If you want to run and grow your business sustainably, you can’t expect your teams to do EVERYTHING manually: you need at least some level of marketing automation.
But what is it in practice? And how can it make your life easier while also improving your customer experience and boosting your revenue?
I’ll show you (so that you can finally stop wasting so much time on repetitive tasks).
Marketing automation explained
Marketing automation means using tools and software to automate repetitive tasks and optimise your marketing.
The goal? Streamlining and enhancing your entire process in a way that makes your teams more productive and elevates your customer experience.
Nowadays, there are all kinds of tools, including AI-enriched options. To give you an idea, though, here are some examples of marketing automation:
- Quiz marketing to attract, segment and nurture your leads
- Email sequences
- Follow-ups
- Lead scoring
- Scheduling social media posts
- A/B testing
- Ad campaigns
- Abandoned-cart reminders
- Meeting reminders
- And much more!
What are the benefits of marketing automation?
- Streamlining your lead generation and marketing – You’ll simplify and automate different marketing tasks and activities, especially the most repetitive and time-consuming ones (phew!)
- Personalising your communications – Worried that marketing automation will make your customer experience less personal? It’s actually the opposite! By segmenting your audience and tracking their touchpoints, you’ll guarantee a more personalised experience (like sharing content that’s relevant to their challenges or sending follow-ups that reference their actual situation)
- Improving your lead management – For example, you can use marketing automation to pre-qualify and score your leads (based on their unique journey and how likely they are to become customers). So, you can expect a 451% increase in qualified leads!
- Taking care of your entire customer lifecycle – You can use marketing automation at every single stage of their journey, from lead generation to sales and even retaining your customers after that first purchase
- Increasing your teams’ efficiency and productivity – By freeing up their time and removing human error, you’ll allow them to focus on more strategic activities and decisions
- Aligning your marketing and sales team – No more back-and-forths! Both your teams will get to use consistent messaging, pick up where someone else left off and monitor each lead’s journey
- Collecting data – Marketing automation tools can also offer you more advanced analytics, replacing guesswork with data-driven decisions
- Increasing your marketing ROI and overall revenue and business growth – Ultimately, all the benefits of marketing automation boil down to this! And now that you’ve read this list, it’s easy to see why you can expect a 417% increase in revenue, isn’t it?
Now, how can you make all this work for your business?
I’ll show you, step-by-step.
Selling on repeat: step-by-step guide to combining lead generation with marketing automation
As we’ve seen, there are all kinds of opportunities for marketing automation, which is both exciting and… potentially overwhelming!
So, instead of going through every single option out there, start from your current lead generation and sales process. Then, ask yourself: what stages can be optimised by marketing automation?
Here are some ideas to get you started (and how you can bring all of them together with ONE quiz).
1. Attract your prospects with online marketing
Before you can automate your lead generation and sales process, you need to put yourself in front of your target audience.
Some effective demand generation strategies to increase your brand awareness are:
- Social media marketing – Share valuable posts for your ideal clients, and interact with them on the platforms they use the most (psst: you can easily automate this by scheduling your posts!)
- Content marketing – Create insightful and engaging content (like blog posts, videos, podcasts or e-books) to attract your target customers
- SEO – Help them find you when they’re looking for your type of business or asking questions to understand their problem. How? Optimise your website and blog posts for the keywords your audience is searching
- Collaborations – Tap into someone else’s audience, too (for example, through influencer collaborations or by co-hosting events with complementary brands)
- Outbound – Reach out to your target customers directly through cold calls, cold emails, ads or by attending relevant events
2. Capture more leads with a lead magnet
Getting more eyeballs is the first step. Now, you need a way of contacting them directly while compelling them to engage with your brand. That’s where a lead magnet comes into play!
This is a valuable resource that you offer to your audience for free in exchange for their contact details.
So, your lead magnet should be something they want and that positions you as the logical next step.
Most businesses are still relying on static PDFs as lead magnets. However, they’re so overused that they’ve become white noise, and they only convert at 3-10%.
So, to stand out online and maximise your chances of success, consider using the best lead magnets instead.
Quiz lead magnets
From personality quizzes to Scorecards (and more), these lead magnets help your participants understand their current situation and get personalised results or advice. So, they’re highly sought-after!
For example, a business coach could create a “What’s your entrepreneurial profile?” quiz, and a content marketing agency could launch a “Marketing scorecard for small businesses.”
Quizzes also allow you to segment your audience and send them more relevant content and messages. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that quiz lead magnets convert at a whopping 30-50%!
When using professional software like ScoreApp, you can also connect your quiz to your email marketing platform and CRM, creating a fully automated marketing funnel.
Create your FREE quiz lead magnet with ScoreApp
Webinar lead magnets
These lead magnets have a more exclusive feel and allow you to showcase your personality, making a connection with your audience.
You could also use a quiz to:
- Recommend the best recorded webinar for each participant
- Make a live webinar even more engaging (for example, by testing your attendees’ knowledge)
Promoting your lead magnet
Once you’ve created your lead magnet, talk about it EVERYWHERE:
- On your website
- In your social media profiles and posts
- As a call to action at the end of your blog posts, videos or events
- And… whenever you show up for your business!
If you have different segments or products, you could consider having multiple lead magnets to target all of them.
Or, once again, just make your life easier with a quiz: it’ll segment your audience through your questions and allow you to set up different sequences and offers for each of them (more on that soon!).
3. Nurture your leads through automated email sequences
Once you’ve collected someone’s details, keep contacting them directly to build trust, nurture them and – eventually – upsell the right solution for them.
For the best results, use marketing automation to personalise the entire experience. This will keep your customers engaged and lead to a 20% increase in sales!
That’s one of the many reasons why it’s more effective to start with a quiz lead magnet. Instead of sending the same generic sequence to everyone, you can:
- Segment your new subscribers
- Set up different and super relevant email sequences for each of them, based on their quiz answers
For example, you could use these emails to create a connection with your subscribers, send bespoke advice that’s tailored to their challenges and goals, and share strategic sales-enablement content (like blog posts that answer their questions or concerns).
4. Convert your leads into paying customers
The right marketing automation tools can also show you:
- When and how to invite someone on a call
- What product or service you should recommend
For example, you could send an exclusive discount to anyone who’s gone through certain touchpoints or offer a call to those who’ve completed your email sequence.
When you start with a ScoreApp quiz as your lead magnet, that’s a breeze to plan and set up!
After nurturing each prospect and sharing the right sales-enablement content, send them an automated message referencing their results:
“Hi Jane,
I noticed you recently took our Copywriting Quiz and scored 54%. You scored really high in the CREATIVE section, which is fantastic, but quite low in the MEASURING RESULT category.
Would you be up for a quick call so I can offer you some advice and share strategies to improve this?”
Much better than a generic “Would you like to jump on a call”, right?
Plus, instead of starting from scratch with each prospect, your sales team will get to look at all their previous touchpoints before getting on a call with them. So, they’ll be able to personalise their communication even further and recommend the best option for each individual.
Get ready to hear many more YESes!
5. Encourage repeat customers
Someone became a customer? That’s great, but it doesn’t mean your marketing automation should be over!
As teased before, you can (and should) use it for your entire customer journey. So, that includes post-purchase follow-ups, satisfaction surveys, loyalty programs and cross-sell or upsell campaigns.
This will allow you to:
- Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Get feedback that you can then use to improve your processes even further
- Keep that communication line open
- Encourage repeat purchases
How to use ScoreApp for your marketing automation
Marketing automation can really make your life easier and boost your sales while improving your communications with your customers.
And when you choose ScoreApp? You get to use ONE quiz to create a full marketing automation funnel!
How?
- Use your quiz lead magnet as part of your content marketing strategy
- Get more sign-ups thanks to a compelling quiz landing page, and ask questions that’ll segment and pre-qualify your prospects
- Set up customised email sequences to nurture each segment
- When the time is right, make them a personalised offer they can’t refuse!
Once you’ve set it up, it’ll keep on running in the background for you, attracting your target audience, nurturing them strategically and bringing you more customers.
Set up your marketing automation funnel: create your ScoreApp quiz today and for FREE.
