What is Marketing Automation?

When an individual makes a product individually, it is necessary for he/she to show to her customers that you’ve made a production. If no one is aware of that product, then it does not turn into a sale or a business.

At this point, that person has to announce that she has made a production. A marketing campaign should be created to turn that production into a business. The marketing campaign is carried out by informing surrounding people, posting the product’s pictures on social media, making it seen by many people as possible. The total amount of self-announcement that starts from this point is called a marketing activity. 

The process is the same for companies. They provide products or services to their customers to generate revenue. A company needs to make people aware of its current and potential buyers about the products and services it offers. There are various (conventional) traditional marketing methods as known as marketing mix for self-promotion. For example, traditional marketing strategies are activities that reach large masses by organizing advertising campaigns by using tools such as television, radio, print media, and billboards. Examples of these;

• Television advertisements,
• Magazine advertisements,
• Promotional activities in social media, 
• Participating fairs, the platform where potential buyers are marketing their products
• Personal sales, door-to-door sales, marketer

It is aimed to reach more buyers by advertising campaigns by applying these strategies.

In marketing campaigns, all activities carried out to promote a company’s products and services and reach more audiences are defined as marketing.

Marketing automation is a toolset that automates these processes when you run a marketing campaign. For example, you can use email automation that a part of marketing automation to organize and automate your emails.

In today's trends, the goal of reaching the masses is much more effective and faster through digital channels. Today, it’s provided an opportunity to reach more users through digital marketing methods without paying high fees to TV advertisements. For example; it’s now possible to create viral on Twitter. It is possible to reach the masses without paying any fee when a message is created that will spread and grow rapidly in the internet environment when tweets are posted. It is necessary to rethink marketing activities with today's technologies for the digital marketing environment.

In accordance with today’s marketing settings, each company should act like a media company. Media companies have various channels, such as televisions, newspapers, magazines, editors, copywriters, and print houses. If it's a television, it must have a license. On the television license broadcasting side, there must be several structures ranging from the organization that prepares the programs and to the infrastructure systems. 

This is how the system has been operated in traditional media companies. However, there is an incredible transformation to the digital marketing side, including also those traditional media companies today. Media companies must be in digital marketing platforms. Newspapers now reach their readers in digital environments rather than in print. To this extent, today they use video streaming channels instead of a television channel. Since people prefer using streaming services on computers and mobile phones, TV is losing its validity. It is broadcasted on television just to watch it on the big screen. There is a trend such as watching the broadcasts on the internet rather than the normal TV station channel. Classical media companies have also had to invest in digital marketing methods and those who do not have lost their validity. At this point, the old ones are also trying to keep up with digitalization.

Apart from classic media companies, the other companies actually have an opportunity within their own organizations. Firms should establish a media structure, even if it is very small. The structure is formerly called the marketing department in the classical sense. Each company should be in a position to provide its own media company with its media structure. The nominal and the real cost of media structuring is almost zero. If there is the internet, a computer is a must. With only a few new personnel hiring, it becomes able to make its media structuring at the cost of personnel only.

For example; the cost of creating, promoting, and making an informational video consists only of the time spent on them. Apart from this, no fee is paid to youtube or the internet to publish the content. It provides the opportunity to carry out the marketing activities of the media company since it is not paid. If it was before, the media company should have had enough level of infrastructure to carry out the publishing job. Nowadays, however, these infrastructures are not necessary. So, companies should establish their own media structures.

We need to think and build the marketing department and the marketing plan and the marketing strategy in accordance with the media structure of the media company. Media structuring is the organizational scheme that companies use when expressing themselves. On the other hand, the company has to tell its customers why they should buy its product and service rather than buying the competitors’. At the same time, it should tell its customers what kind of products it has, and what it offers before competitors. 

Today's customers do not demand advertisements, but they demand information. Because there are advertisements and promotional activities from all sides, people are bombarded by television and the internet. If some companies provide the information sought, customers should prefer to listen to them.

Marketing activities should be focused on information not in the form of direct advertising, but in the form of indirect advertising. In accordance with those marketing activities, both visually and in the form of digital printing, e-newsletters, emails, we should consider meeting with customers. 

Today's trends are both risky and offer great opportunities at the same time. If companies can seize these opportunities, they have a great chance to promote themselves. However, as their competitors are also doing these, if they are late, their competitors may get ahead in the competition really quickly. So, companies should hurry up to catch the latest trends.

The digital marketing department should take action at this point in order not to miss the marketing trends in digital channels. Companies are not just like outsourced services, rather it would be the healthiest for them to establish these departments and structures within their boundaries. They may still receive support from outside, but it is more important that they develop this information inside. It will appear as a marketing medium that will be more common in the coming years.

Let's give an example of the marketing activities we conduct without marketing automation. For instance, let’s say we’re fishing with a fishing net. We don't know where the fish is, so we throw our net much wider. While our goal is actually to catch bonito, we may end up catching different kinds of fish. Thus, without marketing automation, our marketing activities appear as a matter of luck, just as in the example.

Also, if we use marketing automation, we will have more information about the audience and their location. For example, we may know from our previous experience that bonito can be caught between 7:00 am and 9:00 a.m., in September. And since we only want bonito fish, a specific network of bonito is created. TV advertisements are given to the channel in this direction. At this point, we have general information about which segment is followed.

If we take this subject in segmentation from the customer side, we can say that we may have a diverse customer base. For example, there may be corporate or individual customers. At this point, we must do our marketing activities according to this customer base and create a marketing campaign specific to the audience. 

In another classification, the segment of our other product and service may be different. There may be other customer bases that we should create a specific campaign for. Data is needed to do these. Performing a manual analysis of your data is not both profound and sustainable over time. At this point, we have to take advantage of the power of digitalization software.

Marketing automation tools are marketing activities that are made as personal as possible. It can be personalized, sent to customers, e-mailed, SMSed, and advertised. It should be considered as an advertisement that comes across when the person goes online. The more personalized these are, the more the people they touch, the higher their effectiveness. 

From this point of view, the better the customers are known, the better they are classified for these activities, and the more successful the marketing is. What we mean by classification is the form of advertising promotion targeting the ideal customer base we call marketing personnel. It is the system we call marketing personnel that determines the decision-makers at the ideal product and service purchase point. Marketing staff is expressed as the ideal customer base. 

It is not mentioned here that you produce an end consumer product. Even if you are a B2B sales company, there is a person, a staff member, who decides on it. It can be the general manager of the company, the purchasing manager. Ultimately, it should be targeted and a communication campaign should be conducted towards it, meeting its needs and engaging with it. We have to improve our personalization and understanding of the counterparty to increase campaign recycling rates.

In terms of activities, campaigns, or marketing automation tools can be a normal advertising campaign, an e-newsletter, a form we make on the website. Here, most responses are personal emails. Email marketing companies use email management in product and service promotion and informative messages to reach a specific target audience. These are e-mails in which you are told your needs in a personalized way as much as possible. If we can put these emails into the automation system, we will reach very serious volumes. At this point, returns are among the highest marketing automation techniques.

Companies should focus their marketing activities on information, not as direct advertising, but as indirect advertising. As a result of these marketing activities, they can meet with customers by using both visual and digital printing tools, e-newsletters, e-mails, or other digital means.

It should start with why. Why would you care? In accordance with that, manual operations can be arranged. Then, it is necessary to answer the question of how. How will manual operations be automated by the power of the software? Lastly, you should introduce your product, the features of your product, what kind of product or service you have. In this way, they are marketing automation techniques with a good conversion rate in campaigns. 

Advertising in e-newsletters has a good but gradually decreasing impact. Because there are promotional and advertising campaigns from all sides. At this point, it is necessary to be different and sincere. The products and services you have should have to solve the problem of your target audience. The person who will solve and understand the problem of the target audience and reach them with a correct communication method will be satisfied with the marketing campaign. Hence, it will enable you to reach your customers. Let's create such a marketing campaign strategy that when you reach it by advertising, e-newsletter, or personal mail, the other party should say that you have reached me. Even if it seems like a very difficult target, the ideal way of doing this is to think about and approach this issue from the above mentioned strategies. At this point, it is necessary to be sincere and to understand the customer very well, to show them that we can meet their needs with our products and services.

At this point, it is a must to use a CRM system, where information about target customers and potential customers is kept, to catch the attention of people who are not yet your customers. When we look at CRM as a layer, it is the customers with whom we contact and communicate more closely as a result of these features. That’s what exactly Prosofly does. 

If we consider marketing as a funnel, our customer relationship management system (CRM) allows us to include a relevant customer base. It is to create demand and reach as much potential audience as possible. At this point (CRM) customer relationship management system is aimed to make people who have not yet become customers and to enable us to sell more products and services to them.     

Marketing automation and CRM should be thought of as two complementary structures. Marketing automation is a relatively new concept. So, it is not a tool that is reflected in all companies and economies. CRM systems are yet to be used effectively by companies. Some use it effectively, though, but their crew is not that crowded. As a result, marketing automation is a much less-used tool.

When we look at the world, the history of marketing automation, CRM systems, and cloud computing software, etc, we can say that they have a maximum of ten years of history. They previously existed in older systems, but they have become more widespread in the 2010s. Their popularity, including cloud computing today, has also emerged after the 2000s. People often still have safety concerns related to the use of cloud programs. It takes time in the world to spread these to all companies.

Combining marketing automation and CRM gives companies incredible power. It allows analyzing the market at a higher level. It also reflects on product and service development and creates a competitive advantage. Marketing automation has to be a system that feeds CRM directly. It helps companies’ sales and marketing departments to work in coordination. So, marketing automation has a notable value. 

When automating marketing activities for our current and potential customers, we will have a chance to introduce ourselves in the cut. We will give more details of our products and will be able to cross-sell to catch opportunities. In addition, we will have an understanding of the customers’ expectations and have a chance to design our products or services accordingly. Thus, it is a useful vehicle.

If you manage the results of marketing automation with your CRM system, marketing automation gives you information and intelligence, and the customer relationship management system keeps the information there. Accordingly, it allows you to manage the status of the customer, the level of sales with your products and services, as well as after-sales support and your connection with your customer in the system.

Marketing automation is your company's spokesperson. What we call a tool is a means of communication. That is, the way you express your company to the public. To this extent, marketing automation tools are the means of reaching customers. Marketing automation enables us to take the intelligence, analyze and manage both the campaign, the communication, and the feedback as a result of that communication. Marketing automation is our eyes and ears. When marketing automation and CRM are together in this way, the competitive advantage they provide increases to a very considerable high level. 

Marketing automation helps to better know the target audience and to make more accurate communication campaigns for them. Digitalization of marketing processes, where outputs are clearer and where we follow the customer demand structure more closely, is a requirement for today's companies.

Marketing automation creates many new growth avenues for the company. The result is a lot of new work to be done in order for the company to increase its sales and get to know its customer base better. However, if the advertisements made in this direction do not reach the required segment, companies should examine this issue in detail. At this point, what should be questioned is whether the company's product or service appeals to the target customer group.

Marketing automation facilitates not only selling but also the product and service development process. In this way, you can change or improve your company's operations. There is a saying in consultancy about this process: Sales and operation should go in line with each other.

If the firm produces a product and pushes customers to buy, this is called a push strategy. It is defined as the marketing strategy that companies push products and services towards customers. With the push strategy, high cost and customer satisfaction about the product are not considered. So-called pull strategy, rather than push strategy; The strategy in which the requests, information, and data from the customer are included in the operation processes should be used. Thanks to the pull strategy, the customer knows which product and service to buy and the satisfaction of the products is high.

It is by talking to the customer to understand whether products and services attract customers. The target here should be to reach hundreds of thousands or to manage audiences that are not our customers. We have to read the signals given by marketing automation correctly and organize our operation processes accordingly. The structure we call sales and operation planning can become much more efficient and effective thanks to the digitalization of marketing in this sense. In this way, the new task arises with marketing automation.

In line with all these, the most important goal is to sell to designated customers. The pull strategy helps the company understand the customers involved. Customers who are already interested will be the people who clicked the campaign, spent time, and were in the sales process. Therefore, as a company, we can be sure that our customers will buy the products or services we produce. As a result, the efficiency of the sales process increases.

In the old system, salespeople would have gone to thousands of customers. This would both increase costs and affect motivation. Instead, companies are now very familiar with the products and services that their customers enjoy. Thanks to marketing automation, increases the efficiency of operations. In addition to these, in the process of developing new products or new services, it can do market research thanks to marketing automation without even launching the product. In other words, it does not bother to develop products and services, it only plans and attracts customers.

Tesla, for example, collects the demand for these vehicles before product development, when there is no physical vehicle yet, and takes a deposit from each requesting party. Thus, it provides financing from its customers. Tesla does this with its products. Obviously, we are not saying get an advance payment from customers, rather we say that you can get a signal from your customers whether the products and services you plan to develop are worth it or not. This enables marketing automation to create a system and important output that will direct companies such as the compass.