Social media is a crucial part of any b2b marketing strategy. However, b2b companies often report that there aren't enough hours in the day for all of their existing marketing tasks. If that's your experience, marketing automation could be the solution to improve your social media marketing strategy.

Social media marketing automation is far more than scheduling content. Planning your content marketing, as well as bulk uploading and scheduling your posts helps. But marketing automation software also gives you marketing and sales improvements through improved customer experience and an increase in lead generation.

In this post, we will cover questions such as:

How effective is social media marketing automation?
How do companies measure the effectiveness of social media marketing automation?
How does marketing automation compare to social media post schedulers?
Does a social media marketing automation strategy create a positive customer experience?
Will social media marketing automation help with lead generation?
Is marketing automation right for social media marketing?

We'll also learn more about how marketing automation can assist your organisation in your social media marketing efforts.

Compelling Statistics About Marketing Automation and Social Media

Almost 70 percent of companies find improved targeting of messages is the most important benefit of marketing automation

Social media marketing is a great way to interact with the b2b buyer, decision-makers and existing customers online. While potentially time-consuming, it provides companies with a platform to speak one-on-one with their target audiences. Automating social media can help organisations save time so they can focus on other areas of their business.

It's easy to say that automated social media marketing is beneficial. However, these statistics prove the power of marketing automation when combined with social media marketing.

On average, 51 percent of companies are currently implementing a marketing automation strategy.
Automating social posts and ads saves more than 6 hours per week on social media management. It also keeps your profiles updated with content.
Over 80 percent of organisations say social media post scheduling is the most suitable application for a marketing automation platform.
Marketing automation is one of the four most popular methods to create personalised customer experiences.
You can increase your reply rate by 250% when you automate your social media marketing strategy.
Almost 70 percent of companies find improved targeting of messages is the most important benefit of marketing automation.
Marketing automation strategy contributes to increased sales, according to 64 percent of companies.
Nearly 75 percent of marketers find that marketing automation saves time in their day-to-day tasks.

Combining social media with marketing automation is a no-brainer. Social media automation saves time, creates positive customer experiences, and improves targeted messaging.

Marketing Automation Is Not Your Average Social Media Post Scheduler

Your marketing automation platform will allow you to plan ahead and schedule posts, including links and attachments

When it comes to automated social media marketing, many will think of a social media scheduler. These schedulers allow an organisation to schedule multiple posts in advance. This means a member of the team doesn't need to login to each account and create posts every day. However, social media schedulers typically cannot do much more than that.

Marketing automation platforms are different. We partner with Sharpspring, a sophisticated marketing automation platform that is still easy to use. After setting up your SharpSpring account, built-in APIs connect your social media accounts. Currently, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be synced with new APIs being created to serve the needs of SharpSpring users.

Your marketing automation platform will allow you to plan ahead and schedule posts, including links and attachments. A calendar with daily, weekly and monthly views allows you to manage multiple posts per day across all your platforms. Better still, you can see all other actions that are planned by your organisation. You can view when your email campaigns, meetings, calls and other events are due to happen, and co-ordinate accordingly.

An integrated marketing automation platform will show you which leads are interacting with your social media posts. In Sharpspring's Life of the Lead dashboard, you can see which specific posts a lead "liked", "shared", and "retweeted". Along with your social analytics, you can see which posts are encouraging engagement.

An average post scheduler cannot show you who is "hot" and which leads need to be nurtured right now. Marketing automation lets you assign lead score points to important social interactions. Monitoring when leads complete one of these actions allows you to provide the specific information your prospect needs.

Custom-built workflows trigger an automated email sequence or notify your sales team when a lead reaches a certain lead score. Knowing when a lead is showing a lot of interest in your organisation helps you interact when they are primed to make a purchase decision. You can use this opportunity to fully nurture the lead and determine what they desire from your company.

A Dynamic Duo: SharpSpring and Social Media Marketing

Social media strategy goes hand in and with SharpSpring. The platform's social media scheduler helps marketing departments save time every week. It can also improve your social media team's communication and workflow.

When SharpSpring is used to enhance your social media marketing strategy, you can expect the following benefits:

Ease of scheduling
A better understanding of customer engagement
Increased lead generation
Ability to see end-to-end ROI

In addition to the Life of the Lead, SharpSpring also has social monitoring and listening features. You can see your feeds and mentions of your account, specific keywords or search terms. In addition, you can monitor your competition’s accounts. You don’t even need to leave the SharpSpring platform to do social media research on your competitors.

Improving your interaction with your audience results in increased lead generation. Life of the Lead shows at a glance what information your prospects are interested in. You can see the specific products or services they engage with. You can even see their sentiment toward your company.

Workflows can be built into the system to notify someone in your organisation when leads interact with a specific post. Interest in a particular page on your website can often be a good indicator of a qualified lead. A prospect clicking through from a post can trigger a notification for a member of your sales team to follow up. You can improve their customer experience and keep moving them down the pipeline.

Due to SharpSpring’s social tracking abilities, it’s easy to see the effectiveness of social media campaigns. You can assign UTM codes to specific campaigns, platforms or members of your team to see what types of posts are most engaging, which platforms generate the best quality leads and whose efforts are gaining the most traction.

Social Media Marketing Automation Expertise

Nearly 40 percent of organisations not already using marketing automation will invest in the next 12 months. These organisations will utilise the power of marketing automation to empower their current social media strategy. They will see better lead generation and create a better customer experience.

Don't fall behind the competition. We combine Sharpspring's capabilities with our extensive business to business marketing knowledge to create compelling campaigns for b2b companies. Contact us today to find out more about campaign planning and how SharpSpring can improve your social media marketing strategy firsthand.

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