What if I told you that marketing your business didn’t have to be so much work? Or that it was possible to automate certain marketing tasks so you can free up your time and work on your business?
Marketing automation lets you serve your customers with the right message when they need it the most.
Think about it this way: You can automate your marketing and sales process with certain software so that all your communications take place on autopilot. You literally turn your website — and all the content you put out — into a marketing machine.
Below, we highlight seven different tools that will help you easily automate your marketing process.
Way #1 Lead Magnets
Lead magnets act as incentives to get people to join your email list. They can be a number of things, but commonly they’re a downloadable ebook or free report that addresses a pressing need of your audience.
The user will then enter their email in exchange for the free lead magnet.
Lead capture tools like LeadPages and Thrive Leads will enable you to place lead magnets across your site. Then you’ll need to utilize some form of email marketing software on the backend to manage your leads and deliver your lead magnet.
The tool we most commonly recommend for managing your contacts and delivering your lead magnet is ActiveCampaign.
Way #2 Lead Nurturing
Once a person has joined your email list, you’ll need a way to provide them with consistent value to build trust and move them further along your sales pipeline.
Email marketing software like ActiveCampaign, Ontraport or Infusionsoft will let you create an autoresponder that is automatically delivered to your subscriber’s inboxes. All you have to do, is create the sequence once.
You can even begin automating your webinars, which will act as virtual salespeople selling your high-ticket items.
Way #3 Onboarding
Client onboarding is the process of bringing on new clients and selling them on your products or services. This process usually takes a lot of time, and as a result, a lot of business owners either restrict or stop the onboarding process completely when they’ve got too much work.
This is a surefire way to grind your business growth to a halt.
With automation software you can automate the onboarding process, so you can focus your time on building systems to handle the influx of new work.
For example, you could create a Zapier integration that automatically sends out client intake forms via Typeform after they’ve completed your webinar or taken a specific action on your website. Alternatively, you can use a preset automation within ActiveCampaign.
Way #4 Upsells and Downsells
Upselling allows you to sell higher-ticket items to buyers after they’ve made a purchase, or recommend a complementary product to increase the total value of a sale.
Downselling, on the other hand, means recommending a cheaper product once a customer has backed down from a purchase. The main goal is making a sale and building a relationship with your customer, even if the profit is lower to start with.
With automation software like ActiveCampaign you can automate this part of your sales process. For example, once a customer purchases a product, you could have an automatic email trigger that recommends a complementary product.
Or, in case of a downsell, when a customer decides not to move forward with a purchase, you can send an automatic email that offers a coupon or a lower-priced product.
Way #5 Feedback Loops
Customer feedback is incredibly important. If you’re looking to create more useful products and services, then the customer feedback you receive will be good as gold.
Still, if getting customer feedback is simply an item on your to-do list, it will never get done. Instead, you could either create a feedback loop system that reminds you to reach out to past customers, or you could let email automation software handle it for you.
For example, you could set up recurring events in your existing calendar to gather feedback from clients. Or you could create a survey with Survey Monkey or Google Forms and send out a follow-up email sequence to past customers.
Way #6 Cancellation Surveys
Sometimes the best feedback you can receive is from people who have decided not to work with you anymore or purchase your products again. All feedback can be good feedback.
This concept is similar to the point above, but it will have a different sequence.
For instance, when a customer cancels their subscription or service, you could send a follow-up Surey Monkey, Typeform or Google Forms survey via your email marketing software. The information you collect might help to illuminate any blind spots you have surrounding your business and funnel.
Way #7 Referrals
Referrals can be an extremely valuable addition to your business. Yet asking for referrals is another one of those tasks that often falls by the wayside.
You can automate this part of the process by adding it your client onboarding email sequence.
You can even create a referral reward program that provides extra incentive for client referrals. For instance, if you run a web development firm, you could offer customers $500 or a percentage of the total project for any clients they send your way.
Referral reward programs are a great way to let satisfied customers and clients do your marketing for you. Best of all, you can use software like Ontraport and Infusionsoft to automate this entire process too.
Remember to always thank clients for any referrals you’ve received. I recommend using a handwritten card service to provide a nice personal touch.
Once you’ve determined how you’d like to better automate your marketing efforts, get in touch with the Automation Agency team or simply request an invite to join our services.
