You will have no doubt already heard of “marketing automation” as it is very much the buzzword of the minute.

But what exactly does it mean and will it really benefit your business?

Simply put, marketing automation is using technology to help streamline your marketing processes, which can help to free up time for your team and can make whole campaigns a lot more efficient and effective.

Lots of companies can really take advantage of automating their marketing and, if done correctly, they can really reap some huge benefits.

To ensure that you do carry out any marketing automation correctly, you should be aware of these dos and don’ts.

Do Have A Strategy In Place

First of all, you need to make sure that you have a strategy in place for all of your marketing automation.

Once you have a strategy and plan in place, you will then have a reason for using the automation, which will help you use it with more purpose.

Doing so will make it a lot easier for you to reach all of the goals and targets that you set your business.

Don’t Just Let The Software Take Control Of Everything

There are so many great software and computer programs that you can use to automate your marketing with.

However, some teams tend to rely too heavily on these tools and try to leave their whole marketing campaign and strategy down to the software.

This really isn’t a good idea, as you still need to take control of the software as well.

For instance, some marketers let their software take over generating new leads.

However, these tools can only do so much, no matter how sophisticated they may be, so it’s always best to keep hold of the reigns.

Do Set Yourself Realistic Goals

It will really pay off if you and your team set some goals for your marketing automation.

That way, you will be able to keep track of just how well your efforts are doing.

Not only that, though, but these goals and targets will ensure that your team have something to keep on reaching for, which can help to improve motivation.

Don’t Ignore Other Forms Of Lead Generation

Even though marketing automation can make generating leads a whole lot easier than what it used to be, that doesn’t mean that you can now ignore the other methods that you used to use.

In order to get the most from marketing automation, it is necessary to do it alongside some of the more traditional forms of lead generation.

That way, you are ensuring that your campaigns cover all bases.

So, rather than ditching your SEO and content marketing in favour of automation, try to keep both strategies running side by side.

You should find that all of the different forms of lead generation can then benefit from their symbiotic relationship with one another.

Hopefully, all of the dos and don’ts in this blog post can help you come up with a very effective marketing automation strategy.

This article was contributed by James Cook