Marketing Automation is the step after you attract a visitor. It is the nurturing which builds trust with a stranger. The temptation and illusion which a traditional salesperson finds difficult to resist is selling too early when the buyer is not ready. Marketing automation helps your buyer become ready for the sales conversation.
Old Mindsets
Premature selling is the root cause of many organizations who have not transitioned to the new economy. Their old mindsets have them doing the following:
- Interrupt prospects
- Continual follow up
- Sell, sell, sell
Effort is confused with results. Success is a low percentage. Typical numbers may be 2 out of 100 cold calls get a meeting or 2 out of 100 mailers got a call. All the while, the question of what happens to your brand with the other 98% is ignored. You damage your brand. You don’t get a second shot to make a first impression. But, that matters little to someone who only cares about selling. It’s part of the delusion in a sales mindset. The carnage and failure rate is ignored.
What About Buying?
Think about how you buy. When did you want a salesperson to call you about software, services or products you were not sure you needed yet? Likely later, rather than sooner. Here is how a buying process works:
- Have need
- Search for need
- Become aware of offerings
- Educate myself
- Look for value and content
- Subscribe
- Request meeting
- Confirm credibility
- Buy
The buyer is largely in a self-service mode to get to the goal you both want – a sale. How is this process managed effectively today? Marketing automation systems which are set up with multiple campaigns that nurture the buyer based on their preferences help your brand build trust in the mind of the buyer. It helps the buyer become ready to engage you and purchase.
Types of Marketing Automation Campaigns
Let’s assume that the various marketing automation systems today can get the job done of nurturing and building trust. You will likely start with some standard automated marketing campaigns which are based on specific buyer profiles. In our marketing automation consulting, here are a few which nurture and convert leads to customers:
Education Campaign
Nurture by providing education on your industry and offering. Buyers think about your value offering a fraction of the time your company incessantly talks about itself. Help them with the knowledge gap by providing valuable information which allows them to be in an intelligble conversation with your sales team.
Use Case Campaign
Help the buyer see the use cases of your offering and the success stories. This builds a picture for identifying with your product or service in solving their problem. The envisioning should make your value proposition indispensable with regards to your competition. You must establish leadership and uniqueness.
Branding Campaign
If you are in an unknown category, this campaign should drive your leadership position. Capitalize on the PR and credibility you have established in your market space and educate the buyer on your category.
Buying Campaign
Explain what it means to be a customer and how your team supports and brings added value in the context of ongoing relationship. This helps build relationship in the mind of the buyer and trust. Explain your processes and create transparency with how your service delivery is different and reliable.
Imagine that a visitor to your site engages one of these funnels or another custom developed marketing automation process. Their nurturing can be measured for effectiveness by ongoing scoring and triggers in your CRM system. The respective buying funnel should be designed to help a smaller sales team engage when your system tells you who is ready. You will see the digital behaviors each nurtured lead has in their contact record. Clicks on your content, subscribing to additional value pieces or response to a call to action are more valuable in this system than a follow-up phone call with the buyers’ guard up.
By the time sales engages, your buyer should relate to you and your brand with high trust. They know you and trust you because you provided value which connects in a relevant, personal and timely way.
What are the campaigns you believe your buyers care about and need to say, “Yes?” Feel free to comment below.
