A marketing automation platform (MAP) can be the fast track to converting names to qualified leads for many companies. But it takes more than turning the system on to get the results you want as quickly as you need. You need to be able to optimize the platform to fit your company’s goals.
Here are 7 tips to help you on your path to better marketing automation.
1. Get a handle on your data. Bring together data from multiple systems, devices, and platforms so you can get a single view of where you’re at and where you’re going.
2. Pair with CRM. Make sure your MAP and CRM system are talking to each other constantly and consistently. You want to be able to view all of your marketing activity from within your CRM so you can automatically assign leads coming from your marketing efforts right to sales reps, and more.
3. Know your audience. Do you know who your audience is? What information they like to consume and when? What devices they use to consume information and how they interact with content? Start researching and tracking your audience to better inform your campaigns.
4. Develop personas. As you’re tracking and researching your audience, put that information into a set process like personas so you can keep track of the top 3-5 audience segments you’re targeting and their preferences, helping you organize and target your efforts.
5. Try progressive profiling. There’s always a balance between asking for the right amount of information so that prospects will still fill out forms, but you still have quality data in your CRM. If getting enough quality data on your prospect audience is a struggle, try progressive profiling. With progressive profiling you can gradually ask for new information from prospects to improve the quality of your database.
6. Personalize to your audience. Try personalizing more of your content directly to the personas you’ve developed or even to individuals based on certain actions they’ve taken on your site, whether it’s downloading a white paper or using an online tool.
7. Try lead scoring. Determine where leads are in the buying cycle and how closely they align with your definition of an “ideal” buyer by assigning “points” for how often a lead visits a web page, downloads a document and completes a lead gen form. Website visitors will start to accrue more points as they interact with your company, helping you determine who is most likely to to convert into a qualified lead.
Looking for additional tips to get more out of your existing marketing automation platform? We’re here to help! If you have a specific question on how you can get more out of your marketing automation strategy, contact us.