Written by: “Help, we’re getting so many leads from our website!”
Who has time to follow up on all of the web leads you're getting? Why not automate it?
You are one of the fortunate companies that gets several leads and business opportunities from your website each day. You aren't equipped to handle the volume of leads that you’re getting from your website, so how do you follow up and still have time in your day to manage everything else?
Enter marketing automation — a technique that can help you recapture time in your schedule or reduce a staffing burden.
Following up on web leads
The fact of the matter is that many web leads don’t need personal follow-up.
If you’re in the midst of an inbound marketing program, you probably have several landing pages on your website that offer detailed guides, checklists, ebooks, demos or other “premium” content.
Because many people on your website are probably in the early stages of the sales process, you probably get as many (if not more) web leads/contacts from people downloading these materials as people requesting price quotes or a sales call.
These web leads should go into a marketing automation queue for follow-up.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is a buzzword in the marketing industry that really boils down to the process of automating follow-up with leads.
It’s quite simply the process of nurturing your potential customers to a point of sale. This can happen through email, social media, and other contact points. It's most traditionally done through email.
What marketing automation isn’t
Marketing automation isn’t a sure-fire fix for all of your marketing problems. It’s not a completely automated process that will instantly generate new business leads with absolutely no work from your marketing team.
Marketing automation supports all steps in the marketing funnel — the points where potential customers are researching your company’s product/service and have indicated that they have some interest in your solution. It’s not a tool to fill the top of your sales funnel with new leads.
It also doesn’t work with email lists you’ve purchased from advertisers or third-party sources. Don’t expect to “drip” emails to your rented email list and expect that those contacts will eventually be sales ready.
Is marketing automation a good fit?
For companies producing great content and getting a steady flow of leads from their websites, marketing automation could be a good solution to the problem of timely, effective follow-up. Here’s a list of things that you should consider when deciding if marketing automation is right for your company:
- Do you have a steady flow of leads from your website?
- Is your existing sales or marketing team too busy to follow up on both web leads and offline leads?
- Is your sales team comfortable giving marketing control of the initial contact for most leads (through automated messaging)?
- Does your company understand your customer well enough to know what questions potential customers ask during the sales process?
- Does your company have a customer relationship management (CRM) system in place?
If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, marketing automation might be right for you.
If you think marketing automation might be a good fit for your company, would you like us to show you how it might work for you? Let us know.
