Bringing Intelligence, Science and Automation Into the Marketing World Do you lack true marketing expertise? There's an app -- or a fractional CMO -- for that.
By Angela Ruth Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Every business owner wears too many hats. These days must also where a different superhero cape, as well. In the midst of the chaos, your mind may dream of other versions of you. Each duplicate you handles many of the tasks on your plate. That way, you can breathe, think strategically and maybe even take a day off.
What other versions of you exist?
These other versions of you do exist. They live in marketing automation software. Marketing automation has been available in some form for the last couple of years. However, the industry now focuses on the specific strategies and tools to automate intelligently. As a result, you'll be able to focus on high-level strategy instead of time-consuming tasks. So much of your business will now be taken care of while you work elsewhere.
Here are some ways to intelligently automate the marketing component of your business. These include organizing your marketing strategy, increasing team workflows and mastering social media schedules.
Related: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing
Automate your marketing calendar.
A great place to start this intelligent automation is with your marketing calendar. Keeping your calendar updated takes considerable time. Adding science and automation intelligence helps alleviate this strain.
For example CoSchedule, a cross-functional marketing calendar program, recently introduced ReQueue, the only social automation tool of its kind with built-in intelligence. This tool can react, recalibrate, and anticipate changes in your entire social schedule.
This calendar is unlike other social automation tools.
Unlike other social automation tools, ReQueue interacts with the rest of your social marketing calendar. It takes into account everything you've got scheduled before it takes any action. From there, it can determine when to promote your content by using machine learning to calculate optimal post times for your specific content. ReQueue then changes the schedule to align with these findings. In this way, the calendar can help you get the most mileage from your social messages by knowing when and where to reschedule those pieces of content that have already been posted.
There's no telling how long it might take you to do the calculations that ReQueue can do in a matter of moments. Given the effort you put into creating and distributing marketing messages, getting the most bang for your existing content buck is a great money and time saver. That's where science can really help the art of marketing.
Related: 4 Ways to Market Your Business for Free
Get yourself an on-demand marketing expert and fractional CMO.
Combining the human element with technology, marketing expert intelligence can give you the coverage you need for a strategic marketing plan -- even if this type of strategy is not your core strength.
Trailblaze Growth Advisors provides startups and midsize organizations with access to executive-level marketing expertise. Hiring a marketing expert in this way costs a fraction of what a full-time CMO does. As a result, you receive C-level leadership with key operational guidance and a distinctive strategy to grow your business.
A better value for your business.
The ability to tap into a fractional CMO delivers the whole picture of what your marketing strategy should look like, and importantly, it comes with the added element of an actionable implementation plan. Having this heavy lifting done for you gives you the confidence that you are on the best marketing track for your business, delivering the top and bottom lines along with greater value.
Are you an expert number cruncher?
Not all entrepreneurs are number crunchers, so it helps to have access to someone who understands statistical analysis and can better determine the metrics that show the true picture of how marketing campaigns are doing. Christine Alemany, chief growth advisor at Trailblaze Growth Advisors, explained that leaders may "fail to question whether they are using the right data, whether there are other factors to consider that are not represented within the data, and how much weight they should be giving the insights they glean from the data."
If you have a marketing expert in your corner who knows the right data to analyze, then your brand will be able to produce and implement the best campaigns possible to achieve the greatest return.
Related: Use These 5 Steps to Create a Marketing Plan
Adopt other intelligent automation strategies for marketing,
Incorporate marketing automation tools into your CRM platform -- but don't confuse the two, thinking they are one and the same. CRM does help you with personalization and customization. Plus, it saves you a lot of time. However, it doesn't leverage the power of automation in a way that addresses marketing needs intelligently.
When you bring both game plans together, you'll elevate what's possible when it comes to achieving your marketing strategy. For example, you can send targeted emails to the contacts in your CRM based on the personal data and insights stored there.
This separation reduces manual labor and frees you up to be doing other things while your email marketing campaign runs itself. In the process, you'll also enable a deeper level of personalization than you could have accomplished on your own, especially if your database includes tens of thousands of contacts.
Marketing and key performance indicators.
Another benefit of separating your list and processes is that a better understanding of your marketing key performance indicators will begin to present themselves. Instead of using a few tools and platforms, each of which requires you to participate in the process, you can use something like the HubSpot Growth Stack. With this marketing automation capability, you can select all the marketing activities related to a certain campaign.
In return, you'll get a wide range of marketing analytics related to your marketing KPIs, such as traffic and conversion rates. This type of intelligent automation delivers so much insight for so little work on your part.
Related: This 14-Year-Old Founder Explains How to Market to Teenagers on Social Media
Building a better brand in half the time.
It takes time and thoughtful planning to build your brand. However, marketing automation's brawn and brain make quick work of this process. In return, you'll start to enjoy the benefits of marketing automation intelligence through greater customer acquisition. Whether you tap into outside marketing experts or access the marketing automation tools yourself, your business will thank you for it.
Made user-friendly for the new entrepreneur too.
Rest assured that these marketing automation tools are not too "smart" for you. Even those entrepreneurs who lack technical expertise can operate these user-friendly marketing automation solutions. Just imagine how much you can accomplish in your business when there are marketing experts -- disguised as you -- taking care of all of those extras. In the end taking this action with automation leaves you with the time to take care of the truly important aspects of your business to keep it growing on schedule.
