Marketing automation strategy is one of the most important aspects of your business that you should routinely be thinking about. Without a clear plan in place, you will find that your investment in marketing content will not be effective, and returns will be limited, or nonexistent.
So how do you create content for your marketing automation strategy? What do you need to consider and how can you go about being more efficient?
1. Include Sales
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when they are creating marketing content is that they don’t think about the sales team. At the end of the day, both the marketing and sales departments are part of the same chain of processes. If they aren’t aligned with the same point of view, then you can end up with a mixed message. It is confusing to your audience and can lower the conversion rate of your sales team when leads contact them.
So, when creating marketing content, always run everything past your sales team. Ensure they know what the business is offering and check that they are onboard with your offers and what you are claiming.
2. Avoid Bottlenecks
When creating marketing content, there are bound to be bottlenecks in the process. For example, when one department is relying on information from another before they can begin. However, the priorities of one department can be entirely different from that of another, which means work can be left aside and not completed on time.
Your senior management team should be aware of potential bottlenecks and work hard to avoid them. All departments involved in the creation of marketing content need to be provided with a schedule, including when work will arrive with them when it needs to be processed and the deadlines. To help speed up the process, all departments should also be provided with the knowledge of where work should be coming from and going to, and the timings.
Project management software like BaseCamp can help you manage the process from creation to the final product.
3. Test Everything
Everything created should be tested by numerous people. They can spot errors and provide constructive feedback to aid in the development of the content. It is best that the writers of the content are not involved in this process as it is harder to spot mistakes made by yourself than it is to others.
4. Audit Your Content
Auditing consists of looking at the achievements of your marketing content and analyzing their success rates. Look at the open rates and conversion rates; try to identify the factors that have had the most impact on the results.
You might have had a great email campaign that grabbed the attention of your audience, but the landing page on the website was not as effective. For this, you wouldn’t necessarily need to change the email style next time but might want to think about changing the landing page.
Conclusion
Creating content for your marketing automation strategy is an enormous task that has a lot of potential pitfalls. By involving multiple departments and ensuring there are clear processes, feedback loops, testing, and audits, you can improve the chance that your campaign will be more successful.
How do you create your marketing content? Is automation something that is important to you?
Let us know in the comments below.