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How Marketing Automation is Key to Inbound Marketing

2 mins read

For many of today’s businesses, it’s the norm to use marketing automation. When a new prospect signs up for weekly emails or a customer has bought a product, they can be added to a workflow which sends them targeted emails.

Some people think of automatic emails as spam! Yes, some types of emails are spammy because they don’t consider the needs of the reader. However, well-written and customer engaging emails can nurture new prospects into delighted customers.

Marketing automation is central to any successful inbound marketing strategy because it engages with buyers at every stage of their buyer’s journey.

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What is inbound marketing?

Traditional ways of outbound marketing to customers, like cold calls, television adverts and direct mail isn’t as successful as it used to be. Today’s buyers are more empowered, they know what they want to buy, they have more choice and they can use the internet to do their own research.

This is great for buyers, but it makes our job as marketers, more complex.

Inbound marketing is a growing marketing methodology which is designed to engage with these empowered buyers. Inbound strategies market to your target audience so you’re not wasting your budget on people who aren’t interested in your products or services.

Inbound marketing considers each stage of the buyer’s journey: from when he/she is looking for more information to looking for the best product for them.

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Marketing automation plays a key role in the inbound methodology. Once you have your leads, your Marketing CRM (like HubSpot) will automatically add them into a workflow.

Automated marketing is central for inbound strategies, because it:

1. Engages with your buyers

Depending on their position on the buyer’s journey you can create email workflows that directly engages with their needs. It takes a lot of time to individually send emails to your leads.

Automation marketing systems automatically sends an email depending on the actions of a lead. If they’ve downloaded an eBook that offers more information about a product. You can automatically send emails that help to further the buyer’s knowledge. If they’ve bought a product, you can set up emails that send after a certain amount of time, to prompt them to return to your shop.

2. Nurtures your prospects

Forms of outbound marketing can be seen as irritating and spammy. Inbound automated marketing is designed to nurture leads into customers with helpful and relevant information.

Nurturing your prospects can take time but automated marketing is a long term strategies that continually nurtures. Your sales team can focus on other leads who are ready to buy, whilst your email workflows gradually nurture your other leads without hassling them.

3. Guides them along the buyer’s journey

Marketing automation is key to inbound marketing because it automatically guides your buyer personas along the buyer’s journey.

In the past, it was the responsibility of sales teams to actively communicate with potential customers. But now, automated marketing works in the background to guide them through each stage of the buying journey.

How to create your own successful marketing automation

Automated marketing systems are key to inbound marketing. Nurturing your potential customers, following the inbound methodology, offers higher results compared to outbound methods.

Did you know inbound leads have a close rate of 14.6%? Outbound leads only have a rate of 1.7%.

Here is how you can create your own automated marketing strategy... 

1.

It's crucial you understand your own potential customers. You need to understand what their pain points are and what will be most engaging for them. This will help you create emails that will have a higher chance of successfully engaging with them. They need to feel like you are their solution to their problems.

Try creating your own Buyer Personas so you understand your target market inside-out.

2.

Learn more about inbound marketing. Once you understand your buyer personas, you need to understand the inbound methodology so you can see where your personas fit in the buyer’s journey.

3.

Use a Marketing CRM. Find the best CRM for your business, you can create automated emails and workflows that will nurture your leads into customers.  

To get more great advice on how to get more from your inbound marketing efforts, check out this FREE download.