There are many myths regarding social media marketing automation. Do you want to know the realities? If yes, then read the article and know the myths as well as realities.
If you are in the ‘Business to Consumer’ (b2C) marketing segment, social media marketing automation is a vital technique that you must be initiating to perk up your sales and generate more leads. It is the application of certain software to automate the social media marketing process such as customer data distribution, customer message broadcast, social media campaign management and more. However, despite its multi-tiered benefits, there are some rigid recurring myths associated with social media marketing automation.
Sources revealed that only 10 percent of business to business companies, at present, incorporate social media marketing automation. It is fairly logical to expect that most marketers are still planning the use of some kind of automation platform. Whatever be the reason, it is necessary for you to get updated with some of the myths related to such marketing.
Let’s have a quick look –
Myth 1: You require dedicated employees to attain the most from social media marketing.
Reality is: Prior to initiating social media marketing automation, you strongly require transforming your business. The first thing that you need to do is to put your attention on your customer’s buying process rather than the sales process. In fact, it must start from top down and must involve both sales departments & marketing. Be ready and experimental with team performance and, if necessary, re-shuffle. Employment of additional people may not be necessary. The moment your systems get in place, social media marketing automation can curtail your staffs’ precious time and gear up their productivity level. Automating a recurring task like tracking ‘events’ or ‘webinars’ instead of delivering messages manually will save a lot of your marketing members’ time, which can be productively used in other marketing efforts.
Myth 2: Social Media Marketing automation software is expensive.
Reality is: In order to enhance marketing effectiveness, a strategy must be initiated to fully distribute your message across hundreds of social media websites. Frankly speaking, the top automation social media marketing software seems more cost-effective than what is expected, especially when some related high cost factors are taken into consideration. Some of the high cost factors include-
time consuming repetitive tasks performed by the marketing team
Excessive time spent by the sales representatives in chasing bad leads
Lost opportunities as your dormant leads purchase product / service from your close competitors.
Myth 3: It is tough to learn Social Media Marketing Automation
Reality is: In order to make your social media marketing automation a successful one, you need to take into account your customer’s buying mechanism. Consider what serves as a superior lead for your sales team and build up relevant content for nurturing leads. This process, no doubt, can be tricky and can invite multiple debates. However, the moment an agreement is set on how to achieve leads, the following things become much simpler than the ‘hyped’ discussions and debates on business process:
What campaigns should be followed?
How to manage the participants of an event?
What is the process of implementing social media marketing automation program?
Myth 4: As there is email blaster, there is no need for social media marketing automation software.
Reality is: With every passing day, the email campaigning response rates are dropping rapidly. As per the ‘Epsilon Q4 2009 Email Trends & Benchmark reports’, the response rates of consumers average only 22 percent. Mind you, if you fail to understand your buyer’s preference and repeatedly send them content which are irrelevant to them, they will surely neglect your message and might flag you as spam.
Thus, the only way to increase your targeted customer’s response rate is through social media marketing automation platform. This platform will help you to better understand online behavior of your target customer and thus you will be able to send more targeted content to your buyers. This will definitely gear up response rate of your customers.
Myth 5: Social Media Marketing automation is already included in the existing CRM or ‘Customer Relationship Management’
Reality is: It has been found that many CRMs include fundamental emailing features and some even include process workflow. However, none of these platforms have that depth to understand the characteristic traits or behavior of your target buyer. Hence, delivery of automated social media marketing messages that are irrelevant to your buyer’s choice, taste and preference will only annoy him / her, instead of converting to business. Social Media Marketing automation allows you to understand the buyer’s accurate interest areas, which ensures you to send the appropriate content at appropriate time. The moment a buyer shows sincere interest in your products and services, you can use your unique selling proposition to convert them to business. You can integrate the social media marketing automation with your existing CRM platform of your sales team and thus your sales team won’t need to change their system of lead tracking.
Myth 6: There is no harm in using my existing process for another year because it is working fine.
Reality is: As per “DemandGen Report”, social media marketing automation is turning out to be an essential investment in the year 2010 for leading B2B companies. This development can be attributed to two factors:
Mounting up of pressure for demonstrating ROI
Fall in rate of response of the buyers to untargeted mass communications
Remember, at the end of the day, the smart prospect to engage customer is through pertinent, reliable and rich content. Here, if you don’t highlight the buyers’ concern and send them the suitable information relating to purchasing decisions, there is always a chance of thing getting messed up. There is a fair chance that your competitors have already started to adopt marketing automation for their business, ahead of yours, to gauge the consumer behavior more accurately. Thus, don’t delay in taking the right decision now; otherwise it will be too late for you to regain the lost opportunities.
Hence, it can be said that social media marketing automation will definitely help a B2B marketer in understanding the needs and preferences of target customers in a better manner. This will help them to provide more customer-centric marketing process, which will in turn help the B2B organizations to get more leads and businesses.
After going through this entire article, you now know the realities regarding the various aspects of social media marketing automation. Social Media Marketing automation will help you to know your customers’ behavior in a better manner and thus enable you to catch their imagination in a more targeted way. So, make the right decision at the right time and increase your sales by opting for Social Media Marketing Automation.
