Digital Marketing vs. Marketing Automation: What’s the Difference?

ASG 070 – Digital Marketing vs. Marketing Automation. What’s the Difference

Chris L. Davis: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the All Systems Go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot, learn how to deploy automated marketing and sales systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of Automation Bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris L. Davis: [00:00:31] Welcome to the All Systems Go podcast, I’m your host, Chris Davis, the founder of Automation Bridge, an online publication for small business marketing automation, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals into automation service providers. And in this episode, who I’m going to take a leap here and I’m going to do what’s not been done before. And what that is, is I’m going to draw a clear distinction between digital marketing and marketing automation. No longer can we irresponsibly lump the two into one doing so. It doesn’t serve the business owner or the marketing professional will. And it doesn’t set the right expectations or approach. OK, so brace yourselves. Today in this episode, you’re going to need to take some notes. You probably rewind this one, think through, pause, whatever. This is new. This is new. So before we get started, let me just say if you’re new to the podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Do me a favor as much as you trust me, and I may have come highly recommended by your friends and trusted business associates or whatnot, but listen to this episode in its entirety. Don’t take their word for it. Do not give me the benefit of the doubt. How about that? Listen to this episode in its entirety. And if you like what you hear, make sure you subscribe and leave a review later, OK? After this episode, for those of you who are listeners, longtime listeners are more than one time listeners. If you haven’t already subscribe to the podcast, please do so.

Chris L. Davis: [00:02:10] We’re an Apple podcast. Google podcast. We’re on YouTube. You could subscribe on YouTube. And if you haven’t left the five star rating in review, please do so. OK, if you cannot figure out how to leave that review, we have a resource for you. Automationbridge.com/review and it will direct you to your platform to lead the review. Or you can just leave your review right on the website and we’ll post it for you. All right. We’ve got you covered. OK, so let’s let’s get into this. The time is now. Everybody and I have been self-appointed as the messenger. And let me say this, I’m hesitant with saying this may be the most important podcast that I’ve recorded, but it is close. It is close. I don’t want to qualify in the eyes and hearts and minds of you all. But this is going to be so important. This is going to be a paradigm shift for many of you, and it’s going to be freeing for I think most it’s going to provide a level of clarity that is missing in the marketplace. So I’ve done all the researching online to save you from attempting to do so. And take my word, there is no place that clearly defines the difference between digital marketing and marketing, automation, email marketing versus marketing automation. Yep, digital marketing versus Internet marketing versus online marketing. Yep. You’ve got all of all of those things.

Chris L. Davis: [00:03:39] Right. But no one not not one on the topic at hand. OK, so let me be the first to say I am taking a extremely careful approach here and let this podcast serve as the introduction of this idea, but also a working document on this topic. Depending on when you’re listening to this, I may have already fleshed this thing all the way out and you’re like, oh, that’s where it started. Or you may be like, oh, that was interesting. I want to know more. So I’m not going to try to get these definitions and clarifications perfect. OK, that’s not the focus. I was initially that was my approach and it was becoming overwhelming. And I said, no, let me use this podcast to provide insight for you to operate with clarity and do some level settings and end expectations. So further explanations and clarifications will take place in the community where we can all put our collective heads together as automation service providers and really flesh this out. And I’ll have some finalized documentation and articles on this to come. But for now, I thought it will be appropriate to get this out in front of as many of you as possible so that you can share it and make sure that the collective market is educated on their approach for searching for marketing professionals. And those who want a career in marketing can properly assess and choose automation, marketing, automation and know the difference.

Chris L. Davis: [00:05:10] Ok, so let’s baby step our way through this. I don’t want to assume anything. Let’s start from the top. Marketing, what is marketing, marketing, Webster defines marketing as the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. I don’t like that. I think that’s a very bad definition. Honestly, I think Webster gets it wrong because marketing is not selling. Marketing is not sales, and again, here we see commonly commonplace people sloppily put together two that really are distinctly different.

Chris L. Davis: [00:05:48] You can be a great sales and a terrible marketer. You could be a great marketer and a terrible salesperson that you do not have to embody the two in Webster’s definition sloppily does that. OK, so it’s not just regular individuals. These are professional platforms, you know, trusted resources that do this. HubSpot HubSpot defines marketing, as they say. Marketing refers to any actions, any actions a company takes to attract an audience to the company’s product or services through high quality messaging. Much better, much better referral. Candy has marketing as the deliberate communication of value intended to influence consumer decisions. I like that, but I must say, my good friend, I’ve got to give him props, Tom Stovall, he said this for a while and it took me a while to understand. He says marketing is the game of narratives and the best narrative wins. So there is a narrative that is going around in your consumer’s head right now. They’re telling themselves something about something. What marketing does is it introduces a new narrative. And what you’re trying to do is say, will you accept this new narrative or will you stick to what you believe, you know, to be true? And if they select that, if they pick the new narrative that now is the buy in to the sales in an ongoing. So that’s marketing. That’s marketing defined. OK, so when we put digital in front of marketing, digital marketing can then be defined as doing marketing in a digital way.

Chris L. Davis: [00:07:29] Right. But we can’t use the word digital when we’re defining digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:07:34] So using the Internet to execute your marketing is the simplest definition that I could think of. Right. But MailChimp, I feel Nail’s this one, OK? MailChimp defines digital marketing as the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the Internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media and Web based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel. Essentially, if a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it’s digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:08:15] Ok, so the effective use of digital communication for your marketing is what digital marketing is and digital marketing consists of content. I’ll just name a few areas, OK? I’m not going to encompass everything, but you’ll understand what I mean. Content marketing, social media, marketing, paid advertising. That could be PPC or social. You know, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:08:40] Lastly, marketing, automation. These are all parts. These are things that make up digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:08:47] So many of you have you know, you’re writing a blog or you’re writing articles or being featured in articles. You have a podcast like I have had content marketing. You’re experiencing a form of marketing right now. Some people are posting on social big influencers. That’s social media marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of the first forms of marketing that I was exposed to in the online space. Right.

Chris L. Davis: [00:09:12] And digital marketers, they must be proficient in understanding online conversions, landing pages, copy function and flow of these pages, how how they differ from a website and things of that nature traffic generation to those, you know, to landing pages and what matters and using colors correctly. Right. Funnelling leads to sales. This is an important one because remember, marketing is not sales. Digital marketers are not digital salespeople. But there is no term for salespeople online. Right. Like the closest you have to a salesperson that uses digital communication is a sales page. Right, a video sales letter.

Chris L. Davis: [00:10:00] These are terms that we’ve come up with because there is no magic. We have a digital marketer. There is no digital sales person. Digital sales are you know, it doesn’t exist. It all is lumped into digital marketing. Lazily, haphazardly, whatever you whatever you want to name it or label it, it is what it is. So digital marketing really funnels leads to your sales, OK, doesn’t do the sales. Digital marketing is not sales, everybody. And because marketing and sales get sloppily lumped in.

Chris L. Davis: [00:10:37] Because this is true, you are a digital marketer right now, as as today stands and I don’t see this changing, they must also be proficient in digitizing the sales process. Right. Sales pages, check out pages of sales down sales, et cetera. That’s really sales automation. But because the market has been trained, that’s what a digital marketer does, they need to be proficient in that. OK. And overall, building sales funnel, what is a sales funnel? It’s a broad language for building a marketing and sales process. As one you just say sales funnel that lumps in marketing and sales. And people think that, you know, OK, so I can get leads and make money. A sales funnel. Right. But it’s got a couple components, you know, the marketing and sales side.

Chris L. Davis: [00:11:22] So many of you who have gone through my master class, you know, you have to have engaged with any form of training. You see how I break up marketing and sales when we talk about automation because they are different. And I don’t want you to mix them up. Most most of the overwhelming mistakes that I find that marketing professionals make today is that they can be really good at marketing, such as sales, still do sales and beat themselves over sales, beat themselves up over their poor performance in sales, let that negative energy flow over into their marketing and never really have a business that they love. Or vice versa, right? So when it comes to, you know, being proficient in these areas, you understand that the different areas of digital marketing and let me say, you know, content marketing, that could be its own industry.

Chris L. Davis: [00:12:13] Social media marketing is its own industry. You see what I’m saying? So if it starts to introduce like there’s this idea of full stack or specialized digital marketer. Right. Or you a digital marketer that does everything or are you specialized in a specific area and you all are starting to see this automation service provider is a specialized area within digital marketing. But let me not get ahead of myself. OK, but speaking of automation, since I brought it up, a digital marketer and I’m saying this when I say digital marketing and digital marketing, you all know I’m using the Parado principle. This applies to about 80 percent of the market. You have your 20 percent outliers that, you know, defy these laws and what I’m teaching you, blah, blah. We know that nothing is 100 percent OK. A digital marketer. Traditionally, they’re going to use automation out of necessity to complete their job. But it’s not their focus. It’s optional. Automation is optional at times and inherent other times. Right. So when you build a landing page, you could go to your cell phone. Or they could just get the leads in email. You could follow up via email. That is still digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:13:27] Ok, that’s still digital marketing, automation is optional. Now, if you want an autoresponder to send that email, if you don’t want to. If you don’t want to manually respond to the digital actions, now we bring in automation, but I can manually respond to any digital activity that produces leads or actions in my business. And I’m still digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:13:54] Ok, so just no automation to a digital marketer is optional, but it’s inherent at times because there are certain tools that you get that just have automation built in. You’re not going to be able to buy checkout software that doesn’t automatically send an email. When someone checks out automation, it’s inherent. You didn’t have to do anything. Right.

Chris L. Davis: [00:14:18] And now we start to see the difference when an approach to a digital marketer and a marketing automation specialist or automation service provider is, is that there’s this the tools that a digital marketer will select are totally different than those of a marketing automation specialist. OK, so let me just not get ahead of myself. I’m pulling already. I want to jump into the automation part, but I want to make sure I take my time and draw that clear line. So you see that a digital marketer can do marketing in a digital capacity. And if there is no automation, that still does not mean they are not digital marketing or doing a good job at digital marketing. So if you have a digital marketer that is doing automation, just know that’s in addition to their natural skill set as a digital marketer. And it doesn’t have to be the case. It does not. There are many digital marketers out there that know just the bare minimum of automation, OK? And they can still produce results.

Chris L. Davis: [00:15:27] All right, so if you haven’t pieced it together yet, this was not like a big build up to a surprise, you could probably have pieced it all together. Marketing, automation, yes. Is a subset of digital marketing here.

Chris L. Davis: [00:15:44] I get to use my definition right. Marketing automation is defined as the process of employing technology or hiring technology to work for your marketing strategy. Moving into marketing automation shifts the focus from strategy to technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:16:04] And this is why, again, in my masterclass I mentioned it earlier. But in the masterclass, by the way, if you like, where do I find his master class automationbridge.com/webinar and it will take you to the most recent master class. OK, but why I state this when in the master class I always state, start with strategy.

Chris L. Davis: [00:16:24] It’s required. It’s just five steps to automating any business in any industry. You have to start with strategy because look at this. Your strategy, your marketing strategy is what digital marketing is, right. Your marketing strategy online without digital marketing, there is nothing to automate. Thus no marketing automation. I know. I know. You know, that’s kind of like consequential. Like, OK, well, if marketing automation is a subset of digital marketing, you take away digital marketing. No marketing automation. I can see that connection. The market doesn’t.

Chris L. Davis: [00:17:03] Marketing professionals, don’t they again, sloppily are mixing these two. So I have to start with strategy, which means I have to start with digital marketing, I have to be efficient, I have to be aware of all of the areas in digital marketing, understand the strategy if I’m going to be great or even good at marketing automation. OK, once the strategies in place, marketing automation takes over to match that strategy. Right. Usually created by the marketer and marries it with the appropriate technology to execute the strategy on an ongoing basis with minimum human maintenance required. Where we’re most digital marketers gloss over the technology required, we make a career out of selecting and implementing the best technology to do the job.

Chris L. Davis: [00:18:00] That’s what marketing automation is marketing automation looks at. OK, this is what we’re doing. Let me go assess the best tools and let me have the acumen of implementing. The technology for now, I have to throw caution, there is a path into the industry of marketing automation without going through digital marketing. I want to caution you from that.

Chris L. Davis: [00:18:29] Ok, the best out of marketing automation, the best way to implement marketing automation is to do it in the context of understanding digital marketing, how it works and the strategy. You do not want to be a blind implementer of marketing automation because you’re just building and it could work, but it’s going to be very hard to optimize shift, you know, make make the appropriate adjustments in a timely, timely manner for the business.

Chris L. Davis: [00:18:59] Ok, so.

Chris L. Davis: [00:19:02] Where again, where digital market is just kind of gloss over technology. Listen, it is if you ask this is this is the difference, ask a digital marketer, hey, what platform should I use to send emails?

Chris L. Davis: [00:19:16] It’ll be like pick one. It doesn’t matter. You know what? You can use a whatever. You can use it. And they’ll start naming off all of these platforms. And in a marketing automation specialist, they’ll cringe. They’ll be like, oh my gosh, because they understand the technology at a different level.

Chris L. Davis: [00:19:33] Right, and they’re doing it and they’re looking to implement it at a different scale, ask a digital marketer, hey, I’m thinking about starting a course. What should I use? You hear tools like Hajira, KJB, teachable, all fine on the surface, but it’s only the marketing automation specialist that knows the intricate details of those technologies and the things to look out for as you scale and what the marketer will can’t see because the marketer, they they’re not required to go deep in technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:20:07] You get what I’m saying, so that’s when I say marketing automation, you make a career out of selecting the best technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:20:15] That means you’re looking at technology at a different level. It’s it’s no different is no different than, you know, people who are hobbyists, really good hobbyists and then professionals. Right. And I’m talking about in the context of of technology, but I’m going to use a different example to draw draw the analogy. So your neighbor is a good painter and you know this because you’ve gone into your neighbor’s house and in the wall looked really good. So you said, hey, neighbor, can you do that painting for me now? Now, though, your neighbor does not specialize in painting. They can do the job now. Can they do the job at scale? Doing the job scale is going to expose some of their areas of weakness because in a controlled in a controlled environment of a house that looks like theirs, they look great. But when you start changing the tone and maybe the angles, higher ceilings, this isn’t that they start to get exposed. This is where the professional painter comes in and says, hey, look, oh, no, you don’t even have the right to look at this equipment that we use.

Chris L. Davis: [00:21:19] Oh, that’s not the right that’s not the right paint at different levels of height. You have to use a different paint because the air is different and you could mess up and, you know, it could start cracking. And they have an entire deeper set of considerations for painting. And you didn’t know until your needs grew.

Chris L. Davis: [00:21:38] And until the neighbor that painted your little house, you say, hey, you did our house over there on Fourth Street, we moved across the city, can you come and paint? And then they come in with their little bitty equipment and they’re looking up at the ceiling is like, I can’t do that. I don’t even think they make a ladder that tall. Right. Because the size of your house required a deeper knowledge, a deeper insight, deeper set of considerations for the pain. Same with technology, but digital marketer knows technology. Hey, yeah, we could use this for autoresponder. We could do this. We could do that for a certain size, a certain result, a certain speed of scale and a certain level of scale. At some point, as the business grows, you’re going to be looking at that market like you don’t know what we need more.

Chris L. Davis: [00:22:30] Something’s not. It fell off. Now, watch this, because everything’s lumped in, the marketer can easily get into their imposter syndrome and start to act like they know things that they don’t listen. Digital marketer, no shame. That’s automation. You don’t have a deep enough consideration set for technology to navigate these bigger areas that require faster scale.

Chris L. Davis: [00:22:54] And do you know, just different elements? You don’t have it and it’s OK.

Chris L. Davis: [00:23:02] This is why there’s a difference between digital marketing and marketing automation, and I’m using digital marketing and marketing automation, you can put anything in front of marketing, right? It could be I mean, you could put anything after digital, digital sales, digital, whatever, and then tie it with, you know, sales, marketing, automation, sales, automation. Just change the words. We’re really talking about a difference in marketing and automation. Right. The doing of something and then the automated doing of something. Right. And this is why I teach assessing technology as one of the main pillars of automation and automation. Service provider must master. You can’t go through my program. You can’t pass it. You don’t get the certificate if you don’t display acumen around assessing technology because it’s a huge differentiator from your regular marketing professional digital marketing professionals out there. And it’s our job again is automation service providers.

Chris L. Davis: [00:24:03] It’s our job to select the best software and save businesses from using software that will not scale with their business model. We have to have foresight for the business strategy and the technology and the technology. This is why this is not a haphazard, sloppy approach.

Chris L. Davis: [00:24:24] I’ve stated this what is an automation service provider in a previous episode, and that was the coming out. Hey, this is an industry. Everybody marketing automation is an industry. We’re here. Don’t lump us in with digital marketers. Right. How would how would you like it if people just lump oh, basketball players know WNBA players are proud of their league, NBA players are proud of their league. No one is greater than the next. They’re both equally great in their own respects, but different. Digital marketers are great at marketing, automation, great, they’re just different and we need to treat it that way when we’re providing the service as well as looking for it.

Chris L. Davis: [00:25:13] Ok.

Chris L. Davis: [00:25:15] Automation is what gives marketing its wings. Automation gives longevity to all of your marketing efforts. It’s an additive, it’s an add on, it’s a power up. OK, it’s a different skill set that a marketer must desire to obtain. We’re talking about depth, there may be a certain depth in marketing, you do not desire to go technically. OK, if you don’t have that desire, stay on the surface technically, OK, it’s fine, but go couple yourself with someone who’s gone deep technically because you’re going to need it. I’m telling you this. The marketplace right now is filled with people with the wrong technology and marketing efforts that worked for a certain level of revenue. And then all of a sudden things broke. And it’s not working. And it’s because they don’t have the technological foundation and automation in place to take them to the next level because they don’t want to hire more people. They want technology to work harder. They want to hire technology. Well, that process of hiring technology, your digital marketer, marketer, there’s a good chance that they’re not the best person to hire technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:26:36] And the best the best example I have for this is my story at Lipase. I know I’ve mentioned there’s a lot of times, but I’ll be totally honest with you. I was working through this this episode, just ideating around it with my operations manager. And I said something. I said, wow, I’ve never said that out loud.

Chris L. Davis: [00:26:52] I’ve never I never made that connection. I said, oh, I got I got to record the podcast. Right. And when when I was preparing this this podcast, I realized that I embodied in automation service provider before I even knew the difference between digital marketing and marketing automation. I embodied it right. So I was hired at that leap just for my automation skills, not my marketing skills. This is why I told you you can’t get into this space with automation first, but you got to be careful, OK? Because what was given to me, because the let me be honest, I had no confidence. I was not a confident marketer at all. In fact, I didn’t I thought I think naturally I could make a good marketer because of my personality. I like connecting with people. Of course, my skill of digitizing process, connecting with people is a process, blah, blah, blah.

Chris L. Davis: [00:27:46] But I did not have the skills, you know, so I wasn’t confident at all. So I had to. But I wasn’t confident as a marketer. But I’ll tell you what, I sure could put some technology together, boy. Hey, Chris, Chris can build some online, right, so now you have Clay, who was the digital marketer and CEO of Lee Pages, are co-founder, CEO and co-founder of Leap Pages at the time. Clay was a digital marketer and he had no automation skills. So one of the first questions he asked me when we met was, hey, you know, Infusionsoft, that was that was one of our first time meeting him.

Chris L. Davis: [00:28:27] You know, I was like, yeah, he’s like, wait a minute. You know, marketing, right. It was the digital marketers dream. And they’re I don’t know if he was intentional. I know I wasn’t. We drew a line and said, hey, look, as a marketer, this is where I begin and end in terms of marketing automation. I need you to take it from here. He said that and if if if you’re listening to this, I don’t know if you made that distinction at the time, but it was so it was futuristic. And and I’m here as a byproduct of that. And many of you listening may have done the same thing. And I just gave words to your experience. So with with Clay, I got a clearly defined marketing strategy.

Chris L. Davis: [00:29:14] Right. He knew everything that marketing needed to do. He was not an Automator, that’s where I came in. So being fed a marketing strategy is how to best leverage Infusionsoft at the time, along with other technology, to build a system that functioned with minimal human maintenance required. So what we did, he didn’t want to have a 20 to 30 size marketing team. Right? So the stronger our marketing, the higher quality output of the system, which was money. We made money, tons of it, we were printing money, right? So automation became the back end system to nurture and direct leads to the intended destination and beyond and beyond, I say beyond, because most digital marketers focus on marketing and sales with bare minimum marketing and sales automation. Right.

Chris L. Davis: [00:30:11] Like, that’s it when you look at getting into the space of automation as a profession, which I would say, you know, which I coined the phrase automation service provider, you start with marketing and sales automation, but continue to apply automation across all operational areas of a business for ultimate efficiency.

Chris L. Davis: [00:30:32] Let me ask you this. When’s the last time you heard of a digital marketer talking about how to better automate your fulfillment?

Chris L. Davis: [00:30:40] As a service provider right there, normally just focused on filling that funnel and getting you sales, hey, make sure you got up. Hey, you got recurring. Hey, you got this money, money, money, nothing wrong with it. This is not one is greater than the other. Right. But as someone who has a profession in automation, we start their marketing and sales. It’s important. And then we look at fulfillment. Finance, Human Resources, I.T., and we’re extracting strategy process and measuring it with technology across the entire business, across the entire business. When I say scale, that is scale defined, you, you know, automate as much as possible, even in my project management software, I think Clickable is great for that. It’s got so much built in automation. I’ve not found a platform that has more automation built in native. You know, I don’t have to use that idea for a lot of it just just built in. Why? Because automation is my profession. I do it everywhere. My home is automated. Right. I know my boundaries don’t get me wrong. I know my boundaries. But I’m just what I’m doing is I’m making fun of this. I’m adding some levity to this because this is a heavy topic. Right. But out of people who whose profession is in the provision of the service of automation. Yes, yes, yes, yes. They go beyond the basics of marketing and sales automation. OK, so if we think of marketing, you know, I think of like web development, how you have front end and back in developers.

Chris L. Davis: [00:32:26] If we think of marketing as front end and back in digital marketing becomes the front end of marketing that context, see and engage with marketing. Automation becomes the backend facilitation to capitalize and optimize on all of your marketing efforts. The contact. They don’t see automation, but they experience it. They don’t see a tag being applied to their record, but they experience a path that that tags set them on that’s different from everybody else. OK, they don’t see the technology that says, hey, if they have this tag, put this value on the Web page, they don’t see that, they just see the outcome, the output of that value. So now we have front end marketing back in marketing front and marketing is digital marketing back in its marketing automation. And again, we drop the marketing. We’ve got front in digital sales, back in sales automation, right front in digital, whatever, right finance, back in finance, automation, whatever the case is. Frinton is what the Contac experience backing is what we craft. It’s invisible to the eye. But you feel it up and you see it back and you feel it, you experience it. So when we talk about enhancing the customer journey, somebody tell me how you’re going to how are you going to do that without automation? That’s what automation is created for the customer journey.

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:03] It’s it’s to enhance the experience your marketing gets them, attracts them, gets them in the door, but we need automation and the reason why we need automation is because what’s required for us to enhance the customer experience to customer journey cannot be done by an individual at scale. It can’t be done by individuals at scale. We need technology to do that, so we’ll continue. We will continue to flesh this out. By we I mean, myself and my community of automation service providers will continue to flesh this out and define more as time goes on. There are certain skills you may be expecting from a marketer that that they rightfully so do not possess. Let me say this bold statement. It is not far fetched for a automation service provider to not be strategic.

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:57] That is fair, that does not mean they are a lower level, but guess what, if you give them the strategy best believe they’ll be able to automate that best, believe it, and vice versa. So a digital marketer with a strong strategy may not have any automation skills and may have no desire for it. So you business owners, do you see how you may you may need to pass this out and make sure you have both and stop relying so heavily on one to do it all again? You’re going to have your outliers, your automation service providers who are strong in strategy. It’s one of the things that has set me apart in the marketplace. Right. You may have a digital marketer that strong with marketing automation as well.

Chris L. Davis: [00:35:40] Ok, so regardless of what combo it comes in, just know that’s what you’re looking for in in the marketplace. OK, so I am this went the I was I was nervous recording this because my thoughts haven’t always they this this is an evolving topic. And they weren’t super clear before I sat down. So that was the nervousness of just putting something that’s not all the way thought through or whatnot. But I feel like as we work through this collectively and as you all were listening, I feel like I did a good job.

Chris L. Davis: [00:36:16] And you are starting to see, oh, wait a minute, I didn’t realize there was a difference. Yes, there’s a difference.

Chris L. Davis: [00:36:25] Ok, so if you want to learn more about this difference and say, OK, what does that mean, that that career in automation look like you can go to automationbridge.com/difference OK, just go the automationbridge.com/difference and it’ll take you to an article that is going to wrap up. You know, what an automation service provider is? It will talk. It will inform you more on exactly more of those details in the shownotes, will link you to resources to previous podcast and everything else. So let me ask you this. Who needed to hear this? Let me be specific today. What digital marketer needed to hear this? Think of your local digital marketer, OK? And by local, I mean close to you in proximity, but close to you. Assume a zoom away, OK? Who’s that digital market to share this with them, they’ll appreciate it, they’ll appreciate it, because what I’m doing is I’m creating boundaries and in fine lines of operation for a excellent output. OK, no longer do we have to have this imposter syndrome in marketing where we have to. Oh, I’ve got to do animation. I’ve got to act like. I don’t know. You don’t. Oh, I’ve got to be strategic. Actually, you don’t. It’s a bonus. We’ll take it. The business owner will take it. Don’t get me wrong. Not required. And that’s just one area. There’s other areas. Right. So who’s that digital marketer that needed to hear this? Share this with them, please. Post it in in Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, community share it on YouTube, whatever the case. Get the word out. This is extremely important, everybody, that that this this difference is defined.

Chris L. Davis: [00:38:10] So if you found value in today’s episode, again, share it with as many people as you can specifically, at least that digital marketer. OK, don’t don’t you hold this to yourself. Do not keep this to yourself. For my first time listeners. Now’s the time that you subscribe and write five star rating. This was a good one. If this is your first one, this was a good one to come in. To come in on. Have a library, a library of podcasts that you can binge on, but now is the time, I’m welcoming you to the family of Listeners’, leave your five star rating and review again if you’re struggling where to do that? Automationbridge.com/review. Here at Automation Bridge, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers, as you have seen the difference. OK, right. Small business owners, they need this. They’re in dire need of marketers with the ability to learn marketing and technology. For the deployment of automated systems, for rapid growth, a lot of the business owners are strategic thinkers and they just need somebody to take that strategy and digitize it in an in an automated system. That’s what an automation service provider is. So if that’s you listen to me. I said something today and it just hit different today. You may be a listener. And it was it was something was it was the clouds, right. Remove the sun is shining a little brighter. You could see the vision. If everything that I said today, you’re like, that’s it. I want to. I want to. I want a career in automation. Let me tell you, now is the time to become an automation service provider.

Chris L. Davis: [00:39:52] We have a program in place that will walk you through. We walk you through every element and equip you with everything. You need to have a long standing, profitable career in automation. If that’s you. What I want you to do is go to automationbridge.com/ASP, fill in some preliminary basic information. It is going to tell you whether you’ll be a good fit or not. Honestly, right there on the spot, you say, hey, you’re a good fit guy and from there you have an opportunity to talk to to myself or someone on my team to just assess your goals, what you’re trying to do in business and all of those things to ensure that you’re a good fit for the community. We would love to have you. OK, if if if this is a good fit for you so you can go to automationbridge.com/ASP. And do that, filling your information, take the quick assessment, takes less than two minutes and it will let you know. OK, so all of the show notes and podcasts are accessible at AutomationBridge.com. For this last podcast, let me mention we are accepting guests. Get the word out, everybody. Automationbridge.com/guest We’re looking for SaaS owners who of of sales and marketing technology and consultants, experts and influencers who have used automation. To produce a particular result, but if you just know somebody who’s interesting, like man, they’re doing some great things in the digital space, we’ll take those to OK, who who would you like for me to interview to give you better insight on what they do?

Chris L. Davis: [00:41:37] Automationbridge.com/guest. You can submit their information or they can go and submit their information themselves. Right. So again, all of the channels are accessible. Automationbridge.com/podcast.

Chris L. Davis: [00:41:49] You can subscribe there and listen to other episodes at your leisure. So until next time I see you online automate responsibly, my friends.

ASG 070 – Digital Marketing vs. Marketing Automation. What’s the Difference

Chris L. Davis: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the All Systems Go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot, learn how to deploy automated marketing and sales systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of Automation Bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris L. Davis: [00:00:31] Welcome to the All Systems Go podcast, I’m your host, Chris Davis, the founder of Automation Bridge, an online publication for small business marketing automation, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals into automation service providers. And in this episode, who I’m going to take a leap here and I’m going to do what’s not been done before. And what that is, is I’m going to draw a clear distinction between digital marketing and marketing automation. No longer can we irresponsibly lump the two into one doing so. It doesn’t serve the business owner or the marketing professional will. And it doesn’t set the right expectations or approach. OK, so brace yourselves. Today in this episode, you’re going to need to take some notes. You probably rewind this one, think through, pause, whatever. This is new. This is new. So before we get started, let me just say if you’re new to the podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Do me a favor as much as you trust me, and I may have come highly recommended by your friends and trusted business associates or whatnot, but listen to this episode in its entirety. Don’t take their word for it. Do not give me the benefit of the doubt. How about that? Listen to this episode in its entirety. And if you like what you hear, make sure you subscribe and leave a review later, OK? After this episode, for those of you who are listeners, longtime listeners are more than one time listeners. If you haven’t already subscribe to the podcast, please do so.

Chris L. Davis: [00:02:10] We’re an Apple podcast. Google podcast. We’re on YouTube. You could subscribe on YouTube. And if you haven’t left the five star rating in review, please do so. OK, if you cannot figure out how to leave that review, we have a resource for you. Automationbridge.com/review and it will direct you to your platform to lead the review. Or you can just leave your review right on the website and we’ll post it for you. All right. We’ve got you covered. OK, so let’s let’s get into this. The time is now. Everybody and I have been self-appointed as the messenger. And let me say this, I’m hesitant with saying this may be the most important podcast that I’ve recorded, but it is close. It is close. I don’t want to qualify in the eyes and hearts and minds of you all. But this is going to be so important. This is going to be a paradigm shift for many of you, and it’s going to be freeing for I think most it’s going to provide a level of clarity that is missing in the marketplace. So I’ve done all the researching online to save you from attempting to do so. And take my word, there is no place that clearly defines the difference between digital marketing and marketing, automation, email marketing versus marketing automation. Yep, digital marketing versus Internet marketing versus online marketing. Yep. You’ve got all of all of those things.

Chris L. Davis: [00:03:39] Right. But no one not not one on the topic at hand. OK, so let me be the first to say I am taking a extremely careful approach here and let this podcast serve as the introduction of this idea, but also a working document on this topic. Depending on when you’re listening to this, I may have already fleshed this thing all the way out and you’re like, oh, that’s where it started. Or you may be like, oh, that was interesting. I want to know more. So I’m not going to try to get these definitions and clarifications perfect. OK, that’s not the focus. I was initially that was my approach and it was becoming overwhelming. And I said, no, let me use this podcast to provide insight for you to operate with clarity and do some level settings and end expectations. So further explanations and clarifications will take place in the community where we can all put our collective heads together as automation service providers and really flesh this out. And I’ll have some finalized documentation and articles on this to come. But for now, I thought it will be appropriate to get this out in front of as many of you as possible so that you can share it and make sure that the collective market is educated on their approach for searching for marketing professionals. And those who want a career in marketing can properly assess and choose automation, marketing, automation and know the difference.

Chris L. Davis: [00:05:10] Ok, so let’s baby step our way through this. I don’t want to assume anything. Let’s start from the top. Marketing, what is marketing, marketing, Webster defines marketing as the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. I don’t like that. I think that’s a very bad definition. Honestly, I think Webster gets it wrong because marketing is not selling. Marketing is not sales, and again, here we see commonly commonplace people sloppily put together two that really are distinctly different.

Chris L. Davis: [00:05:48] You can be a great sales and a terrible marketer. You could be a great marketer and a terrible salesperson that you do not have to embody the two in Webster’s definition sloppily does that. OK, so it’s not just regular individuals. These are professional platforms, you know, trusted resources that do this. HubSpot HubSpot defines marketing, as they say. Marketing refers to any actions, any actions a company takes to attract an audience to the company’s product or services through high quality messaging. Much better, much better referral. Candy has marketing as the deliberate communication of value intended to influence consumer decisions. I like that, but I must say, my good friend, I’ve got to give him props, Tom Stovall, he said this for a while and it took me a while to understand. He says marketing is the game of narratives and the best narrative wins. So there is a narrative that is going around in your consumer’s head right now. They’re telling themselves something about something. What marketing does is it introduces a new narrative. And what you’re trying to do is say, will you accept this new narrative or will you stick to what you believe, you know, to be true? And if they select that, if they pick the new narrative that now is the buy in to the sales in an ongoing. So that’s marketing. That’s marketing defined. OK, so when we put digital in front of marketing, digital marketing can then be defined as doing marketing in a digital way.

Chris L. Davis: [00:07:29] Right. But we can’t use the word digital when we’re defining digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:07:34] So using the Internet to execute your marketing is the simplest definition that I could think of. Right. But MailChimp, I feel Nail’s this one, OK? MailChimp defines digital marketing as the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the Internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media and Web based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel. Essentially, if a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it’s digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:08:15] Ok, so the effective use of digital communication for your marketing is what digital marketing is and digital marketing consists of content. I’ll just name a few areas, OK? I’m not going to encompass everything, but you’ll understand what I mean. Content marketing, social media, marketing, paid advertising. That could be PPC or social. You know, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:08:40] Lastly, marketing, automation. These are all parts. These are things that make up digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:08:47] So many of you have you know, you’re writing a blog or you’re writing articles or being featured in articles. You have a podcast like I have had content marketing. You’re experiencing a form of marketing right now. Some people are posting on social big influencers. That’s social media marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of the first forms of marketing that I was exposed to in the online space. Right.

Chris L. Davis: [00:09:12] And digital marketers, they must be proficient in understanding online conversions, landing pages, copy function and flow of these pages, how how they differ from a website and things of that nature traffic generation to those, you know, to landing pages and what matters and using colors correctly. Right. Funnelling leads to sales. This is an important one because remember, marketing is not sales. Digital marketers are not digital salespeople. But there is no term for salespeople online. Right. Like the closest you have to a salesperson that uses digital communication is a sales page. Right, a video sales letter.

Chris L. Davis: [00:10:00] These are terms that we’ve come up with because there is no magic. We have a digital marketer. There is no digital sales person. Digital sales are you know, it doesn’t exist. It all is lumped into digital marketing. Lazily, haphazardly, whatever you whatever you want to name it or label it, it is what it is. So digital marketing really funnels leads to your sales, OK, doesn’t do the sales. Digital marketing is not sales, everybody. And because marketing and sales get sloppily lumped in.

Chris L. Davis: [00:10:37] Because this is true, you are a digital marketer right now, as as today stands and I don’t see this changing, they must also be proficient in digitizing the sales process. Right. Sales pages, check out pages of sales down sales, et cetera. That’s really sales automation. But because the market has been trained, that’s what a digital marketer does, they need to be proficient in that. OK. And overall, building sales funnel, what is a sales funnel? It’s a broad language for building a marketing and sales process. As one you just say sales funnel that lumps in marketing and sales. And people think that, you know, OK, so I can get leads and make money. A sales funnel. Right. But it’s got a couple components, you know, the marketing and sales side.

Chris L. Davis: [00:11:22] So many of you who have gone through my master class, you know, you have to have engaged with any form of training. You see how I break up marketing and sales when we talk about automation because they are different. And I don’t want you to mix them up. Most most of the overwhelming mistakes that I find that marketing professionals make today is that they can be really good at marketing, such as sales, still do sales and beat themselves over sales, beat themselves up over their poor performance in sales, let that negative energy flow over into their marketing and never really have a business that they love. Or vice versa, right? So when it comes to, you know, being proficient in these areas, you understand that the different areas of digital marketing and let me say, you know, content marketing, that could be its own industry.

Chris L. Davis: [00:12:13] Social media marketing is its own industry. You see what I’m saying? So if it starts to introduce like there’s this idea of full stack or specialized digital marketer. Right. Or you a digital marketer that does everything or are you specialized in a specific area and you all are starting to see this automation service provider is a specialized area within digital marketing. But let me not get ahead of myself. OK, but speaking of automation, since I brought it up, a digital marketer and I’m saying this when I say digital marketing and digital marketing, you all know I’m using the Parado principle. This applies to about 80 percent of the market. You have your 20 percent outliers that, you know, defy these laws and what I’m teaching you, blah, blah. We know that nothing is 100 percent OK. A digital marketer. Traditionally, they’re going to use automation out of necessity to complete their job. But it’s not their focus. It’s optional. Automation is optional at times and inherent other times. Right. So when you build a landing page, you could go to your cell phone. Or they could just get the leads in email. You could follow up via email. That is still digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:13:27] Ok, that’s still digital marketing, automation is optional. Now, if you want an autoresponder to send that email, if you don’t want to. If you don’t want to manually respond to the digital actions, now we bring in automation, but I can manually respond to any digital activity that produces leads or actions in my business. And I’m still digital marketing.

Chris L. Davis: [00:13:54] Ok, so just no automation to a digital marketer is optional, but it’s inherent at times because there are certain tools that you get that just have automation built in. You’re not going to be able to buy checkout software that doesn’t automatically send an email. When someone checks out automation, it’s inherent. You didn’t have to do anything. Right.

Chris L. Davis: [00:14:18] And now we start to see the difference when an approach to a digital marketer and a marketing automation specialist or automation service provider is, is that there’s this the tools that a digital marketer will select are totally different than those of a marketing automation specialist. OK, so let me just not get ahead of myself. I’m pulling already. I want to jump into the automation part, but I want to make sure I take my time and draw that clear line. So you see that a digital marketer can do marketing in a digital capacity. And if there is no automation, that still does not mean they are not digital marketing or doing a good job at digital marketing. So if you have a digital marketer that is doing automation, just know that’s in addition to their natural skill set as a digital marketer. And it doesn’t have to be the case. It does not. There are many digital marketers out there that know just the bare minimum of automation, OK? And they can still produce results.

Chris L. Davis: [00:15:27] All right, so if you haven’t pieced it together yet, this was not like a big build up to a surprise, you could probably have pieced it all together. Marketing, automation, yes. Is a subset of digital marketing here.

Chris L. Davis: [00:15:44] I get to use my definition right. Marketing automation is defined as the process of employing technology or hiring technology to work for your marketing strategy. Moving into marketing automation shifts the focus from strategy to technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:16:04] And this is why, again, in my masterclass I mentioned it earlier. But in the masterclass, by the way, if you like, where do I find his master class automationbridge.com/webinar and it will take you to the most recent master class. OK, but why I state this when in the master class I always state, start with strategy.

Chris L. Davis: [00:16:24] It’s required. It’s just five steps to automating any business in any industry. You have to start with strategy because look at this. Your strategy, your marketing strategy is what digital marketing is, right. Your marketing strategy online without digital marketing, there is nothing to automate. Thus no marketing automation. I know. I know. You know, that’s kind of like consequential. Like, OK, well, if marketing automation is a subset of digital marketing, you take away digital marketing. No marketing automation. I can see that connection. The market doesn’t.

Chris L. Davis: [00:17:03] Marketing professionals, don’t they again, sloppily are mixing these two. So I have to start with strategy, which means I have to start with digital marketing, I have to be efficient, I have to be aware of all of the areas in digital marketing, understand the strategy if I’m going to be great or even good at marketing automation. OK, once the strategies in place, marketing automation takes over to match that strategy. Right. Usually created by the marketer and marries it with the appropriate technology to execute the strategy on an ongoing basis with minimum human maintenance required. Where we’re most digital marketers gloss over the technology required, we make a career out of selecting and implementing the best technology to do the job.

Chris L. Davis: [00:18:00] That’s what marketing automation is marketing automation looks at. OK, this is what we’re doing. Let me go assess the best tools and let me have the acumen of implementing. The technology for now, I have to throw caution, there is a path into the industry of marketing automation without going through digital marketing. I want to caution you from that.

Chris L. Davis: [00:18:29] Ok, the best out of marketing automation, the best way to implement marketing automation is to do it in the context of understanding digital marketing, how it works and the strategy. You do not want to be a blind implementer of marketing automation because you’re just building and it could work, but it’s going to be very hard to optimize shift, you know, make make the appropriate adjustments in a timely, timely manner for the business.

Chris L. Davis: [00:18:59] Ok, so.

Chris L. Davis: [00:19:02] Where again, where digital market is just kind of gloss over technology. Listen, it is if you ask this is this is the difference, ask a digital marketer, hey, what platform should I use to send emails?

Chris L. Davis: [00:19:16] It’ll be like pick one. It doesn’t matter. You know what? You can use a whatever. You can use it. And they’ll start naming off all of these platforms. And in a marketing automation specialist, they’ll cringe. They’ll be like, oh my gosh, because they understand the technology at a different level.

Chris L. Davis: [00:19:33] Right, and they’re doing it and they’re looking to implement it at a different scale, ask a digital marketer, hey, I’m thinking about starting a course. What should I use? You hear tools like Hajira, KJB, teachable, all fine on the surface, but it’s only the marketing automation specialist that knows the intricate details of those technologies and the things to look out for as you scale and what the marketer will can’t see because the marketer, they they’re not required to go deep in technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:20:07] You get what I’m saying, so that’s when I say marketing automation, you make a career out of selecting the best technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:20:15] That means you’re looking at technology at a different level. It’s it’s no different is no different than, you know, people who are hobbyists, really good hobbyists and then professionals. Right. And I’m talking about in the context of of technology, but I’m going to use a different example to draw draw the analogy. So your neighbor is a good painter and you know this because you’ve gone into your neighbor’s house and in the wall looked really good. So you said, hey, neighbor, can you do that painting for me now? Now, though, your neighbor does not specialize in painting. They can do the job now. Can they do the job at scale? Doing the job scale is going to expose some of their areas of weakness because in a controlled in a controlled environment of a house that looks like theirs, they look great. But when you start changing the tone and maybe the angles, higher ceilings, this isn’t that they start to get exposed. This is where the professional painter comes in and says, hey, look, oh, no, you don’t even have the right to look at this equipment that we use.

Chris L. Davis: [00:21:19] Oh, that’s not the right that’s not the right paint at different levels of height. You have to use a different paint because the air is different and you could mess up and, you know, it could start cracking. And they have an entire deeper set of considerations for painting. And you didn’t know until your needs grew.

Chris L. Davis: [00:21:38] And until the neighbor that painted your little house, you say, hey, you did our house over there on Fourth Street, we moved across the city, can you come and paint? And then they come in with their little bitty equipment and they’re looking up at the ceiling is like, I can’t do that. I don’t even think they make a ladder that tall. Right. Because the size of your house required a deeper knowledge, a deeper insight, deeper set of considerations for the pain. Same with technology, but digital marketer knows technology. Hey, yeah, we could use this for autoresponder. We could do this. We could do that for a certain size, a certain result, a certain speed of scale and a certain level of scale. At some point, as the business grows, you’re going to be looking at that market like you don’t know what we need more.

Chris L. Davis: [00:22:30] Something’s not. It fell off. Now, watch this, because everything’s lumped in, the marketer can easily get into their imposter syndrome and start to act like they know things that they don’t listen. Digital marketer, no shame. That’s automation. You don’t have a deep enough consideration set for technology to navigate these bigger areas that require faster scale.

Chris L. Davis: [00:22:54] And do you know, just different elements? You don’t have it and it’s OK.

Chris L. Davis: [00:23:02] This is why there’s a difference between digital marketing and marketing automation, and I’m using digital marketing and marketing automation, you can put anything in front of marketing, right? It could be I mean, you could put anything after digital, digital sales, digital, whatever, and then tie it with, you know, sales, marketing, automation, sales, automation. Just change the words. We’re really talking about a difference in marketing and automation. Right. The doing of something and then the automated doing of something. Right. And this is why I teach assessing technology as one of the main pillars of automation and automation. Service provider must master. You can’t go through my program. You can’t pass it. You don’t get the certificate if you don’t display acumen around assessing technology because it’s a huge differentiator from your regular marketing professional digital marketing professionals out there. And it’s our job again is automation service providers.

Chris L. Davis: [00:24:03] It’s our job to select the best software and save businesses from using software that will not scale with their business model. We have to have foresight for the business strategy and the technology and the technology. This is why this is not a haphazard, sloppy approach.

Chris L. Davis: [00:24:24] I’ve stated this what is an automation service provider in a previous episode, and that was the coming out. Hey, this is an industry. Everybody marketing automation is an industry. We’re here. Don’t lump us in with digital marketers. Right. How would how would you like it if people just lump oh, basketball players know WNBA players are proud of their league, NBA players are proud of their league. No one is greater than the next. They’re both equally great in their own respects, but different. Digital marketers are great at marketing, automation, great, they’re just different and we need to treat it that way when we’re providing the service as well as looking for it.

Chris L. Davis: [00:25:13] Ok.

Chris L. Davis: [00:25:15] Automation is what gives marketing its wings. Automation gives longevity to all of your marketing efforts. It’s an additive, it’s an add on, it’s a power up. OK, it’s a different skill set that a marketer must desire to obtain. We’re talking about depth, there may be a certain depth in marketing, you do not desire to go technically. OK, if you don’t have that desire, stay on the surface technically, OK, it’s fine, but go couple yourself with someone who’s gone deep technically because you’re going to need it. I’m telling you this. The marketplace right now is filled with people with the wrong technology and marketing efforts that worked for a certain level of revenue. And then all of a sudden things broke. And it’s not working. And it’s because they don’t have the technological foundation and automation in place to take them to the next level because they don’t want to hire more people. They want technology to work harder. They want to hire technology. Well, that process of hiring technology, your digital marketer, marketer, there’s a good chance that they’re not the best person to hire technology.

Chris L. Davis: [00:26:36] And the best the best example I have for this is my story at Lipase. I know I’ve mentioned there’s a lot of times, but I’ll be totally honest with you. I was working through this this episode, just ideating around it with my operations manager. And I said something. I said, wow, I’ve never said that out loud.

Chris L. Davis: [00:26:52] I’ve never I never made that connection. I said, oh, I got I got to record the podcast. Right. And when when I was preparing this this podcast, I realized that I embodied in automation service provider before I even knew the difference between digital marketing and marketing automation. I embodied it right. So I was hired at that leap just for my automation skills, not my marketing skills. This is why I told you you can’t get into this space with automation first, but you got to be careful, OK? Because what was given to me, because the let me be honest, I had no confidence. I was not a confident marketer at all. In fact, I didn’t I thought I think naturally I could make a good marketer because of my personality. I like connecting with people. Of course, my skill of digitizing process, connecting with people is a process, blah, blah, blah.

Chris L. Davis: [00:27:46] But I did not have the skills, you know, so I wasn’t confident at all. So I had to. But I wasn’t confident as a marketer. But I’ll tell you what, I sure could put some technology together, boy. Hey, Chris, Chris can build some online, right, so now you have Clay, who was the digital marketer and CEO of Lee Pages, are co-founder, CEO and co-founder of Leap Pages at the time. Clay was a digital marketer and he had no automation skills. So one of the first questions he asked me when we met was, hey, you know, Infusionsoft, that was that was one of our first time meeting him.

Chris L. Davis: [00:28:27] You know, I was like, yeah, he’s like, wait a minute. You know, marketing, right. It was the digital marketers dream. And they’re I don’t know if he was intentional. I know I wasn’t. We drew a line and said, hey, look, as a marketer, this is where I begin and end in terms of marketing automation. I need you to take it from here. He said that and if if if you’re listening to this, I don’t know if you made that distinction at the time, but it was so it was futuristic. And and I’m here as a byproduct of that. And many of you listening may have done the same thing. And I just gave words to your experience. So with with Clay, I got a clearly defined marketing strategy.

Chris L. Davis: [00:29:14] Right. He knew everything that marketing needed to do. He was not an Automator, that’s where I came in. So being fed a marketing strategy is how to best leverage Infusionsoft at the time, along with other technology, to build a system that functioned with minimal human maintenance required. So what we did, he didn’t want to have a 20 to 30 size marketing team. Right? So the stronger our marketing, the higher quality output of the system, which was money. We made money, tons of it, we were printing money, right? So automation became the back end system to nurture and direct leads to the intended destination and beyond and beyond, I say beyond, because most digital marketers focus on marketing and sales with bare minimum marketing and sales automation. Right.

Chris L. Davis: [00:30:11] Like, that’s it when you look at getting into the space of automation as a profession, which I would say, you know, which I coined the phrase automation service provider, you start with marketing and sales automation, but continue to apply automation across all operational areas of a business for ultimate efficiency.

Chris L. Davis: [00:30:32] Let me ask you this. When’s the last time you heard of a digital marketer talking about how to better automate your fulfillment?

Chris L. Davis: [00:30:40] As a service provider right there, normally just focused on filling that funnel and getting you sales, hey, make sure you got up. Hey, you got recurring. Hey, you got this money, money, money, nothing wrong with it. This is not one is greater than the other. Right. But as someone who has a profession in automation, we start their marketing and sales. It’s important. And then we look at fulfillment. Finance, Human Resources, I.T., and we’re extracting strategy process and measuring it with technology across the entire business, across the entire business. When I say scale, that is scale defined, you, you know, automate as much as possible, even in my project management software, I think Clickable is great for that. It’s got so much built in automation. I’ve not found a platform that has more automation built in native. You know, I don’t have to use that idea for a lot of it just just built in. Why? Because automation is my profession. I do it everywhere. My home is automated. Right. I know my boundaries don’t get me wrong. I know my boundaries. But I’m just what I’m doing is I’m making fun of this. I’m adding some levity to this because this is a heavy topic. Right. But out of people who whose profession is in the provision of the service of automation. Yes, yes, yes, yes. They go beyond the basics of marketing and sales automation. OK, so if we think of marketing, you know, I think of like web development, how you have front end and back in developers.

Chris L. Davis: [00:32:26] If we think of marketing as front end and back in digital marketing becomes the front end of marketing that context, see and engage with marketing. Automation becomes the backend facilitation to capitalize and optimize on all of your marketing efforts. The contact. They don’t see automation, but they experience it. They don’t see a tag being applied to their record, but they experience a path that that tags set them on that’s different from everybody else. OK, they don’t see the technology that says, hey, if they have this tag, put this value on the Web page, they don’t see that, they just see the outcome, the output of that value. So now we have front end marketing back in marketing front and marketing is digital marketing back in its marketing automation. And again, we drop the marketing. We’ve got front in digital sales, back in sales automation, right front in digital, whatever, right finance, back in finance, automation, whatever the case is. Frinton is what the Contac experience backing is what we craft. It’s invisible to the eye. But you feel it up and you see it back and you feel it, you experience it. So when we talk about enhancing the customer journey, somebody tell me how you’re going to how are you going to do that without automation? That’s what automation is created for the customer journey.

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:03] It’s it’s to enhance the experience your marketing gets them, attracts them, gets them in the door, but we need automation and the reason why we need automation is because what’s required for us to enhance the customer experience to customer journey cannot be done by an individual at scale. It can’t be done by individuals at scale. We need technology to do that, so we’ll continue. We will continue to flesh this out. By we I mean, myself and my community of automation service providers will continue to flesh this out and define more as time goes on. There are certain skills you may be expecting from a marketer that that they rightfully so do not possess. Let me say this bold statement. It is not far fetched for a automation service provider to not be strategic.

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:57] That is fair, that does not mean they are a lower level, but guess what, if you give them the strategy best believe they’ll be able to automate that best, believe it, and vice versa. So a digital marketer with a strong strategy may not have any automation skills and may have no desire for it. So you business owners, do you see how you may you may need to pass this out and make sure you have both and stop relying so heavily on one to do it all again? You’re going to have your outliers, your automation service providers who are strong in strategy. It’s one of the things that has set me apart in the marketplace. Right. You may have a digital marketer that strong with marketing automation as well.

Chris L. Davis: [00:35:40] Ok, so regardless of what combo it comes in, just know that’s what you’re looking for in in the marketplace. OK, so I am this went the I was I was nervous recording this because my thoughts haven’t always they this this is an evolving topic. And they weren’t super clear before I sat down. So that was the nervousness of just putting something that’s not all the way thought through or whatnot. But I feel like as we work through this collectively and as you all were listening, I feel like I did a good job.

Chris L. Davis: [00:36:16] And you are starting to see, oh, wait a minute, I didn’t realize there was a difference. Yes, there’s a difference.

Chris L. Davis: [00:36:25] Ok, so if you want to learn more about this difference and say, OK, what does that mean, that that career in automation look like you can go to automationbridge.com/difference OK, just go the automationbridge.com/difference and it’ll take you to an article that is going to wrap up. You know, what an automation service provider is? It will talk. It will inform you more on exactly more of those details in the shownotes, will link you to resources to previous podcast and everything else. So let me ask you this. Who needed to hear this? Let me be specific today. What digital marketer needed to hear this? Think of your local digital marketer, OK? And by local, I mean close to you in proximity, but close to you. Assume a zoom away, OK? Who’s that digital market to share this with them, they’ll appreciate it, they’ll appreciate it, because what I’m doing is I’m creating boundaries and in fine lines of operation for a excellent output. OK, no longer do we have to have this imposter syndrome in marketing where we have to. Oh, I’ve got to do animation. I’ve got to act like. I don’t know. You don’t. Oh, I’ve got to be strategic. Actually, you don’t. It’s a bonus. We’ll take it. The business owner will take it. Don’t get me wrong. Not required. And that’s just one area. There’s other areas. Right. So who’s that digital marketer that needed to hear this? Share this with them, please. Post it in in Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, community share it on YouTube, whatever the case. Get the word out. This is extremely important, everybody, that that this this difference is defined.

Chris L. Davis: [00:38:10] So if you found value in today’s episode, again, share it with as many people as you can specifically, at least that digital marketer. OK, don’t don’t you hold this to yourself. Do not keep this to yourself. For my first time listeners. Now’s the time that you subscribe and write five star rating. This was a good one. If this is your first one, this was a good one to come in. To come in on. Have a library, a library of podcasts that you can binge on, but now is the time, I’m welcoming you to the family of Listeners’, leave your five star rating and review again if you’re struggling where to do that? Automationbridge.com/review. Here at Automation Bridge, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers, as you have seen the difference. OK, right. Small business owners, they need this. They’re in dire need of marketers with the ability to learn marketing and technology. For the deployment of automated systems, for rapid growth, a lot of the business owners are strategic thinkers and they just need somebody to take that strategy and digitize it in an in an automated system. That’s what an automation service provider is. So if that’s you listen to me. I said something today and it just hit different today. You may be a listener. And it was it was something was it was the clouds, right. Remove the sun is shining a little brighter. You could see the vision. If everything that I said today, you’re like, that’s it. I want to. I want to. I want a career in automation. Let me tell you, now is the time to become an automation service provider.

Chris L. Davis: [00:39:52] We have a program in place that will walk you through. We walk you through every element and equip you with everything. You need to have a long standing, profitable career in automation. If that’s you. What I want you to do is go to automationbridge.com/ASP, fill in some preliminary basic information. It is going to tell you whether you’ll be a good fit or not. Honestly, right there on the spot, you say, hey, you’re a good fit guy and from there you have an opportunity to talk to to myself or someone on my team to just assess your goals, what you’re trying to do in business and all of those things to ensure that you’re a good fit for the community. We would love to have you. OK, if if if this is a good fit for you so you can go to automationbridge.com/ASP. And do that, filling your information, take the quick assessment, takes less than two minutes and it will let you know. OK, so all of the show notes and podcasts are accessible at AutomationBridge.com. For this last podcast, let me mention we are accepting guests. Get the word out, everybody. Automationbridge.com/guest We’re looking for SaaS owners who of of sales and marketing technology and consultants, experts and influencers who have used automation. To produce a particular result, but if you just know somebody who’s interesting, like man, they’re doing some great things in the digital space, we’ll take those to OK, who who would you like for me to interview to give you better insight on what they do?

Chris L. Davis: [00:41:37] Automationbridge.com/guest. You can submit their information or they can go and submit their information themselves. Right. So again, all of the channels are accessible. Automationbridge.com/podcast.

Chris L. Davis: [00:41:49] You can subscribe there and listen to other episodes at your leisure. So until next time I see you online automate responsibly, my friends.