Marketing automation is a crucial tool for a successful marketing strategy and when used correctly it will help marketing departments gather more leads, close sales, and prove true ROI.
A great marketing automation platform like SharpSpring has all the tools to make a business’ marketing plan successful. However, because it’s so powerful it can easily overwhelm a marketing department.
This forces some companies to abandon using marketing automation therefore losing ROI, while other companies will only use certain features of the marketing automation software. By limiting your use of the app, you’re also limiting the benefits.
You can be successful with marketing automation, but having a plan for using the platform is crucial!
Companies that successfully implement marketing automation should be given a comprehensive overview of the product. Not only should a demo be given showcasing all the features of the desired marketing automation software, but the company should also provide you with ongoing support as you continue to adjust to your new marketing automation platform.
Let’s take a look at four elements that lead to a Successful Marketing Automation Implementation
Guidance
Some companies will sell you the software, send you the login information and expect you to figure out the software on your own. This is not the case with SharpSpring…
SharpSpring provides a full onboarding process when a partner signs up. The onboarding process is designed to show you all the features of SharpSpring. The initial onboarding is designed to give you an overview of the basic features of  SharpSpring and the presentation is tailor-made around the partner’s own previous experience with marketing automation.
At the conclusion of the first onboarding presentation, SharpSpring will schedule a 2nd onboarding presentation to address any questions or concerns a customer may have regarding SharpSpring. The purpose of scheduling a separate presentation is to allow new partners to absorb the information presented to them and to really think about how they plan to use SharpSpring.
SharpSpring continues to roll out the red carpet for its Partners and clients beyond just an initial introduction. With a dedicated team of Account Managers and Technical Support, SharpSpring is available  to lean on for assistance whenever its needed.
Staffing
Marketing automation is designed to reduce the redundant tasks associated with marketing.
Unfortunately, some organizations underestimate the effort necessary for getting a marketing automation strategy off the ground.
Companies that succeed with implementing marketing automation utilize multiple employees to reach its marketing goals. Assigning one employee to manage all of the marketing activities is likely to overwhelm that employee.
A better solution is to have a marketing strategist or account executive, a content creator, and a salesperson; this will allow you to divide up these tasks. Working in harmony, these three roles can fully incorporate marketing automation activities in concert with your overall sales and marketing objectives.
Content
Marketing automation is not a substitute for having an established content marketing strategy. Content marketing allows you to truly dig into a company’s buyer persona and find out what leads are looking for out of the website.
Staying abreast of where leads are showing interest on your website, maintaining a company blog, posting regularly on social media, amongst others will allow you to compose and send specific email content that resonates with the interest of your leads. Balancing these elements will allow you to succeed and respond accurately to the interests and behaviors of your customers.
Contacts
Obtaining contacts is a crucial element for implementing a marketing automation plan that succeeds. Only 2 percent of website visitors will fill out a form on a website.
Without marketing automation, marketing departments are losing out on the other 98 percent of website visitors. SharpSpring’s VisitorID feature tracks the other 98 percent of website visitors. It will track every anonymous visitor who enters the website.
A method of obtaining this anonymous information is by using data services that collect information about businesses.
One of the more popular services is Zoom Info, which is a powerful vertical search engine focused on collecting business information. The search engine is able to receive information from companies through their own avenues of collecting data relating to the companies’ public personnel rosters, IP address, etc. This information is passed onto the marketing automation platform so it can connect the company’s IP address to the anonymous visitor who accessed the website
This information should not be used as a closing strategy. Instead this creates a starting point using actionable data that is obtained through our integration with Zoom Info. VisitorID displays a list of people, job titles, and contact information for employees at that company, who might have visited the website, if available. This data gives you a starting point to begin soft cold calling and developing a relationship, which then allows you to incorporate them into a real lead.
Using these four techniques will help when it comes to successfully implementing a marketing automation service .
