Something that business owners know is this: marketing automation’s a great tool to drive revenue. However, despite the fact that they know about the value that it can bring to a business, many business owners don’t implement business marketing automation correctly. One of the biggest reasons that they don’t know where to begin.
Whether it’s because you simple do not have the time, you feel overwhelmed, or you simply aren’t able to get it correct, business marketing automation that is ineffective isn’t going to get you really far. For many people, it’s very frustrating to dedicate a lot of time and effort to set up automation software and not see any results.
Today we are going to look at some of the top reasons why business marketing automation fails for many businesses so that you can avoid these problems yourself.
Business Marketing Automation Fails Because It’s Impersonal
When you write an email to someone, like to a friend or family member, you make it personal. You are talking to someone that you know. Unfortunately, a lot of people lose that personal touch when they are automating their business emails. This is one reason why business owners find that their emails aren’t being well received. In order to make your business marketing automation successful, make sure that your emails are more personal.
A lot of marketing emails sound robotic. Think of how you would write the email if you were sending it to someone that you know. For instance,
| Instead Of | Use |
| Utilize | Use |
| Procure | Get |
Most people would rather be talked to on their level rather than talked down to. If you use flowery language, they may feel like you’re talking down to them. So even though you are sending out business marketing emails, do your best to make them sound less robotic and more peronal.
Marketing Fails Because of Cookie Cutter Messages
Using software for your business marketing automation can help you with sending out messages to many people really quickly and doesn’t require you to do it manually. It can help you a lot of time.
However, if you are setting up your automations so that everyone’s getting the same messages, this can greatly reduce your chances of making a sale. Without segmenting the audience according to their interests, it’s possible that you are going to send advertisements to the people who have no need for the service or product.
Let me give you an example for automation that we do for a client of ours. This client offers a variety of landscaping services, such as pest management, gutter cleaning and seasonal cleanup. So, we have marketing emails that we send out based on what services the customers already have. If a customer has pest management services already, for example, we send them an email about gutter cleaning or seasonal cleanup. If they have gutter cleaning, they get emails about pest management and seasonal cleanup. You get the idea.
It’s essential to segment your list. Writing and sending personalized messages often can change your business and make a huge difference in your bottom line.
It’s important to collect the information from contacts, whether through their behavior or forms, that will help you with delivering the kind of content they want to receive.
Business Marketing Automation Fails Due to Timing
It’s exciting when someone becomes a subscriber to get your free eBook, and you might want to jump right in to tell them about your services and products. However, the person just got your eBook. They already have one of your products. Now isn’t the time to start pitching your product or service to them.
Automation can be set up to send out your messages at just about any time. But you also want to consider if you’re sending the messages when they should be sent.
Messages should be targeted based on your customer’s lifestyle stage:
- Identify – The contacts want information. You want contacts who are interested in the things you’re offering. Attract the contacts with things like eBooks.
- Nurture – The contacts want problem solving. You want to figure out the things they’re interested in and take your relationship further. You want to send the contact advice that they can act upon that will help with segmenting them based on the interest of the contact.
- Convert – The contacts are now ready to make a purchase of a service or product that is going to solve their problem. You are ready and willing to sell the service or product to them. This is where product and sales content will become essential.
- Retain – The contacts want to keep on getting value. You’re interested in encouraging repeat business and referrals. You want to keep on providing contacts with value.
Some of the contacts only will connect you after they’re ready to directly purchase from you.
At other times, you want to be cautious so that you’re not sending your sales pitch to a person who just started understanding they have a problem.
There are 5 levels of awareness of customers that you should know about. We’ll go more into these in another blog, but here are the general idea.
- Unaware – Person isn’t aware there’s a problem.
- Pain Aware – Person knows there’s a problem. However, they aren’t aware of solutions.
- Solution Aware – Person knows about problems and knows about the existence of solutions.
- Product Aware – Person knows about problem and knows about the specific solution you offer.
- Most Aware – Person is quite product familiar and is nearly ready to decide.
The messages that you send need to be created so that they’re meeting the contacts at their particular awareness stages.
If you have a contact who’s pain aware, you shouldn’t start to sell the product or service you offer. First you have to give them help with understanding that solutions are available.
If the contact’s product aware, it’s a good idea to highlight the benefits and features of your product or service. You’ll want to help them with understanding why the product or service will solve their problems.
Understanding the awareness stage and lifecycle of a customer can go a long way to helping you with avoiding one of the most common reasons for failure of business marketing automation. It also will help you with delivering the messages to the right person at the best time.
No matter what kind of business you have, marketing business automation can help you. But this is true only if you are careful about what you are sending to your contacts and when you are sending them.
Are you worried about using automation and sending out the right emails and messages at the right time? We can help you out with this. Contact us to find out more about how we can help you with business marketing automation through Service Autopilot.
Have a great weekend!
