Marketing automation is a marketing ‘game-changer’. It’s an effective and simple way to keep your existing customers and your potential customers, or leads, to create and sustain your brand’s awareness to target customers, while minimising the drain on your precious resources. It is no secret that marketing automation has helped many businesses scale. Businesses that implement marketing automation experience an average of a 451% increase in qualified leads (Business2Community). Before we share with you 3 reasons why marketing automation should be your top business growth strategy, we need to know what exactly is marketing automation?

Marketing Automation refers to the software that can perform certain tasks without, or with significantly reduced, human interaction.

Marketing Automation takes your time-consuming and repetitive marketing tasks and mechanises them.

There are many ways you can automate your marketing initiatives such as automating your email campaigns, social media posts, SMS messaging, etc.

Setting this up effectively can bring so many benefits to your business which is why you should prioritise having a automated marketing strategy. Here are 3 reasons why marketing automation should be your top business growth strategy:

 

1. Systemise your marketing

What is the current state of your marketing process? Does it give your brand a good and trustworthy image? Does your marketing process provide a great customer journey experience, one that is memorable to your customers which makes them loyal to your brand?

With marketing automation, your marketing process puts in place a system for getting results which are better marketing efforts – consistent and effective ones.

A systemised market through automation gives you more time to focus on other business operations whilst taking care of your customers and potential leads.

 

2. Provide accurate and useful data report

An accurate data report is one of the keys in knowing how to attract clients and keep loyal ones. With marketing automation, you can access all the data you need, you can learn what works and what doesn’t, without your staff having to spend more time working on it.

This saves you time to manually tabulate marketing effort results.

 

3. Increase chances of lead conversion

Marketing automation helps you build personalised connections with EVERY customer, and thus, greatly improves overall customer experience.

You can send an automated email after a customer buys a product or service from you. These simple automated messages make a lot of difference for your business and in keeping a certain customer happy.

Ultimately, marketing automation helps in business growth by improving the system in your marketing process, giving you accurate data that you need to grow your business, increasing your chances of lead conversion through great customer service. It also helps in lead generation. 61% that increasing lead generation is the most important strategic goal of marketing automation. (SocialMediaToday).

Want to know more information on how marketing automation can help your business grow? Simply contact us today!

Any industry and business can have a broken customer journey.  In fact, I would suggest that most industries and businesses have broken customer journeys, and this is what creates the mistrust and fear in people. Discover How Broken Customer Journeys Create Mistrust and Fear…

 

To understand the concept of the mistrust and fear, you only have to look at an industry such as Real Estate.  Here in Australia this industry has a perception of it being untrustworthy and there is fear associated with dealing with it.

 

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask someone who recently purchased a house and how they felt about dealing with the Real Estate agents and the process overall. Ask them if they felt valued and respected, and if their needs were met at all times?

 

Mostly you will hear people say that they got squeezed for every last cent and that the agents played tricks to jack the sale price up or coerce buyers into spending more money, all to benefit their own pockets.

 

Unfortunately, the Real Estate industry is filled with broken customer journeys, and this is what creates mistrust and fear.  People do not feel valued and think they are being manoeuvred to extract the highest possible amount of profit from them.  There are the rare exceptions of course, but we are talking about the general rule here.

 

So, let’s examine what the broken customer journey is, and how that creates the mistrust or fear.

 

Firstly, the fact that customers go through a series of steps to buy a house means there is a journey.   There is a process they go through to reach their end goal of purchasing that house.

Secondly, the fact that a customer can still achieve their end goal of buying the house but end up with a sense of not being valued, mistrusting of the industry and more, means there are gaps in the journey.

 

There are many possible paths that we take in life to achieve our goals, and it’s not dissimilar to this example.  We could choose Real Estate Agent A or Real Estate Agent B to achieve our goal of buying a house.  We may go on very different paths with either of these Real Estate Agents, but the end goal is the same.

 

Which path (or journey) to achieve our goal is the best one? And what makes a journey a ‘more successful’ one if we still achieve our goal of buying the house?

 

This comes down to the human element of the journey.  The person who is experiencing the process is guided and moved along the touchpoint in that journey by their Real Estate Agent, and others involved.  If their experience is one that doesn’t honour or value their needs as a human – instead of the profit machine – then the journey will not be as successful as it could be.

 

Furthermore, and this is really crucial; if a person can go through a journey and reach their goal of buying a house AND feels valued throughout that journey – then not only are they going to be happy about the end goal, but they are going to want to share their good experience with others. They may even recommend the Real Estate Agent to others! And – they are going to remember them and may also go back to them if they want to buy another house.

 

When someone’s expectations are not being met, and they are feeling undervalued and treated as a small cog in a large profit machine, then their journey is broken.  This causes the mistrust in the industry and the feelings of fear in an individual.

 

Can you imagine what this does to each person who goes through a journey like this? And if there are hundreds and thousands of people experiencing similar journeys and feeling the same levels of mistrust and lack of value?

 

This situation creates the industry-wide perceptions that we have today. And without people pointing out the gaps (and the issues) with these journeys, it becomes a stagnant elephant in the room that we all know is there – but nobody’s doing anything about it.

 

Until I came along and started writing about it!

 

Hopefully, this example has highlighted for you what it means to have gaps in a customer journey, and how those gaps contribute to mistrust and fear.

 

Let me ask you a few questions:

Think about your own business and your industry. Do you operate in an industry that carries a similar level of mistrust and fear?

 

Is your own business operating in a way that doesn’t value your customer beyond the amount of profit they’ll make you?

 

Are you pumping a lot of money into buying new leads and filling your funnel – because you have a high turnover of customers?

 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you definitely should be looking at your customer journey, mapping the gaps, and fixing it.

 

The sustainability of your business and your industry deserve it. And most importantly, so do the important people who come into your business and go through your customer journey.

 

Hopefully, you can now understand how broken customer journeys create mistrust and fear, and why you should do what you can to fix it now!

 

Not only would you be creating a positive change in your business that will benefit you in many indirect ways (including your profits), but you will be setting a new standard of differentiation and excellence in your market and industry.

 

Now that’s something worth working towards, isn’t it?

If you need expert’s advice on customer journey mapping, contact us now!

Providing an excellent customer experience and retaining customers is one of the most critical aspects of creating a successful business. In this article, I am going to expand on the ways a business owner can adopt some straightforward yet powerful strategies to create an excellent customer experience – 4 Steps to Retain Customers Through an Excellent Customer Experience…

 

Before I begin discussing about 4 Steps to Retain Customers Through an Excellent Customer Experience, I want to ask you to have an open mind and to put aside the thoughts you currently have about what comprises an ‘excellent customer experience’.

 

Let’s go on a journey of discovery and start to unpack what it means to both ‘create’ an excellent customer experience, and ‘enjoy’ a unique customer experience.

 

So, let’s think about what does ‘excellent customer experience’ actually mean to you?

 

Is it a customer going through the motions of buying from you and happily handing over their cash?
Is it a customer going through the sales process and not putting up any resistance to buying from you?
Is it a customer going through the sales journey and willingly asking for additional products to buy?

 

Here’s what I want you to consider…

An ‘excellent customer experience’ should have the possibility of any or all of those things.

 

More importantly, it needs to be a journey for them, that is:

a) Meaningful
b) Enjoyable
c) Repeatable if possible (some products may be one-off purchases in a lifetime, but for all others, they should be repeatable)
d) Engaging

 

If your customer experience doesn’t contain these four elements, then it doesn’t fall into the ‘excellent’ category.

 

So, let me explain what those four key elements of your excellent customer journey are:

 

STEP ONE – Creating a Meaningful Journey for Your Customers

Here is my definition of a meaningful journey:

 

A meaningful journey is one that creates an important connection for your customer.  It answers their needs and creates a sense of importance for them so that they feel connected to your business and grateful.  It leaves them with a positive memory.

 

How do you do this?  You need to ensure that your customer has positive experiences during their journey to buying from you by:

 

STEP TWO – Creating an Enjoyable Journey for Your Customers

So, what is an enjoyable journey?

 

Quite simply, it’s an experience that brings them joy, some happiness, some contentment and positive outcomes.

 

The most crucial aspect here is creating joy for them.  So, think about what is most important to them and what their most significant issues are that keep them awake at night and how solving those issues will bring them joy!

 

STEP THREE – Creating a Repeatable Journey

So, what do I mean by a repeatable journey?

 

This is a journey that you can ensure is repeatable for all customers.  Creating consistency in your meaningful touch points along the customer journey is something that will create efficiencies in your business, and also assurances to your staff and everyone involved in delivering the overall customer experience.

 

You also want to ensure that the journey is repeatable because it is so meaningful and enjoyable that someone WANTS to return and buy from you all over again!

 

STEP FOUR – Creating an Engaging Journey

An engaging journey is one where a prospect or customer is committed to the process, is excited by it, and has an emotional connection with your product offering.  The critical thing here is that they have made a conscious and a sub-conscious decision to move forward, as they have an emotional connection to your voice, words, actions and everything you are telling them.

 

This is what it means to be engaging!  The potential customers want more from you, and they are willing to keep going down the journey path until they become a customer, and beyond.

 

So, these are my four steps to retaining customers through an Excellent Customer Experience.

 

If you are confused by one or more of the steps; I suggest you go back and reread it until you resonate with it logically and internally.

 

I guarantee that if you are willing to put in the effort, these four steps will positively change your sales process and create happy customers who stay with you for a very long time

Contact us if you need help!

Whether you’re new to business or are an experienced business owner, you may not have come across the term “Customer Journey Mapping”. What is Customer Journey Mapping? And Why Should You Care?

 

And Why Should You Care? Let me explain…

 

I’m sure you’ve heard many times that old saying, “The customer is always right”?

 

Well, I don’t believe the customer is always right. As you know from experience, there are times when they’re not right, and you wish they weren’t causing you so much trouble or that they went elsewhere!

 

However, what I do believe in is that the Customer is always a priority.

 

I’ll explain how it’s crucial in a short example:

 

Let’s say there is a shop in a town, two kilometres away from the main shopping street. There is a long winding path to the door with prickly bushes and a dog barking loudly next door. Then, as a customer opens the door to enter the shop, there is crackly music playing, dust on the shelves, and a cockroach runs under a cupboard as they walk in.

 

It is an extreme example, of course, but makes the point that the experience of a customer arriving in your business is something for you to consider. Because that experience makes them FEEL certain things, SEE certain things, and REACT to certain things – and these are mostly within your control.

 

Then adding to that scenario, imagine that as they tried to purchase the item, the credit card machine was out or order and they were asked to pay cash. And the person who served them chewed gum repeatedly with their mouth open and was constantly glancing at their mobile phone.

 

How important would you feel at this point? And how would this entire experience make you feel? Would you want to return? Or would you seek out an alternative source for that product in future?

 

I am guessing that you’d feel the way most of us would – that we would not feel important, the process was terrible, the overall experience was hideous, and you don’t ever want to return!

 

Right?

 

As a business person, you are already aware of the importance of excellent customer service, but you can see now that the entire customer experience is a priority. Without a customer, you don’t make sales, and without sales, you don’t have a functioning business.

 

If you look at the scenario, I described above; you can see that the journey the customer took to make their purchase, can be viewed as a series of steps in a larger journey.

 

Each small step they took before making a purchase added up to an overall experience; and the outcome of that experience, for them, will determine whether they ever return to that shop.

 

Furthermore, they may talk to their friends about the experience, and share this with others in the next 24-48 hours afterwards – especially if the experience left a big impression on them either positively or negatively.

The customer’s overall experience in your business should be a priority for you. As the owner, you want to ensure that their interaction with you, your products, the environment, and your staff leaves them feeling great and wanting to come back and buy again.

 

So that’s what I mean by the customer being your priority; you need to care about what they go through and design a process or experience for them that is far better than the sample scenario I described above!

 

Sadly, most business owners pay very little attention to the experience their customers go through.

 

Instead, they focus on product sales, packaging, positioning, operations, marketing, admin, and the myriad of challenges and demands they face daily in their business. Don’t get me wrong; ALL of these things are extremely important! Each has its place in the running and growing of a successful business.

 

However if you want to stand apart from your competitors, grow your business organically and naturally from word of mouth referrals and reputation to sustain your growth into the future, you will need to make your customer’s experience a priority, and the only way to do that is to start Customer Journey Mapping.

 

In my 12 years of working with small to medium businesses, I have come across so few business owners who cared about their customer’s experience that I could count them on one hand

 

And even fewer even knew what “Customer Journey Mapping” meant.

 

So if you care about your customer experience and are already making it a priority and you want to stand apart from your competitors, then you start with mapping your customer’s journey. Start from when they get in their car to drive to your business and continue until they make the purchase, and even beyond. If your business is 100% online, you map the entire customer journey from the moment they found you online.

 

Hopefully, you understand the importance of your customer’s experience, and how you can use Customer Journey Mapping to identify and create that experience, to not only demonstrate to your customer that you care, but that you are genuinely happy, they are your customer.

 

Remember that focusing only on the sales part of the journey is not accurate Customer Journey Mapping, and not does it show that you genuinely care about your customer.

 

Setting up your Customer Journey correctly is both an art and a science, and requires you to adopt the steps I’ve outlined here for your Customer Journey Mapping.

 

Your Customer Journey won’t be the same as your competitors, and nor will it magically create itself anew as a by-product of the everyday running of your business.

 

You’ve got to step back and carry out the steps to identify the journey, plan it properly, and then design it so that your customers know that you genuinely care about their experience with your business.

 

If you don’t, you’ll be ‘average’ like everyone else, and continue to get ‘average’ results. And ‘average’ is not what you want to aim for if you’re reading a blog like this.

 

So create your Customer Journey Map, and show your customers that you truly care.

 

If you need help with customer journey mapping, feel free to contact us now!

When I’m asked the question, “How do I use automation throughout the customer journey?” the first thing I respond with is, “It’s not as difficult as you think”. Now let me explain to you more about Marketing Automation and why Automation Throughout the Customer Journey is not as difficult as you think

 

Some background context

The customer journey is the process by which a new lead takes a journey through all the touch points with your business, to becoming a customer, then staying for a long time (or as long as you want them to remain).

This isn’t just a few emails offering a product and asking for a sale.

This isn’t just a pretty website with beautiful images and lots of excellent copy promising everything you want, yesterday.

This is so much more than that.

The journey, you see, is the ENTIRE journey from when they first see your business to when they’ve been with you for a long time.

Most businesses don’t even view it as a journey; they want to focus on the sale.

However, the smart businesses, at the top of their niche in their industry, (look at Disney, Zappos, Apple) know exactly what this is, and they have mastered it beautifully.

Your job as a Business Owner, Marketing Manager or General Manager, is to become very clear about what that journey is – so that you can use some smart technology to automate parts of it and make life easier for you all.

 

Who are you talking to?

You’ve got to consider who you’re talking to, or your Automated Customer Journey  will become a lot of hype and hot air that lands in the inbox of people who don’t respond in the way you want them to. (They may even mark your emails as spam).

 

If you haven’t done this already, you need to work on creating your Ideal Customer Avatars, so that you know precisely who you are addressing, and everything about them.

Once you have your Customer Avatar dialed in, you can look at the journey of how to nurture them.

 

The Automation Process

There are many tools on the market to help you set up automation throughout the customer journey, so I won’t go into that today. As I said earlier; it’s not as difficult as you think!

There are so many articles and websites you can research – you could get lost in the web for the next week, reading about them all and what makes them ‘better’ than the others!

The key thing here is having the map or plan of your customer journey laid out, so you know what the process needs to be.

Using your automation tool, you need to map out each of your journey flows for your ideal customers. If you don’t have an automation expert on your team to do this, then you must outsource it to an expert.

Note: this will save you months of wasted energy and pent up frustration!

The automation build will be optimised once you follow your Map/Plan of your customer journeys and ensure each one is built out according to the plan.

If you’re unsure about what you’ve created, the best thing to do is test it!

 

Build, Test, Optimise

My recommendation is to do the following:

1. Create your plan (from your customer journey).

2. Build one journey for the most frequented process in your lead nurturing process.

3. Drive traffic to that new journey that’s being run by the automation (whichever one it is).

4. Test it, tweak it, optimise it.

 

Once you’re used to how the technology flow works following your plan, you then need to focus on the other aspects of your customer journeys.

Build them all out until your entire end-to-end customer journey is set up, using your internal systems worksheets and the automation tool you’re using.

Test it from end to end, ensuring it all works functionally.

Then test it using your ACTUAL leads coming into the funnel, and watch them at every step of the journey, ensuring that they are experiencing it exactly as you had planned.

 

Test, tweak and optimise.

This entire process could take you as little time as a few months (if you already have your Ideal Customer Avatars created), or as long as 2 years.

It depends on your dedication to getting it done properly and doing the work to ensure the steps are followed, and everything is tested and optimised.

So, as you can see, it’s not as difficult as you think!

Using Automation throughout the Customer Journey is one of the smartest things you could do in your business, and when done well, it will bring you great rewards.

Let me know how you’ve gone with building your automation throughout the customer journey in your business!

I look forward to hearing your comments and feedback below.

Happy Journey-creating!

If you need help with automating your customer journey map, feel free to contact us!

“How does automating your marketing work?” is one of the most popular questions that I’m asked. This question arises because I’ve seen many cases in which small business owners blame the technology for their marketing automation not working. We’ll show you the right answers to the question – “How Does Marketing Automation Work?”

 

However, when we dig a little deeper we find that nine times out of ten, it’s the strategy that was either non-existent or flawed to begin with.

 

This means that before you undertake any automated marketing, you must first understand how marketing automation works.

 

Having powerful marketing automation software at hand without the correct underlying strategy is similar to putting a high-powered car in the hands of an inexperienced driver, i.e. you’re asking for trouble.

 

Don’t just automate what you already have.  This will result in magnifying what you already have. If it’s already great, good, you’re lucky; but if it is flawed… well I don’t need to tell you what will happen.

 

Once you understand how automated marketing works, investing in a new CRM and Automated Marketing Platform such as Infusionsoft, is an opportunity for you to re-evaluate.

 

This is a chance to determine what is working and not working in your business. It’s an opportunity to streamline everything, and moving forward only use what is working and likely to work in the future.

 

 

How marketing automation works can be broken down into three categories:

1. People
2. Processes
3. Systems

 

People

Your organisation must be culturally aligned. This means that those involved with Sales and Marketing must view marketing and sales as one integrated process. Any breakdown here will be reflected and magnified by your automated marketing.

 

We have encountered many businesses that have “sales” people and “marketing” people and they are run as individual silos. A business owner who allows this to continue after implementing automated marketing, does not understand how marketing automation works.

 

So the first step in learning how marketing automation works is to ensure that your entire sales and your entire marketing team are familiar with the Ideal Customer Lifecycle.

 

This lifecycle begins with the first contact with your marketing effort and “ends” with asking for referrals from happy satisfied customers.

 

With this overall understanding, your team will be able to easily identify what stage a “lead” or a “customer” is at. They will also understand exactly what the next step ought to be, to have them continue through your marketing and sales funnel.

 

The next important aspect for your people, is having someone who can absorb large amounts of data and complex concepts. This is imperative to be able to make decisions to solve problems or refine your marketing automation efforts.

 

You see, marketing is increasingly becoming a technical profession that includes high-proficiency with technology solutions.

 

Today’s marketing automation platforms such as Infusionsoft are much easier to use than earlier systems, however marketers today must be comfortable using technology.

 

So if you don’t have the right skills on-staff already, you’ll need to train your current staff using external consultants, and/or look at hiring the right staff.

 

 

Process

Prior to marketing automation almost all marketing was simply about Lead Generation. This is not how marketing automation works.

 

Marketing automation is a highly organised, integrated, repeatable process.

 

It’s about understanding your customers’ buying process, and moving from focus on lead generation to lead education and nurturing in a logical, sequential manner.

 

You’ll also need to understand your Lead Flow.

 

Some businesses have too many leads that need to “scored” before handing over only the “hottest” leads to your sales people.

 

You see, understanding how automated marketing works, can help you guide leads through your funnel more efficiently, and when done well, it can nurture leads all the way to sales conversion.

 

Even so, if your business is new or if you have a small business, you may not have enough leads.

 

If you have nothing coming into the top of your funnel, you will have nothing to nurture!

 

If you don’t have enough leads, you’ll need to put a plan in place to get more using with content marketing, social media marketing, networking events, and so on.

 

You’ll need to do anything that will help to get prospects into the top of your funnel.

 

So how does marketing automation work with your internal processes? You’ll need to consider the following questions:

• What defines a sales-ready lead for your business?

• How does your sales team prioritise their time?

• How will you implement lead nurturing for leads that are not ready to buy yet?

• How will you re-engage sales leads that don’t move forward?

• What key metrics do you report on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis?

• How do you measure a campaign ROI?

• Do you have missing or incomplete data?

• If so, how will your data get cleansed to ensure your marketing automation doesn’t suffer?

 

Now you understand the effect of people and your processes on how marketing automation works, it’s now time for…

 

 

Systems

Choosing the right system(s) for your business is paramount. Every business’ needs are are unique. So do your research and select with care.

 

Whilst doing this, keep integration top of mind. The right marketing automation system for your business also needs to integrate seamlessly and completely with your accounting software, your website, and your other marketing tools and systems such as content management systems, and analytics platforms.

 

Ideally you would use a complete CRM with Marketing Automation already built in such as Infusionsoft.

 

 

How Does Marketing Automation Work?

All of the factors discussed here are paramount for marketing automation success, but don’t let not having all of them in place at the same time keep you from getting started.

 

The best marketing automation strategies I’ve seen have started small with what they have, they plan for the future and scale up only as success is achieved.

 

Success breeds success!

 

Start small; aim for small successes first and then scale up realistically and methodically by building on those successes.

 

How does marketing automation work?

 

Now you know!

 

If you need help with your marketing automation, please feel free contact us!

Marketing Automation, in particular automating your follow-up is one of the best ways to build closer relationships with your prospects and customers.

You see with marketing automation, even if at first glance it doesn’t seem so, you are able to provide more personalised attention to prospects and customers, for example:

When your marketing automation is set up correctly you will segment your leads and customers into specific buying or behavior types.

This means you can follow up based on a person’s specific interests, which shows them that you have a deeper understanding of their needs and what is important to them.

With this in mind, let’s now look at the top 6 benefits of marketing automation and in particular automating your follow up with prospects and customers…

 

1. Build Better Relationships
If you automate the repetitive follow-up processes that your business has, prospects will not slip through the cracks, they will never receive an irrelevant or untimely message, or feel ignored by your business.

Those who complain that marketing automation removes the human element from your business is clearly not doing it correctly.

 

2. Capture and Nurture Leads 24/7
If someone requests a Lead Magnet in the middle of the night, your delivery sequence ensures it’s delivered to that person’s inbox within minutes.

In other words, marketing automation doesn’t sleep, forget or take “smoko” breaks.

Having a system that works around the clock means your customers are getting the consistent and timely information they need to make a buying decision easier.

 

3. Give People What They Desire
The ability to automatically segment and target groups based on actions they take (or don’t take) allows you to personalize your follow up specifically to that person’s needs. Doing this makes them feel special and understood or in marketing tech language, “you give them lot’s of love and cuddles”.

 

4. Convert More Leads Into Customers
Without marketing automation, it’s easy to get behind in your follow-up and let warm and hot leads slip through the cracks.

Having consistent fail-safe follow up ensures that no one ever slips through the cracks; the cracks that often occur due to human error.

 

5. More Sales
By converting more leads into customers, you make more money; simple!

And once a lead becomes a customer, it will be easier to sell to them again with (automated) new offers or new bundles. It becomes easier because you don’t have to build that initial trust from scratch all over again, you already have it.

Enjoy more sales with Automating your marketing.

 

6. Scale Up
As your employ more marketing automation systems in your customer lifecycle, you are able to spend more time on growing your business by working on The 7 Levers of Business that directly affect your profitability.

Using Marketing Automation for repetitive tasks gives you your time back!

In addition using a marketing automation platform gives you all your important data at your fingertips. With this data on hand you can easily determine what works and what doesn’t.

And by doing more of what works, your business success is assured.

If you need more information about marketing automation, feel free to contact us now!