If you have been generating leads on your website for any amount of time, you are already aware that making the drastic leap from lead to customer can take time. Of course, that amount of time changes from industry to industry and even business to business, but with proper use of marketing automation, you should be shortening the sales cycle. After all, the job of a marketing automation workflow is very clear: to convert leads into customers.
DEFINE THE JOB OF YOUR WORKFLOW
As a prospect makes his or her way down the sales funnel, there are specific milestones and stages — and your automated marketing workflows should help to guide your leads depending on their level engagement. But how do you ensure your workflows are effective? It all comes down to aligning with your goals and measuring for success.
Your marketing automation tools, like your website, are more than just a piece of software and technology. They are a member of your team, "hired" to get a job done: to manage your lead generation tactics and help you to reach your revenue goals as you capture leads on your website.
The nurturing experience for someone who is newly engaged with your brand is very different from the experience for someone who has been consuming your content for a length of time. While the former will be focusing on engaging the lead to keep them coming back for more, the latter's goal is to further qualify them. By defining which marketing automation workflows are meant to complete which job, you can better determine what each should look like to create effective nurturing experiences.
This is an in-depth process here at H&C Inc. Reaching your goals is our endgame. Workflows should never be created without a thorough, well-thought out strategy that aligns every automated step of your workflow with its goal. Consider your buyer personas and what kinds of solutions they want. Reinforce who are talking to and why they are there. And, of course, decide what you want your prospects to do as they further engage with your brand.
Deeply understanding each workflow's goal is the key for creating a lead nurturing campaign that will not only guide the content for each level of engagement, but also see you reach your goals faster and more effectively.
Defining your workflows and their respective goals results in fully understanding what you have "hired" your workflows to do for your sales and marketing teams. But how do we ensure this job is getting done? Lead nurturing takes a lot of time and effort, if it isn't working to the extent you need and want, is it even worth it?
To gauge performance, most marketers will look at the metrics that examine email click through and open rates, but this doesn't tell the whole story. Workflows are meant to do more than just engage prospects with email. Your marketing team needs to know whether the nurturing journeys created through your the workflow are truly converting your leads into customers. Are you achieving your goal? Is there room for improvement?
To know how each workflow impacts the movement of your contacts through the sales cycle is to maintain focus on the purpose of your efforts. By setting an entry point for each marketing automation workflow and goal (removing contacts as the goal is reached), the conversion rate is calculated between the two.
Marketers can report metrics on your leads' movements through life cycle stages and other important milestones and sales teams' jobs are that much easier. A well-strategized workflow might be the best hire you've made.