In marketing, there’s an obvious expectation that your efforts will generate a return on investment (ROI). Each tool or resource you use should be contributing to this. If you can’t show a return on the resources you’re expending, it’s nearly impossible to justify them. Content automation is one such tool you may have in your arsenal, but is it really improving your results? How much is content automation contributing to your marketing ROI?
What Is Content Automation?
In most cases, content automation is lumped into marketing automation. But they are different beasts. Some may assume that content automation means the creation of content with some form of machine learning or artificial intelligence with rule-based algorithms. But in this context, content automation refers to the parts of the content production process that can be automated. With less important tasks handled by automation, your team can focus on more creative endeavors and optimizing your content strategy.
What Can You Automate?
If you have a robust content marketing platform, then you’ll have the ability to automate many time-intensive tasks, as well as those that disrupt workflow. So, what can content automation offer your company?
- Production workflows: Create templates and reuse them to automate task generation, team assignments, and production schedule calculations.
- Content calendars: Develop content calendars with easy drag-and-drop functionality, eliminating the manual work of formatting, updating, and distributing.
- Publishing: With integrations, you can automate when and how content is published, both on your website and on social media. By automating publishing, your team will get back the time previously used to complete these actions.
- Reporting: With all your data in one central hub, dashboards are preconfigured for each content channel. You’ll then be able to run automated reports to give you insights on content performance.
- Notifications: How much time does your team spend simply emailing updates and reminders for projects? There’s no need for this with content automation. Notifications are automatically emailed to impacted users. These also live on the dashboard so that when users log into the system, they are easily seen.
Where’s the Marketing ROI of Content Automation?
Looking at the automation capabilities you can execute, you’ve already seen how the process can save time and deliver better productivity. Here’s how content automation impacts your marketing ROI.
Greater Productivity
If your team gets back hours every week they once spent on mundane tasks, they’ll have more time to contribute to the big picture of content marketing. Writers have more time to write. Strategists have more time to look at content analytics and adapt the strategy as needed. Social media managers can use the time they would’ve spent posting to interact with followers and build a community.
Enhanced productivity means that your team can focus more time on the deliverables that matter the most, instead of being in the weeds of execution.
More Efficient Workflows
DivvyHQ Screenshot – Example Workflow
Content workflows should be part of your content marketing foundation. It’s meant to be a group or sequence of tasks that you engage in to complete a piece of content. Depending on the type of content, you may have numerous workflows. However, your workflows may not be efficient without the aid of automation.
Consider, if you use them, how your content workflows are delivering efficiency. If they only exist in some document that no one refers to, then they aren’t really adding to your ROI. They may be actually detracting from it.
When you have agile workflows that provide repeatable steps for content production, then you have efficiency. And when you can create efficiencies, you have ROI.
Optimize Efforts with Content Analytics
If your content performance data is in multiple places, then you’re spending a lot of time aggregating it and then attempting to decipher it. This process isn’t sustainable and won’t help you optimize your efforts. What content automation brings to the table is real-time insights on all your data, no matter where it lives.
With access to your data, you’ll have the ability to recognize trends and anomalies immediately. You may soon learn what content your audience prefers and the topics that matter to them the most. With this intel, you can inform all your future content to ensure it’s on target.
With more optimized content, you should see higher engagement from prospects, and with that comes more interest and moves them further down the sales funnel. Content analytics are vital to marketing ROI. Without easy access to your data, you’ll spend too much time and lose opportunities to improve content projects.
Boost Conversions with Content Automation for Lead Nurturing
Automation boosts conversions. It’s been proven in multiple surveys and studies. Content automation for lead nurturing is can significantly boost your conversions. To use content automation in moving prospects through the customer journey, you can personalize their experience.
In essence, you can automate what prospects see based on where they are in the buying process. This content could include automated emails based on actions or customized content on your website or landing pages. Content automation can be a powerful resource in increasing conversions.
Content Automation Breaks Down Silos
Silos in business hurt ROI. Silos are bad for content marketing and make content collaboration difficult. When no one is on the same page and can’t see the big picture, it weakens your team and efforts. Content automation is a great tool to break down silos, bringing all the pieces of the process together.
When this occurs, your team members better understand their value in driving meaningful and relevant content and how it derives ROI for your company. When silos are shattered, content collaboration is much easier, which can improve the quality of your content. Working seamlessly also saves time and provides visibility to all the parts of the process.
Content automation offers you so many benefits—save time, reduce costs, and redirection of efforts—to name a few. With content automation, you can see improvements in your marketing ROI, making it a proven tactic to help you convert and sell better and faster.
Learn how content automation on a content marketing software works by trying DivvyHQ’s platform. Start today with a free trial.