You’re Automating the Wrong Things

You’re Automating the Wrong Things

These days there is so much data that the problem isn’t knowing what kind of marketing to do. The hard part is being really good and consistent at it. You start off with the best intentions and then things happen and marketing starts to fall by the wayside. It’s the #2 marketing mistake I see over and over again.

To be successful, you need to be consistent, and being consistent – day in and day out – requires automation.

51% of companies are currently using some form of marketing automation. With half of the rest planning to adopt the technology. But that stat is misleading. The real problem is that companies aren’t automating the right things. Most are focusing the bulk of their automation on their social media presence, which can cause reduced engagement on those platforms. Instead, you should be using automation to support your three key marketing goals:

  • Build Your Audience
  • Capture Leads
  • Stay Top of Mind

Let’s talk about what you should automate that align with these goals.

Capturing Leads from Your Website

You’ve built connections on LinkedIn. But now you want to be able to capture that audience and build your email list, so you can talk to them whenever you want.

Your website is your best and biggest sales rep and it needs to capture people coming to the site. You’ve taken the time to build an audience on LinkedIn and directed them to your website. Now that they’re there, it’s not enough to just serve up a great experience for them. The goal is to turn those visitors into leads and to do that you need to implement automation around capturing emails. If you aren’t capturing prospects as they hit your website and funneling them straight into your CRM system to move them further along the sales funnel, you’re missing a big opportunity.

By automating the email capture process on your website via landing pages and popups, you can optimize the capture of referrals to your website.

Make sure your website is connected to your CRM, so that not only are captured leads added to your email marketing, but they’re automatically added to the CRM as well. By the same token, your CRM should be integrated with your email marketing system, to ensure that every prospect and lead is automatically added to your email marketing list.

Nurturing Prospects

As soon as a prospect or referral is added to your CRM or signs up for email on your website, they should automatically be subscribed to your email list and start receiving email marketing. We like to start them off with a nurturing email campaign. It’s a series of emails that tell the full story of WHO you are, WHY you do what you do, and HOW you do it. It welcomes the new prospect in and then brings them up to speed on the story of the great things you’re doing for your clients over a series of 5-9 emails.

Staying Top of Mind

Once the nurturing campaign has ended, you still want to stay top of mind. Build campaigns are what we follow up the nurturing campaign with. They are regular emails (2 per month) that continue to give your audience valuable insight-driven content that helps them understand how you are uniquely positioned to help them solve the problems they are facing, and keeps you top of mind.

Automate Your Analytics – Automated analytics can help show you a view of your customer’s journey – both on the website and via email. It makes it easier to see what is working and what isn’t.

Mistakes in Automation

  • Having no goal in mind – You have to have a strategy in place that involves goals. If not, then it’s just automated random acts of marketing.
  • Not following the data – There is so much data available that can tell us whether or not what we’re doing is working. You have to track the data and iterate based on the results. Otherwise, no amount of automation will help grow your business.
  • Sending emails to the wrong audience – or just not building an audience in the first place. You want to build the right audience of prospects that you want to talk to. If you’re not focusing on building the right audience, then you’re automatically sending emails to the wrong audience.
  • Not A/B testing – Automation is the perfect place to try out A/B testing. You can easily test out different versions of emails or landing pages. It also provides a lot of good data on what approach is most effective and allows for further iteration.

There is no shortcut that is going to give you the results you want. Your strategic plan needs to be long term and consistency is key. Automation frees you up to focus on things that really need a live person doing them, like lead generation and creating good content.

Learn more by listening to our B2B Word of Mouth Marketing podcasts.

This article originally appeared on: https://www.boomtime.com/youre-automating-the-wrong-things

Bill Bice

CEO at nQ Zebraworks | Legal Innovation Advocate

5 年
回复

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Bill Bice的更多文章

  • 9 Ways to Make Online Payments Better in Your Law Firm

    9 Ways to Make Online Payments Better in Your Law Firm

    Accepting credit card and ACH payments is no longer an exception for law firms but everyday business. Here are the most…

    1 条评论
  • What is Your Why?

    What is Your Why?

    One of my favorite subjects when it comes to marketing is the WHY. I love how Simon Sinek puts it: “People don’t buy…

    1 条评论
  • Your Prospects Don’t Know What To Do

    Your Prospects Don’t Know What To Do

    You’ve put Sales Navigator to work for you to build your audience on LinkedIn. You’re making great connections…

    1 条评论
  • Don’t Neglect Your Nurturing Campaign

    Don’t Neglect Your Nurturing Campaign

    You’ve been increasing your engagement on LinkedIn and then capturing those leads on your website to help build your…

    1 条评论
  • Don’t Ignore Your Prospects

    Don’t Ignore Your Prospects

    You’ve optimized your profile on LinkedIn and shared great insight-driven content. People have liked what you shared…

    1 条评论
  • You’re Not Fully Leveraging Sales Navigator

    You’re Not Fully Leveraging Sales Navigator

    We all know that if you’re serious about building an audience on LinkedIn, It’s worth investing in Sales Navigator…

    1 条评论
  • Is Sales Navigator Worth It?

    Is Sales Navigator Worth It?

    In the B2B space, it seems like everybody has either tried Sales Navigator once or they’re considering trying it…

    4 条评论
  • Why Your Marketing Doesn’t Work

    Why Your Marketing Doesn’t Work

    I get a lot of questions from prospects & contacts about why their marketing strategy isn’t working. And my answer is…

    4 条评论
  • The Value of Micro-Commitments

    The Value of Micro-Commitments

    You want people to buy your product or service. But there’s a problem.

    1 条评论
  • Capturing Emails

    Capturing Emails

    You’re doing everything right. You have the three pillars of marketing in place.

    1 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了