If you’re serious about lead generation, you need to get serious about the marketing technology tools you use to support this strategy. The right software makes it easier to get the work done efficiently and measure the results, so you can get on with delivering the strategy.
Read on to find out why marketing automation technology is your recipe for results…
Marketing automation is transforming the digital marketing space. Studies show that 91 per cent* of companies successfully using this technology believe it essential to their strategies—and that effective implementation of marketing automation can drive a 14.5 per cent** increase in sales productivity.
On the other end of the spectrum, many companies have invested in marketing automation and been stuck with expensive software that they don’t know how to use. The best way to ensure this doesn’t happen to you is to learn as much as you can about marketing automation before you get started.
We can help with that.
You can’t automate your marketing without the right technology. There are countless providers to choose from, but they aren’t all created equal. What you need is sophisticated software that gives you complete, accurate insights into how prospective customers are interacting with your digital presence. It’s also important that your software allows you to tailor automated communications: they need to be human. The leading platforms at the moment include:
Engaging Partners use HubSpot because it gives you the power to fully personalise every interaction with your prospects and customers, and rolls all your inbound marketing functions into one smart platform. It’s also set up to easily integrate with specialist technology like Salesforce, Slack, Wordpress, Mailchimp, Facebook Ads and much more.
Even if you are one of the unlucky companies saddled with a less than stellar marketing automation platform, chances are it can be infused directly with HubSpot—no tough transfer procedures required.
And what happens if your to-do list is beginning to look a little un-doable? You can always partner with an agency that has the skills that you need to get the job done.
There’s no point implementing a marketing automation platform without a strategy for what you are trying to achieve.
Your marketing strategy should define your requirements. Are are you looking to use content purely for engagement purposes or do you have specific lead generation and sales conversion targets that need to be met? A full-funnel Inbound Marketing strategy that touches cross-channel acquisition and retention touch points and needs to integrate with your CRM, will have very different technology requirements compared to a fast-touch FMCG marketing programme that uses content to drive in-store purchase.
If you’re looking to marketing automation to support lead generation and sales conversion activity then critically, both the Marketing and Sales teams should be invested in strategy development, platform selection and have shared goals in terms of what the programme is expected to deliver. We see time and time again the Marketing team delivering hard-earned, high quality leads, only to see them disappear into the void of the Sales department if the Sales team aren’t equal stakeholders in the programme.
Marketing automation may be able to automate interactions with customers and leads but it’s up to you to create the copy that forms those touch points. That means establishing a buyer persona (or more likely a set of personas) and writing in the manner which will be most effective at converting them.
To create a useful persona you need to consider:
When targeted to a specific persona, content is one of the most effective ways to help turn prospects into leads and leads into customers.
Once a marketing automation campaign kicks off, the work has only just begun. The next step is to measure your results, discern what works and what doesn’t and use that knowledge to continually fine tune your approach.
Metrics you need to be paying attention to include:
This best way to do this is usually to use two or more ads or strategies at once, both of which are similar apart from a small detail like different copy or targeting. This is better known as A/B testing—a functionality that HubSpot has built right into the software. Watch to see which performs better then adjust your strategy accordingly.
