In today's fast-paced digital world, automation has become a critical aspect of any successful business, especially in the field of digital marketing. Automation can help streamline processes, increase efficiency, and ultimately drive better results for clients.
Because, at the end of the day, your client isn't concerned about your operations. She only cares about the end result - what you will deliver to her and how you will help grow her business.
That's why you should have the most efficient processes and operations possible. You should make sure that you and your team are focused on the most important and strategic tasks, and not spending time with manual and boring processes.
For that reason, it's really important that you learn how to automate a digital marketing agency.
There are countless processes that you could be automating in your agency, like:
- Client OnBoarding
- Proposal Creation
- Contract and Invoicing
- Sales Pipeline
- Client Dashboard and Reports
- And much more
So, in this blog post, we will discuss the steps to automate a digital marketing agency.
1. Identify Areas for Automation
Identifying the areas of your digital marketing agency that can be automated is the first step to streamlining your workflow. Automation could be applied to tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, data analysis, and reporting, which may be time-consuming and tedious.
Evaluate the resources you are currently investing in each of these tasks, and consider the advantages that automation could provide. Automation could save you time by removing the need for manual processes and improving the accuracy of your data analysis and reporting.
Additionally, automation could free up more of your resources, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business.
Do you have questions about how to automate your business? We can help. Book your free consultation today.
2. Choose the Right Tools
Once you have identified the areas of your agency that could benefit from automation, the next step is to choose the right tools for your agency. There are numerous marketing automation tools available, such as Hootsuite, Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot, and Mailchimp, to name a few.
It is important to consider the particular needs of your agency and to select the tools that best suit your budget and requirements. Think carefully about the features you require and investigate the options available to make sure you get the most comprehensive and cost-effective solution. You may also want to consider the scalability of the tools so that you can easily increase or decrease the level of automation as needed.
Finally, take the time to evaluate the customer service and support offered by each of the companies, to ensure that you have the support you need when you need it.
3. Set Up Automation Workflows
With the right tools in place, the next step is to set up automation workflows. Automation workflows can help streamline and optimize various processes, such as lead generation, email marketing, and social media posting. By automating these processes, you'll be able to save time and resources, as well as ensure that your campaigns are consistent and accurate.
This will, in turn, improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, allowing you to generate more leads, increase email open rates, and boost engagement on social media.
Automation workflows can also be used to automate mundane tasks such as data entry and customer service, freeing up additional resources that can be used to focus on more strategic initiatives.
4. Monitor and Measure Results
Regular monitoring and measurement of your automation workflows is crucial to the success of any automation project. By using analytics to measure the effectiveness of campaigns, you can quickly identify areas of improvement and adjust your workflows accordingly.
This ensures that your automation processes are always performing optimally and that you are able to consistently produce the desired results for your clients.
Furthermore, tracking your progress over time can help you stay on top of trends and anticipate shifts in the market, allowing you to stay one step ahead of the competition. This can help you maximize the impact of your automation efforts and drive even better results for your clients.
5. Continuously Improve
Finally, it is important to continuously evaluate and improve your automation workflows to ensure they remain efficient and effective. As technology evolves, so must automation practices in order to remain competitive and successful. Stay up-to-date with new automation technologies and consider integrating them into your agency to take advantage of the latest advancements.
Researching automation techniques and tools regularly will help ensure that your workflows remain both productive and reliable. Additionally, it is beneficial to monitor the performance of your automation workflows and adjust them accordingly, as needed, to ensure that they remain running optimally.
Summarizing the Benefits of Marketing Automation
In conclusion, automating your digital marketing agency can provide many benefits, including increased efficiency, cost savings, and improved results for clients. By following these steps, you can automate your agency and drive better results for your clients.
Automation can give you more time to focus on strategic tasks, as well as provide insights into customer behavior and preferences that are difficult to obtain manually. Automation also reduces redundancies and makes it easier for you to track performance and results, allowing you to adjust your strategies in real-time.
Additionally, automation allows you to scale your campaigns quickly and easily, whether you're targeting new customers or expanding your reach to existing ones. With automation, you can ensure that your campaigns are reaching the right people, at the right time, with the right message, driving better results for your clients.
Examples of Marketing Automation at Work
Investing in automation in the following areas is sure to produce quick and sustainable results for your clients:
Email Marketing
Email marketing has the potential for incredible returns, and mastering it will set you up as an expert to your clients. On average, the ROI for email marketing is 42:1. This means that for every dollar your clients spend, they can see an average return of $42. If you scale this, an investment of $1,000 could get your clients $42,000. These are numbers no agency should ignore.
Automating your email marketing will ensure your clients get all of that potential revenue. Automation software will send marketing emails to your clients regularly with relevant, engaging information to edge them toward a sale. Even after the initial sale, the relationship with the customer continues to ensure future sales and recommendations.
Social Media Marketing
Over half the world is on one or more social media platforms for a couple of hours every day. Marketing on these platforms is vital and rewarding but also overwhelming - attracting the right attention is challenging. If social media has one rule for establishing a presence, it is consistency.
Marketing automation will make it easier and more efficient to,
- Create content
- Distribute content
- Measure effectiveness
Getting these right and regularly posting can be time-consuming and repetitive. Social media automation tools will make creating, curate, and schedule content significantly faster and less taxing.
Content Marketing
Generating content is a time and energy-intensive task. It's necessary to market your company and establish yourself as an expert in your industry. But the volume required to be consistently present and marketing online can quickly become just too much. AI can help with content generation, but you still need to schedule, post, and email it.
In addition to making content, automation can take that long-form content and create emails promoting it, social media posts, etc. Automation includes detailed analysis and monitoring software, so you always know what's working.
Push Notifications and Up-Dates
Push notification marketing is an inexpensive option that can effectively target the right people.
With push notifications, you have:
- More engagement
- Better insights
- High security
- Greater reach
- Affordable communication channel
Potential customers seem more willing to sign up for notifications than email, probably because it's a more straightforward process. You can use these to target drip post notification campaigns. Marketing automation will ensure your audience is reminded of you regularly.
Customer Service and Support
A big concern for most companies is customer service and support. Businesses grow, and so does the number of customers they must support. Responses to queries can quickly become repetitive and time-consuming, as customers often have the same questions or concerns.
Automation can take over these tasks from your customer service team, saving them time and effort. They will be able to focus on the other parts of your customers' needs, enhancing their experience.
Chatbots and live web chat software can be helpful with routine queries and requests.
Getting the Right Tools for Your Automation
The above examples mean finding the best tools for your clients, and an excellent digital marketing agency stays current on all the newest in automation. Your job is tough enough, but with the best automation tools, you can help your clients achieve business growth and increased revenue.
For email automation, consider tried and true Mailchimp or Keap. Wotnot, Ada, or Intercom are great for customer service automation. You can trust your social media automation to Hootsuite, Hubspot, or Zapier. Marketo or Hubspot are excellent choices for content marketing, and PushEngage or Pushwoosh make automated push notifications easier.
These and other tools can make you look like a hero to your clients.
If you need help learning more about how to automate a digital marketing agency or even how to build your first automation, feel free to reach out to Axe Automation or find us on Twitter.