Marketing Automation in the Mission-Driven Organization

I admire people who create art, carry out ‘do it yourself’ projects or even beekeeping as I discovered my relative did. They are passionate about their hobbies and gain much pleasure from a time well spent. My hobbies revolve around film, books, cooking shows and most of all ‘brand watching.’

I spend upwards of 10 hours a week brand watching to learn how big brands achieve results. Fascinating stuff! My research starts with the question — “How do big brands accomplish xx?” The result of all this reading is usually a social post, a curated blog or use in some of my work. Answers would usually come easy until recently.

Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions. The technology of marketing automation makes these tasks easier. — Hubspot

The hunt for a marketing automation tool

I received an email from a company touting their ebook on Social Analytics. Though I was interested in the ebook, I was more curious about which marketing automation tool this company used to produce their email. In reviewing the source code in Chrome’s developer tools, I found that this company used Bizible. I hadn’t even heard of Bizible! I grew even more curious.

How can mission-driven organizations use automation tools and which one is best for their needs? There is no simple answer. The problem for mission-driven organizations is that they’ll need to wade through a sea of tools with different functionality — there are tons of them on the market.

“Marketing automation solutions have been used by big corporations for a while now. But, for small business, it’s still a tool that’s just starting to gain popularity. In fact, a Leadpages and Infusionsoft Small Business Marketing Trends Report shows that as much as 47% of small businesses still try to handle their marketing efforts by themselves.”

A dilemma for mission-driven organizations

Mission-driven organizations tend to have small marketing teams so yeah we handle our efforts. These small teams typically have limited budgets and no organization-wide strategy. These mission-minded individuals may not use terms like ROI, CRM, sales funnel, competition, etc. However, like big brands, we do compete! We compete for attention! We need people to know our mission, contribute to our cause, volunteer to serve, use our services, visit our social channels and more.

Like big brands, we need to create personas and determine how our customers journey through the sales (communications) funnel. We need to evaluate ROI as well as the effectiveness of our campaigns and social posts. We need to create inbound content and analyze results. We need the industry to view us as thought leaders. But, how do we get our message out?

Marketing automation will grow

According to some estimates, worldwide spending on marketing automation software will hit $32 billion this year so finding a solution is going to be important. For MarComm Pros, carving out a corner in our budget for marketing automation may be tough to sale so we must understand how to pitch this tool to senior executives. Hiring a marketing automation manager is probably not in the budget either. The salary range for skilled professionals from Glassdoor range from $80k up.

Leaders in marketing automation

The Internet is full of content from influencers and thought leaders; however, it seems like there are more ‘how to’ guides written by software vendors than thought leaders. Since marketing automation comprises many different tactics, each tactic appears to have a thought leader, according to Mathew Sweezey who offers an excellent breakdown of these tactics.

Follow these leaders

1. Chad S. White (@chadswhite) — The Biggest Email Marketing Challenges of 2018
2. Neil Patel (@neilpatel) — Marketing Automation Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide
3. John Boitnott (@jboitnott) — Top Marketing Automation That Makes You Look More Genuine
4. Christopher S. Penn (@cspenn) — First Steps Towards Thinking About Automation in Marketing
5. Jodi Harris (@Joderam) — How to Deliver Emails That Will Increase Reach, Impact, and Subscriber Satisfaction

Mission-driven organizations can benefit from automation

I’ve used Hubspot in the past and it’s simple to use and offers a lot of educational content. Comparing tools is time-consuming for a small staff so check out the Top Marketing Automation Software Analyst Report. SelectHub may also be a good solution as it optimizes and standardizes technology evaluation so it could save time and money in selecting the right software. I can personally say that Ben Holland was responsive to my request for information.

Where do we go from here?

I suspect this influencer-thought-leader-bubble will burst one day leaving behind only those leaders who earned the right to call themselves experts. However, I wonder where mission-driven organizations will land in this inbound content driven landscape. What I do know for sure is that we can’t create content, post it on our website and hope we raise awareness or attract clients. There is a new way to compete in the marketing field and it’s not going anywhere.

With all the data available to drive decisions, we need to refocus our attention from beyond raising awareness. We need to adopt an automated solution to maximize our time and resources.

Shortlink: http://bit.ly/marketing-automation-by-trenay-bynum