And Speaking of Nurturing Leads…
January 21, 2016
Digital marketing saw a major shift in 2015, and if we’ve learned anything about internet marketing in recent years, it’s that change is constant and unpredictable. As buying behavior continues to evolve — both online and off — we have to respond with technologies and tactics that sell, and marketing strategies that reflect the way people research and purchase.
Heading into 2016, we continue to note an increasing disparity in how organizations and individuals buy B2B or B2C products and services, versus how companies market and sell them. The buying process has changed significantly, and most businesses are struggling to adapt their sales and marketing strategies in response.
Successful digital marketing campaigns in 2016 will hinge on expertly combining technology, strategy and content — a tall order for any organization, regardless of size and skillset. Smart companies are embracing an approach that efficiently positions them to attract, engage and convert today’s buyer. It’s called marketing automation.
How does marketing automation work?
Marketing automation is a strategy that incorporates powerful software and processes to make complex and repetitive tasks easy.
Premium marketing automation systems integrate your website analytics to ensure that customers receive personalized and highly relevant content based on the information they choose to interact with (versus a generic message that offers no value or context). Here’s a step-by-step example:
- A construction company sends out an email newsletter featuring commercial, residential and remodeling
- A customer opens the email and clicks on the commercial
- The customer is taken to a webpage that highlights commercial construction with a clear call-to-action to view a case study of another company that benefited from the company’s commercial services.
- They click to view the case study.
At this point, the software would have logged steps 2 through 4 in the system and, depending on the sales process, could trigger several activities, all of them focusing on the commercial services for which the prospect has already expressed an interest:
- A phone call from a designated representative that specializes in commercial construction services;
- Another automated email that offers a statistic-rich blog post on commercial services, for instance “Four reasons why our commercial construction clients saved a minimum of 20% on their projects in 2015”; or
- A display banner featuring the company’s commercial construction projects that appears every time the customer logs into social media or Google accounts for the next 30 days.
In the past, the Step 1 email was tracked in a very limited way, if at all. With marketing automation software, every meaningful interaction is tracked and logged automatically, saving time and creating insight about every user who receives the email.
At BroadBased, we’re confident that marketing automation is the best way to keep your company in the driver’s seat in 2016. If you’re ready to have a conversation about how it fits into your current lead generation strategy, click here to email Chris Ramaglia, EVP, and start mapping out your strategy.
