Digital Marketing Automation Services
Picture in your head a perfectly laid out line of dominos. Every single domino is performing a single digital marketing task simultaneously as soon as the ‘trigger’ is pulled. In this instance, your finger. As soon as your finger performs the task of pushing over the first domino, all the other actions are automatically triggered (at the same time or in a linear sequence) and they perform a pre-configured action as part of a complete workflow. By the end of the workflow, all the actions have been performed with very little human resource and input.
“If this happens, do this…”
That’s the idea behind automation but until the last few years there hasn’t been a great deal of emphasis on using automation to save time in what has always been considered a ‘creative industry’. Historically, automation software and implementation were reserved for industries which were thought to require more repetition and less variation.
However, with the marketing industry worth an estimated $1.7 trillion dollars and advertising platforms such as Facebook making an estimated $70.7 billion in ad revenue in 2019 according to Mobile Marketer it’s no wonder that advertising platforms and software have made a giant leap towards automating digital marketing in order to further increase efficiency (and ultimately spend) by improving manual marketing processes normally undertaken by ‘expensive’, ‘slow’, and ‘error-prone’ humans.
So, with automation (and artificial intelligence) being on every digital marketer’s list of trends to look out for in 2020, we thought it worth listing some simple examples of digital marketing automation that can be implemented in to your business immediately.
Simple digital marketing processes which can be automated immediately
Email Marketing: We’re quite sure everyone reading this article is aware that you can automate your email marketing efforts and link them with a CRM platform. Ecommerce businesses were one of the first sectors to adopt automation as part of the customer checkout workflow so it’s no wonder they’re also typically the most sophisticated businesses at implementing automation throughout the user experience. Email is probably the most widely used form of digital marketing automation across the industry. We won’t go in to any great detail in this article but let’s consider one thing. Time versus effectiveness. Consumers are extremely savvy and spot an automated marketing email a mile off, so it’s vital for companies to first consider a) what actions on their owned digital marketing channels, could trigger an automated email b) what the email creative and content should consist of in order for the triggered action to get the desired result. Ultimately, so that it doesn’t turn in to another piece of spam that gets deleted before it has even been opened. Remember, just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should. Be strategic and selective with the actions and triggers you automate.
Paid Social Media: If you’re a digital marketer reading this article, the chances are that you’re aware of Facebook’s dynamic ads which gives you the flexibility of changing your adverts… dynamically. Meaning, if used in conjunction with their automated rules, you are able to change the adverts you’re serving to people based on a series of changing conditions and factors. In it’s most simple form, if an ad is performing particularly well, you’re able to increase the budget without manually doing it yourself. And vice versa, if an ad is doing particularly poorly, you’re able to decrease your ad spend. Something you may not know about though is the ability to automate ads based on external factors outside of Facebook. External factors like weather can be automated with software like Kamp’n to trigger weather-relevant creative in real-time. Fancy!
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Automation Example 1: One of the reasons why single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) can be powerful is the fact that the ad creative you serve can be automated based on the search term that consumers type in to the search engine. Having the same words in your ads as the search term, means your ad relevancy goes up, your bid can come down, and your conversion rates will likely go up as well. Imagine someone looking for wedding supplies in a nearby town. There is a strong possibility that the search term will include the location… “Wedding supplies <nearby town>”. If you create ads that automatically include the same <nearby town>, it means that your ad will be more likely to be shown and more likely to be clicked on… “Best wedding supplier in <nearby town>”. That’s the power of automation.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Automation Example 2: A second form of automation in PPC campaigns could be security-based. Click fraud is a form of black hat marketing which Wikipedia says:
“occurs when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having an actual interest in the target of the ad’s link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud.”
If brands run large quantities of PPC campaigns, some software companies such as Click Guardian offer PPC protection by giving advertisers the ability to control the number of ‘clicks’ the same IP address can make on the PPC ad. Automatically blocking the IP address from seeing the ad only if the quota has been reached.