The Elephant in the Room: 3 Common Marketing Automation Mistakes Your Business is Making

Consider marketing automation as the business equivalent of an automatic car. While driving a manual, your thoughts and your hands are occupied with changing gears, whether this is a conscious or subconscious act. However, an automatic car eliminates the need for manual gear-changing. Your hands, which were once occupied by the gear stick, are now free to rest on the steering wheel or sneak a sip of your morning Starbucks coffee. Your mind is no longer distracted by the technicality of your car.

Marketing automation does for your business what an automatic car does for your driving. It allows you to separate from the everyday technicality of generating new social media posts, emails, and website content. Marketing automation involves the automatic scheduling of marketing activities across all aspects of your business, including social media, email marketing, and lead generation – among others. Instead of creating new content on a regular basis, you can create your content in advance and schedule its release. This grants you more time to focus on other components of your business. However, the novelty of automated marketing often creates vulnerability for simple errors. Below are 3 common mistakes that businesses often make with marketing automation.

1. Limiting automation to one platform, namely email marketing

Email is one of the leading channels for marketing success. But while email is an important component of marketing automation, many businesses make the mistake of limiting themselves to this platform and neglecting others. There are many marketing channels where automation is relevant, which can also be linked to your email content (i.e. social media and website links). An effective marketing campaign will cover all bases.

2. Setting up automation and ignoring it

It might be tempting to schedule automated content and think your job is done. Yet, it’s critical to always monitor your marketing channels. Marketing automation solves the time-consuming problem of daily content creation, but you still need to be aware of what you’re posting and how people are responding to it, especially with personalized content.

3. Thinking marketing automation is spam

Some businesses believe marketing automation is just a fancy term for spam. But unlike spam, your automated content shouldn’t harass consumers with promotional offers. A successful business knows not to force its agenda on its audience. Your automated social feeds can simply offer a reminder that your brand exists – whether it’s a quote, a statistic, or a news article in your industry. The point of marketing automation is not to spam your clientele with unsolicited material, but to craft meaningful content that keeps your business on the map while you’re occupied.

How does marketing automation drive your business? If you’re thinking of adding marketing automation to your business strategy, contact Worldsites Toronto today to get started.