Marketing Automation Trends One Needs To Follow in 2021
Jul 08, 2021
10 min read
Marketing is one of the prime topics that every business looks forward to and most probably the first thing in mind when a company wants to open up its trading channels. Marketing is a method to build an engaging relationship with your consumer base and is considered an ever-lasting procedure to provide them with what they want. With the advancement in technology, marketing, and other business functions have experienced significant improvements in their functionality. Modern-day technological changes have revolutionized marketing; it has become more efficient yet more complex. The future of marketing shall focus on delivering a top-notch customer experience. There will be extensive utilization of data and analytics to create better marketing campaigns.
What Is Marketing Automation?
Having that said, this gives rise to a modern-day concept called Marketing Automation. Marketing automation has generated a huge buzz; all credit goes to its ability to generate revenue and save costs. As the name suggests, marketing automation means using technology and advanced software drivers to maneuver marketing functions for any business.
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There has been an incredible spike in the percentage of CMOs using sales intelligent platforms to get closer to their customers. According to a recent survey, 90% of the CMOs, from some of the world's leading companies plan to incorporate marketing automation tools by the end of 2021. Automation has a profound outcome on marketing and other tasks of managing a business firm by keeping it updated and relevant to customer’s demands. It is also a well-known fact that technology is taking over every aspect, department, and task. Therefore, it is better to make the most of marketing automation to become more effective in terms of market reach and cope with the challenges of the marketing function.
Benefits Of Marketing Automation
Advertising about your product/service in local newspapers or putting out advert and bulletins on a business website is a must-to-do chore; however, it could sometimes become repetitive for the department. Automation comes into play and drives the marketing functions of your business firm in a much simpler, productive manner. Along with that, it plays an essential role in providing numerous benefits to your business like -
Lead Generation
It is one of those things that a business firm strives for via its daily operations. Lead generation is a process where the customer grows interested in your offered product or services. Bringing automation into marketing functions aids your business to get more prospects in lesser time and simultaneously focus on the demands of those leads. Using technology-driven strategies, you can get closer to consumer behavior and a detailed report of their expectations from you.
Efficiency In Working
One of the primary aspects of bringing automation technology into business marketing is the potential to unlock operational efficiency. While you can free up your departments’ half of the work and get it done online, it is better to allocate human resources on strategic projects or maybe your business’ core operations. Once you establish automation into marketing, you will align your business goals in a much better way, with strategic planning and effective implementation.
Enhanced Conversion Rate
A conversion rate refers to a visitor on your website becoming a consumer after successful purchase of a product or service. It is astonishing how you can increase the conversions for your business by targeting and retargeting the customers to manage what they want from your website.
Error-free Reporting
Making business reports and analyzing the marketing outcomes can seem like an arduous task. Still, you can get better and more refined results without any procedural errors if you align marketing automation practices into the process. Online software could quickly assist you in streamlining report-making tasks and target the mistakes for you to fix them.
Marketing Automation Trends To Look Forward In 2021
The future of marketing is here, and so is the list of latest trends that your business must follow -
Personalized Content Supremacy
As per numerous researchers, it is essential for every business, big or small, to customize its ideas, product approach, and effective communication. In the coming time, most customers will expect firms to understand and predict their interests regarding offered products/services. Content will drive the marketing and sales force towards lead generation. Thus, it has become imperative to focus on customer’s backgrounds, procure details of their purchase history and behavioral characteristics towards a product brand.
Establish Presence Everywhere
Next marketing automation trend could be using multiple channels and online resources to sight the target groups. Once you begin interacting with customers on different channels, be it email or social media, your business will better use automation to provide seamless and ongoing support. Further, as the company sustains itself on numerous live channels, you can enjoy the inclusion of leads and conversions achieved by strategic actions.
Chatbots And Artificial Intelligence
AI has already impacted many businesses by bringing positive outcomes in efficiency and better customer engagement sessions. Having that said, this shall continue to be an automation trend for many coming years that will simplify the customer’s interaction with your business. AI also helps in analyzing behavioral attributes of customers while they spend time on your website and turn that data into better opportunities for your business. On the other hand, Chatbots ensure that your customer’s query is addressed in a much qualitative way so you can improve and gain credibility in the market.
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Customer Retention
Better late than never, customer retention will remain one of the primitive tasks of a marketing department. Earlier, it was proposed that acquiring more and more customers is the key to profit-making. But, studies have shown that providing a quality-driven experience to the customers and making all efforts to retain them will be a part of marketing campaigns for any business. Retention of customers must be done in two ways: provide quality service and be on toes to address their concerns. And second, retargeting and keeping in touch with them by building credible relationships and trust.
Smartphone Approach
With the increasing use of intelligent mobiles by almost every individual out on the street, this is an ideal opportunity for your business to acquire mobile traffic on your website. Gone are the days when people wanted to visit the stores and make a purchase physically. Now all they want is to shop online, so having your business application or a Progressive Web Application helps you acquire those prospective customers that use smartphones to shop. Having that said, the number of mobile shoppers is increasing with every passing day, thus, opening the doors of new opportunities for your business to bounce and act upon mobile marketing automation.
Applying marketing automation strategies could seem like a daunting plan, enter Saffron Edge. We proudly offer various marketing services to aid your business operations so you can benefit from the marketing automation techniques and get an edge over your rivals. Our team of experts shall help you with email and website marketing, one of the main ways to engage and enlarge your customer base. We also make an effort to enrich our client’s marketing campaigns with the proper guidance and manage them with software programs to earn larger profit values. To know more, contact our team today and transform your business mechanism!
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Why Facebook Ads Are Perfect For Raising Awareness Of Your Dental Practice
Facebook is a social media platform that needs no introduction. With over 2 billion monthly active users , it’s a no-brainer that you absolutely need to market your dental practice on the platform to gain new patients. Imagine being able to reach new patients on the platform they trust and are already spending their time on… yeah, that’s Facebook. Since trying to get new patients is the number one problem modern day dentists face, Facebook Ads can be a powerful tool and an untapped resource for dental practitioners in search for new patients, if used correctly. Now, the traditional methods of media advertising for dentists induced a lot of cost with minimal results. But Facebook has turned the digital marketing sphere for dentists upside down. How? With Facebook Ads, dentists can choose their specific target audience and it’s size according to their own budget. Also, as your ad is shown only to a relevant audience, you get improved results. A win-win, for both dental practitioners all over the world and Facebook itself. But what is a Facebook Ad? Facebook offers two forms of advertising: Ad Campaigns and boosted posts. Facebook Ad campaign is where the gold is! You can run your ad campaign as long as your budget allows and the people clicking on your ad will go straight to your website. But the best part about a Facebook ad campaign is the varied audience targeting options it has, which I don’t think any other social media provides at such a depth as Facebook. Facebook lets you target your audience on the basis of demographics, interests, your connections, user behavior and you can also create your own custom audience using mobile numbers, email addresses or Facebook IDs A boosted post, on the other hand, is something entirely different as it focuses only on your current following and their family and friends. Facebook lets you ‘boost’ your status update to make sure it is viewed by your followers and their friends and family so its best to use this form of advertisement to push an offer to your existing followers. And it’s cheap, you can boost a post for a day for as low as $1. When advertising through a Facebook Ad, it’s important to make sure that your ad contains a nice copy, stunning visuals and an irresistible offer to get results. But the real power of Facebook Ads for dentists is your ability to showcase your ad in front of a highly relevant audience selected by you. Optimizing your Facebook Ads You can target whoever your heart wants with Facebook Ads with its intelligent, data-backed targeting options. Here are some of the targeting options you can use to unleash its full potential for your dental practice Target your current patient list Targeting your Facebook ads to the people who already like and trust you is a great way to begin with your marketing efforts on the platform. The engagement you’ll receive on this form of targeting will be the highest as you’re targeting patients who already trust you with your services. Target your email subscribers Use the custom targeting option on your Facebook Ads and add all the email addresses you have in your database to target these people on Facebook as well. You’ll get high engagement rates on this type of targeting as well because people who already have taken the action to submit their email addresses to you will have no problem in taking action again. So, start targeting your email subscribers on Facebook as well along with your regular email campaigns to raise awareness of your dental practice. Target your site visitors Using Facebook Ads to target your site visitors is another great way to gain some traction as they’ve already connected with you before through your website and Facebook Ads is a great way to connect with them again. Use the custom audience targeting option to target people who’ve already visited your website in the past. Target people who have relevant interests on Facebook A simple way to increase your audience and raise awareness for your dental practice is to target people who aren’t already your patients, are not on your email list and are not your Facebook fans by using a combination of demographics, interests, or behaviors. There are unlimited combinations of interests that you can make for your target audience, depending on your dental practice specialty or goal for your Facebook ad. The possibilities are endless. To get an idea of how setting audiences on Facebook Ads work, here’s a quick summary of the targeted audience of a Facebook Ad campaign we did for our dental client in New Jersey - Once you click ‘Edit’ under ‘Audience Details’ of your campaign, you can customize almost every aspect of your targeted audience including their gender, age, location, connections or you can explore some detail targeting options, here’s how it looks like - Facebook also very conveniently displays a summary of your selected audience preferences in the top right corner to give you a quick idea of where your audience targeting efforts is heading towards. When you run a Facebook Ad Campaign, you have full control of choosing your own audience which you think will bring the best results to your Facebook Ad Campaign. Facebook and its advertising platform have opened a whole new world for dentists where they control who they market themselves to, completely unheard of in the dental industry before. So, using Facebook Ads to unlock the true potential of Facebook by targeting the right people for your posts based on their demographics, interests and user behavior is highly recommended for dental practitioners. ...
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Why Is Cart Abandonment One Of The Biggest Pet Peeves For DTC eCommerce Businesses?
A major issue for merchants and DTC eCommerce business owners are abandoning online shopping carts. As a store owner, abandoning carts is a huge drain on your business's profits and a major source of frustration. Over 70% of online purchases remain unsuccessful due to customers leaving their carts unattended. Source: Pexels That's a lot of people. You can reclaim 70% of sales by recalling them to their cart. Everyone would be doing it if preventing customers from abandoning their online shopping carts was as simple as a few clicks. While there may not be a simple "one-fix answer," there are various efficient techniques to assist your Direct to Consumer sales by bringing customers from shopping to checking out and placing orders. You may consider a cart abandonment strategy as a part of your D2C marketing strategy. No matter how aggravating cart abandonment is, it's important to remember that every shop faces the same challenge: convincing customers to complete their purchases no matter how large or well-known. Comparing prices, shipping charges, and customer reviews is easier for online shopping than for traditional brick-and-mortar customers. It gives online shoppers an unfair advantage over brick-and-mortar window shoppers. To make matters worse, many people use online shopping as entertainment rather than a means of making a purchase. As a result, eCommerce cart abandonment is expected to reach new heights in 2022. We grew less inclined to spend money on "essential" or "frivolous" products when we became more uncertain about the globe and our world. People abandoned their shopping carts in droves in 2021 due to heightened financial anxiety, allowing them to save money for a rainy day. Source: Pexels As a result, more customers abandoned their online shopping carts before checking out, while an even greater number did not even attempt to add anything to their virtual shopping carts. It's understandable why more online merchants are considering cart recovery. What is Cart Abandonment, and How Do You Know it's Happening? It's deemed "abandonment" when a visitor to your website leaves a page before completing the required action. That means every page of your website with a call-to-action has an "abandonment" rate. In the case of shopping cart abandonment, or "basket abandonment," an item is put into a digital shopping cart, but no payment is made. After an item has been placed in the shopping cart, the consumer can change their mind or get upset and leave, which can happen for various reasons. It may have been because the shipping prices were too exorbitant, the delivery time was too long, or the checkout process was too lengthy. Source: Pexels To get your website or D2C eCommerce brand’s abandonment rate, you'll need to divide the total number of completed transactions (orders) by the number of abandoned shopping carts. Depending on where you acquire your site's analytics, one can access these numbers from various sources. Use Google Analytics to keep tabs on how your website is doing. Most experts advocate checking your cart abandonment rate at least twice a month if you want to remain on top of any major issues and make necessary corrections. Customers quit shopping carts for various reasons, many of which you have no power to influence. If you implement cart abandonment solutions and maximize your audience's engagement, you may significantly reduce cart abandonment and increase your online store's profitability. Don't forget: The best way to prevent cart abandonment is to ensure it doesn't happen at all! If this happens, your only option is to try to win back any clients you've lost in the future. It's vital to understand your customer's point of view to address most of the causes of cart abandonment. To better comprehend your customers are going through when they shop at your online store, you need to put yourself in their shoes. Source: Pexels Authenticity and trustworthiness are extremely important considerations for many online customers. Why? Because the vast majority of people making purchases online have never had the opportunity to hold your product. It's much more critical that customers trust you as the store owner or vendor to deliver a decent, legitimate product if it's a digital one. Your online store and checkout process will impact Direct to Consumer sales more if you incorporate social proof, such as real customer testimonials, into the design and functionality. The stakes go much greater after your user reaches the checkout page; thus, the modifications to your website and entire experience are even more critical. You can rapidly lose the trust of your target customer if your checkout procedure is complicated or if the general look and feel of the checkout pages differs from the rest of your website. Customers will abandon their carts if the checkout procedure is too long; therefore, you'll have to play defence with abandonment cart recovery if your checkout process is too long. The Most Common Reasons Why Customers Abandon Their Shopping Carts Since one can easily remedy most of the ten reasons cited in the Baymard study, we'll focus on the top four, with the possible exception of shipping prices. However, one can argue that high shipping costs can be alleviated by offering customers flat-rate shipping, a discount, or a minimum order amount to qualify for free shipment. First and foremost, high shipping expenses. Having to register an account to view content. A lengthy checkout procedure. Costs that aren't immediately apparent. How To Reduce And Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts In The Most Efficient Manner Possible Optimizing your checkout and cart recovery processes can reduce shopping cart abandonment rates. Please read on for details on 4 of the most successful techniques. Resend checkout recovery emails to customers. Make the checkout procedure easier. Offer a deal to encourage them to return. Make it possible for guests to check out. Final Thoughts While we focused on the four most common reasons for shopping cart abandonment, it's crucial to analyze the bigger picture. All the major issues identified in the Baymard study should be familiarized with and addressed. Many abandonment issues can be traced back to each other if you don't include window shoppers and tire kickers. The pieces reveal a bigger story when they are put together. When other roadblocks like website faults, lengthy delivery timeframes, and a poor or nonexistent return policy are coupled, the lack of free shipping may be what prompts a consumer to abandon their cart. Potential to recover some of those abandoned carts is enormous. You may recoup some of those missed Direct to Consumer sales by sending recovery emails with creative subject lines, offering incentives like discounts or free things, and ensuring that the checkout procedure is simple, mobile-friendly, and secure. For more details, contact our D2C eCommerce experts! ...
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6 Steps You Should Follow To Increase Your Website’s Domain Authority
Increasing your website’s domain authority is probably the best thing you can do to eventually increase your overall search engine rankings. But how do you do it? This post is all about that and a lot more. So, what exactly is Domain Authority (DA)? Originally developed by Moz, Domain Authority is a metric that predicts how well a website will rank in search engine result pages. It is calculated by looking at a lot of factors (40 to be exact), like the number of unique domains linking to your page, the number of external links your domain has acquired over time, internal linking structure of your web pages, quality of your content & more. DA scores websites on a scale of 0 to 100, with every new website starting off with a DA score of 1, which increases over time as they work on building their online presence. How do I increase it? So, now you know what domain authority is and some of the factors it takes into consideration to score websites over the web. Now, let’s take a look at the 6 practical steps you need to follow if you are looking to increase the domain authority of your website - Technical SEO Optimization Being a renowned SEO company ourselves, we are well aware of the importance of your website’s technical SEO in your overall SEO performance. While most of the technical Search Engine Optmization tasks are simple, if they are not implemented correctly on your website, it can have a detrimental impact on your domain authority and search engine rankings. So, you should tackle the technical aspect of your website’s SEO first to lay a strong foundation that would support your other on-page & off-page SEO efforts (which we will get to in a while). To increase your website’s domain authority, here are some of the significant technical SEO website elements you need to care of - Register your website with Google Search Console to let Google know of your website’s existence Create and submit your website’s XML sitemap to Google to make sure it crawls and indexes all your web pages correctly Make sure you don’t have robots.txt enabled on any of your web pages (unless you specifically want Google crawlers to not crawl your content) Migrate your website to https Provide a well-defined breadcrumb menu on all pages Consider adding schema markup or structured data on individual webpages to let Google crawlers understand their context. On-page SEO On-page SEO includes everything related to optimizing your individual web pages and it’s content. Here are a few elements to take care of while doing on-page SEO - Quality content is a top on-page and off-page SEO factor. Always strive to provide good, relevant content to your users and search engines. Naturally add the most relevant keywords in your content.Focus on ‘naturally'. Optimize meta titles and descriptions of all your web pages Use of headings (H1 & H2) in your content Easily readable URL structure and SEO optimized slugs Adding title and Alt-text to all your images, videos, and other visual properties Make use of Internal Linking Off-page SEO When it comes to optimizing your website’s off-page SEO, optimizing your link profile is what you need to specifically take care of. Here’s how you can do it - Removing bad links You can increase the quality of your existing link profile by removing backlinks from spammy or low DA websites. You can use a link analysis tool like Ahrefs or Moz for this. Building authoritative links Providing quality content that people love to share within their inner circles is at the heart of building a quality link profile. Every share that you earn on your awesome content will serve as a backlink for that specific web page or content, increasing your website’s search engine ranking. Other way to earn quality backlinks from authoritative publishers is via outreach. For that, you’ll have to find publishers that share (to a point) the same audience as you and pitch your content (should be relevant) to them to earn a backlink. When you start putting out content that people like to read and share in the niche you are in, backlinks come naturally! Combine them with your proactive outreach efforts and you’ll have a stunning backlink profile in no time. Generate Social Signals Content that manages to earn a lot of likes, comments & social shares usually have a tendency to rank high in Google. Here are a few things you can do to generate some social signals for your website and individual web pages- Maintain an active business presence on popular social media marketing platforms like Facebook & Twitter and start building a fanbase. Mention it on your website (probably with a clickable logo in the header or footer) so visitors can easily find you and connect with you on their preferred social media network. Provide social sharing buttons on every blog you publish or on every webpage you create so that users can easily share your content with their friends. Mobile Friendliness We have said it many times already and we will say it again - Go mobile! More than half of your users access your website via mobile, so it makes sense to optimize your website for the same. Optimizing your website for mobile became a hot topic when Google introduced it’s mobile-first indexing algorithm. The algorithm was designed to index and crawl the mobile website first of any each and every domain to ascertain it’s search engine rankings, and it’s desktop counterpart would come next. So, there’s no doubt that mobile accessibility of your website is a definite ranking factor and may effect you DA as well. If you are looking to optimize your website for your mobile users, we extensively covered this topic a while back. Do give it a read. Website Speed Apparently, your website speed also effects your search engine rankings. Sites that take a lot of time to load will usually have a lower DA then quicker websites. Which makes sense, as according to their own study, there is a direct relation between the speed of a website and it’s bounce rate and Google hates seeing their searchers bouncing off websites. You can spike your DA score marginally by working on speeding up your website (for both desktop and mobile) only. You can use Google’s own Mobile-friendly test tool or Pingdom to easily speed up your website and enjoy increased search engine rankings and eventually, traffic for your website. Implement the steps listed above and see your DA tick like never before! If you know of any other tactic that worked well in increasing your website’s domain authority over time, do let us know in the comments. ...
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