Get It Done All-in-One

I’m all about small businesses, and I love helping them level the playing field by becoming more efficient in their marketing and sales. In my time in the marketing automation space, I’ve focused on creating all-in-one solutions that combine the three elements of marketing automation together. This would be the CRM, email marketing, and marketing automation platform.  
Each of these elements are key for a company to grow, but managing them separately can cost a lot of time and money most small firms don’t have. My company has championed small business from the beginning, and I want to share some of my best ideas on how you can use an all-in-one system of your own.
 

Where Small Businesses Get It Wrong

What I found when looking at the market for small businesses is that they were using separate systems usually ineffectively. Most were simply blasting out an email newsletter to their entire list with decreasing rates of effectiveness.

This strategy of spray and pray just doesn’t work anymore when it’s possible to get a lot more personalized with your list. If you can hone in on a prospect’s needs or pinpoint their exact stage in the buying process, your communication is going to be a lot more effective.

The challenge when your systems are all separate is that you can’t get to this level of personalization the way you can with an all-in-one. Fortunately, this is where the market is going and all-in-one systems are taking over.

 

The Beauty Of All-In-One

With an all-in-one system you get to capture the entire story of your customer’s interaction with your marketing and website. If they open an email and follow a link to your site, you can see it. Maybe they fill out a form to make a purchase but then don’t complete it. You can still reach out.

It gives you a better chance at forming relationships with more warm prospects than ever before.

One area my company has been very successful with our all-in-one has been lead generation. We haven’t had to make a single cold call. Through all-in-one automation, we’ve created an inbound marketing system that keeps our sales reps totally slammed and it’s one that any business can replicate. Here’s how it works:
 

Your Website

Your website is the key point of contact in your automation system. It’s your number one sales engine so it’s critical to make sure it’s fully integrated into your backend. This will allow you to capture leads in your CRM as early as possible in the sales cycle.

However, in order to draw traffic to your website, you need to be providing something to attract those visitors. We do this through content marketing.
 

Content Marketing

We create a lot of our content internally, and we post it to either our blog or contribute it to third-party sites. We’ve researched our market, and we often do guest posts with other influencers in our space. Additionally, we look for freelance writers to create organic content for us. Overall, the cost per lead is much lower though when it’s coming from an organic traffic source versus a paid one.
 

Lead Capture

As I mentioned above, you want to begin capturing customer data as early as possible in the sales process. On our website, we seek to educate and build a relationship with prospects. In order to do this, we’ve created a resource section that contains white papers and online courses to help inform each visitor about what we do – marketing automation, in our case.

While we’re educating prospects, we’re also using the interaction to learn more about them. We’re offering our content for free, but in exchange, we’re asking for their name and email address. Now we’re also paying attention to which white papers they’re downloading because that helps us understand who they are and what their needs are.

All the information our prospects are supplying then goes into our database, and we can begin communicating with them in a personalized and targeted way. This allows us to take control of the buying process and position ourselves as a guide.

None of this would be possible if we didn’t have an all-in-one system. We’d simply be spinning our wheels and letting our warmest leads walk out the door.

Don’t lose out on all the business you deserve, consider your own all-in-one.

 

Action Steps

  1. Use all-in-one marketing automation that combines email, CRM, and an automation platform.
  2. Create content that drives traffic back to your website, use a variety of content strategies and optimize for the most successful ones.
  3. Integrate your website with your all-in-one so you can begin capturing prospect data.
  4. Offer something of value on your site in exchange for your prospects’ contact information.
  5. Begin personalizing your marketing approach to each segment.

 

Result You Will Achieve

A more efficient marketing strategy by using all-in-one automation that allows you to personalize your marketing message.
 

Mentor: Don Breckenridge

Co-founder and CEO at Hatchbuck, the Hatchbuck team hasn’t made a cold call since starting up in 2012 and has grown revenue by 2300%. A passionate innovator, Breckenridge has a track record of launching and building successful software companies. In 1999, he co-founded Sendouts, an on-demand software for third party recruiting professionals.

 
This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.