ROI is always a hot topic of discussion in social media. The most common questions surround how to initially engage people on social media, or how to effectively point them to CTA’s (calls to action) on your website so that ROI becomes more apparent. As technology has developed, these conversations have shifted to include mentions of using analytics and social media tracking tools to track mentions on your brand online.

But wouldn’t it be great if you could do more? What if you could reach potential customers as prospects by knowing that they are a frequent visitor to your website, have downloaded your whitepapers, or signed up for your webinars? Enter a new discussion topic: marketing automation.

Prospect identification is the main purpose behind having a marketing automation (MA) system in place that can run your social media campaigns. With a MA system in place, you can track how prospects, rather than just randoms, engage with you on social and turn this into more informed, qualified leads.

I know what you may be thinking – “what about apps like Hootsuite and Buffer?” While both of these programs are excellent for sharing and have great analytics, MA platforms go one step further by localising all of your social sharing in one place.

MA platforms operate as a hub for your digital marketing activities, providing you with one clear view of prospect interaction, reporting, and analytics in the same interface. This emphasises simplicity, while also enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Within the platform you can automate the content that you send to individuals based on the lead score you apply to them, because they have clicked on a link or signed up to a piece of content. The platform allows you to nurture individuals from suspect, to prospect, to existing customer. As the process is automated you can let the system do the work and place the individual in a cycle of which content to receive and when based on their behaviour.

I also care about marketing automation as a PR and marketing professional because there has been a great shift to inbound marketing and MA is essential to helping marketers capitalise on this change.

And PR itself has changed, moving on from just being about visibility and profile to become increasingly linked to lead generation. As content marketing and marketing automation become more widely used by companies, agencies need to be able to advise their customers on how to “PR” their MA campaigns to increase the flow of prospects to their website.

It is time to start the conversation. Think about marketing automation when you consider not only the ROI of your social media, but also how you can maximise your marketing and PR activities.

 

By Jennifer Reid, Director of The CommsCo.

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