Things You Must Remember Before Adopting Marketing Automation
Aug 24, 2021
10 min read
The application of marketing automation in this digital world has entirely reflected on the small and local businesses and big-scale industry-specific firms. In 2019, The global market size of marketing automation solutions was at $15.6 Billion. It is expected to reach a whopping $25.1 Billion valuation by the end of 2023. It is accelerating growth aspects for these industries, but it functions as a helping hand in minimizing the burden off your marketing division.
Another study suggests that the automation software industry would increase at a CAGR of 19.2% between 2020 and 2025. It means that the value of the global marketing automation software industry would triple by 2025. At this moment, most businesses have already invested in Marketing Automation to synchronize their time and resources with the help of technology, resulting in effective and optimized marketing.
In simpler words, marketing automation allows your business to leverage technology to do marketing tasks by replacing human resources. Since these tasks are routine and mild, mostly email targeting or repetitive chores such as auto-responding to pre-sales leads, etc., technological aid is considered an ideal resource for them. Marketing automation somehow affects your marketer’s duties and responsibilities and transforms their complex functions into much simpler tasks.
As a result, your marketing department gets time to be creative for designing marketing campaigns and ponder upon increasing brand awareness via product and service quality. In addition, the best thing about emphasizing technology is that you source out the best results at the right time with purposeful business insights and data analysis that elevate your firm’s productivity.
The best action plan for businesses worldwide in this modern time is to put marketing automation into operation and consider lead generation and nurturing their primary tasks. By doing so, you’re not only allowing technology, or say, Artificial Intelligence, to automate your business’ marketing requirements but remove emotional presence in some of the tasks with practical machine learning elements.
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What To Do Before Committing To Marketing Automation?
After your business has given a thought to MA being a full-fledged tech aid, you must have a list of things ready to check before diving into the implementation of marketing automation. Luckily, below is the list of those factors that one should think about MA to supersede human efforts and time .
1. Creating A Strategic Plan
With technology surpassing your business marketing routine tasks, you may have to draw and implement a new strategy altogether. For obtaining the best results, your business has to undertake its goals and objective statements related to marketing and how you used to establish marketing campaigns. To begin with, list down why marketing automation would be the right decision for your business- refer to the global statistics for efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and customer engagement projection.
Diving into the marketing automation world without a firm strategy could be daunting, like shooting an arrow in the dark- inefficient and less promising. Moreover, you’ll not only be deploying unnecessary monetary funds and efforts but lose crucial time. You could have used the time to explore or work on new opportunities.
2. Having Quality Content
By implementing a strategy to obtain marketing automation services, your next step would be to plan out content delivery to your prospects. Having good quality content on your plate is crucial to engaging your customers with the correct information. With marketing automation and content working together, your business will experience a positive shift in sales, thus increasing your revenue growth. Therefore, having a firm grip on high-quality content creation is significant to trigger the buying process.
Another benefit of producing good content for your business would be greater customer engagement on your website. If a customer stays on your website by engaging with the last level of content that takes them to the purchasing page, it can increase the conversion rate.
3. Align Your Departments
Bringing technological aid to your marketing department does not mean the other departments of your business firm would not be affected or could relate to it. You must bring harmony to your marketing, sales, and other divisions, right from the beginning. When you plan to give your marketing strategy a new shape, it is crucial to comprehend its effects on the business sales and anticipate the customer behavior/actions after introducing marketing automation.
Synchronize the objectives of your marketing and sales departments to make the most of marketing automation tools and enhance your marketing campaigns then and there. Incorporating your sales experts into the marketing automation systems facilitates their understanding of the importance of sales-ready leads and how to nurture those leads to obtain positive results.
4. Training Your Division Heads For The Change
It might sound efficient and convenient in upgrading your marketing campaigns, departments, and experts towards automated aid, but, in reality, it requires constant training and development to understand the complexities of marketing automation. Your business marketers must show interest in learning about MA; they must continue the practice to specialize in the industry-specific roles for your business. Consider working on the product and marketing automation tools to explore the loose ends and define a sharp plan that would help take advantage of MA tools.
In addition, your marketing team can create data statistics after working with the marketing automation software to link with the initial objective strategy that can be studied by your sales team as well.
5. Setting A Benchmark
In the end, before implementing marketing automation, set your business benchmarks in terms of revenue, lead generation, customer base, etc. These benchmarks must be objective-driven, so your business can achieve them with marketing automation’s aid. Once you’re clear with the benchmarks, develop ways to measure your results after successfully implementing MA tools.
Having that said, you may want to explore expert guidance from a leading brand. Saffron Tech is your one-stop shop to narrow down your marketing automation system requirements. With our team of experts empowering your marketing approach, we aim at providing an efficient and cost-effective service to help you assess which marketing automation tool would do wonders for your business type. Visit our website and sign up to dive into our services!
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How To Prepare For Google’s Mobile-First Index
Google, which you may recognize as a search engine goliath, is at the end of the day a business trying to make profits. And like most successful businesses, they too want to provide their users (searchers), like you and me, with the best experience they can for using their platform. Since mobile usage all around the globe has witnessed tremendous growth over the past years, it becomes fairly easy to understand Google’s decision to focus on mobile as well. In November 2016, with their announcement of introducing a mobile-first indexing algorithm to show better search results to their ever-increasing mobile searchers, it generated quite a buzz about the future of mobile and the direction of SEO in general. But this vague Google announcement created more confusion amongst webmasters than buzz and questions like ‘Does this announcement mean I should only focus on my mobile website?’ and ‘I don’t even have a mobile website, should I get one to increase my overall rankings?’ popped up in the comments soon enough. Until recently, when Google cleared all the air about their new mobile-first index with an announcement stating that they are commencing their long promised and awaited ranking algorithm shift and have started migrating sites that follow the mobile-index best practices. For those who are still new to this concept, Google’s shift to mobile-first indexing is actually not how things are admitted or prevented from inclusion in its index, but instead, how things are organized within the index, which is obviously going to be mobile-first from now on. But the key takeaway of all this is that there still is only one index of your website and it will be heavily prioritized on the performance of your mobile website. So, if you want to get that front spot of Google, getting a fully optimized mobile website along with your desktop website is your best bet. Here are some factors that will help you rank better in accordance with the new Google’s mobile-first indexing algorithm - Know your type of site You need to know what type of mobile website you currently have and set it’s metadata accordingly to let Google crawlers know as well. Usually, all separate mobile websites fall under the category of dynamic serving or separate URLs. It will help your mobile website get indexed quickly and more often. Like, in a dynamic serving setup, a vary HTTP header must be added to its metadata to hint Google crawlers about your site’s dynamic serving. Google prefers that you have a responsive web design instead of having separate URLs for your mobile website because of its crawler friendliness and the ease of sharing it provides to users. Moreover, if you choose to have a responsive web design for your mobile website, you won’t have to alter your desktop website content in any way. No matter which type of website you choose, using any of the mobile optimization methods require that you let the crawlers know specifically under what category your mobile website falls in, as it will only help your website get crawled and indexed in a better way. Speed From July 2018, page loading speed is going to be a major ranking factor for mobile websites and Google is calling it the ‘Speed Update’. Website performance, according to a Kissmetrics’ study, is the most decisive factor that can result in a good or bad user experience for mobile searchers. Accordingly, optimizing your mobile website for speed should be your top priority for 2018 if you are looking to jump up some places in your search results. You can use Google’s own tool PageSpeed Insights to analyze and optimize your mobile website’s performance. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Talking about speed, making use of the Google’s AMP project is a nice way to book a spot at the top of search results in the form of carousels. See that lightning bolt on the bottom left corner of the carousels, that denotes that the pages are AMP. AMP is light HTML pages that take advantage of various technical approaches to prioritize speed and deliver a quicker experience to users by instantly loading content. If all your desktop website pages are built with AMP HTML, you won’t need to have a separate mobile website to cater to your mobile visitors. Also, websites that are already using AMP pages enjoy greater Google mobile search results exposure across categories of e-commerce, entertainment, travel, news, recipe sites and more. If you have a website hosted on Wordpress and want to make use of the extra benefits of AMP, you can install plugins that can help you with the same. Schema and Rich Snippets Schema or Schema Structured Data is a semantic vocabulary of microdata tags that you can add to your website’s HTML to improve the way search engines read and display your page in SERPs. By adding this structured data markup to your website’s HTML, search engines will be able to better understand the content on your website and add a ‘rich snippet’ to your search engine results which can marginally improve CTR as searchers will be able to see better and in-depth information about your website. With Google pressing webmasters to provide rich information to searchers, I think adding Schema markup to your mobile website now is more important than ever. If you haven’t yet added schema markup on your mobile website, you can add it with the help of this detailed guide and test its effectiveness by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Likewise, if you have a WordPress website you can make use of plugins to add information-rich schema markup to your website’s HTML easily. Site Structure When it comes to SEO, the HTML structure of your website matters. Your website’s technical configuration plays a crucial role in its organic performance and if you are using a dynamic serving or separate URL mobile website, you need to be more careful and double check your website for the following aspects - 1. Hreflang Tags If your website caters to users of different nationalities, most probably you’ll have your website translated in other languages as well. But how do search engines know what webpage translated into a specific language needs to be shown to a specific user? Through Hreflang Tags. If you have a ‘Separate URL’ mobile website, make sure that you have placed the correct Hreflang Tags on your mobile website’s HTML to redirect users to a webpage of the correct language. 2. Robots.txt A website ‘Robots.txt’ file contains specific directives for search engine crawlers to follow when they crawl your website. If you have a ‘Separate URL’ mobile website, then you need to have a separate ‘Robots.txt’ file for your mobile website as well. The ‘Robots.txt’ disallow directives on both your mobile and desktop website must be the same for search engines to crawl your website properly. 3. Crawl Rate After this mobile-first indexing algorithm, the rate at which Google crawlers will crawl your mobile website is most likely to increase. So, it makes sense to gear up your mobile website for it in advance. Make sure that the increased crawling doesn’t slow down your website by upgrading it’s hosting environment. Fast loading sites hurt no one! User Experience With this Google update, the quality of the overall user experience your mobile website provides is paramount. To rank better, I think it goes without saying that you absolutely need to focus on improving the end-user experience for your mobile searchers. Having a slow loading website, scattered website layout, unplayable content, poor navigation, complex design, too many elements, infinite scrolling, improper font size or faulty redirects on your website is bound to upset visitors and make them leave which may hurt your website’s search engine rankings beyond repair. So, it’s better to keep a close check on the user experience your mobile website provides using a service like Chrome User Experience Report which evaluates your website with a public dataset of key user experience metrics and offers quick optimization suggestions. What to avoid Anything that adds unnecessary friction and hampers customer experience must be avoided when it comes to a mobile website. Google cleared it right from the start that anything that hinders content accessibility on a mobile website will be penalized and they targeted mobile interstitials first. Since then, they have come a long way in defining what webmasters must absolutely avoid having on their mobile website to see a positive effect on their search engine rankings. Google has a list of all the common mistakes webmasters must stay clear of to improve their search engine rankings or to keep their hard earned rankings in place. Mobile Friendliness Tests There are many mobile friendliness tests available online to… you guessed it, check the mobile-friendliness of your mobile website. After applying all the above-mentioned methods, you can check the results of your efforts on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test orMobiReady. These tools not only analyze your complete website for mobile friendliness, they also highlight what else you missed in making your website more mobile friendly. Take Webmasters’ help Google Webmaster Central Blog is Google’s official blog where they post about the latest developments in their algorithms and search results. Keep a close eye on this blog to stay on the same page as Google. Another helpful resource Google provides to its webmasters all around the globe is Google Webmaster Central Help Forum, which is a place where webmasters can post or search for their queries and get straightforward solutions from the experts. Head over to this forum if you are facing any hurdles in fully optimizing your website for mobile. The whole point of this blog is to convince you of the importance Google is placing on having a mobile website with their new mobile-first indexing algorithm. Just relying on your desktop site for search engine rankings will help you no more. You need to have a fully SEO optimized mobile website and provide a customized experience to mobile searchers who are actively searching for your website online. ...
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5 Benefits of Hiring Mobile Application Developer for your Business
Mobile Application Development in today’s digital era is essential for an overall successful business growth. The constant advancement in technology has made digital presence equally crucial as your tangible presence. Having a digital presence on all digital platforms is vital for a business and additionally for potential customers. Mobile Applications have become a necessity for new as well as established businesses. They are a useful marketing tool for various platforms, promoting a faster business growth, brand promotion, product exposure and attracting and retaining potential customers. They are also helpful in improving communications, boosting productivity and maintaining coordination within the workplace and between customers, staff members, and overall management. If you also own an established business or have just started off with new business, getting a mobile app developed by hiring Mobile Application Developers can offer you many multiple benefits including: 1. Expert services This quality is a crucial factor in the Mobile App Development. The Mobile App Development Companies have several years of experience in the same field. Their highly skilled developers can provide you quality product and services. Their proficiency and years of experience give them an added advantage to know what’s best for whom. 2. Business Analysis These skilled developers understand and analyze what you want for your business, and what you aim to achieve through the app. Once you get the right developers, you can accomplish your desired business goals. The developers are experts who observe market trends, best designs that appeal to your business type to develop a pleasing yet error-free device application. 3. Control over quality When you hire a team of developers for your business project, their primary goal is to deliver the kind of work that appeals to you. You are in direct contact with the developers and can coordinate and interact with these techies on a regular basis. You can do a quick check up on their work and get updates from them. You can also get them to make required changes according to your choice and test the quality of the app. Your regular interaction can also help in developing the device on time and within the budget. 4. Getting the job done When you hire a team of developers, it is upon them to get your project remitted within the right time and budget, as guaranteed. Their primary goal is to get the job done, and working as a team helps them work on different aspects of the app together, keeping the progress going. 5. Completely secure The respective developers undertake the responsibility of your mobile application's security. Your data and project are secured and protected by applying internet safety protocols as well as latest security features that use mobile devices. To sum it up, these were only some of the benefits of hiring Mobile Application Developer for your business. At Saffron Edge, our highly skilled iOS and Android developers design and develop qualitative mobile apps to offer a new platform and increase the online presence of your business. If you have any queries related to Mobile App Development, get in touch with us! ...
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Marketing And Artificial Intelligence: How The Combination Is Taking The Industry By Storm?
Marketing has always been desired when your business cares to promote trade, acquire more market share, or be recognized with its brand’s name. It is a basic act of attracting people to show interest in your product line so you can convert them into customers and achieve short-term or long-term organizational goals accordingly. Every business’s prime objective is to earn a profit, and fruitful or effective marketing plays a significant role in driving sales and generating revenues. Therefore, it is imperative to focus on a constructive marketing approach, be it traditional or conventional; the idea should be to promote the business and invite trade opportunities. Nowadays, marketing has helped businesses make strong connections with the customers and maintain a relationship that completely spins around what they aspire from your business. The approach is known for its ability to persuade people because, with rising consumerism levels, companies must strengthen their customer base and gradually expand it. Artificial Intelligence In Marketing Factors like technological advancements, the need for effective communication, and rising competition have simulated many businesses to look after their marketing and advertising strategies so they can survive in the cut-throat race and continue to keep their brand image. Technology, in specific Artificial Intelligence, has lately become a part of strategic marketing. Since technology guarantees speed and error-free computations, hard-core marketers make use of Artificial Intelligence to collect and observe piles of customer-centric data, which includes classifying the needs of a group of people, analyzing the buying trends, and collating factual information about the impact of various marketing methods used in the overall industry. This enables them to distinguish between a particular set of observations and comprehend the pros and cons of each marketing method applied to them. Once this is done, businesses get a better insight into individual wants and what marketing approach it is affected by the most. AI marketing is the talk of the town and has brought a positive impact on the existing traditional marketing approaches, making ways simpler and better. The prime reason to include AI techniques to cater to business marketing needs is that with the rising consumerism, it is hard to manage data trends, customer behavior graphs, and important stats which is essential for a business. AI tools effectively manage to collate such details and provide decisive arguments, where required, to save time and speed up the overall process. If you observe any traditional marketing approach, it involves different ways of targeting and retargeting the customers at various points of time to ensure brand loyalty. On the other hand, with the much-needed introduction of AI methodologies, your business can come up with automated yet monitored ways to reach out to the customer and complete the marketing procedure as proposed by your business. Benefits Of Artificial Intelligence In Marketing Technology and marketing, if used in a synchronized way bring fruitful results for a business, and for that to happen, enterprises have to work on how they invest their time and efforts in understanding the impact of AI on business development tools, including marketing. The following are some of the plus points that a business enjoys while incorporating Artificial Intelligence into marketing strategies: Monitors Overview Of The Process Since it is considered that customer reaction is an impact of the business activities, the disposable behavior of a customer is based on what your business offers to them, in terms of product/service, after-sales services, attracting via alluring advertising programs, the price of the product, etc. These factors are precisely taken into consideration in order to predict customer behavior and anticipate future sales. This analysis and segmentation of customer behavior and related trends allow a business to get an overall perspective of the suitable marketing approach which seems promising and ensures back results. Machined And Skillful Work Technology itself sends a reminder to be better than what it is now, in simpler terms, using AI for marketing practices allows your process to strategically understand the situation and learn from the experience to provide necessary improvisations to the existing approach. It is a continuous process that includes AI to repeatedly search for data trends and bring relatable content for the customers. As a business, it allows you to focus on other operations and initiate a self-driven marketing approach. Avoids Excessive Revenue Reduction Customer retention is a skill that every business strives to be good at and losing loyal customers to your competitor surely wouldn’t be a good thing for your business. Understanding and fulfilling the customer-needs ensure brand loyalty thus helps in preventing the need for disinterest. AI plays an important role in comprehending this data so your business can completely know what your loyal customers require. Collating this information gives the control to draw outline marketing programs and drive sales campaigns quickly. Reduced Manual Marketing and Increased Bot Support Hiring marketing experts sure can suffice the process requirements at many levels, however, with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence, you can initiate proactive advertising drives and run campaigns that are run by bots and automated chat programs. This change from manual marketing techniques to tech marketing allows your business to run perpetual campaigns that don’t require much human intervention. By allowing AI to take over customer support via chat help, you can ensure your business to revert to customer queries in less time, which is a great approach to customer satisfaction. Add A Personalized Touch To Your Approach It is observed that advertising mails and promotional offers that are sent out for the target audience often seem redundant and lack a human touch. Well, AI helps a business to build automated responses that have a personalized message, basis the customer behavior and concern. It could be emails, upcoming future campaigns, social media information, anything that attracts customer attention in a better and improved way. Personalized messages can be well programmed by accumulating customer’s anticipated behavior and buying trends so that they feel worthwhile trading with you. If your business requires assistance in maintaining marketing and AI together and fails to fulfill the task due to a lack of competence or path guidance, you can consider industry experts such as SaffronEdge, where you can amplify your business development pace and include technology in an organized and precise way. We are SaffronEdge industry insights to build personalized marketing plans that tackle the trading situations and ease up advertising and promotional practices done to escalate revenue graphs. ...
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