Converting sales leads and staying ahead of the competition are daily challenges. You need to hit the right audience with the right message at the right time—a challenge even for marketing pros.
Meanwhile, you’re busy juggling meetings and projects and figuring out the budget for next quarter. If your goal is growth (and whose isn’t?) it’s almost impossible to manage marketing content plus all your other responsibilities. Marketing automation might just be the solution you are looking for.
What Is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is software you use to facilitate repetitive marketing actions, like publishing social media posts, nurturing leads, sending out marketing emails, and updating contact information.
Marketing automation platforms store your campaign, contact, email, and web page information in one place. And they typically provide ready-to-build templates that can make it much easier to craft marketing messages.
Let’s look of a real-world example of what marketing automation can do.
Cart abandonment is a huge and well-documented problem for online retailers. Suppose one of your potential customers puts an item in their cart, leaves your site to check social media, and then forgets about the purchase.
You can use marketing automation software to send the prospect a gentle (or funny, or persuasive) email reminder to come back and complete their purchase. The customer clicks on the link in your email and completes their purchase.
This is just one example of how marketing automation software can help your business. But how do you know if you’re ready for it and whether it’s worth the investment?
Here are some telltale signs…
1. Your website doesn’t generate enough leads.
Converting leads to sales is a kind of courtship. It requires nurturing. Adding some content and a “contact us” button to your website and expecting sales to roll in is not a winning strategy. Someone filling out your contact form is only the beginning—now you need to “nurture” this new lead. Marketing automation can help you “warm up” leads with useful and engaging information that keeps your company top of mind when it’s purchase time.
2. Your leads aren’t converting.
Considering it takes 7 contacts to convert a lead to a sale, trying to nurture every viable lead individually is a monumentally difficult task. Number of leads + time to write emails + time to follow up = ugh…math.
But, with the right automation tools, you can answer your customers’ key questions—things like how your product or service will solve their problem, how much your product costs, and what results they can expect. And you can deliver relevant content based on how your leads interact with your website, marketing emails, and social media pages. All this builds trust and can help you convert leads to sales.
3. You don’t have the manpower or data to segment your leads.
If you blast out emails to every customer or prospect in your database because you don’t have much information or the staff to sort through the information you do have, you already know you’re only reaching some of your target customers. Worse, you’re probably annoying many others in the process.
Segmenting leads helps you develop more targeted messaging, and it gives your potential customers a better experience.
Before you can properly segment your lead data, of course, you need to have enough data. This includes location information, behavioral data, and more. To get this information, you need to ask the right questions (marketing automation software can help with that, too).
Once you have good data, marketing automation programs can help you segment current and potential customers into different categories. If you sell fitness trackers, for example, you might create segments for professional athletes and casual exercisers. Segmenting customers can also help you identify where you should be investing the most effort and resources in future campaigns.
4. You’re spending way too much time on repetitive tasks.
You come in, check emails, answer the same 10 questions, respond with the same answers—what is this? Groundhog Day?!
If you find yourself consumed with building lists, managing leads, or writing emails, you already know you’re neglecting other important tasks and responsibilities. Marketing automation programs can remove much of this burden, allowing you to focus on creative work or, if you’re a business owner, running your business.
5. Your competition is using it…and blowing you out of the water.
We all know what happens to companies that fail to adapt to the times (we’re looking at you, Blockbuster and Kodak). If your marketing efforts are being drowned out by your competition and you can’t seem to keep up with their online presence, odds are they’ve gotten smart and are harnessing the power of a marketing automation platform. Using marketing automation software, a single employee can do the work of a marketing and sales department dozens of members strong. It really is that powerful.
Ready to Learn More About How Marketing Automation Can Help Your Business Grow?
From scoring leads to sending out targeted marketing emails, marketing automation can help you reach your goals. NP’s Marketing Automation puts the most effective technology at your fingertips so you can nurture leads faster and more efficiently. When combined with analytics and performance tracking, you’ll stay ahead of the competition.
National Positions is a full-service SEO agency. We’re constantly researching and finding new ways to empower your campaign with the most innovative technology to drive traffic, leads, and sales to your website.
Make the most of every lead and sales opportunity—at the right time. Call us at (877) 866-6699 and start automating your success today.