Have you ever sat down at your favorite Mexican restaurant and been so hungry that you can’t decide what to order? From chicken enchiladas and rellenos to carne asada and shrimp ceviche, it all looks so good that you sit there…stumped. The wait staff may have to make several extra trips because you are distracted by the choices and can’t decide.
Now think about this scenario in the context of setting up a multi-week, multi-step marketing automation campaign. Sounds familiar, right? You have so many decisions and moving parts to control that getting started can be overwhelming.
We suggest answering these four simple questions beforehand to make structuring your first few marketing automation campaigns a little easier…a little more digestible, if you will.
1. Who are your leads and what is their source? Answering this question will help determine their initial interests and how you first communicate with them. For example, leads from outbound calling efforts should probably be segmented and receive different communications than those generated via an affiliate email program.
2. What would you say in a 1:1 conversation – why should these leads care about your communications? Are you offering them something of value such as a special offer, educational material, free assessment, etc?
3. How can you support your campaign? Content rules as a way to interact with leads so audit your existing content and determine what is relevant or can be repurposed. White papers, case studies, testimonials, webinars and videos – you probably have more than you think!
4. What do you want to accomplish? Are you qualifying leads to hand off to sales or are you driving them to an online demo? It makes sense to identify your end-goal at the beginning of the campaign because you can review every step to see if it logically supports the overall objective.
Armed with the answers to the above questions, the next step is to actually hit the whiteboard, Visio or old-fashioned pen and paper to map out the decision-tree and possible outcomes. The few minutes that spent answering these four questions will have a huge pay-off as you become familiar with developing and structuring your marketing automation campaigns. Be prepared for delicious results!
