Marketing is how a product establishes itself as a contender in the market place. Without an effective marketing strategy, a consumer will never be communicated the value of a product or service. Marketing techniques vary depending on what you’re trying to sell and who the target consumer is. While some aspects of your marketing strategy cannot be controlled (due to the nature of the product), others can be molded to help create the most efficient marketing campaign possible. The easiest and most reliable way to do this is to automate most aspects of your marketing campaign and use analytics to gain insight into your target consumer. The three most popular marketing automation software’s are HubSpot, Marketo and Pardot.
HubSpot takes the hassle out of marketing while allowing you to maintain control over your strategy. HubSpot runs on the idea of “Inbound Marketing”, this essentially means that instead of buying ads or using traditional outbound techniques, you focus on high quality content that bring people towards your product and company. You create content in the form of blogs, podcasts, social media, eBooks, SEO or eNewsletters that aligns itself with your target consumer’s interests. In doing this, you attract more leads, gain more customers and close more sales. The goal is to make your marketing not seem like marketing and create brand advocates from each your customers. One tool that sets HubSpot apart is their analytics program, aptly named HubSpot analytics. The integrated analytics system provided by HubSpot, and other marketing dashboards, allows you to utilize the information collected to improve and optimize your marketing strategy. Through the analytics tool, you can see all of your marketing channels and their individual performance level in one place. There are even ways to incorporate self-service analytics tools (compatible with most analytics platforms) into these platforms to make even more decision based solely on data.
Marketo makes marketing automation easy. They utilize the “Marketo Engagement Marketing Platform” to give you the ability to quickly run targeted marketing campaigns across each of your content channels. Marketo also offers “Real-Time Personalization”, which allows you to engage your target consumer with personalized, relevant and meaningful real-time interactions through any of your content channels. By engaging your potential consumers you increase the likelihood of creating a sale and brand advocate. Marketo also offers tools such as a “Customer Database” tool which comprises data on each of your customers, allowing you to even further personalize your marketing campaign. Perhaps one of the most powerful tools offered by Marketo is their “Omni-Channel Campaign Management” which helps to coordinate all your content channels to engage more consumers. This management tool also allows you to define what success means for each campaign. By doing this, they give you the power to determine which channels and marketing campaigns is driving the most success and creating the most sales.
Pardot is everything you need to run a successful automated marketing campaign. Their automated marketing service offers “blended lead scoring and grading” to help prevent time wasted by chasing down dead ends. Their lead scoring system selects only your ideal target consumer. Pardot also offers “prospect activity tracking”, which will inform you of the best time to follow up with your prospects. On top of this, Pardot also helps you to nurture your non sales ready leads by sending periodic automated advertisements. The Pardot Marketing Automation system saves you both time and resources by automating lead generation, management and nurturing programs. Lastly, Pardot offers many resources and informational data about how to best utilize their programs and ensure your marketing campaign goes successfully.
In today’s digital age, vast amounts of information are at our fingertips and we are essentially interconnected via the internet. Due to this, the outbound marketing strategies of the past just aren’t as effective as they used to be. Because we are all so connected in the social media world, it is logical that this is the best place for a marketing campaign to occur. With inbound marketing via an automated marketing platform, social media and other internet marketing campaigns are easier to run than ever. Automated marketing is ideal for this new day and age as it allows us to target ideal consumers, sell them a product and make them a brand advocate all with one platform.
