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Programmatic advertising is when brands automate the buying and selling of ads in real-time using an automated bidding system. Programmatic media allows companies to buy impressions on sites or apps in an efficient and quick-response ecosystem.

To put it a different way, programmatic advertising lets companies set their media purchase for advertisements on auto-pilot using specialized software using real-time bidding processes.

In essence, using programmatic technology is the next step in marketing and advertising.

Using traditional advertising, brands need to purchase their media inventory manually. Networks would buy digital impressions ahead of time from a variety of sites and applications, repacking them then be sold on to marketers. In this old scenario there was no clear view of where the media had come from. Doing this required salespeople, proposals, and plenty of space for human error; it was inefficient, tricky, costly, and time-consuming for everyone involved.

The automated systems that drive programmatic advertising is faster, more efficient, and less expensive. Marketers and advertisers gain more detailed insights into advertising campaigns by purchasing individual impressions. By using strategic dashboards, marketers can manage their ad campaigns from any angle.

What are the Benefits of Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic Advertising has several key benefits:

1. Improved Transparency and Control

Due to the very nature of the technology that allows programmatic advertising to be far more transparent than traditional advertising methods. Using the ecosystems provided, advertisers have the ability to track exactly what sort of reach their ads have – what sites they reach, the kinds of customers paying attention, and any real-time expenses linked to their advertising in real time. A direct advantage of this is that marketers and advertisers can optimize at any stage, tailoring their advertisements to best meet objectives on the fly.

2. Improved Efficiency

Digital advertising has improved efficiency of marketing campaigns already. The programmatic elements of new advertising systems lets advertisers measure and track each step of their campaigns. This allows them to optimize on the fly, thus improving efficiency.

3. Increased Targeting Capacity

Using the automation that programmatic advertising provides, advertisers can tailor their targeting parameters to meet their exact requirements. The flexibility of the new technology allows users to really reach their ideal customer base and target objectives. For example, by using IP Zoning, geolocation targeting, and contextual keyword programming. IP Zoning targets specific IP addresses, and is typically used to reach people for business activities or events. Geolocation targets area-specifics, through geolocation data like zip codes, states, or cities.

4. Real-time Reporting and Measurement

Every marketer is constantly chasing real-time data. Data provides the founding blocks for improving strategies and reach. Programmatic advertising allows advertisers to measure exactly how each element of their campaign is doing. This performance data lets advertisers see where improvements can be made, build on successful aspects of the campaign, and tweak targeting settings to get the most out of the campaigns.

5. Improved Audience Reach

Aside from improved audience targeting, programmatic advertising also offers the opportunity for the all-important retargeting. Statistics tell us that only 2% of consumers convert on their first visit to a website, retargeting allows marketers to continue to reach out to the remaining audience and encourage them to the website, improving the conversion rate.

How do you Successfully Implement Programmatic Advertising to improve Customer Engagement?

Programmatic advertising can be used to reach specific audiences, achieve clear target objectives, and regarget missed conversions. The key to using programmatic media to improve customer engagement and reach is to make sure that all parameters are optimized.

Customer engagement is vital to building customer loyalty. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2020:

74% of customers feel loyal to a particular brand or company
52% of customers report going out of their way to buy from their favorite brands

Keeping these statistics in mind, driving customer engagement is vital for every brand, leading to improved conversion rates and a boost to sales. Using programmatic advertising, marketers can directly improve the conversion rates of their advertising campaigns, driving traffic with increasing success. The flexibility and data-driven insights gained from programmatic advertising allows brands to take their marketing to the next level, improving reach, transparency, and reporting.

Final Thoughts

Marketing technology has evolved over the years, developing better and better tools in a short duration. These improvements have given marketers and advertisers greater capacities to control and reach their target audiences, increasing customer engagement, and as a result directly improving the customer experience – after all, customers do not want to be shown advertisements that hold no interest for them. As technology continues to develop, marketers will have to take further responsibility for the data they collect and the consumers they reach. Technological advancement is going to be the key to the continual evolution of marketing, and programmatic advertising is an all-important element in this evolution. In short, programmatic advertising is, without a doubt, a large part of the future of marketing.

If you want to start taking advantage of programmatic advertising in your digital performance marketing strategies, get in touch today and let us help you reach the future!

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Your marketing team, no matter how good, is only human. From managing marketing campaigns, customer engagement and multiple social media accounts, there are many marketing tasks that require daily attention. The smaller your marketing team, the harder they find it to stay on top of campaigns, which affects your business’ efficiency and ability to generate sales qualified leads. Fortunately, there is a way to keep up with your company’s marketing tasks all at once – Automated marketing.

Never heard of it before? You’re probably not alone. A whopping 90 percent of marketers don’t know what automated marketing is and how it can reduce workload while increasing productivity. By the end of this article, you’ll be glad to have joined the remaining 10%.

Marketing Automation And Getting Good Results

As a business, personalization is key to connecting with your customers. This helps to build positive relationships and encourage loyalty. However, as your customer base grows, it’s harder to keep up with personalizing every single interaction you have with them.

Such was the issue for Math Plus Academy, a children’s tuition agency aiming to create a fun learning experience for kids.

Founder Raj Shah implemented several marketing strategies to boost his agency’s performance but achieved unsatisfactory results. They overspent on online advertising and several marketing obstacles made the academy’s offers unappealing, making expansion hard. In fact, their marketing objectives took precious time away from developing their primary product: fun-filled courses for the kids.

However, Shah was introduced to Infusionsoft, an integrated automated marketing platform. It efficiently managed his business with its automated customer relationship management (CRM) system, allowing him the time he desired to work on his product. His courses sold better through an integrated and efficient e-commerce module creation, expanding his reach.

Getting to Know Automated Marketing

For Math Plus Academy, marketing automation led to an overall increase in business efficiency and sales. In fact, companies that utilize automated marketing experience an 80 percent increase in leads and a 77 percent increase in conversions, according to VentureBeat. There is a lot to be gained if you’re willing to take the time with the initial set up.

Three Major Channels of Automated Marketing

Marketing automation allows marketers to utilize software to perform repetitive online marketing tasks. When we think of repetitive tasks in terms of digital marketing, we can distribute them into 3 broad online channels.

1. Email Marketing (also SMS Marketing)

If you have a large, well-segmented audience, sending out emails or SMS can be a full-time task, even with a few templates prepared. Fortunately, you can turn to software to automatically send out emails or SMS that are triggered by certain events (a new subscriber, an enquiry, etc.).

2. Social Media Marketing

Managing multiple social accounts for your business can be time-consuming and even disorganized. However, automated marketing software lets you manage multiple accounts on a single platform and even automates your social media engagement. It allows you to connect with your followers and leads with the least amount of effort.

3. Landing Pages

Landing pages are what your customers see when they click through on links in your emails. In the past, it took a lot of time and effort in designing landing pages that appeal to your audience. Marketing automation makes it easy to customize landing pages and content to your segmented audience depending on where they are in the sales funnel.

Getting Started with Automated Marketing

1. Organize Your Contact List

The first thing you need to do is establish a centralized list of contacts. This may be the most time-consuming step of the process as you gather these contacts into a single list.

Jog your memory a bit; where do you typically store contact names and email addresses? Search through your desk for business cards, look at email sign up forms, and squeeze your hard drive dry of any spreadsheets with email addresses. Once you have them all, be sure to discard contacts that you’ve not been in touch with for over a year and are unlikely to remember you.

Make sure to create contact groups based on criteria relevant to your business. Organize them according to their interests to make it easier to send personalized emails. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to import them into your marketing automation software.

2. Know Your Audience

Sending the same email to everyone doesn’t work as customers want to feel connected to your business on a personal level. Catering to your customer’s personal interests is one way that helps you create that connection. Use Google Analytics for insights on your site visitors, and develop email content based on the customer personas you have created for your business and their interests.

3. Create Your First Email

There are many types of emails you can try sending. For example, welcome emails, qualification emails, trial emails, newsletters, and DIY Course emails.

Start by repurposing high-quality content from your business’ blog to send as an email. You can experiment with different approaches and find out which are successful and which are flops. Infusionsoft (2Stallions is an Infusionsoft Certified Partner), among other automated marketing software, can help you design your first email, save templates, and organize a profitable contact list. If you’re having trouble designing an eye-catching, quality email, utilize software that can guide you with templates and newsletter creation interface.

4. Create More Content

When someone gives you their email, they are inviting you to be part of their digital lives. In return, you have to dish out quality, gated content. You can send them eBooks, whitepapers, online courses, and more. The goal is to build a relationship with your contact list over time and see it prosper.

See to it that you only send relevant content. For instance, if a portion of your contact list consists of fitness enthusiasts, send them workout routines courses that they can do from home.

5. Track and Improve Performance

It is great that you’ve invested time and effort to connect with your audience. However, there is always room for improvement, and you should find out how you can take your automated marketing strategy a step further.

Analysing your email list is one way to find out. How many contacts did you start off with and how many do you have now? Open rates and click-through rates can also give you an idea of what content your customers are interested in and what they are not. Data such as these matters if you want to expand your reach and improve your marketing efforts. Below are some metrics to keep an eye out for once you launch your automated marketing venture:

Contact List Size: Keep tabs on your contact list size and track its growth. Decide on a goal to reach by the end of the year. How many contacts are you aiming for at the end of the month? Ask yourself these questions and work towards crossing out achieved goals at a steady pace.
Email Open and Clickthrough rates: You’ve experimented with a lot of email approaches and techniques. Which ones received the best open rates? Keeping this in mind will allow you to recalibrate your focus and invest more time and energy on the strategy that works and decrease efforts on flop approaches.
Engagement: Figure out what kind of content is best received by your audience. Which blog post reeled in more traffic? What sort of CTA got more visitors to take action? Utilize Google Analytics and find out which stuff works and what doesn’t. This will help you understand what type of content your audience wants to see more of for a better bottom line.
Unsubscribe Rate: An “unsubscribe” can be a little heartbreaking. However, it is important to pay attention to how many people are unsubscribing from your email list. If the rate increases over time, perhaps it is time to rethink your strategy, sending schedule, and content.

Automated Marketing Is Your Friend

Like anything new, automated marketing can seem intimidating. Despite this first impression, don’t let this great opportunity slip away. Automated marketing will require some effort and research on your part, but believe me when I say that the returns are worth it.

If you encounter any roadblocks to understanding and setting up your automated marketing strategy, leave a comment below or shoot us an email. We’ll be glad to shed some light on your issue and might have solutions to make your venture easier!

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