The age of automation is here. Whether at the shopping checkout or in the online business world, automation technologies are becoming a standard tool for streamlining workflow and business operations, especially online.

In 2020, the digital marketing and advertising industry was worth over 370-billion dollars in the U.S, with more business owners realizing the full potential of this marketing medium every day.

Automation software may be one of the greatest business development tools invented to date. However, there are some dangers to becoming too dependent on automation; it could be costing you a ton of profit, and, if you are not careful, could cost you your business.

Read on to learn six major dangers of relying on automation systems in digital marketing in 2022.

1. Automated Bidding

Automated bidding is an automated system that sets bids on your ads based on that ad’s likelihood of getting a click and a sales conversion. This automated bidding system can be customized for a specific business or sales goal.

This can save hours of labor for business owners and is very appealing as a set-it-and-forget-it approach to generating leads and sales conversions.

However, things that sound too good to be true often are. While this kind of marketing tactic can reap many benefits to your enterprise, running automated ad campaigns unsupervised is unwise and could actually cost you profit if you get too comfortable utilizing it as a primary marketing tactic.

While AI algorithms are smart, as yet, they are not more intelligent than humans and will not be able to perform in a sales capacity as well as a sales professional.

This is not to say that you should stay away from automated bidding; however, you should be using it as a tool rather than a crutch; marketing still requires human-to-human interaction, even through the internet.

2. Forgetting to Continuously Optimize

While automation provides a lot of stress and time-management relief for business owners, the “set and forget” nature of automation can be a trap for those who tend to get comfortable.

Optimizing your automated systems is a manual process, and the internet will not slow down to let you catch up. Online advertising and marketing is a fluid environment, and you never want to turn your back on the sea. 

Ensure that your automation systems are optimized for the current online climate, including making sure your systems meet the criteria of current search engine algorithms. 

A dedicated development team can build in automated tools and advantages as they construct your systems. But to capitalize on that vast amount of work, ensure you maintain them well and optimize your automation for the best results. Overall, make it a point to design and operate automated systems for the right reasons in your customers’ eyes and not just out of laziness.

Automation will only do what you tell it to, so treat it like an employee that needs to be observed and managed rather than an extra limb that you need not pay attention to; automation is there to make you profit, not cost you exposure.

3. Over Messaging

Automated messaging systems can be a savior for a business owner trying to optimize their customer service and communication. These systems help you build and maintain rapport with your customers and audience; however, sending too many automated messages can have a disastrous impact on your business.

Over messaging can damage your brand in two primary ways:

1. It has a negative impact on your recipients, damaging your engagement and client relationships
2. Adversely impacts your app or website

It can take years to build your brand and only seconds to burn your reputation; with automated messaging, quality over quantity is the name of the game, and it is crucial to strike a balance between over and under messaging.

4. Loss of Brand Message

One of the main focuses in the current world of digital marketing is customizing your customer’s experiences. While automation and AI can absolutely help you achieve this, there is a fine line between having automation technologies help you run your business and completely ignoring your customer’s existence.

You are your brand, whether you like it or not. If you let your automated systems do all the communication on your behalf, your customer will eventually feel like they are not seen or appreciated.

One bad review can undo a lot of hard work, so don’t let automated systems’ appeal detach you from your valued customers and clients.

This sensibility doesn’t apply only to customers. You’ve probably heard of creating your “brand as an employer,” which is a marketing strategy designed to attract the best job candidates to your company. Automated software for recruiting is commonly used by businesses to help with this, but in marketing for candidates, it’s critical to apply a human touch to as many of your candidate-facing interactions as possible. Therefore, leveraging your automation for behind-the-scenes efficiencies where the candidate is less likely to notice it.

5. Focusing on Vanity Metrics

No one likes a bragger, and being a bragger that is also embellishing the truth is even less appealing. Vanity metrics are the equivalent of unjustifiable bragging in the digital marketing world.

While celebrating your legitimate wins is a great business practice and is healthy for business development, being disingenuous with your facts and figures is a sure-fire way to get people offside.

Relying on your automated metrics is just as dangerous. You need to be on top of your facts and figures; at this stage, there is no such thing as a reliable, fully automated online business, and putting too much faith in your automated data will turn around and bite you eventually.

6. Automating What Shouldn’t Be Automated

While there are many things automation software can significantly improve in your business and branding, some things should not be automated, even if they can be.

Cyber security

The hackers and thieves never sleep, and they are constantly finding new ways to break through cyber security systems. Manually ensuring your security systems are optimized maximizes the security of your business and protects your customer’s data, such as their personal information.

Customer Engagement

While there are areas of customer engagement, people still want to know they are dealing with a real person or team of people. People are not naive, and they know when they are talking to a bot. 

Although it is tempting to automate as much of your business as possible, people will lose trust if they feel that they cannot connect to a human being on the other side of the monitor, so remember to keep it real, literally!

Social Media Posts and Messages

There are plenty of automation systems for social media engagement; however, this is not an area that should be overlooked. For some, social media marketing is laborious and time-consuming, but the truth is your business needs it.

If you really cannot deal with your business’s social media marketing aspects, then outsource to a professional and reputable social media manager who can optimize your engagement. 

This investment will pay off, so choose a human resource over an automation system. That’s not to say you cannot use systems to automatically post your content at a particular time and date; just don’t rely on automation and AI if you want to see actual results.

Marketing Proposal Templates

If you are a digital marketer or work in a digital marketing team, you want to ensure your marketing proposal template comes directly from you or a team member and includes personalized comments that relate to the specific prospect.

Sending these as an automated proposal may be insulting to your client, and a pitch is much more likely to be successful if it is customized for your potential client.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is a great way to optimize and streamline your business; however, it is just a tool and will not replace your hard work, personal engagement, and attention to business.

Use marketing automation as a complementary utility to grow your business and not as a business model itself; strike that balance. You will definitely reap the rewards of your efforts.

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