Imagine being able to win new leads and customers every day while you sleep.
That’s the power of automating your digital marketing!
In the marketing world, time is a valuable asset, and tasks are plenty. Marketing automation is not just a time-saver but a result-driven approach that can revolutionize your workflow.
In this article, I’ll break down step-by-step how to automate the digital marketing side of your business.
Key Takeaways
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is, in essence, the strategic use of software and digital tools to streamline and automate routine marketing tasks.
Looking ahead, we can expect to see trends like Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data analytics taking the lead in the automation field.
These aren’t just buzzwords; they’re powerful tools that can make marketing campaigns and internal workflows more efficient than ever.
But what does that look like in real life?
Imagine a scenario where a potential customer fills out a form on your website, showing interest in your product or service. This action triggers an automatic email that gives them more information about your offer and invites them to schedule a consultation. At the same time, the system updates your CRM, flagging this person for a follow-up call.
This example shows what marketing automation is all about – getting regular marketing tasks done with as little manual work as possible.
So, how can you start automating your digital marketing?
Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Build an automated sales funnel
The first step to automate your digital marketing is to build a sales funnel that automatically converts strangers into loyal clients.
All-in-one funnel-building tools like Kartra make it easy to create and optimize sales funnels by crafting custom communications based on customer behavior and designing automated sequences in no time.
A sales funnel typically consists of three parts:
And the best part of a sales funnel is that you can automate all three parts.
Top Tip: A tends to work great as a lead magnet, and typically converts leads into sales effectively.
Once you have a sales funnel in place, it’s time to promote the sales funnel using automated digital marketing strategies.
Step 2: Promote your funnel
You could have the best sales funnel in the world, but if no one sees it, it’s pointless! So to get results from your sales funnel, you need to get it in front of people.
Here are three of my favorite ways to do this:
1. Blogging
Blogging allows you to create content that ranks at the top of Google for various keywords related to your business.
Pros of blogging:
Cons of blogging:
Blogging is a great way to be found on Google. The more content you create, the more keywords you can rank for and the more traffic you’ll get.
Once people are on your website, you can send them to the next step of your sales process (such as your sales funnel).
How is blogging automated?
You can use AI tools to help you write content for your website’s blog. Then from the content, they can go to your sales funnel. There is some work involved in the beginning to create content, but once the content is out there, you can get leads for months and even years into the future without any further work on your end.
2. YouTube
Creating YouTube videos allows you to rank on YouTube search for keywords related to your business. On top of that, YouTube videos have the potential to appear on the YouTube homepage (recommended feed) and on the Google search results.
Pros of YouTube videos:
Cons of YouTube videos:
Overall, YouTube is a great way to generate leads for your business. It does require more work compared to blogging, but at the same time, your YouTube videos can be pushed out to more places.
How is YouTube automated?
You do need to record videos on YouTube to get started. However, you can use AI video editing tools to help you save time when editing your YouTube videos. Plus, once the videos are on YouTube, your videos can generate leads for months and even years into the future.
3. Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is the fastest way to start generating leads for your business automatically. Some of the best paid advertising platforms include Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Pros of paid advertising:
Cons of paid advertising:
As you can see, if you have the budget for it, running ads is a great way to start generating leads in your business as fast as possible.
How is paid advertising automated?
People click on an ad and go straight to your sales funnel without any input on your end. All you need to do is increase/decrease your advertising budget to control the volume of leads you get. It’s an amazingly fast way to get leads and new clients in your business
Step 3: Automate lead nurturing
Automating lead nurturing involves using the following tools:
By implementing automation tools in each of these areas, you can save time, improve efficiency, and enhance your lead nurturing efforts by eliminating repetitive tasks.
In the past, you would need to purchase different software to do each of these tasks. But because Kartra is an all-in-one solution, you can do all this and more, without needing to purchase additional automation tools.
Here are some additional tips on how to automate these parts of your digital marketing:
1. Email Marketing
Email automation software like Kartra can help you send personalized and targeted campaigns to nurture leads into customers.
You can do this by creating an automated email sequence.
How does it work?
Whenever you generate new leads, you can send them to your email sequence. The email sequence will then automatically email your leads each week (or as often as you like) with helpful educational content, customer testimonials or even special offers.
With Kartra, you can also set up specific email sequences that are only triggered if your leads take certain actions.
For example, if a lead doesn’t finish watching your video, you can send them a reminder email to finish watching the video. Or, if a lead clicks on one of your special offers, but doesn’t finish purchasing, you can send them another email to find out if anything went wrong.
These marketing automation rules can help you maximize your sales and conversions from your digital marketing campaigns!
2. Video Marketing
Video marketing helps you to nurture leads and establish trust. Almost nothing else builds trust as effectively as videos.!
By using automation tools to create and deliver video content to leads, you can save time and resources while improving your lead nurturing efforts.
Implementing video marketing automation strategies can help you create captivating content that resonates with your target audience and drives results.
Some strategies to consider include:
With Kartra, you can upload your videos natively to the platform. The advantage of doing this (especially for your sales videos) is that you can track which leads have watched (or didn’t watch) the video.
This allows you to improve your marketing videos to increase your conversions.
3. Lead Scoring
Lead scoring systems aid businesses in prioritizing leads based on their conversion probability, ensuring effective resource allocation. By implementing lead scoring systems, businesses can save time and resources while improving their lead nurturing efforts.
For example, on Kartra you can implement lead scoring based on:
The possibilities are endless…
Lead scoring can help you send out special offers or reward your most loyal leads and customers.
Best of all, this whole process can be automated!
4. Retargeting
Retargeting is a form of online targeted advertising that is aimed at users who have already shown interest in your brand or products. You can set up retargeting ads on websites such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and even Adroll (if you want to appear on thousands of non-social media websites).
It allows you to remind and persuade these potential customers to return to your website to complete a purchase or engage with your content.
Top Tip: It often takes multiple touch points before a lead converts into a customer. So for best results, it’s a good idea to implement multiple lead nurturing strategies in your business.
5. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer relationship management (CRM) is about understanding and managing your interactions with your customers. It’s important because it helps you build strong relationships with your customers, which can lead to more sales.
However, managing these relationships can be challenging and time-consuming.
That’s why it’s important to use a good CRM tool to help you do this.
Kartra’s CRM tool collects customer data and uses it to help you understand your customers better. It tracks a customer’s interactions with your brand, giving you a clear picture of what they like and want.
For example, I can see what pages of my website leads visit, whether they played any of my videos, which emails they’ve opened and so on.
This information is shown to you automatically without needing to update anything manually.
Step 4: Automate customer delivery
You might be thinking, how does automating my customer delivery help me with winning new customers?
Well, providing an amazing customer experience, can help you get more customers via referrals.
Here are some tips on how to do this:
1. Automate your knowledge
If you sell some kind of one-to-one consulting or coaching service, chances are you’ll probably end up repeating the same thing to multiple clients.
That’s why uploading your advice in the form of an online course can make it easier for you and your customers to find the information they’re looking for.
2. Payment Processing
Still taking payments from clients manually? Using automated systems for payment processing can provide several benefits, including:
3. AI Support Bots
Another way to automate your customer experience is by using AI support bots. You can train AI bots on the data from your business. This then allows the AI support bots to provide automated customer support, conserving time and resources while enhancing customer satisfaction.
AI support bots, allowing you to provide immediate assistance and 24/7 support to customers.
4. Affiliate promotions
Another great way to get new customers is to reward them each time they make a referral. You can do this by implementing an affiliate program.
In short, you can automatically reward members of your affiliate program for each successful new customer they refer to your business.
This type of referral program encourages your existing customers to refer you to more customers.
In conclusion, marketing automation is a game-changer for businesses looking to save time, improve efficiency, and achieve better results. By automating lead generation, lead nurturing, and customer delivery, businesses can focus on growth and success.
Don’t miss out on the exciting opportunities available with marketing automation – start implementing these strategies today!
Ash Davis is the CEO & Founder of Skyline Social.
For over 15 years, he has been helping business owners with lead generation. Ash specializes in helping businesses get high-quality leads, appointments and clients each month in an automated, scalable and profitable way.
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