Marketing Automation

If you do it right, this can be a game changer.

Four Signs that You Might Be Ready for Marketing Automation

As a team of folks passionate about marketing, we’ll admit it’s hard not to get excited about how technology has transformed things over the last decade. It’s been many years since the first marketing automation tools made their way into the marketplace, yet we’re still impressed with the power it offers to small businesses.

But on the other hand, you don’t really need a North Face down parka if you live in Miami. Automation may or may not make sense for you.

Here are four signs that indicate it’s probably time to consider marketing automation:

SIGN 1

You treat all prospects the same. By this, we mean you are doing little or nothing to segment your contact lists based on what makes them unique. Instead, all your prospects are getting the same broadcast email, being invited to the same webinars, or being sent the same special offer.

SIGN 2

You’re great at jumping on the hot leads, but others tend to die on the vine. You aggressively work to close the 10% of deals that bubble to the top, but have no systemic way to nurture the other 90% over time. This “90% ground” grows barren because things fall through the cracks… or there’s just simply a lack of follow-up.

SIGN 3

Your sales team is spending too much time chasing the masses. Your sales team doesn’t have the information needed to distinguish the high-probability leads from the rest. So they spend hours and hours making calls and sending emails to figure it out.

SIGN 4

You continue marketing, but don’t have a clear sense of financial impact. Our favorite marketing quote of all time is from marketing pioneer, John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

So What Exactly is Marketing Automation?

Here’s the Cliff Note version:

A good marketing automation system can improve the effectiveness of each part of your customer lifecycle… from helping attract initial interest, all the way through obtaining referrals from your customers.

How does it do this? Well, it automates many of the time consuming and error prone tasks that many marketers struggle with (things like list segmentation, landing page and signup form creation, email promotions, email sequences driven by business logic, task scheduling, and analytical abilities to help track the impact of marketing activities).

For small businesses, we think you can boil it down to a three things:

It greatly increases your marketing capacity without adding additional headcount.
It helps you to be more targeted and personal in your marketing – which delivers better results.
It allows your sales team to spend more time on high-value activity (talking to interested prospects) and no time on low-value activity (chasing down the time wasters and tire kickers).

How HMG Can Help

As great as marketing automation can be, it’s never a case of flipping the switch and seeing the leads roll in. In fact, the system is only as good as the strategy, processes and content that feeds it. That’s where HMG comes in. We help companies properly implement marketing automation solutions. For some clients, that means just offering advice and oversight. For others, We’re in the guts of the system mapping out lead flows, writing sales copy for emails, creating action sequences, and setting up analytics tracking.

The only tool we recommend and support is Infusionsoft.

Why? 2 Reasons:

• We’ve done the research and we’ve used other systems. To us, Infusionsoft hits the mark for offering a very powerful product, but at a price that small businesses can afford.

• Infusionsoft runs our business. Yep, we trust them enough to run our marketing. We know the system inside and out and we can put this first-hand knowledge to work for you.

100% Transparency: Infusionsoft pays a small commission to agencies. And yes, we’re considered an official “agency” to Infusionsoft. Sure, we love the token of appreciation for introducing folks to Infusionsoft, but that’s not a driver. We believe in the product, we’re qualified to assist, and we know it helps our clients increase sales. If you want to learn more about Infusionsoft, visit www.infusionsoft.com

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If you’re looking for an Orlando marketing company, send us an inquiry and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!