Every marketer would agree that social media has become an even bigger factor for lead generation. While platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are incredibly powerful for content sharing, brand awareness and generating business, don’t forget marketing automation. There are several fantastic apps that can do more than just send emails. It’s all about creating and spreading good quality content, generating an interest and measuring ROI.

While having 10 000 Twitter followers is great, it doesn’t mean much if nobody engages with your brand. Knowing what content to post, how to share it and to who is essential for growing your audience. It all comes down to employing social media marketing automation tactics that will help generate leads, increase conversions and accurately measure results.

Basic Marketing Automation Tactics

With purchased email lists being frowned upon (and for good reason), just how do you grow your email list organically? You can start by combining Twitter with a good marketing automation platform which puts you in a really strong position. Let’s take a look at a simple form of marketing automation to help you get started.

  1. Create Compelling Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a piece of interesting and relevant content that helps solve a prospect’s problem or shows them how to be successful. Content that works well as lead magnets includes e-books, how to guides, whitepapers, video tutorials and webinars. As always, it revolves around adding value to people’s businesses and lives.

Our favourite lead magnets are free e-books and downloadable PDFs with useful tips and tools to help a business succeed. While e-books have always been one of the best ways to entice people to opt-in, the content must be interesting, relevant and informative.

  1. Build Good Landing Pages

Well-designed landing pages can help convert traffic and attention into prospects and ultimately customers. Similar to lead magnets, landing page design needs to be creative, informative and eye-catching. Nobody likes a poorly designed website so why would landing pages be any different?

Did you know that using a single call-to-action button on landing pages can increase conversions by 62%? Landing pages should be simple and leave no doubt in the visitor’s mind about what action you want them to take. For optimal results, marketers should create a new landing page for every different marketing campaign.

The main aim of landing pages is to ensure that visitors remain focused on why they clicked on your ad in the first place. Don’t give them a reason to look elsewhere for more information as your ultimate goal is lead generation and conversion. Some marketing automation platforms, like SharpSpring, offer a landing page builder but a popular standalone app is Leadpages. People use it for webinars, e-books and sales-driven landing pages.

Need help designing your landing pages? Take a look at this infographic and read the article, “How To Create Landing Pages That Really Convert”.

  1. Integrate Quality Email Software

If you are serious about growing your email list with Twitter and marketing automation, you need the right software. You can’t expect impressive numbers if you’re sending your emails from your Gmail account. With more apps coming to the fore, email and marketing automation tools are cheaper and smarter than ever. All you need to do is figure out which elements or features you need and then make an informed decision.

Using the right email marketing tool can help get your message across to the right people at the right time. While marketing automation platforms generally include a bulk emailing tool, if your business requires a simpler app, MailChimp is a good place to start. Other examples include Constant Contact, iContact, AWeber and GetResponse among others.

Effectively combining social media, email and marketing automation will put your business on the map. If you are new to email and marketing automation, we suggest starting small and move your way up the ladder. Some of the more comprehensive marketing automation platforms you can look into include:

  • SharpSpring
  • HubSpot
  • InfusionSoft
  • Salesforce
  • Marketo
  • Eloqua
  • G2Crowd

Many companies purchase software based on all the features but they often don’t even need half. Do your due diligence and find the system(s) that will work for your business and budget.

  1. Setting Up Marketing Automation

Once you have integrated the right software, your landing pages and lead magnets are in place, it’s time to set up the automation. As mentioned earlier, there are many email and marketing automation tools but also social media management tools. We use Sendible to automatically schedule posts across various social media channels. While most apps have similar functionalities, they have their own UI (User Interface) and may not work exactly the same.

Sendible

Choosing Twitter for this particular post, you will notice a shortened link and an associated image. These are important elements to include in social media posts to maximise interest and promote engagement. Using Sendible (or a similar app) you can schedule the message for any time of the day or week and also set it to repeat. You can even select certain days and specific times that you’d like to Tweet.

marketing automation platforms

For this eBook, we created a landing page asking people to fill in a form to download the file. Taking it beyond scheduling, we can track engagement of landing page visits and eBook downloads using marketing automation. We used SharpSpring to create a simple automation relating to filling in a form and engagement with our Twitter account. It sends a prospect two emails, adds them to a list and notifies a specific person about the new prospect.

SharpSpring marketing automationThe possibilities are almost endless when using marketing automation and social media effectively. With the right content, strategy and software, your email list will grow beyond anything you could have imagined.

  1. Continuous Monitoring, Measuring And Optimising

Now that you’re sending Tweets on autopilot and starting to see some engagement, your job is not done yet. You need to measure how many people are clicking on your lead magnets which means continuous monitoring, measuring and optimising.

Perhaps you have three lead magnets where one is not performing too well compared to the other two. Because of the data you collected, you can now make adjustments to the ad or post and continue testing until it yields results.

The beauty of digital marketing is that it provides a constant flow of data to assist you in optimising campaign results. Consistently monitoring and improving your workflows will increase your overall competitive advantage. In addition to increasing leads, marketing automation systems can help increase cross sales and upsells, and improve customer care processes. It can really turn your customers into active fans who are ready to recommend you.

If you need help getting started with marketing automation or improve your current campaigns, get in touch for a free consultation.

Related Post

What’s the single...

Adam Vincenzini from Comms Corner recently posted a very good article which I think goes...

Effective Facebook Marketing...

With over 600 million users, Facebook represents the single most connected platform on...

How To Drive Sales With...

Landing pages have long been the primary tool of the web-savvy marketer. Whether the...

Content Sharing Via Social...

Target marketing to meet your business goals Is your business using social media channels...

Social Media Spotlight:...

Until Facebook came along, Google was the undisputed online leader. However, this started...

Can you get help to fund your...

If you need a new website, it’s possible that you could get help towards the cost....

Leave a Comments