From artificial intelligence to machine learning, businesses representing various industries have evolved to adopt these advancements of automation in their marketing efforts in the hopes that they will improve processes tenfold. However, even with automation taking away a significant portion of human intervention, there are still areas that humans need to be involved in and with that comes the potential for human error.
When businesses don’t have the knowledge to leverage automation tools or maximise their usage, many marketers end up damaging their engagement rates and ROI. But marketers shouldn’t be so hard on themselves because these common mistakes are common for a reason.
Transitioning from traditional marketing strategies to automated marketing isn’t always a smooth process and some tools may even fall through the cracks. This is why the more you know about automation and the common mistakes people make, the more chances you will have to create a truly impactful marketing strategy.
While this may be true of any industry that chooses to venture into the ever-evolving world of automation, it’s especially so when it comes to healthcare marketing—an industry that’s continuously overworked and perhaps has a higher chance of seeing these common mistakes throughout its processes.
Mistake #1: Selecting the wrong automation tool for healthcare marketing
According to the State of B2B Marketing Automation Report, 59% of B2B professionals reported that they don’t think they’re maximising the features and benefits of their automation tools. Almost 46% stated that their biggest challenge was finding automation tools that have the capabilities they require.
Finding the right automation is a roadblock for a large number of marketers. So not only do marketers have to struggle with picking the tools, but they also have to struggle with learning how to use them. Selecting the right automation tool for healthcare is critical since it’s going to determine the best way to execute a successful marketing campaign.
Here are the top features you should consider when adopting healthcare marketing automation.
- User-friendly interface
- Integrations
- Ability to scale
- Knowledge base and customer support tools
- Advanced analytics and reporting
Mistake #2: Leveraging only one form of automation
Marketers often fall into the trap of using automation for a single set of tasks and focusing on that without really going the extra mile to expand its uses to other areas. This is perhaps an all too familiar way that marketers miss out on opportunities to improve the visibility of their healthcare facility. Taking advantage of these features will almost certainly ensure that you maximise your efficiency.
Marketers—like other professionals—have a lot of little tasks that they need to attend to during the course of the day that don’t seem to need a lot of time to be devoted to them. But if you add up all the time you spend updating contact information, posting on social media, and other tasks, you’ll find that there’s a lot of time that marketers spend doing manual tasks that can easily be automated.
Take a closer look at your healthcare marketing automation tool and see which processes are efficient. Every automation tool has its own merits and finding the features that work well for your healthcare facility is key to implementing automation that fits seamlessly with your processes.
The more you use automation tools, the more time you have to spend strategising about lead generation, lead nurturing, and more.
Mistake #3: Sending out emails to unsegmented lists
As a healthcare facility, you’ll have access to a database full of patients who can also be qualified leads, but the problem is that your marketing automation software sends out an array of emails that aren’t customised for your unique recipients.
Imagine a scenario where you’re sending out emails about cervical cancer but instead of sending them exclusively to your female leads, you end up sending them to every one of your patients. This means that your leads aren’t paying off because your emails aren’t useful to a large portion of your patients.
There’s really only one solution here and that’s to develop a lead nurturing strategy that includes segmentation so that you can send specific emails to the target group that it needs to reach.
With the right marketing automation software, you can seamlessly execute your segmentation strategy and get the results you want.
Mistake #4: Lacking an actionable goal
It’s important to transform with the times and adopt technology in your healthcare facility, but it’s also important to make sure that you have a plan in place rather than blindly making changes to your systems and processes which could end up costing you much more in the long run.
Determine what you’re trying to achieve with automation. Once you’ve come to a consensus, assign these goals to each automated effort, such as email workflows, social media, and so on to make it easier to track your progress.
Implementing a method to track your progress will tell you how successful your journey to automation is going to be and what changes or adjustments are needed to get the most out of your automation software.
Avoid making the same mistakes and hoping for a better outcome
If you’re using marketing automation in your healthcare facility, there’s a good probability that you’ve made some or all of the mistakes we’ve highlighted above, but that’s okay because humans aren’t perfect.
Marketing automation tools are changing and improving every day so it’s easy to make mistakes and leverage the latest technology that’s being rolled out. Once you’re aware of these common mistakes, you’ll definitely make sure that you don’t fall victim to them again and stay focused on improving your strategies.
While all this may seem fairly straightforward and simple, sometimes you may need a little extra help to get you started and guide you in the right direction. Working with an automation expert could give you the edge you need, help you find the custom healthcare marketing automation software that works for you, and get advice on the best way to optimise your automation tool.