Marketing is essential for any business to thrive, but it can also be very time consuming and use a lot of man-hours. Hiring specific marketing staff is one option but this can be very costly. Another option is to include marketing tasks in the job role of existing employees, but this will reduce the time they have to work on key tasks.
Outsourcing marketing tasks to a specialist agency is becoming an increasingly popular alternative but many businesses struggle to decide which components they should keep in-house and which they should outsource.
Marketing automation can help your business to get the most out of its marketing budget and resources, whether you do the work in-house, outsource, or a combination of both. In this post, we look at how automation can assist your business even while you’re sleeping.
Collective Strength
The total strength of a business lies in its employees. Individual skills work together to create a strong team that is worth more than the sum of its parts.
Marketing is a multi-faceted process that needs experts in several different areas in order to be successful. Copywriters, graphic designers, computer programmers, project managers, social media experts, and media buying experts all have their part to play.
Strategies and automated marketing software are an important part of the overall picture too. To be successful in marketing, all these individual pieces must work together in harmony.
The key is to identify the skill set of your existing employees and what you can outsource to get the biggest bang for your dollars.
Don’t Procrastinate
Marketing is something that many businesses put in the “too hard” basket, but the longer you wait to put a clear plan into action, the more money you could be wasting.
Take the time to set up a defined marketing strategy and make it a priority. Look at your budgets along with your data and reporting to determine what is going to be the right fit for your business.
Many businesses are put off making decisions about outsourcing for fear of making the wrong decisions and wasting money but remember – nothing is set in stone. It’s important to remain fluid and adjust what you do as a business to continuously improve.
How Marketing Automation Can Help
Whatever type of marketing campaign you have planned, automation tools are available to help you send emails and reminders based on user behaviour, date, website actions, and many other trigger events.
Automation allows you to benefit from the skills already present within your team, combined with specialist knowledge and tasks you outsource to external providers, minimising the time that all parties spend on marketing tasks and so making your budget stretch further.
You can automate events, and send invitations and reminders, all at prescheduled times. If you have a busy period coming up at work or a key member of staff will be away on holiday, you can plan in advance and queue up and automate your marketing tasks so everything will be taken care of with little external input.
This means your campaign can run smoothly without any missing pieces and you have the option of outsourcing tasks only when needed, rather than taking on a full-time staff marketer or working with a marketing agency or freelancer indefinitely. For example, you could outsource a copywriter to create a series of email newsletters as a one-off task and then use automation software to send out these emails regularly over several weeks or months. This would work out a lot more cost-effective and efficient than writing one email a week for a long period of time.
Harness the Power of Marketing Automation
Does your business use marketing automation for your campaigns? Or maybe you’re confused about the different options available and have yet to take the plunge. Here at Swift Digital, we can assist you with your online marketing needs to ensure your campaigns are a success! To find out how your business can get the best out of Swift Digital’s platform, contact our Sales Team today on 02 9929 7001.
