Do you want to know how to increase your conversion rates by 60%?
Adopt marketing automation for your business.
Marketing automation is one of the best investments you can make for your business.
With the huge amounts of customer data available, a lot of businesses have trouble sorting out the data in any way that produces a positive ROI.
In 2016, marketing automation has not only gotten more advanced it’s also gotten a lot cheaper.
Marketing automation has grown 50% over the last 3 years.
Non-technology companies have a 3% adoption rate.
In this post, I’ll go over 5 simple ways you can use marketing automation to grow your business.
What is Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation is defined as the following:
“Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.”
Marketing automation was built to make your job easier.
Once you’ve learned how to use the technology you’ll manage your business more effectively.
But there are many different types of software you can use.
If you want to learn more on the pros and cons of each software check out these posts below:
- Marketing Automation Software Pricing Guide.
- Best Marketing Automation Software.
- Marketing Automation Comparison in 2016.
What Do You Do With Data?
Marketers are addicted to data.
Data helps marketers create more effective marketing campaigns.
Data helps you create more relevant messages that your prospects/customers will engage with.
Most business owners have a ton of data on their customers but have no way of using that data to produce any meaningful results.
Marketing automation allows you to sort your data and use the right marketing channels to effectively.
It’s not a substitute for marketing
Before you invest into marketing automation, you have to realize that it does not do the marketing for your company.
You need leads and a pipeline of prospects that are already interested in your products/services.
Leads are the engine that drives new businesses.
Marketing automation is the tool you use to effectively scale your efforts.
Why Should I Invest in Marketing Automation?
If you want to automate and scale your marketing, you need marketing automation.
Here are a few reasons why adopting marketing automation will yield results:
- 45% regularly re-purpose content for efficiency, compared with 28% of companies without marketing automation.
- 54% capture intelligence for the sales team, compared to 25% without marketing automation.
- 49% customize content to the Buyer Journey stages, compared to 21% without marketing automation.
- 59% can use intelligent targeting to trigger content, compared to 17% without marketing automation.
Here are 5 ways you can use marketing automation to grow your business.
1 – Lead Magnet
The first step in any inbound marketing campaign is to have an effective lead magnet.
A lead magnet is a gift you use to ethically bribe the person for more information.
Your lead magnet should be compelling enough that your prospect will voluntary give out their information.
The best types of lead magnets are easily consumable and solve one problem that your prospect might have.
Fletcher training has a good diagram below:
After you have created a compelling lead magnet, you can use your marketing automation tools to lead your prospects through your sales cycle.
To read more on how to create a compelling lead magnet check out these posts below:
- How To Create The Perfect Lead Magnet.
- 9 Lead Magnet Examples.
- Lead Magnet: Email List Building On Steroids .
2 – Lead Scoring- Qualify
It’s important that you collaborate with sales to determine the quality of the leads.
You will waste a lot of time chasing down unqualified leads.
Marketing automation has tools you can use to grade your leads.
In order to correctly qualify your leads you should determine a few things:
- Identify buying criteria.
- Understand Intent vs Interest.
- Identify your target market.
- Identify the size and type of business.
Once you’ve collaborated with your sales department and determined the exact criteria of a qualified lead, then you’ll use the tools available to grade your leads.
Pardot recommends the following sequence:
- Assign– The best leads should be immediately followed up by a sales rep.
- Alert– Have the sales rep follow systemically. Depending on the sale and your product, your sales reps might need multiple follow ups.
- Nurture– I’ll talk more about this sequence below.
3 – Lead Nurturing/Email Sequence
An email drip sequence is usually the most effective way to nurture your leads.
Users are 3 times more likely to make a purchase through email than social media.
After determining if the lead qualifies, you can build email drip sequences to educate and state the benefits of your products/services.
Over 96% of internet users are not ready to buy the first time they see your business.
People have to know, like, and trust you before they buy from you.
Before you start building an email sequence you should segment your subscribers based on criteria your business finds important.
Here are the steps on how to build an email sequence:
- Determine the quality of the lead and find out at what stage of the buying cycle your prospects are.
- Make your content is educational and entertaining – This is called infotainment.
- Set a deadline with all your offers and make sure to stick to it.
- Use only one call to action in each email.
- Use compelling subject lines that have high open rates.
All the marketing automation software allow you to build email drip campaigns inside their dashboards.
If you a have higher priced product/service, you should still use an email drip sequence to create appointments with your sales reps.
4 – Sales Page/Landing Page
An email drip sequence can also lead to a landing page/sales page.
The landing page can be a sales page or a simple squeeze page to request for more information.
This depends on your business and the product you sell.
You can create simple landing pages on Hubspot, Marketo, and Pardot.
Here’s a good guide on creating a perfect landing page:
To learn more about creating a landing page check out these posts below:
- Quicksprout: Landing Page Optimization.
- 101 Landing Page Optimization Tips .
- Beginners Guide To Landing Page Optimization.
5 – Split Testing or A/B Testing
Split testing also known as A/B testing allows you to test different parts of your campaign to optimize for the best results.
You can test the following things:
- Headlines.
- Email Subject Lines.
- Images.
- Copy.
- Call to Actions.
A few things to remember when doing split tests:
- Only split test one thing at a time.
- The headline is usually the most important thing to test in your campaign.
- The image is the most important thing to test on Facebook campaigns.
To learn more about running A/B testing on your marketing campaigns check out the posts below:
- A/B Testing The Complete Guide.
- A Beginner’s Guide to AB Testing .
- The Ultimate Guide to A/B Testing.
Conclusion
Marketing automation is one of the best investments you can make in your business.
It can take time, to learn the systems and use the tools in an effective way.
Marketing automation won’t solve your marketing problems.
It works best once you have a steady stream of inbound leads.
Marketing automation will allow your business to scale its marketing and grow.