The biggest marketing prediction for 2018 is marketing automation. It’s going to be the next big thing.
If you’re not using it, you’ll get left behind.
Marketing automation has been around for a while. There are a lot of software and tools you can use to automate your marketing activities. But adaption by marketers especially in the pickups us very low.
Why Marketing Automation Will Be Big in 2018
1) Digital marketing is maturing
What that means is organizations are starting to learn that likes and followers aren’t right metrics to track in digital marketing.
They are starting to learn how to measure ROI properly.
In the last 5 years, these vanity metrics have been the sole focus of organizations. Primarily, because CMOs don’t know any better.
Most CMOs from big organizations live and die by traditional methods — such as billboards, TV ads, etc. When digital entered the scene, they merely translated their offline activities to their online campaigns.
With billboards, TV ads, and the like, the goal is to maximize impressions. Super Bowl, prime-time TV spots, and much more are the coveted and most expensive spots to place your ads — primarily because a LOT of people are tuned in during these times.
The equivalent of maximizing impressions in digital is reach and followers.
Now, as the industry is maturing, CMOs are learning that these metrics aren’t enough.
2) Marketers are overworked
The demands from the modern marketer are far greater today than it was just 3 years ago.
Now, it’s a prerequisite to be knowledgeable in almost all aspects of digital marketing: from SEO, social media, PPC, social ads, email marketing, and analytics.
This transition from a specialist to a generalist couldn’t have come sooner.
The more involved the marketer across the entire customer lifecycle, the better it is for the customer — and consequently, better for the organization.
This brings us to number three…
3) Marketing budgets aren’t increasing
The marketing budgets of organizations haven’t increased overall across industries.
That means no new tools and no new headcount.
And with a never-ending task list with no additional budget, you’re left with only two options:
- Spend more time working; or,
- Use marketing automation
We all know that putting in more hours will not solve the problem. So, that leaves all of us marketers with the only option — use marketing automation to speed up our work.
Conclusions: The Need for Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is still in its early days. There are already a lot of tools out there.
One of the most popular (generic) automation out there is called IFTTT — which stands for if this then that.
There are function-specific tools like Buffer and RecurPost for Social Media. You also have Goodbits.io for email marketing.
Then you also have Zapier that allows you to integrate different and complex systems together. Or the all-in-one marketing softwares like HubSpot and Marketo.
Most of these marketing automation tools are free. Almost all of them use a freemium model.
At the end of the day, your job as a marketer is continuously evolving. If you don’t deliver results for your organization, you’ll be in trouble. Learn more about marketing automation and start using it.
I’ll be writing more about how I use these tools over the next few weeks. If you’d like to learn how these tools work, simply subscribe to my newsletter.
