Now is the time to consider the marketing automation strategy you want to create for your company.
The first steps in developing a marketing automation plan are capturing your customers' attention, establishing a benchmark, conducting research, and finally, nurturing your leads.
Let's now expand on these.
Capturing the attention of potential leads or customers:
The use of automation can be beneficial before a conversion takes place to let potential customers know who you are, what you're offering, and why your business is superior.
A potential customer wants to learn more about you early in decision-making.
Similarly, you want to get to know them better... and probably want to get their email address to continue the conversation.
Automate both inbound and outbound marketing. Content marketing and search engine optimization can help you attract leads by ranking well for specific keywords on Google, publishing engaging content, and filming tutorials.
Establish benchmarks:
Templates are a crucial component of a successful marketing automation strategy. This enables scaling and transfer of experience.
Starting with the following benchmarks is an excellent place to start:
- Email and direct message templates:
You must create sample adjustable subject lines and copies for all occasions, including cold outreach, welcoming new subscribers, offering a deal, and sending regular newsletters.
- Drip campaign examples:
Email sequences triggered by user actions have higher open rates than single emails.
Depending on your business type, you may require templates for the following campaigns: verifying new email addresses, promoting a new product or service, collecting feedback, increasing user engagement, and reminding about upcoming events. - Creating business offer templates allows marketers and salespeople to personalize and re-send prospective clients standard forms for solicited and unsolicited proposals.
Research:
Flexibility is key to an effective automation strategy. Your marketing efforts should evolve along with your target audience's preferences, interests, and concerns. You can:
- Keep an eye on Google Trends to see what people in your area or country are searching.
- Monitor and analyze social media mentions of your and competitors' brands to make informed decisions about future promotion.
- Gather customer feedback or conduct a poll survey.
- Compile advanced website analytics, such as monitoring heat maps.
- Monitor your competitors' marketing efforts.
Lead nurturing:
The majority of people prefer to receive messages that are relevant and personalized.
It is therefore impossible to achieve a successful automation strategy without custom content paths for every single lead.
Lead nurturing begins with segmentation and results in specific campaign content.
Before implementing automation, take the following steps:
- Determine target audiences - create profiles for crucial accounts or buyer personas.
- Establish a scouring system or criteria for determining qualified leads
- Segment the data in the initial stage
- Determine the points of contact with each segment
- Prepare content strategies for segments, including messages, ads, and visuals.
- Analyzing what combination of content and creative performs better for each segment of the audience in A/B test campaigns
- Analyze segments and adjust them according to client behavior, e.g., engagement level or loyalty level.
