Many small to midsize businesses (SMBs) rely on traditional marketing strategies and try to limit their marketing efforts within the resources they have available.
This includes performing many marketing tasks manually, including sending emails, following customers’ buying habits, segmenting customer lists, and more.
Performing these tasks is not just inefficient, they also cost money and time. And even with the rising number of companies that are using a marketing automation strategy to further their businesses, there are also those that question its relevance to their operations.
SMBs may feel that their businesses are too small for marketing automation or that they don’t possess a significant budget to dedicate to it. They may think of it as a business-savvy decision, but the costs of inefficient and ineffective marketing methods could prove to be more costly.
With studies showing that over $1 billion is wasted annually as a direct result of inefficient marketing strategies, SMBs need to align their marketing automation goals to reflect the customers’ journey and secure their loyalty to the brand. They can do so by following these 7 steps:
1. Understand the buyer persona
SMBs must make sure that the first step is to align their marketing automation strategy and objectives with the customers’ journey.
An important element of marketing automation is to understand who your customers are so that you have all the information you need to make an informed decision about the type of content that’s relevant to them.
You also need to be familiar with your customers’ demographics and where they frequent to obtain the information they need. Conduct surveys about your marketing, sales, and customer service operations. You can also speak to the people in your business that run these functions, and finally, you can also speak to the customers themselves and get a better understanding of what drives their buying decisions.
2. Map out your customers’ journey for each persona
Potential customers will typically go through four phases: awareness, consideration, decision, and purchase.
To ensure that your efforts are successful, you must align your marketing automation goals with each of these phases by creating a landscape where your business appeals to many customers and allows them to engage with your brand, your products, and services using multiple pathways.
You can send newsletters, emails, and personalised text messages using marketing automation software, but before you get started, there are some questions that you should consider when mapping out the journey.
- What challenges do customers face and what do they consider at each stage of the journey?
- What type of information are customers looking for?
- What kind of questions are they most likely to ask at each stage?
- What content would help them make purchasing decisions?
Once you have discovered the answers to these questions, you’ll have a much clearer idea about who your customers are and what drives their decisions.
3. Conduct an audit of your content
One of the key reasons why marketing strategies fail is because the content isn’t effective and has little to no impact on the customers.
While a good marketing automation strategy can help you track your performance, you also need to conduct a content audit as part of that strategy to optimise your customers’ experience. This is one of the best ways to know the type of content that has an impact on your customers.
An audit will help you determine which content is creating the most impact, what you should keep, and what needs to be removed or improved to appeal to your audience.
4. Know your analytics and what they mean
Marketing automation helps you obtain a lot of key analytics, but if you’re unable to understand the analytics, you may not be able to effectively map out your company’s marketing strategy.
For instance, imagine that you know the amount of time it takes for potential customers to take advantage of an offer and how much time it takes for that offer to close. You need to know where in the process your potential customers are failing to progress to create a marketing automation plan that solves this problem.
In addition, the data that’s provided is of no use if you don’t know how to interpret it and understand how it can impact the bigger picture.
5. Collaborate with your sales team
Sales teams are constantly on the frontlines speaking and interacting with customers. This means that they gain a lot of first-hand knowledge about the customers and what they’re looking for.
You can use these insights in your automation strategy and create better alignment with your customers by:
- Having regular discussions with your top sales personnel and gaining insights into how, when, and who they reach out to, and using the information to refine your customer profiles
- Discovering the team’s roadblocks and successes
- Developing a line of open communication between your sales and marketing teams to ensure that there are no gaps in sales communications
6. Develop activities that will get you in front of customers
Get the most out of your marketing automation by planning programmes and activities that put you in front of your customers at every stage of their journey.
You can do this by tracking your customers’ levels of engagement and analysing which content or marketing automation component is more appealing to them.
For instance, one customer might be more responsive to an email marketing campaign while another customer prefers your social media marketing efforts.
Always try to understand what your customers are searching for and ensure that you maintain a good relationship with them even after the purchase.
7. Identify the tools you need to execute your plan
In any business—whether it’s a large corporation or an SMB—the ultimate goal is to generate revenue. The secret to this is in the scalability of your processes.
This is particularly important when determining the marketing automation systems and tools that support your strategy. While investing in these tools can be difficult—especially with the number of options available—it’s an important decision.
The lack of content and an effective marketing strategy will negatively impact any efforts you make to elevate your lead generation and marketing efforts.
Ensuring that you have the right marketing automation tool can have a multiplier effect on the results.
Implement a marketing automation strategy to elevate your SMB
Irrespective of the size of your business, a successful marketing automation strategy is vital not just to get the attention of potential customers but also to nurture them into long-term customers.
Aligning your messaging and content with what interests your customers and drives their purchasing patterns is the ultimate success factor.
To learn more about how you can create a marketing automation strategy schedule a free session with one of our automation specialists today.