A Guide to Content Marketing Automation

What is content marketing automation?

In the simplest terms, content marketing automation is when software programs are used to initiate and complete time-consuming and repetitive tasks in the content marketing process without manual intervention after the initial setup.

There are a variety of content marketing automation tools such as those that automatically publish content for your various social media platforms and others that are programmed to examine your blogging data analytics.

Certain marketing software programs even feature project management tools, so you can spend more time doing creative work rather than administrative work like editorial scheduling and tracking the progress of various projects.

How can businesses benefit from content marketing automation

Content marketing automation makes your marketing efforts that much more effective and effortless. It gives you and your marketing team the ability to concentrate on what really matters — developing a competitive, evergreen content marketing strategy to grow your audience and revenue.

Marketing automation has a number of appealing benefits, including:

Freeing up resources

Marketing automation makes your content marketing that much more efficient. Having to babysit repetitive content marketing tasks like manually sending out welcome emails as a part of your email marketing can be a massive time suck.

Not to mention it could exacerbate your marketing team’s burnout. With automation software, you and your team will have more time to complete tasks that take more involvement and decision making.

Saving money

Marketing automation reduces around 12 percent of marketing spend. Learning which tasks can be automated in your content marketing process makes it easier for you to hire the right people for your marketing team. Having a small, tight-knit group of experienced marketing professionals can help your business reduce costs and run like a well-oiled machine.

Improving productivity and creativity

If your marketing team is stuck in a rut in terms of coming up with content ideas, marketing automation can give you insight on which keywords to focus on and what trends to follow. Certain marketing automation platforms have proven formulas that simplify content creation processes. Email marketing templates and content title examples that guarantee user engagement take the guesswork out of content ideation.

Lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead management

With content marketing, not only are you reaching your target audience and providing them with the information they want, but you are also establishing your brand as a thought leader in your field and creating customer loyalty. With marketing automation, handily push personalized content to lead your customers down the sales and marketing funnels.

Gathering data and insights with ease

When it comes to dealing with numbers and analyzing key metrics for content, humans are nowhere near as adept and accurate as computers. Content marketing automation tracks the performance of your content, so you can better optimize it for the future. Dashboards, graphs, overviews, and key indicators can strengthen your content marketing efforts and help you create relevant content.

Potential drawbacks to automating content marketing

Of course, there are also potential drawbacks to automating content marketing. However, rather than letting these drawbacks stop you from using automation software, think of them as obstacles in the way of your marketing success. They are very much avoidable as long as you are aware of them.

Predictability

While marketing automation can reduce human error and optimize your content marketing strategy through analyzing customer data and tracking user behavior, it can also become predictable, especially if it is too often relied upon.

If you are always publishing the same type of automated content at a certain time in the day as a part of your content strategy, your audience may become too accustomed to it. Rather than being enticed to see a new update, they may entirely tune you out.

Impersonality

Despite the advances in AI technology and machine learning, at times, content marketing automation can still make your marketing campaigns appear too strategic. Make your brand’s voice and values shine through and customize your content marketing to show your audience you really care.

Spam

Unfortunately, when not done correctly, content created with automation software can be marked as spam by search engines like Google. Your content can be repetitive and even duplicated if you don't pay attention to it or have someone on your team review it. In an attempt to build more backlinks and include more SEO keywords, your website can also seem unnatural and spammy as a result.

4 Types of content marketing automation tools and software

When deciding what content marketing automation software to use, consider your business’s goals and needs. What features are you most looking forward to? For example, do you need more help with content management or content creation?

Take a look at the following marketing automation tools to improve your content marketing automation:

Workflow management automation tools

Content marketing automation truly shines in terms of workflow management.

Whether it’s delegating tasks, tracking the process on different projects, checking deadlines, or posting automated content at the most opportune times, the project management tools included in marketing automation software can help you stay on top of the small details and repetitive tasks that have the ability to impact your success.

Especially if you have a high volume of content marketing tasks, the right tools for workflow management can really help you save time and effort.

Social media marketing automation tools

Social media marketing can sometimes be grouped under content marketing, with many content marketing automation tools benefiting the oversight of a business’ numerous social media platforms.

In addition, social media marketing can work in tandem with content marketing. For example, as soon as a blog post is published on your company website, your social marketing tools can trigger a post with a link to the page, garnering a wider reach.

Overall, this type of content marketing automation tool can schedule posts ahead of time, repost popular content from your website, reduce customer service response time, increase brand awareness, and more.

Email marketing automation tools

Software programs for content marketing automation often feature email marketing tools as well.

These tools help manage your subscribers, segment your mailing list by demographics, and execute timely deliveries. They enable brands to be a constant part of their customers’ lives and connect with them on a deeper level.

Mailchimp’s Email Automation Software offers flexible automation that adapts to fit your goals and allows you to import data from your frequently used platforms for better results.

Data and analytics automation tools

Tracking the performance of your content is a big part of improving your overall content plan.

While you may already have stats and data at your disposal, being able to make sense of them is what really counts. There are automated analytics tools for content marketing that can help you see the patterns behind the numbers, tracking metrics like traffic sources, click-through rates, shares, backlinks, bounce rates, and time spent on page.

Some marketing automation software with the right tools will also have the ability to conduct A/B testing and spam testing automatically.

Prioritize content marketing in your business strategy

To grow your audience, prioritize content marketing as a part of your digital marketing strategy. Save time, effort, and money with content marketing automation and take your business to the next level. While content marketing helps you attract, engage, and retain your audience, automation makes it easy and painless.

Just getting started on your digital marketing journey? Check out Mailchimp’s Marketing Library for more resources and tips.

Learn about the different types of marketing, how to start a company blog, and more. Ready to foray into the world of marketing automation? Get to know Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder. Try Mailchimp today.