How to Outrank Big Companies When You Have No SEO Budget

There’s a formula to SEO and as long as you follow it, you’ll get rankings.

So, what’s this formula?

Well, you write amazing content, optimize your code, create a great user experience, and you mix in some backlinks.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, the formula isn’t too complicated, but it does require hard work and patience.

Now what makes SEO challenging isn’t the formula, or the time, or the patience. It has more to do with how you beat people who have more money than you because, in theory, they can do more of everything, which should cause them to outrank you.

But you know what? I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I love SEO because it’s the one channel where you can beat big companies even if you can’t outspend them.

How? Well, let’s go over that.

Let’s first start with the two mental shifts you’ll have to make.

Mental shift #1: Speed is everything

What most people won’t tell you is big companies need to spend more to get the same results that you can for pennies on the dollar. They have way too many employees and layers in their organization to move fast and nimble.

In other words, everything moves slowly.

So, what do they do? They spend money in hopes that it makes them move faster. But the reality is, spending more doesn’t necessarily get them faster results.

If you want to beat them, the first thing you’ll have to do is focus on execution. If you can’t move fast, you won’t win.

This is your biggest advantage.

The reason I have gotten to where I am today is due to my execution speed. And now that we keep growing in size, things are moving slower.

For example, because my business has continually been growing, we now prioritize based on what makes us the most revenue and I bet you SEO isn’t as high on that priority list as it used to be. Not just for me, but for all companies my size and bigger.

You have to remember, we have multiple offices, hundreds of employees… we have to focus on what pays the bills.

So how do we compensate? We spend more money in hopes that it fixes it. Just like how I write less content these days, and I spend money on things like Ubersuggest and Backlinks in hopes that it helps.

But that won’t fix everything.

The point is, if you can move fast, it will give you a huge advantage.

Mental shift #2: Scrappiness beats money

Alright, let’s recap the formula to SEO…

Content + SEO friendly code + user experience + backlinks = rankings.

I know Google has over 200 ranking factors, but the formula above encompasses the majority of it.

Now you are probably thinking that if you want to write content or build links you have to spend money, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

With my previous marketing blog, Quick Sprout, I grew it by partnering with other writers.

I wasn’t as well known in the marketing world back then, but I hit up people like Brian Dean and co-authored guides like this one on link building with him.

That guide is over 20,000 words. And Brian did the majority of the work and for free.

I also did something similar with Ritika Puri and we created a guide on marketing psychology.

And every time I partnered with other writers and marketers to create these in-depth guides my traffic skyrocketed.

The first time I published one, my traffic went up by 117% in 2 months.

Now, that’s something that you can still do to this day to see great results.

Another way you can boost your SEO traffic is to get people to contribute content to your site for free.

I did this with the KISSmetrics blog before I acquired it. During its peak, it generated 1,260,681 unique visitors a month.

We grew the KISSmetrics traffic through one simple approach… we hit up tons of writers in our space and asked them to contribute articles.

At first, we had to pay a few because the blog wasn’t known and we barely had any visitors. But once we paid a handful of well-known writers who were guest contributors on competing sites, we now had a great foundation.

We still didn’t have much traffic, but having those writers publish content was enough to convince other writers to submit content for free.

It’s a simple approach that still works to this day.

There are many ways you can be scrappy, you just have to think outside the box. Don’t think you need tons of money to solve your marketing problems. Being scrappy in most cases is more effective.

Now that we’ve covered the two mental shifts you need to make, let’s focus on the 4 quick wins that will yield the biggest results in the least amount of time.

Yes, many of these “quick wins” are well known, but less than 1% of SEOs focus on them. I know this because I have an ad agency that works with large Fortune 100 companies… and it doesn’t stop there, most companies no matter what size they are, don’t focus on these quick wins.

Quick win #1: Land and expand

They say the more content you create the more traffic you will get.

Do you want to know what the big issue with this strategy is?

Writing more content doesn’t guarantee more traffic.

Content marketing has changed. Writing no longer guarantees you more traffic because there are over 1 billion blogs.

With people cranking out so much content on a daily basis, Google now has the choice of what content to rank and what not to rank.

Similar to me, your top 10 pages are going to make up a lot of your traffic… and probably more than me.

The top 10 pages on my site make up 29.23% of my traffic. That’s crazy considering I have 5,171 blog posts.

With your site, your top 10 pages will probably make up over 40% of your traffic as you probably don’t have as much content as me.

So instead of spending the majority of your time writing new content, why not get more traffic out of the content you have.

I call this the land and expand method. In other words, you already have pages that are getting search traffic and rank on Google, might as well adjust them so you can 2 or 3 times more search traffic to those pages.

Best of all, this method gets results within 1 month for most sites and within 2 months if your site doesn’t have as much authority.

If you want to leverage this technique, follow “step 2” in this article where I break down how to land and expand step by step.

Quick win #2: Optimize for revenue, not traffic

Your goal is to increase your search traffic, right?

Well, if you are reading this blog it is. 😉

But as you get more search traffic, what’s happened to your revenue?

Actually, let’s rephrase the question… as my traffic climbed, can you guess what happened to my revenue?

That traffic according to SEMrush is worth $1.2 million.

But here is the thing: as my search traffic grew by 123%, my revenue only grew by 12.5%… not a good deal.

Yes, you want to optimize your site for Google so you can rank higher. But what’s the point if it doesn’t increase your revenue?

You need to look at the pages on your site that are responsible for revenue generation activities and first optimize those so they rank higher on Google. You can do this by setting up goal tracking within Google Analytics.

Once you set up goal tracking, you’ll now know what pages to focus your attention on so that those extra visitors you in bring will turn into revenue. You can then take that extra revenue and reinvest it in your marketing initiatives.

Quick win #3: Optimize for clicks, not rankings

Question for you…

If everyone did a Google search and clicked on the second results instead of the first result, what do you think will happen?

Well, it would tell Google that people prefer the second listing and it would move that ranking to the number 1 spot.

To prove this theory, Rand Fishkin told all of his Twitter followers to search for the phrase “best grilled steak” and click on the 4th listing instead of the 1st.

And within 70 minutes the 4th listing jumped up to the top spot.

It was so effective that the listing Rand Fishkin told everyone to clicked on skyrocketed to the top of Google for the phrase “grilled steak”.

If you want to boost your rankings, it isn’t just about the content you are creating or the links you are building. If people don’t want to click on your listing, you’ll find that your rankings will continually tank.

And if people click on yours more than the competitors, than your rankings will skyrocket even if you don’t build as many links.

So how do you increase your click-through-rate?

Well you don’t want to tell your friends to click on your listing as that is a temporary effect and your rankings will only climb for a short period of time. You want to optimize your title tag and meta description to encourage people to click on your listings over the competition.

This will cause your rankings to climb slower, but they will stick once you reach the top.

I won’t bore you with the details in this article on optimizing click-through-rates as I have already blogged on it… just head over to this post and follow hack number 1. 😉

Quick win #4: Update your old content

Have you noticed over time that your rankings fluctuate? No matter how good you are at SEO and no matter how much money you have, there is no guarantee you’ll be at the top spot.

Do you want to know why your rankings drop?

Most people assume that it’s a penalty. But Google is very friendly (believe it or not), and their goal isn’t to penalize sites. Their goal is to rank the best sites at the top.

You know… the sites that users love the most.

Just think of it this way, if Google hypothetically penalized BMW for building backlinks and removed them from the index, what do you think would happen when people search for “BMW”?

People would be pissed that BMW isn’t showing up.

And they wouldn’t be pissed at BMW, they would be pissed at Google and they may not use Google again.

Google’s goal isn’t to penalize your site or be mean to you or tank your rankings. Their goal is simple… always put the site that is best for the end user at the top.

When your rankings tank, it’s typically because someone else created a page that provides a better experience for the term you were ranking for.

The way you fix this, maintain your rankings, and even climb higher is to continually update your old content.

If you have content that is old, outdated, or if your rankings drop, read this. It breaks down what to do step by step, and it will help you outrank your competition because I bet they aren’t updating their old content.

This is so effective I currently have 3 full-time people updating my old content.

You don’t have to get as crazy as me, but you should update your old content.

Conclusion

Money isn’t stopping you from beating your competition. The only thing standing in your way is you.

That’s ok though. We can fix that.

With a few mindset shifts and some quick wins, things are about to change.

I’ve never let my competition get in my way. I don’t care if they have more money than me or that they have been at this longer.

If I started my journey cleaning restrooms and picking up trash and eventually got here… you can too.

There is nothing really stopping you from winning.

So what do you think, are you ready to beat your competition?

The post How to Outrank Big Companies When You Have No SEO Budget appeared first on Neil Patel.

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8 Ways to Weave Simple Visuals into Your Kick-Ass Words

It happened somewhere around third grade, when you were about nine years old. Do you remember? Before that age, we...

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How much time should your small business spend on social media marketing?

Social media is a cost-effective way to market your startup or small business. However, if you don’t properly plan, it can waste valuable time, cost your company money and lead to the kind of burnout that sinks startups. The following details how much time your business should spend on social media and how to know if your strategy is working.

How much time your small business should spend on social media

A VerticalResponse survey discovered that 43 percent of small business owners spend six hours per week on social media marketing. Over a five-day work week, that amounts to one hour and twelve minutes per day, which seems reasonable for many small businesses.

In addition, many experts recommend a set number of posts per day by platform. The generally-recommend ranges are:

• Facebook: one to three
• Twitter: five to 15
• Instagram: one to two
• Pinterest: five to 30
• LinkedIn: one to two

That said, you shouldn’t depend on other businesses to dictate how active your business is on social media. Instead, you should consider the following factors.

Quality over quantity

The number of times your business posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram is irrelevant if your posts do not engage your audience and attract followers.

If you’re torn between meeting a post quota and developing unique content, spend your time on unique content your audience is more likely to click, like and share. You don’t need to spend time on social media efforts every day; in fact, a good social media post scheduler allows you to plan all your posts at one time, so you can spend the rest of your week (or month) focusing on other important tasks.

Your audience’s preferred platform

If the experts are to be believed, some companies publish as many as 50 posts per day. If each post takes just five minutes, that amounts to more than four hours spent on social media each day — far too long for startups and solo entrepreneurs to get much else done.

Find out which platform or channel your audience prefers the most, then focus on that platform until you’ve built an appreciable following. You’ll learn insights along the way that will help you successfully expand your reach on other social networks when you’re ready.

Your total marketing budget

How much of your overall marketing budget is devoted to social media? The time you spend on social should mirror that investment. Some businesses thrive on social media, while others might be better off spending most of their time on email marketing, for example. You can always share your emails on social platforms to get greater reach without additional time investment.

This isn’t to say social media marketing isn’t valuable — it absolutely is — but when you’re just starting out, you need to prioritize your time and money to get your business off the ground.

Social media results

Is social media marketing achieving the desired effect? If not, you need to evaluate what’s going wrong. Are you targeting the wrong audience? Are your posts lackluster? Have you chosen the wrong channel? Does your audience even spend time on social media?

If you’re not getting the results you want, you may need to spend more time experimenting to see what will work, or you may need to divert your marketing funds elsewhere. On the other hand, if your social media efforts are paying off, it might be time to double down on your time investment. If you hit a plateau —  meaning you can achieve predictable success that doesn’t increase when you invest more time — you’ve found your social media marketing sweet spot.

How to know if your social media strategy is working

The best way to know if your social media efforts are paying off is to set measurable goals for your social campaigns and track key performance indicators (KPIs).

VerticalResponse’s post scheduler automatically tracks KPIs such as your number of followers and reach, along with post interactions such as likes, shares, comments and retweets. You can even bundle social messages into folders to track multiple posts as a single campaign.

For example, you might set a goal to increase your number of followers by ten percent over the next month. If you currently have 1,000 followers, that means you want to add 100 more over the next 30 days. It’s a measurable and worthy goal since the more followers you have, the more people will see your posts and the likelier they are to interact with your brand.

To achieve your goal, you can schedule a series of posts designed to encourage follows. If your campaign is successful, you’ll know your efforts are working. You’ll also know how much time you invested to reach your goal. If your campaign isn’t successful, you can evaluate why it didn’t work and adjust future campaigns accordingly.

Ultimately, you want your social media efforts to yield sales. It can take several months to build a large enough following to have a significant impact on your bottom line, but eventually you should be able to identify correlations between how much time you spend on social media and sales volume or revenue. Once you can do that, it’s easy to know exactly how much time your business should spend on social media marketing.

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© 2019, Brian Morris. All rights reserved.

The post How much time should your small business spend on social media marketing? appeared first on VerticalResponse Blog.

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Email Hospitality: Copywriting A Personable Email Welcome Series (FS317)

How do we create our ultimate email welcome series? What are the most most important elements and rules that help us connect with new audience members and keep them coming back? Is email still as relevant as it once was?

The answer is yes, the stats show that email is more used now than ever before. Most of us know that an email welcome series can go a long way, but that does not mean that concocting great email copy and content is a common skill.   

In this episode, we talk about how to craft that vital first emailed contact, why templates don’t matter so much and a few rules that can keep your emails out of the spam folder. We are trying to get you thinking about who you are writing to and connecting meaningfully with them!

Today on the show, we are joined by Barrett Brooks, Marketing Lead at ConvertKit and certified email badass! He is driven by the belief that business is one of the most powerful forces for good in the world and this really shows in his and ConvertKit’s increasingly blazing success rate.

We also talk about how to get receivers’ attention and your emails opened right away in the right way, the usefulness of questions and emojis, forming the body of an email and finding the pillar posts of your business. For all of this, join us today, Fizzlers!

Listen to the episode:

Subscribe to The Fizzle Show in your favorite podcast player:

iTunes | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Stitcher | Soundcloud | RSS

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Key Points From This Episode:

• A quick update from Barrett Brooks, ConvertKit and the world of email. [0:07:18.6]
• The stable importance of an email welcome sequence. [0:12:02.3]
• Current marketing and how people find your company online. [0:13:42.7]
• The main objective of an email welcome series. [0:17:30.1]
• Why Luke Skywalker took very little notice of Yoda at first. [0:25:35.6]
• Symptoms, treatments and long term solutions. [0:27:31.2]
• Gaining trust through email copywriting, dos and don’ts. [0:32:55.6]
• Personalization and segmenting your email list by interests. [0:43:30.4]
• The three things you can do to get your copywriting up to scratch. [0:48:06.2]
• Summarizing the mains tenants of creating your best welcome series. [0:52:00.8]
• Compiling a greatest hits of content for your business. [0:55:03.5]
• And much more!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

• Fizzle — https://fizzle.co/
• Gusto — http://gusto.com/fizzle
• ConvertKit — http://convertkit.com/fizzle
• Discover.bot — https://discover.bot/fizzle
• Barrett Brooks — https://convertkit.com/author/barrettbrooks/
• ConvertKit — https://convertkit.com
• Wall Street Journal — https://www.wsj.com
• StoryBrand — https://storybrand.com
• Fizzle 80/20 Copywriting Guide — https://fizzle.co/sparkline/writing-copy-for-web
• Ultimate Welcome Series — https://app.fizzle.co/library/ultimate-welcome-email
• Shark Tank — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442550/
• Dragon’s Den — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443370/
• Star Wars — https://www.starwars.com
• Terence McKenna — https://medium.com/the-mission/unconventional-inspiration-the-best-of-terence-mckenna-5040385a69a2
• Career Renegade — https://www.amazon.com/Career-Renegade-Great-Living-Doing/dp/0767927419
• Copy Hackers — https://copyhackers.com
• Justin Jackson — https://justinjackson.ca
• Pat Flynn — https://www.smartpassiveincome.com
• Kickstarter — https://www.kickstarter.com
• Fizzle Roadmap — https://fizzle.co/sparkline/small-business-roadmap-1-clarity
• Fizzle on Twitter — https://twitter.com/fizzle
• Fizzle Just Ship It Challenge — https://app.fizzle.co/just-ship-it-challenge
• Fizzle Try 5 — http://fizzle.co/try5
• Courage and Clarity — https://www.courageandclarity.com/
• Steph Crowder on Twitter — https://twitter.com/stephcrowder_?lang=en
• Corbett Barr on Twitter — https://twitter.com/CorbettBarr
• Chase Reeves on Twitter — https://twitter.com/chase_reeves
• Fizzle Sparkline — https://fizzle.co/sparkline
• Fizzle Goals Course — https://fizzle.co/courses/goals
• Fizzle Journaling Course — https://fizzle.co/courses/journal
• Fizzle Essentials of Web Design Course — https://fizzle.co/library/essentials-of-website-design-for-business-builders
• Fizzle Website Tune Up Curse — https://fizzle.co/courses/tuneup
• Start A Blog That Matters Course — https://fizzle.co/start-a-blog-that-matters
• Fizzle Toolkit — https://fizzle.co/toolkit
• Fizzle Craft + Commerce — https://fizzle.co/sparkline/craft-commerce
• Fizzle Project Management for Entrepreneurs — https://fizzle.co/sparkline/project-management-for-entrepreneurs
• Fizzle Hosting — https://fizzle.co/hosting

The post Email Hospitality: Copywriting A Personable Email Welcome Series (FS317) appeared first on Fizzle.

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The Thing that Keeps Many Conscientious Writers from Trying Freelance Writing

If you’re concerned about whether or not you’d be a good service provider, there’s a good chance you’d be a...

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Top 5 Things Not to Miss at the Sirius Decisions 2019 Summit

Starting Sunday May 5th and running through Wednesday May 8th will be the Sirius Decisions 2019 Summit in Austin, Texas. There are a whole host of things to do while inside the Austin Convention Center, where the Summit is being held as well as outside the friendly confines.

Here’s one man’s list of top 5 things you should absolutely not miss at this year’s Summit.

1. Alex Sheen, the first keynote speaker of the entire event. Founder of “because I said I would” Sheen takes the stage on Sunday night at 5PM. His passion and calling is a social movement and nonprofit dedicated to bettering humanity through promises made and kept. Sparked by the loss of his father, Alex and his organization send “promise cards” to anyone anywhere in the world at no cost. 
2. The SiriusDecisions Wellness and Charity Run. If you’re like me and love to give back AND be healthy, this is for you. On both Monday and Wednesday during the event you can either walk/run or do yoga all for a good cause. Just one word of warning: these start at crack of dawn at 6:30AM. So, get a good night’s sleep the night before!
3. The 2019 Program of the Year Awards. The award winners are selected from a field of leading b-to-b organizations that have achieved significant and innovative results that were integrated across their revenue-generating functions. The Programs of the Year will showcase the programs Sirius Decisions’ analysts have chosen as best-in-class across marketing, sales and product disciplines
4. The Northwest Water Fountain.  Don’t scoff. You’ll thank me later. As you’re sashaying around the Austin Convention Center you may find yourself in need of hydration. Fear not, head to the water fountain located in the NW section of the floor and get ready for a H2O experience unlike any you’ve ever had.
5. The Oracle Lounge. Ok, ok, I know this is self-serving but hear me out. While in the Lounge, which BTW there is no charge to enter – say hi to Kerry Stange, who is an Oracle Enterprise Advanced Customer Success Services Manager. Kerry can show you how to get your C-Suite to love the value of your SaaS solution – no small task – but equally important will regale you with stories from the road of what it was like to be lead singer for multiple rock bands. He may even have pics of his big-hair days, but that I can’t guarantee it.

**BONUS**

Stop by The Oracle Lounge and get your hands on one of these multi-use Oracle tumblers. But you better hurry for they’re only available while supplies last!

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What Goes into an Engaging Email?

How do you go about creating an engaging email? What does it look like and how should you write it?

All day, every day, people find themselves bombarded with a multitude of marketing messages from a variety of sources. They will be receiving more than a few emails each day. So, your emails have to stand out to get someone’s attention.

You can try to be clever, creative, and humorous to catch someone’s attention. However, as stated before, all emails need to be relevant and useful. Even the subject line has to be interesting or intriguing enough to make someone want to see the email, and this comes down to relevance and letting them know that this email has something that they want or need.

Emails have to be easy to read, view, understand, and digest. Both the copy and design need to mesh well and be:

• Easily readable
• Simple and not overly complicated
• Straight to the point

When it comes to writing (for any type of content marketing materials really and not just emails), while you want to sound enticing, clarity is key. No matter how wonderful your words, if you are not clear then it will not matter.

Remember that your email could viewed on a computer, phone, or other mobile device. Your readers will not want to scroll from side to side, and in fact it is better if they can see the email in its entirety the moment they click on it. In fact, a mobile-friendly email places these four elements above the mobile fold:

• The branding
• The offer or asset
• The message
• The call to action (CTA)

All email copy should cut to the chase and avoid redundancy. You do not need to tell the reader anything they already know. Your email copy should also answer these three important questions:

• Why do it and why do they need it?
• What should it do?
• How will it get done?

Consider these tips when crafting an email:

Sell Your Offer

Concentrate on selling your offer and not the product or service. It’s not what the product or service is; it’s about the benefits what they can do for someone.

Focus on Your Main Points

Make sure that you focus on one offer, one message, and one CTA. It keeps things from getting cluttered and allows you to emphasize your main points.

Drive Action

Do not just relate facts. Drive your readers to take action. Use CTAs that creative and action oriented.

Write Sharp, Concise Copy

Strive for simple, understandable copy that makes its points sharply and concisely. Shorter is better, especially for an email. It should be no longer than it has to be. Do not spend too long setting up the offer. Get into it as soon as you can. Use short paragraphs that can be easily read and scanned. Break up the text with bullet points wherever possible to add more readability.

Be Clear, Concrete, and Specific

Make sure the offer and CTA are clear, concrete, and specific.

Repeat the CTA

Though you should have only one CTA, repeat it as both a link and text.

Be Mobile Friendly

Provide CTA buttons for mobile users.

Remember There Is Beauty in Simplicity

Do not overcomplicate the design and layout. It should not be too busy, and simple images can make the most impact. Strive for readability and clear understanding. 

Create Copy and a Design That Go Together

Make sure your copy, design, and images go well together and match up what the message and offer you are making. Whatever theme you choose, stick to it and stay focused on the message you are trying to get across.

Find out about the importance of open rates and customer engagement with your emails in “The Bottom Line: Open Rate and Customer Engagement.”

Read the blog

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Creating an AB test

“Great science is always dependent upon a creative and artful process. The two work together. We use the creative to generate ideas that we convert to hypotheses. And then with these hypotheses, we use science to determine which of them is most accurate. From this, we’ve developed the most important concepts in the advancement of civilization — Predictability.”

These are the words of Flint McGlaughlin in this replay of a live interactive session on Hypothesis Development. McGlaughlin and his YouTube listeners work together to construct an AB test to decide which email copy will receive the greatest amount of clicks. The first step is to create a hypothesis together. This is the first in a two-part series on test development.

Watch the video and learn how to use the MECLABS four-step hypothesis framework to remove the guesswork from your marketing efforts by performing accurate tests that will help determine what brings the greatest conversion lifts.

The post A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Creating an AB test appeared first on MarketingExperiments.

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Why Modern Marketers Must Embrace Marketing Automation

Marketing technology continues to evolve, with a new tool or platform debuting seemingly each week. While marketers seek to provide benefits or value for your digital transformation or marketing strategy, it can hard to pinpoint what you need — and how exactly to go about it, due to having so many options to choose from.

With so much to do within B2B marketing — including more research, segmentation, and personalization — marketers’ available time seems to be shrinking by the minute. This leaves you with a dilemma: either expand your marketing talent pool or invest further in technology.

The answer is to add marketing automation, which may enable you to add more talent later. Here’s why there’s genuine value in embracing marketing automation — beyond simply allowing you to do more with fewer resources.

What Marketing Automation Can Take On

While marketing automation can’t — and shouldn’t — tackle every task on a marketer’s plate, there are plenty of ways automated tools can give marketers more time and focus for the most important aspects of their jobs.

1. Effective Marketing Task Management

Let’s start with one of the most compelling reasons for investing in marketing automation: These platforms and tools help you organize and oversee many tasks that are often complicated and time-consuming.

For example, with CRM platforms, you can automate social media posts, content marketing and email campaigns, forms and landing pages, segmentation, lead management, and more. Automating these tasks helps you stay on top of attracting and nurturing leads, capturing critical data, and even engaging with your target audience and customer base.

Because there are so many inbound and outbound strategies, platforms, channels, processes, and information, marketing automation can help you do the heavy lifting, fill in skills gaps, and provide a way for you to focus on high-level creativity, planning, and engagement.

2. Integration Capabilities

Marketing automation brings so many aspects of your marketing strategy and technology together through seamless integration. This includes a marketing automation platform’s ability to work with your CRM platform, content management system, and more. You’ll get more out of each of these systems together than if you had them separate and doing their own work.

Bringing them together allows you to use the data from one area to influence another, removing data silos in one fell swoop. Attribution and customer journey tracking can also be made easier with integrated systems. Having real ROI can directly impact your budget and spend in real time.

3. Balancing Out Competitive Advantage

There was a time when a small business had no way to compete with larger companies’ marketing efforts — the size of the smaller team and budget was dwarfed by the enormous resources of these larger enterprises. In this way, marketing automation was a game changer, allowing a marketing team of one to go head-to-head with a marketing team of 50, thanks to automated tools that do the work of many.

A lesser-talked-about benefit is that access to these kinds of resources heightens a smaller company’s professional appearance. Professionalism and access to sophisticated resources can result in a company gaining an opportunity — and a lack of either can eliminate that chance.

4. Increased Accountability

The powerful technology within marketing automation platforms provides a clear picture of what’s working and who’s working. The software provides insights into the leads captured and what’s been done to turn those leads into sales. There’s no escaping the findings of such software, pushing all departments to be accountable for their actions.

Overall, this can effectively raise performance levels and results. It can also eliminate redundancies or overlapping efforts.

5. Multichannel Targeting

With thousands of customers all using different channels and often switching when and where they can be found, it helps to have automated tools that can do the tracking and outreach for you. You can use these tools to target them with a cross-marketing campaign for email, text, and social simultaneously.

6. Enhanced Customer Experience

At first, it may be hard to imagine that the act of automating interactions, thanks to software and tools like chatbots, would improve the customer experience over adding more human interaction. However, customers enjoy how it easy it is to get information when and where they want it. A human touch is warm, but it can also delay.

Plus, being able to personalize a user’s website visit and send behavior-related emails that match her mood will further engage a target and make her feel good about interacting with your brand. A company I worked with added behavior-oriented tracks for visitors who searched specific terms on its site. Based on how the user phrased her request, she’d be placed in a “funny,” “straightforward,” or “gentle guidance” category. This personalization resulted in a 22 percent higher click-through rate for emails, no small feat.

7. Upsells and Cross-Sells

The increased amount of data from marketing automation can give you more insights into how and what you can sell to target audience members. Besides telling you what needs to be done, marketing automation software can handle upsells like reorder reminders, personalized product presentations, and gift guides.

The software can provide campaigns related to other products that each customer might be interested in based on previous orders and interests (think of Amazon’s suggested products). This requires no extra effort from marketers but may capture additional revenue from loyal customers.

No More Cold Calling and Guesswork

With such detailed data that includes everything you need to know about your target, you can stop guessing — and making cold calls. Instead, you’ll have marketing content delivered when a target wants to see it, containing relevant information only. Plus, you’ll be able to track and monitor the actions taken by people after each interaction.

You’re constantly looking for ways to improve your marketing efforts and meet changing customer expectations, and marketing automation enables you to do that. Knowing precisely what needs to change can help you respond more quickly, minimizing any impact on your audience’s experience with your brand. If you want to reach your target audience in a relevant way, you have to embrace marketing automation — or fall behind.

Use Oracle’s Marketing Automation Assessment Tool to see how you stack up against your peers in terms of preparedness for the future of marketing automation.

Take the two-minute assessment

 

 

 

 

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