goal, such as ‘Target ROAS’ focuses on providing you with a return on your investment, so if your target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is 300%, then Google is going to try and ensure that for every £1 you spend, you get £3 in sales. The automated aspect is seeking out the users most likely to convert and serve ads at a CPC, all geared towards that return.
Automation in Emails
Sending emails is the primary way many marketers decide to contact subscribed customers. Emails allow you to nurture your sales leads and offer updates to your products or services. However, sending more emails specific to an individual is too time-consuming, especially if you have a sizable email list. That’s why you should use email automation.
You can use the automation tools on your email platform to set up email Journeys for your audience, adding rules that suit your needs. Your audience will go through a set workflow based on the specific action they perform. For example, an email can be sent when someone completes an order on your website. You can send personalised messages, improving the customer experience. However, you will need to ensure that your email and website are connected.
Email automation can also mean setting up a ‘Drip Marketing Campaign‘. Drip marketing sends a specific number of emails at a set time, again based on an action or change in status. If we take the previous example of completing an order, the drip campaign will be a number of follow up emails to show the status of their order. This constant contact will provide a steady flow of helpful information and show how much you care about their experience with your business.
Automation in Websites
The most apparent website automation used in marketing is, of course, the pop-up. You scroll down on a website, and 10 seconds later, you are asked to sign up for a newsletter or provided with the latest promo codes. Automation like this can appear everywhere but can be effective at forcing users to act, whether by reading an ad, subscribing to a newsletter or just closing the message. But when setting these up, you need to make sure they keep a user on the website to reduce the bounce rate. Unfortunately, pop-ups are seen as annoying, like you are intruding on their screen. This is especially true for mobiles, so it may be a good idea to disable any pop-ups for mobile users.
You may also notice an automatic pop up from a chatbot when on websites. A little chat box appears in the corner asking if they can help with anything. These bots use AI (Artificial Intelligence) and logic-based machine learning to respond to questions and comments. Information is provided to the user without speaking to an actual human. However, you may need to step in if they ask for something more complex than the bot is programmed to handle.
Another form of automation on a website is dynamic content. Dynamic content shows unique and personalised content to a website user based on past data. For example, showing a product that you may find appealing based on your previous activity. If you decide to adopt dynamic content, the coding behind this is more complex than a standard static website, so you may need help from a website expert to make the best use of this feature.
You can also automate specific actions on a website, saving you and the user time. This can include automatically signing a user into their account or filling parts of a form based on saved data.
To optimise the data collected from your website and share this across platforms, you can use Zapier Integration tools. Zapier allows you to collect and move data between web apps automatically. You can set up an action and a trigger for workflows. For example, set up a trigger to inform you on Slack or add a meeting to your calendar if someone has scheduled a call on your website. Never miss important information to your business without the need to manually collect.
If you don’t have an app to complete an action you might find helpful, why not create one? Tools such as Microsoft Powerapps can be used to rapidly build low-code apps that modernise processes and solve tough challenges. You can use premade templates, so you don’t need to have the experience of a professional app developer.
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