The short answer to that is this: Most businesses and business owners are inundated, and therefore consistency is easily lost when managing ongoing communications with clients and prospects.
Automation is not a fad in the world of online marketing. It is a critical business development tool and is designed to facilitate intelligent, on-going communications with prospects and clients for the purposes of
- Lead nurturing – so that conversion rates are optimised for both ‘now buyers’ and ‘future buyers’.
- Optimisation of the after-sales process – to maximise retention and drive incremental revenue through up-selling/cross-selling or referrals.
Core Elements of Automation
- Marketing Database: A centralised platform for all prospect and customer data.
- Workflow Automation: It supports the ability to provide the content at the right time.
- Follow-up can be trigger based, e.g. a prospect responding to a call to action, or it can follow events, such as a number of days after attending a seminar or downloading a piece of content.
- Email Distribution: So online marketing communication activities can be executed by one system.
- Gathering Preferences: Incorporates methods to capture valuable insights about prospects and customers. This insight can then be used to segment them based on preferences or specific areas of interest. The goal is to engage in 1:1 marketing.
- Analytics: Allowing businesses to track and test things like email open rates, click-throughs to landing pages, how many times people have clicked on a certain link, bounce rates and referral source activity such as links from social media.
Automation has become so widespread and easy to use, because of its commonality. However, it has also become harder to differentiate yourself and really leverage these strategies in a way that makes your business stand out.
SEE ALSO:ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR SMALL BUSINESS
Personalise your content
Personalisation of content and communications has evolved from just using a person’s name to tailoring the content of your email newsletter to the specific individual involved. This includes tailored calls to action. The fact remains that personalised emails have six times more revenue rate and traction than non-personalised emails, which makes it well worth a try.
Related: 10 Simple Ways on How to Master Your Email Marketing
Watch a video here about mastering and delivering customised, personalised content.
How to leverage your marketing automation
If you are a small business, there are a number of benefits to implementing an automation strategy in your marketing plan.
These include:
- Sales support. Aligning sales and marketing is crucial for success. However, we very often treat them as separate and this is one area where many businesses fall down. Marketing automation makes it easier to combine them both and allow your marketing to support your sales people so they can build on each other.
- Content. Automation is a great way to gain insight into what content gets the best traction and give you an idea what type of content to produce going forward.
- Analytics. Marketing automation gives you data and insight into your customers’ behaviours, actions and activities. You learn more about your customers and target your future marketing efforts accordingly.
If you want to start down the wonderful road of automation, you will need to start by systemising the strategy, and mapping out sequences and customer journeys so you have them clear in your mind before you start creating content or automated sequences…
…but that’s another article!
Additional Resources:
Download our strategy to make your business more visible online.
Find more help on using LinkedIn for Networking and Lead Generation
Our E-book on How to Woo Your Clients in the Digital Age
Sue Mills is a marketing, sales and digital specialist to the financial and professional service sector, and the owner of Sassy Marketing & Communications. With over 20 years of experience working for and with financial planners, accountants, brokers and advisors she shows her clients how to step up and out to be sustainable and thrive in their practices through adopting smart and valuable marketing strategies. Call Sue on 0477 468 888 for a confidential discussion or visit www.sassy.marketing.
