Marketing On Auto Pilot

Nov-Week-3-22

Most individuals in business consider the behavior of customers as having just one dimension, which should be watched and then reacted to. Consequently, marketing activities are reduced to only a reactive procedure.

What would happen, however, if you could structure your marketing in a way that enabled certain habits or even actively encouraged them?

The use of marketing automation enables you to easily plan and implement the behavior of your prospect that you would want to see more of.

It is necessary to think out what it is that you want from your leads and then develop campaigns in such a way as to elicit precisely that behavior.

This blog will examine why it is vital to develop campaigns to elicit the behavior you hope to see and how to accomplish so successfully so that readers may benefit from the information presented.

What kind of actions do you hope other people will take?

So, how can you design a campaign that gets prospects to act the way you want them to?

Conversion, or the process through which leads are transformed into paying customers, is the desired action for the majority of organizations. On the other hand, there are probably some stages in between, such as…

  • Reading specific entries on a blog.

  • Obtaining downloads of lead magnets.

  • The act of clicking on email links and subscribing to a newsletter

  • Visiting sales pages

  • Making precise requests for information

Instead of only monitoring and responding, it is possible to actively shape behavior via the use of behavioral marketing?

However, you must first establish what activities you want your lead to do in order to construct a process—or journey—that consumers may embark on to get to that point. Once you have made that decision, you can go on to the next step.

You are responsible for being aware of the behavioral signs that show clients are progressing through the buyer’s journey. This will enable you to detect any gaps that are creating a decline in the number of leads; after you’ve done that, you can act and improve the process.

And we do all of this with the help of marketing automation.

What part does marketing automation play in the process of planning behavior to be desired?

Marketing automation enables organizations to seamlessly provide the appropriate information in the proper time to lead prospects through the awareness phases of the sales funnel. It is an efficient method for transforming leads into paying clients and moving them up the qualification lead, to marketing-qualified to sales-qualified.

Demand creation may be effectively driven with the use of lead magnets, which allow for the collection of crucial information from potential leads. Nevertheless, failing to continue nurturing leads after completing the first lead magnet process is one of the most common and costly errors made by B2B companies.

The most important thing you can do is educate your leads in order to advance them further along the awareness path. Then, at each successive level, provide the customer with the following item that will bring them one step closer to making a purchase.

What part do different phases of awareness play in the process of planning conduct to be desired?

The customer journey includes five levels of awareness, each determining the kind of information and interaction a potential lead is ready for.

These are the five phases that are involved:

IDK Who You Are: Prospects are completely unaware of your business. They are unaware of who you are or how you may assist them.

Issue-Aware: Your prospect is aware that they have a problem and is actively seeking information about it and potential solutions. On the other hand, they are not currently familiar with any particular brands or businesses.

Solution-Aware: Prospects are now aware of the possible solutions to their issue, but they still need to focus their research on particular goods, services, or businesses. Solution-Aware prospects are aware of the potential solutions to their problem.

Product-Aware: Your potential customers are hunting for certain goods that will fulfill their requirements. They are researching the market to find items and services that meet the criteria they have developed.

Convince Me: Some potential customers know your business and are interested in your product or service. However, they must defend and substantiate the grounds for the purchase while drawing comparisons to other available options.

You have to be extremely detailed in your understanding of the awareness stage your prospects are in and then utilize that knowledge to manufacture the behavior you want to see from them. Because various kinds of material will be required at each step, you will need to tailor your campaigns to meet the requirements of your leads.

Imagine that you have leads who have downloaded an entry-level lead magnet titled “What is marketing automation software.” These leads have shown interest in what you have to offer. There is a good chance that they are now in the problem-aware stage of awareness; hence, they still need to prepare to make a commitment to purchasing software.

At this point, it is up to you to guide those potential customers through the awareness phases of the buying process. You may plan a campaign that drives people to the logical next step in the awareness journey and allows them to take the next step naturally. The material you utilize may be another lead magnet, a product demo, or anything else geared toward the subsequent level of awareness.

However, in the end, you are going to have to tell your prospects what you want them to do next. This is an essential step in the process of designing the behavior you want your prospects to exhibit. Consider how you might pique their interest, encourage them to download your buyer’s guide, and construct your marketing automation strategy with that objective in mind.

What are the repercussions of a campaign that does not provide the expected results?

The expected situation would be as follows: A potential customer enters your sales funnel through a particular campaign and consumes the material you subsequently provide for them (including blog posts, lead magnets, etc.). They pass through each stage of the awareness campaign without becoming a paying client.

Sadly, things sometimes work out differently than that, particularly in the business-to-business (B2B) world, where the average purchase path is lengthy, and there is often more than one decision-maker involved. Therefore, in order for each lead to finally exhibit Sales-qualified behavior, a significant amount of nurturing will be required on the part of the sales team.

In actuality, it is vital in circumstances like these to build procedures and further campaigns that follow up with leads even if they don’t display the required behavior. In other words, if you want them to behave in a certain way, you must ensure they do.

Everything hinges on the idea that certain actions will cause specific conditional statements to be executed. Putting in place sequences that prepare for desired behavior, including any eventualities, is what it means to automate marketing in the sense that it is done today.

When things go differently than planned, here are some examples of how you may utilize marketing automation to sales-qualify your prospects.

There are a variety of different approaches that may be used to save prospects who still need to convert.

Some examples:

Retargeting

Nurturing long-term

Focusing on the immediate future

Including the Sales Department in the process

Again, the goal of all of these strategies is to “capture” individuals; hence, you will not lose them since you will just be nurturing them in a new way.

You are only ensuring that they will get to their destination in a different manner; hopefully, the ultimate result will be the same.

More information is provided below on each of those four techniques.

1. Retargeting

When executed correctly, retargeting has the potential to significantly boost conversion rates. Google reports that an effective retargeting strategy might increase sales by up to fifty percent.

What does it look like when marketing automation is used for retargeting?

Again, it all boils down to having a good knowledge of the different levels of consciousness.

It is quite unlikely that retargeting individuals who are still in the early phases of awareness, i.e., those who do not know what solution they desire, would be effective. However, retargeting individuals in later stages of awareness, especially the stage in which they are the most aware, enables you to build on the connection you already have and increases the likelihood of a conversion.

2. The Effects of Prolonged Exposure to a Campaign

Ninety-six percent of website visitors are not yet ready to make a purchase, and eighty percent of leads are never converted into actual customers.

Prospects won’t be ready to buy even after you’ve sent them an initial lead magnet and email series.

On the other hand, we are aware that businesses that place a high priority on and succeed in lead nurturing produce 50% more sales-qualified leads at a cost that is 33% lower.

If this is the case, rather than allowing potential customers to slip through the gaps, you should move leads into a long-term nurturing sequence as soon as possible. To reiterate, this is an automated email series that provides a value-added benefit to prospective customers.

Because they enable you to consistently nurture and sustain a connection, long-term nurturing sequences are an absolute need for businesses that cater to other businesses and have lengthy sales processes.

Long-term nurturing has the potential to be effective as a result of…

Is a consistent point of contact that you have with the consumer

Enables you to describe the nature of your company, increases conversions by driving visitors to your website and engaging your list of customers

It raises both the client’s lifetime value and the likelihood that they will remain a customer. Perhaps most importantly, it enables you to maintain meaningful contact with prospects who are not yet ready to make a purchase.

3. Short-Term Nurture Sequence

You have the option of moving them into another short-term nurturing campaign before moving them into a long-term nurturing sequence.

This strategy will target leads with customized content and campaigns depending on what you’ve learnt about them. These campaigns and materials will be tailored to the leads. If you are aware that they have a specific issue or need, you are in a position to solve it.

If they do not convert, you may put them into a nurturing process that lasts for a longer period of time.

4. Including the Sales Team in the process

Imagine that you have just downloaded a lead magnet that discusses marketing automation tools. After that, the next thing you know, a member of the sales team gives you a call.

It’s quite unlikely that this is what you desire at this point. You need some time to do some introspective reading and make some progress on the path to self-awareness before you engage in conversation with another person.

However, it is encouraged for your sales staff to reach out to prospects in order to create connections and directly address obstacles. Again, this strategy is not likely to be successful in the early stages of awareness; however, integrating Sales is a fantastic last step to take if you have prospects who are interacting with your email marketing but are not converting yet.

It enables Sales to offer Marketing the intelligence needed to address objections and answer issues that may be preventing the lead from progressing ahead in the sales process.

Are you prepared to design the actions that you wish to evoke from potential customers or clients?

Many companies regard the conduct as a one-way street, consisting only of observation and response. But being proactive and strategically designing your campaigns to elicit the behaviors you want people to exhibit is far more powerful and successful.

Automation in marketing is very necessary in order to run a successful campaign that yields the required outcomes. If you have a grasp of automation marketing, you will be able to build campaigns that transfer prospects from the marketing-qualified to the sales-qualified status.