The more complex the customer journey becomes, the more important the role of marketing becomes, since it now has to support (and not just encourage) the purchasing decision. To achieve this, marketing automation includes the notion of contact points. The aim is to determine the stage of the buying journey and where the user is located (a website, a social network, an email inbox, etc.) in order to deliver a legitimate, qualitative and personalised message.
A marketing automation strategy can really boost a company’s performance, but it can sometimes be difficult to implement. You can get stuck if you don’t lay solid foundations first. So before you start, you’ll need a thorough understanding of your target audience and your customers’ buying journey, as well as an excellent grasp of your offering.
Drawing on the expertise we’ve built up over many years, we’d like to give you a few tips for a successful marketing automation strategy.
Define your objectives
It is vital to define your objectives carefully. It’s not enough to say “I want to increase my ROI”. You need to set yourself concrete, measurable, time-bound objectives. For example, an objective might be “to generate 100 new customers via the website by June 2021”.
These objectives should become your roadmap. They will then enable you to put in place various actions that will, by their very nature, aim to satisfy them. So be precise, even if it means adjusting these objectives over time.
Define your action plan
When you have a clear vision of where you need to go, you can define a series of actions to get there.
Your marketing and sales teams must both be involved in the process and work in synergy towards a common result. In fact, the whole point of marketing automation is to be able to ensure consistent and fluid follow-up, from the beginning to the end of the customer journey.
Draw up an explicit timeline showing each phase of your strategy and the various campaigns that need to be programmed. This stage is almost as important as the previous one and must be carried out with care.
Stay human
There are many things that can be automated, such as sending emails, publishing messages on social networks, qualifying prospects (lead scoring), segmenting your audience, or uploading content to your website.
However, automation should not be synonymous with dehumanisation. You need to strike a balance between what needs to be automated and the degree of personalisation you want to offer your customers. The customer experience must always take precedence over the time saved by automation.
Success factors
Finally, your marketing automation strategy will only be successful if you create scenarios that are consistent with your buyer personas. You need to decide when it’s appropriate to send them the right message, how many times you need to follow them up, how often, and so on. Don’t just trust your intuition, but rely on in-depth analysis using the data at your disposal.
Once all these steps have been validated, the most important part of the work remains. You can start testing your campaigns and optimising them on an ongoing basis. Use A/B testing, compare the results, adjust your content, your budget and your audiences. This is how your ROI will gradually increase.
Don’t worry, if you don’t have enough skills in-house to implement your new strategy, DJM Digital is here to guide and support you in your marketing automation approach!
Meticulous and perfectionist, Céline specializes in the creation of SEO-oriented content. But these are not her only assets! She also puts her creativity at the service of our Social Media Strategy team to create ultra-targeted campaigns designed to convince and convert.
