Is Christmas really over?

With the madness that  was the week leading up to Christmas over and businesses ready to shut down for a week and a half (two weeks for some lucky individuals) and employees ready to fill themselves with Turkey and chocolates many people will feel that the New Year brings with it a new start. 

In theory this is correct but you would be missing out on crucial previous customer engagements if your Christmas build up is not part of your New Year marketing strategy. The phase strike while the iron is hot has never been more applicable than it is here. 

You have worked so hard to get your prospects and customers to interact with you and many of them have, as they looked to take advantage of the offers you have available – so why would you not take advantage of them and target your marketing accordingly?

A simple email is all it takes

Hi Karl, 

Thank you for your recent custom. We hope you had a great Christmas and New Year.

I’m sure by now you are back into the swing of work and I wanted to let you know how Profunnel can really help you start 2014 well!

This would make me take notice – you have recognised that we have done business previously but you are also helping me further, it feels that you have my best interest at heart. 

As I am sure you are aware making the connection with your prospects is key and you have a great opportunity to do this now and really start your 2014 well.

Here are Profunnel we are big advocates of personalisation and planning your marketing accordingly – we would love to discuss this further and highlight how we can help you so do not hesitate to get in touch. 

Karl
Account Manager

‘Just because someone has landed on my website does not mean they are ready to buy from me’

This is completely correct and something that I wholeheartedly agree with. One visit to your website definitely does not mean that the visitor is someone that you want to be picking up the phone to.

The really exciting thing that Marketing Automation looks at is when one of your prospects is making multiple visits to your site and spending longer amounts of time on there. This is the time when your prospects are displaying those buying behaviours that signal when you should be picking up the phone to them or making contact. 

What you are also able to do is decide on what next best action will be triggered based on their visits to your website. If they have landed on a particular product page you can enter them into a segmentation list to ensure all further communication sent to them is relevant to them, or an alert can be sent to the most appropriate sales person for that particular product.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that once they start displaying these behaviours that they will pick up the phone to you themselves. Think how many times you have been the buyer and you have been about to make a purchase but something has come up, the phone rang or you had to dash off to a meeting. 

Marketing Automation provides you with the invaluable tools to gain the visibility of those prospects that are frequently engaging with you online but not making any direct contact. It allows you to get in contact with those prospects at EXACTLY the right time when they are most likely to buy from your company. What this then does is bring in more sales for your business and provides you with a higher ROI of your online marketing activities.

Marketing Automation - The Next Logical Step to PPC and SEO.

Last time I spoke about one of the main objections that I hear around marketing automation is that people are already using Google Analytics, the next most common objection that I come across is that people are already spending large amounts of money on SEO and PPC.

Of course there are benefits to PPC and SEO and I would never dream of telling a prospect to stop their activities in these areas, however what I would say is that marketing automation is the next logical step on from these. 

SEO and PPC drive large amounts of visitors to a company’s website and marketing automation gives companies the visibility of WHO those people are once they are there and when they return. What is the point in spending all of this money on driving people to your website if you have no idea who they are once they are there? Surely anything that enhances the value of SEO and PPC would be of benefit to a business?

Essentially Marketing Automation provides your organisation with proof of your SEO and PPC ROI.