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37 Tasks Every Marketer Should Automate
As a marketer, you're busy. And, even though you probably already know that automating tasks and workflows can free up a lot of time, it takes a lot of focus to set up, right?
Well, not necessarily.
With all of the marketing automation tools at your fingertips, it's simpler and speedier than ever to streamline your workflows.
To maximize your automation strategy, we've compiled some of the best marketing tasks that you should automate in your workflow.

35 Marketing Tasks to Automate
Email Tasks
1. Delivering Content Downloads
One of the most effective areas of your marketing strategy to automate is email. As one example, you can set up automated emails to deliver content opt-ins such as reports, ebooks, and free templates.
This can be instead of (or as well as) triggering the download in the person's browser. It also has the added benefit of enabling you to add a 'next step' CTA in the email body.

2. Email Newsletters
There's a wide spectrum of what you can do to speed up the time you spend on email newsletters.
You can start by streamlining simple things such as creating email templates or easily duplicated header designs to speed up your production process.
But your automation options don't end there. There's plenty of options of complex automation you can implement to suit your specific needs.

3. Drip Campaigns
Email drip campaigns are a pivotal part of any digital marketing strategy. By automatically enrolling contacts in a campaign based on defined criteria (such as opting into your mailing list or purchasing a specific product or service), you can automatically send tailored content at set intervals.
Most drip campaigns work effectively when there's a 'goal' for the lead to reach — such as subscribing to one of your paid plans. When they reach this, you can automatically unenroll them from this drip campaign and even enroll them in another one instead.
Here's a simple example of a drip campaign made with GetResponse:

4. Smart Personalization in Emails
All top email marketing platforms offer personalization tokens to customize your content for every recipient.
Take a closer look at your automated emails and regular newsletters to identify where and how you can put them to the best use.
5. Cart Abandonment Emails
Savvy marketers know to keep an eye on leads that are nearly converting but need a nudge to cross the line.
If you have an ecommerce store, this can be enabled with an automated cart abandonment email, just like what Shopify offers:

6. Customized Email Campaigns
Rather than having email drip campaigns for only one stage of your funnel, take time to create customized email campaigns for the entire customer lifecycle journey. You can create campaigns that share:

Top-of-funnel content for new leads unfamiliar with your product or service
Middle-of-funnel content that mentions your product and shows ways it can help them to solve their pain points and reach their goals
Bottom-of-funnel content with a deeper product focus

When these three types of campaigns are used together, you can seamlessly guide new leads to become paying customers — at the right pace and without more manual work on your plate.
7. Email Follow-Up
Fed up of manually chasing people who haven't got back to you? Many CRMs enable you to automatically follow up after a set interval (such as one week) so you don't have to spend hours on tedious follow-up.
Lead Generation Tasks
8. Minimalist Lead Generation
If you prefer a subtle approach to automated lead gen, there are countless tactics and brands to inspire your strategy.
On their simply-designed website, podcasters and writers The Minimalists show that lead gen doesn't have to be sleazy. It can be, well, minimal:

9. Website Banner Promotions
Got a webinar coming up or an offer expiring soon? Pin a minimally intrusive banner to the top of your website to feature an offer to visitors who land on your website.
10. Landing Page CTA's
Ask yourself: how can you encourage your website visitors and blog readers to stick around and explore other pages?
This "New here? Click me" button on the bottom right of Marie Forleo's blog headers is a good example of finding creative solutions to boost time-on-site:

11. Recurring Webinars
The online business platform Kajabi offers daily educational and Q&A webinars to provide trial users with more value.
This can be a really effective way to convert more people into customers — especially if you can introduce automation to boost ROI.
Many of Kajabi's sessions are automated, including weekly sessions for 'Create and Sell a Product' and 'Marketing Pipelines.'

12. Dynamic CTAs
One of the most powerful features in HubSpot's Marketing Hub is Smart CTAs. By adding a Smart CTA to your website — such as in a blog post or sidebar — you can display the most relevant call-to-action to every visitor.
You could promote a product-focused webinar to sales-qualified leads while showing new visitors a more top-of-funnel content upgrade.

14. Slide-in CTA's
If you have created downloadables such as ebooks, worksheets, templates, or other resources, you can use these as a powerful tool for automated lead gen on your blog posts. One way to capture new leads and get more downloads is with a slide-in CTA connected to a form.
Social Media Tasks
14. Facebook Bots
An impactful and highly personalized way to automate lead generation is with a Facebook bot that guides new leads through a conversion process.
This example shows a simple use case that automatically delivers a content upgrade via Facebook Messenger:

15. Social Media Scheduling
A super helpful way to save time scheduling your social media posts in advance is with a social media management app like Buffer.
In your Buffer Analytics, there's also a handy 'Share Again' button that you can use to reschedule the same posts that worked well the first time.

Content Tasks
16. Dynamic Content
With dynamic content on your website, you can boost conversion rates by automatically showing the most relevant content to each individual lead.
As one example, with HubSpot you can add smart content to your emails, website pages, landing pages, and templates.

After adding a smart content area, you can then automatically show different content based on:

Country
Device type
Referral source
Preferred language
Contact list membership
Contact lifecycle stage

17. Content Production Queue
Trello is one of the most popular and straightforward ways to manage your team's content queue. But did you know it also provides a ton of options to automate project management, including keeping your content pipeline on track?
With Butler, Trello's automation feature, you can create hundreds of rule-based and if-this-then-that automation to keep your content team on schedule.

SEO Tasks
18. SEO Site Audit
Not every marketing team has the resources to hire an in-house SEO specialist. Even if you do, there are many tools to help you streamline your SEO and stay on top of website problems and opportunities.
Although it's not the cheapest on the market, Ahrefs is one of the most popular and feature-rich SEO tools to optimize your search presence.
As one stand-out feature, it delivers a Site Audit to crawl every area of your website, list all issues, and categorize these by type and priority level. You can then resolve these one by one and re-run the Site Audit when you're ready to check for improvements.

19. Keyword Research
Another area where Ahrefs shines is keyword research. It's super simple to track the keywords you're currently ranking for, look for opportunities related to your relevant topics, and even identify what your competitors are ranking for that you aren't.

Marketing-Sales Tasks
20. Upselling Customers
Marketing isn't just about leads, it's also about your existing customers. Automation is a powerful ally when it comes to upselling customers at the ideal time with products and services similar to those they have already gained value from.
21. Live Chat
Live chat has moved from being a nice-to-have to a must-have for many businesses. Your customers and potential customers want to easily and quickly get in touch with you.
With live chat apps such as what Drift offers, you can create automated chatbots that are configured to bring in marketing leads, not just sales-ready prospects.

22. Lead Qualification
GetResponse is another handy tool for strengthening your marketing team's bridge to sales and helping them identify quality leads.
With a marketing automation platform, you can make sure your leads are sales-qualified before proceeding through a pipeline.

23. Lead Scoring
With lead scoring tools, you can effectively track engagement and know which leads to follow up with or enroll in a workflow that's further down the funnel.
ActiveCampaign makes it easy to reward points and deduct them based on specific behavior and engagement, such as when a lead downloads content or visits your pricing page.

24. Good-Fit Leads
ActiveCampaign also notifies you when leads are becoming more engaged. It automatically triggers email notifications and assigns tasks based on lead score changes.

25. Automated Product Demo Video
As an example of automated sales-qualified lead gen, Marketo gates its demo video behind a form to collect data from qualified leads.

26. Lead Assignment
With sales automation you can automatically distribute your new leads and deals based on:

An evenly distributed round-robin
Based on value (to ensure all sales reps get about the same amount of value over time)


27. Trial Extension Offers
If someone signs up for a trial of your product but doesn't convert, consider sending them a trial extension offer.
This effective example from Kajabi is generous and highly personalized to encourage conversions.

Management & Organization Tasks
28. Contact Management
Your losing a lot of time in your workday if your business doesn't have an automated way to organize contacts from all channels
Your answer to this is a cloud-based CRM system with built-in pipeline management and automation capacities, such as what Copper, HubSpot, and Pipedrive offer.
29. Inbox Filtering
You don't have to reach inbox zero, but you can clear up a lot of the chaos in your inbox using automated inbox filtering. Here's a quick WikiHow tutorial on how to use Gmail's priority inbox feature.

30. Sync New CRM Leads
Two of the most important tools in your marketing stack are your CRM and email marketing app.
Your CRM works best when it's at the center of your stack with contacts from other apps instantly synced. It's also important to ensure that the right leads are in your newsletter list. You can achieve both of these goals by keeping your CRM and email platform in sync.
As well as syncing relevant new CRM contacts with your newsletter list, you can also instantly remove leads from your mailing lists if they opt-out in another app.
31. Marketing Reports
It's easy to spend a lot of your workweek on reporting: finding the right data, creating visualizations, and sharing these with your team.
With tools like Google Data Studio and Supermetrics, you can connect all of your marketing data for reporting in one platform.
Here's a free Google Data Studio reporting template that shows how you could automatically connect your data.

32. Updating Meeting Slides
Instead of manually updating Google Slides with the right data ahead of meetings, you can automatically sync charts and data views in Google Sheets with Slides (and Docs) to free up time and reduce scope for error.

33. Slack Reminders
If you're a regular Slack user, you have lots of automation options to streamline your workflows. You can take advantage of this by setting up a weekly Slack reminder to prep for upcoming team meetings.
34. Team Progress Updates
Another example of how to take advantage of Slack automation is by asking for updates on important projects at the start of every week. Similar to Slack reminders, you can message your team on a recurring basis so you're always in the loop.
35. Project Management
Like Slack, Trello is another app that you can quickly level up with automation.
For instance, if your editorial team has a content planning board, whenever a blog post is moved to the 'Editing' column on Trello, the due date is automatically updated and the right team member is assigned to make sure each piece is edited on time:

Data Tasks
36. Contact Data Enrichment
Do you find yourself having to manually find out information about a new lead? Use Clearbit to automatically enrich the data you have for every new lead that enters your CRM and marketing apps.
37. Automated Data Syncing
Manually exporting and importing data between apps will never be the highlight of any marketer's day.
To free up time for what really drives your KPIs while improving data quality in all of your marketing apps, set up a two-way data sync between your apps. This will keep the customer data in sync not only across your marketing apps, but throughout your entire tech stack, too.

37 Tasks Every Marketer Should Automate With all of the marketing automation tools at your fingertips, it's simpler and speedier than ever to streamline your workflows. Here are 35+ tasks to automate first.

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Is Blogging Too Saturated? Here’s How To Avoid Failure

Want to start a blog but worried that blogging is an oversaturated market? You may be wondering how your blog will stand out amongst numerous ones in the same industry.
You may even fear that your blog won’t be successful because you’re unsure how to create a blogging strategy that will make you stand out. You may have even started your blog and are frustrated that you’re not seeing the results you want. In this article, we’re going to break down what you should consider about starting a blog, how to tell if a market is too competitive, and other ways to make your blog stand out.
Considerations for Starting a Blog in 2021
Starting a blog may feel like a daunting task. There are many questions around whether your blog will gain traffic and how to put your content in front of your desired audience.
The benefits of blogging, however, is a long-term game. Posting to your blog consistently is a fundamental first step. The second step is centering your blog around a specific topic or theme.
According to Website Setup, the number of blogs on the internet has reached over 600 million. If you’re looking to start a blog and worry that this number indicates that the blogging market is oversaturated, don’t panic.
While blogging may be competitive, there’s a lot of context to consider that can give you an advantage. It all depends on which niche you enter. While most blogs lie within a specific industry, every blog has a specific perspective in that industry.
For example, if you have a wellness blog that focuses on healthy eating and exercise, the perspective can be from someone who struggles with a specific disease or has advanced education on nutrition.
This specific perspective is your unique value proposition.
An audience that may be looking for specific, niche information will gain attention and traffic because your specific perspective creates value that is rare.
Overtime, your audience will understand that they cannot find that information with this unique value anywhere else. Your blog’s perspective is what will set it apart from others. Focusing on this specific value will set you up for long term success.
How to Tell if a Topic Is Too Competitive
Now that we understand that your blog needs to have a unique perspective that brings value to your industry, we’re going to explain how to determine if a blog topic is too competitive.
There are many ways to determine how competitive your niche is, but we’ll keep it to the most simple:

Keyword Volume (MSV)
Keyword Difficulty (KD)

In order to determine either of these, you’ll need to perform some research on the keyword landscape for your intended primary topic.
For example, if you want to blog about baking cookies, you’ll want to check out the keyword landscape for queries like, baking at home, cookie baking ideas, baking desserts, to start.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools like Google Trends, Ubersuggest, Moz, or Semrush are great keyword research tools that can show you both the MSV and the KD for any query you’re interested in.
Keyword Volume
Otherwise known as Monthly Search Volume (MSV), keyword volume tells you how many times a certain keyword is being searched each month. Keyword volume can indicate how large the audience is for a certain topic, and therefore indicates how much potential traffic is available to you within this keyword’s landscape.
The higher the volume, the more opportunity for traffic from this keyword. Now, you won’t be able to capture all of the traffic available. Your opportunity is highly dependent on another factor — keyword difficulty.
Keyword Difficulty (KD)
Keyword difficulty gives you an idea of the likelihood that your content will rank in search engines for that keyword by telling how difficult it is to rank for that keyword. Other blogs are also competing for this keyword, so KD gives you a sense of your competition.
Different SEO tools consider various factors to calculate the difficulty of ranking, like number of backlinks and search volume, for instance. Overall, keyword difficulty is a helpful way to tell if a market is highly competitive.
Tips for Blogging in a Competitive Market
If you find that your niche topic has a high keyword difficulty, don’t worry. There are a number of actionable steps you can take to ensure you can still rank and get traffic.
There are ways to optimize your blog to ensure you target the right audience, rank in search engines, and keep viewers coming back. Let’s cover those now.
1. Know your audience.�!
Having a foundational understanding of your blog’s goal and purpose is fundamental to standing out in a competitive market. And knowing who your audience is and what they want to read comes just before that.
You can start by building a persona to target with your content. That way, you’ll have an intimate understanding of who your target audience is and will be able to serve them.
In order to get to know your audience, you should ask yourself the following questions:

Why are you blogging this information?


What impact do you hope to bring with your blog?


What does your audience need to learn?


How does your audience like to consume information?


What demographics define your audience?

2. Incorporate SEO guidelines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to bringing your blog to a wider audience. Essentially, you want to center your blog content on a few primary keywords that align with what your audience is interested in learning. We already discussed above how to determine the MSV and KD for your target keywords, but there’s a lot more to SEO.Your blog’s content should focus around your primary keyword. Those keywords should show up throughout your content.
For example, if your blog is about fishing, that would be considered your primary keyword topic. Relevant keywords that would appear throughout your blog are how to fish, fishing guidelines, and how to prepare for a fishing trip. The more relevant keywords appear in your blog, the more it helps search engines understand what your blog is about.
Don’t flood your content with your keywords simply to rank. This is called keyword stuffing, and it’s a black-hat SEO practice. The focus should be to create quality content that helps users. If you’re creating content that gives information that answers your audience’s needs, then it’s likely they will come back to your blog for more.
3. Build relationships.
Networking applies to online marketing, too. Try to build relationships with online leaders in your industry or those who have parallel audiences.
By building a network, you can also create opportunities for backlinks to your content, which is helpful to build authority. Backlinks help bring more traffic to your blog as the audience from one blog is being redirected to yours. This over time helps you optimize your visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Backlinks can be in the form of a guest post. For example, if you have a cooking blog and feature a guest post on Food Network, that creates a backlink. They can also come from referral links from other sites that may have a bigger name in your industry. For example, if Entrepreneur.com links to your article on startups, that is also considered a backlink.
4. Be helpful.�!
If your blog solely promotes your product or services, it may be overly promotional. Find out what your target audience is really interested in and pursue those topics — it’s always better to be helpful than promotional. Successful bloggers put their community's needs before their financial gain.
"Providing accurate, useful information that informs in a non-self-promoting manner gains credibility," writes Greg Sweval, a direct-to-consumer consultant. "It may take a little longer to build the buzz, but once the momentum gets rolling, it has exponential effects."
5. Blog about your expertise.
Blog about the aspects of your business that you’re passionate about. "Be yourself and blog about the things that excite and interest you (without sounding like a commercial, of course) and you'll be fine," suggests Steve Early.
When you write with passion and offer real value, you will most likely attract a bigger audience. With all the information we have at our fingertips, readers can sense authenticity. Your goal should be to create content for humans who are curious and seeking helpful, unique information. Aim to make your readers as passionate about your subject as you are.
6. Be authentic.�!
You will stand out from the noise and the crowd of bloggers if you are truly authentic. Transparency can earn you credibility in the blogosphere. In addition, it will add a more personal element to your writing style. Be authentic and let your readers see you clearly and identify with your message.
A successful blog takes time, strategy, and research.
Building a profitable and successful blog has no shortcuts. If you perform market and keyword research, you will get a feel for what your audience’s needs are and what they want to see. Once you know what your audience wants, understand your blog’s unique value, and incorporate SEO tactics, you will ensure the longevity and overall success of your blog.
Starting a successful blog in a saturated market doesn’t have to mean failure. However, it will take consistent effort, focus, and dedication to become successful. Start planning your blog strategy today and watch your audience grow.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2009 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Is Blogging Too Saturated? Here’s How To Avoid Failure With so many blogs out there, blogging may seem like a daunting task. Luckily, you can use these strategies to launch a successful blog in your niche.