As marketers, we know that lead generation is one of the most important aspects of our jobs. Without leads, there are no sales. With this in mind, it's imperative to find ways to increase your lead flow and generate more qualified leads for your business. In today's blog post, I’ll talk about how you can automate your lead generation process.
Lead automation is an umbrella term for a set of software and marketing tools that help you streamline your lead generation process. This includes generating leads, qualifying them and converting them into successful deals.
Lead automation can be used by sales and marketing teams to maximize their efforts, increase the number of deals closed and save time on administrative tasks. It builds up firms' revenue while requiring less manpower than traditional methods of lead generation often do.
While it is very useful in giving processes more structure, automated sales funnels do require some input from marketers or salespeople (depending on the stage of the sales cycle) at first.
However, once these processes are set up properly using software like this, they can help businesses run much more smoothly – so much so that they can actually free up time for both sales and marketing teams to focus on creating top-notch content, developing relationships with clients and closing deals.
What is Lead Automation?
Lead generation is one of the most important stages in any successful business's revenue cycle. It consists of attracting prospects who might buy your products or services by using different forms of marketing (such as email, social media advertising or search engine optimization).
The idea behind lead generation is to create leads – people who are interested enough in what you offer that they fill out a form giving their contact information or give you their contact information in some other way.
After that, getting these leads into the sales funnel is crucial for businesses who use lead generation as a main source of revenue. Otherwise, it's just wasted marketing effort.
A process of nurturing and qualifying potential clients is what keeps them moving through your automated sales funnel and drives them towards the final stage: purchasing your products or services.
How Lead Automation Helps You Streamline Your Lead Generation Process
First of all, marketers and salespeople can work on different aspects of generating leads without stepping on each other's toes. Thus they can save time that would otherwise be spent on coordinating their efforts (which often get misaligned despite best intentions).
Secondly, using lead automation software allows businesses to do away with much of the paperwork, emails and phone calls that suck up time from their employees.
Thirdly, the entire sales funnel can be monitored in real-time – by marketers as well as salespeople. In this way, companies can quickly spot where a lead is at any given moment and either dedicate more attention to them or move on to another lead who's closer to being converted into a sale.
How Lead Automation Software Boosts Your Sales Leads
1). First of all, it helps you generate leads- One major advantage record-keeping has over standard manual methods involves tasks such as...
All this data allows you to optimize and streamline your lead generation efforts – and thus do more with less, leading to higher success rates for your campaigns.
2). Secondly, it helps qualify leads- By using marketing automation tools that provide at-a-glance reports on all aspects of lead management (qualification included), marketers can decide whether or not an email should be sent their way at any given time.
Data-based decision making is what will allow businesses to raise their revenue without having to hire more employees. This improves return on investment for both marketing and sales teams.
How to Use Marketing Automation Software for Lead Generation
a. Define Your Leads' Expected Behavior & Profile- It all starts with defining the ideal lead profile – who you would like to engage with, what you want them to do and why they should choose your business over your competitors'.
The more comprehensive this profile is, the better equipped you'll be in using marketing automation software for lead generation.
b. Create Your Own Nurturing Campaigns- To get leads into the sales funnel, you need to nurture them by sending out specialized content that will help nudge them towards your desired outcome (such as filling up a form). Here are two ways of building nurturing campaigns:
c. Define Your Lead Conversion Goals and Activation Points- To use marketing automation software for lead generation, you need to define what you expect from a single lead – how will they get into the sales funnel? How many times should they interact with your company via email or social media before moving forward? What is necessary for them to 'activate' in the eyes of your business?
d. Set Up Your Lead Qualification Rules- To make sure your leads are qualified and ready for further interaction (i.e., conversion), it's important to set up lead qualification rules based on their behavior – such as by logging into a website or making a purchase.
This will make sure leads are not moved to the next stage until they have reached the necessary 'threshold.'
e. Track Leads in Real-Time- Tracking your leads in real time provides you with an insight into what is and isn't working – and helps you quickly correct it whenever something goes wrong (i.e., leads aren't ready yet).
Marketing automation makes this process easier by providing up-to-date reports on lead activity – meaning, you'll always know where each of them stands at any given time.
3). Thirdly- One major advantage of using marketing automation for lead generation is that there is no need to hire additional employees to perform additional tasks such as following up with leads, analyzing reports and more.
This will help you save time and money – at the same time cutting down your sales cycle considerably.
4). Fourthly- Marketing automation gives businesses an advantage over their competitors by providing them with a high level of efficiency. It automates marketing tasks that would otherwise require human intervention – thereby minimizing the chance for human error due to misreading crucial details or forgetting to follow up on leads.
This is why using marketing automation as a beginner is so important: by evaluating your current processes and setting up rules within your business funnel, it's easier than ever before to gain momentum without hiring additional workers or raising costs in other areas such as supply chains or IT departments.
How To Use Marketing Automation Software As A Beginner
Marketing automation is the process of using software to automate your marketing activities. It uses customer data to create engagement programs that integrate with multiple channels, resulting in a highly "personalized" experience for each lead.
For example, you can export leads' current social media activity into Pardot CRM directly from Salesforce or connect Twitter accounts via Zapier for lead scoring.
Here are some ways that businesses use marketing automation.
1. Lead generation- To generate qualified leads by nurturing them through email sequences and/or online advertising campaigns.
This way, leads are provided with the information they need at the right time – which will make it easier for them to convert later on (i.e., purchase a product, download a white paper, etc.).
2. Lead management- To create and maintain lists of leads based on their activity or behavior – for example, by following up with them via email to check in, understand their needs better and/or continue educating them about your brand.
3. Content marketing- To generate content ideas that are aligned with your audience's interests through lead data tracking from multiple sources such as social networks.
From there, you can publish blog posts, infographics and more using a marketing automation tool like Pardot . For example, the Carvana Company uses this strategy not only to generate more leads but also provide high-quality content to existing customers at the same time.
Basics Of Lead Automation
Now that you have a better idea of how marketing automation can help your business, it's time to learn the basics .
The first step is to connect various data sources into your CRM software. This will let you track your prospects' activity on social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook – plus their customer behavior on e-commerce sites against predefined criteria .
For example, if they placed an order with the most recent purchase being over $100 dollars, then this would set them as "medium priority" in Pardot.
The next thing you need to do is create rules for each stage of your sales funnel (i.e., lead generation process).
For marketers who are using Pardot , there are four main stages:
1. Open- This is the first step of the lead generation funnel, which includes capturing leads' contact information, informing them about what you do and why they should trust your brand with their business.
2. Qualify- This involves qualifying leads based on specific criteria that your business determines to be important – for example, by setting up rules that will automatically assign them into one of three categories (i.e., hot/warm/cold) based on how likely they are to engage further through email sequences or not.
This way, you can focus on following up with prospects who are most likely to turn into buyers instead of everyone out there .
3. Match- This is the stage when leads are moved from hot to warm status based on your predefined rules. In this case, you may want to inform them about a special promotion or ask for feedback concerning their experience with your brand so far.
4. Engage- This is where you perform outbound communication with potential customers who have already demonstrated interest in your business by following up via email or initiating contact via social media channels (e.g., Twitter DM).
What Are The Benefits Of Marketing Automation?
1. Saving time by providing pre-made templates - By reducing manual effort and tedious data entry, marketing automation software makes it easier for marketers to generate more leads without spending too much of their valuable time.
This will save you money in the long run since there are no additional employees to pay or tools to buy (e.g., calling services). Plus, this strategy also makes it possible for agencies and other partners who work with your business to provide high-quality service without investing too much of their own resources into subcontracting.
Automation software not only helps save time but increase lead quality as well because it allows marketers to create personalized messages that are interesting enough to generate attention – ultimately, increasing the odds of getting a response.
2. Helps you stay organized- Marketing automation tools are designed to enhance your business' workflow, automating mundane tasks so you can focus more on creating high-quality content instead of wasting time on data entry or scheduling posts.
This will give you more time to work on creative strategies for generating leads and engaging with prospects .
3. Targeted marketing reduces wasted resources- Automated lead generation processes allow marketers to pinpoint their outreach efforts by setting up rules that only trigger some type of follow-up actions depending on certain conditions (i.e., if they meet specific qualifications).
For example, Pardot lets businesses set up automated triggers based on how interested prospects are in receiving emails or social media messages .
This way, you are able to focus your marketing resources on prospects who are most likely to engage with your business.
4. Consolidate data from various sources- Many tools provide their users with the ability to import existing databases so they can be automatically added to new workflows without manual entry.
To implement lead generation automation successfully, it is important that marketers have access to all important pieces of information in one place. By consolidating different types of data into a single hub, these tools will help marketers save time and money by making it possible for them to create personalized outreach campaigns instead of sending out impersonal mass communications.
Furthermore, this helps marketers improve lead quality since they are able to better understand target audiences, identify opportunities for product enhancement and create more tailored messages that address specific needs.
5. 24/7 support for your team- Marketing automation tools are designed to be very user-friendly so almost anyone in your organization can use it without professional assistance. Nevertheless, certain tasks may feel too challenging for non-experts.
To help these marketers out with lead generation automation, most marketing automation software providers offer round-the-clock customer service via email or phone. Some of the most popular businesses on the planet have discovered how powerful this approach is. Here are a few examples:
*Buffer found that investing in the right person was the key to its success with marketing automation tools
While it was not an easy decision to bring someone on board internally, co-founder Leo Widrich says that "people are the key" to his business' marketing automation success .
Buffer uses Hootsuite's Queue feature to manage its Twitter account so non-marketers can share posts without needing much technical knowledge. On their website, they suggest using Zapier for automating social media posts for free so you can focus more on creative strategies than data entry.
*HubSpot 's integration with Google Apps allowed it to process 100 million leads in 2013
With support from 11 outsource development centers located across the world, HubSpot was able to build an internal team that could optimize its marketing automation software faster than any competitor at the time. This now frees up in-house staff to focus on more creative tasks.
*Google is turning to automation tools to improve its search capabilities for marketers
Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." With over 41,000 employees worldwide , the company has a lot of resources at its disposal.
However, with so many different teams working concurrently on various projects, it becomes too difficult for engineers to communicate internally about what should be done next. To simplify this process, they've begun using marketing automation software that allows engineers to continue their work without bothering other team members .
This way, creative strategies are not disrupted because other individuals' priorities got in the way.
*Adobe streamlined its marketing functions after implementing marketing automation software
With over 65,000 customers , Adobe provides marketers with extensive resources for social media management, email marketing, web design and other software applications.
After using Marketo to update its internal processes , the company now has more time to create better content that appeals to current subscribers as well as attract new ones.
