Why Content Makes Marketing Automation Successful

Contents

At this year’s #PartnerCon15, a product manager for Infusionsoft said that one of their biggest issues and their customers face is the demand for content.

Without content, automated marketing simply doesn’t work, and yet, platforms like Infusionsoft, HubSpot, or Marketo don’t have a content solution for their customers. Don’t neglect the importance of content. Here’s why.

Together, Blogging and Marketing Automation Create a Sustainable, Long-Term Marketing Solution

There are no quick fixes in marketing anymore.

You can’t just place an ad and wait for the phone to ring. You can’t write one blog post and expect your SEO rank to jump up to the first page of Google. And yet, companies treat marketing as something that can be turned off and on as cash flow ebbs and flows throughout an organization. Fortunately, there is technology available to make marketing more cost-effective and sustain marketing efforts regardless of whether business is booming or busting.

Content__Marketing_Automation1

Blogging, content and automated marketing are long-range solutions that can carry a business through any short-term state of crisis.

For the uninitiated, marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI), and campaign management. (Source)

Marketers are crying out for better software to make their marketing spend more efficient. Marketing automation is on a growth trajectory, especially among B2B companies. Revenue in the marketing automation industry is growing rapidly, with annual growth at 60% in 2014 to $1.2 billion. The automated marketing industry is also increasingly diverse with nearly 1,000 different marketing technologies available.

Automated marketing selects content and directs it at potential prospects based on database client information compiled by your marketing team. An automated marketing system can be integrated into a company’s CRM system. Automated marketing platforms collect data from lead forms, responses to blogs or lead magnets. These leads receive content delivered through the platforms automated triggers and channels.

Marketing automation may be an unfortunate name for the process. The word “automation” scares people. Actually marketing automation makes it easier, or possible, to send value-added content directly to people who might be interested in it. Manual outreach via email or newsletters is simply too expensive now. Marketing automation gives businesses with limited resources (both human and capital) greater marketing potential and reach.

Blogging and content are at the core of automated marketing

Automated marketing campaigns require lots of engaging content posted to blogs and distributed through email or social media. The content should be high quality and of real interest to potential customers. The content should also be written in such a way as to enhance the reputation of the company. Content starts the conversation. Automated marketing prolongs it.

Without great content, marketing automation stalls

The effectiveness and reach of automated marketing depends on potential customers’ interest in your company and your company’s content. Automated marketing is the technology that makes the regular distribution of your content happen. A steady, scheduled distribution of fresh eye-catching content keeps your businesses top of mind with customers.

As soon as content quality declines or becomes rote, your campaigns suffer.

Social media’s growth

Automating high quality social media posts keeps your brand relevant to your audience. Automated marketing software like Infusionsoft offer social snippets to make it easy for readers to share your content.

Note this incredible stat about the impact of social media on news consumption: 88% of millenials get their news from Facebook.

Consider the net social media can cast in finding potential customers. By reaching out to customer needs via social media, you create a return path to your site where visitors opt-in to receive additional information that can be disseminated via automated marketing.

Marketing is about momentum

Content marketing, automated marketing and inbound marketing are about creating conversations, brand building, reputation building and increased exposure. It is not so much about immediate product sales. It does not depend on short-term economic fluctuations, but requires continued activity to build up contacts and improve your site’s SEO. Cutting down on the continuous push of blog writing and content presentation can reverse the progress generated by years of previous work.

The Wall Street Journal calls Neil Patel the top influencer on the web and Forbes calls him of the top 10 online marketers. Here’s how he describes his personal experience.

If you can’t blog on a consistent basis, your blog won’t be popular. It doesn’t matter how great your content is. Unless you can crank out good content on a weekly basis, you’ll see a huge traffic drop when you slow down or stop blogging….[When] I stopped blogging for a period of 30 days, my traffic tanked….When I started blogging again, it took 3 months for my traffic to return to where it was.

Blogging and automated marketing are powerful, long-term ROI generators

Hubspot’s massive study of 3,600 marketers has found that blogging is possibly the most important thing a high-performance marketer can do. Joe Chernov, author of the report said, “Blog, blog, blog, blog….Companies that are prioritizing blogging are 13 times more likely to be increasing ROI year-over-year.”

Marketers who are generating positive ROI focus on blogging, SEO, and content amplification. These three factors help them with their over-reaching goal of getting found.

Forbes writer Jacquelyn Smith agrees. “Writing a successful blog,” she says, “is about getting the word out there and actually being seen by people….The most successful way to develop a loyal online following is by creating useful content that readers will consume and share.”

The ROI for companies that implement marketing automation is 28%, reports VentureBeat.

And yet, people are still unsure about making the investment in content and marketing automation.

The economy will have its ups and downs. But blogging and content marketing with automation tools is suited to this tuned-in online environment in which expensive marketing and advertising methods often fail. Blogging is based on the idea of a community of interest. Such communities have to be slowly and incrementally built and persistently maintained.

Businesses need a steady supply of useful, informative and interesting content that will create conversations and automated marketing to execute the follow-up.

Verblio

This post was written, as well as any other posts with the author "Verblio," by one of our 3,000+ U.S.-based writers who write for thousands of clients monthly, across 38 different industries. Only the top 4% of writers who apply with Verblio get accepted, so our standards for writers (and content) are high.

Questions? Check out our FAQs or contact us.