Father’s Day and Marketing Automation: Give Yourself the Gift of Time
In a recent survey of fathers who own businesses, sixty percent of them stated that they have worked on Father’s Day. But it’s likely that most fathers would prefer to spend Father’s Day with their families, barbecuing, picnicking, or playing with their kids.
The survey allowed for comments. Fathers stated things like:
“Had to finish”
“I needed the money at the time”
“Sometimes you have no choice”
One father, a small business owner who we interviewed told us, “I’ve worked on a few Father’s Days over the years.” He pointed out that as a salesperson he often worked weekends and holidays, prospecting and organizing sales calls for the upcoming week. Certainly, many people do well in business because they work harder, but there is a set of tools available today that allows salespeople and small business owners to get more sales done in much less time.
This set of tools, called “marketing automation”, increases the number of leads that companies gather until it becomes a steady flow. Most often this is done through Search Engine and Web Site Optimization (SEO/WSO). SEO/WSO is the practice of building web sites and forms online that bring in new inquiries through email and phone calls.
Hubspot, a company that helps automate this process, offers a marketing grader that compares your web site against your competitors’ and then makes suggestions to help you improve its performance. Business owners can save time by automating the lead-flow process.
Once lead-flow begins moving smoothly, the focus turns to increasing “conversions,” the process of converting inquiries into sales. Conversion improvements are accomplished by software that tests various approaches against each other for success and ongoing improvement. The most popular type of test is a simple “A/B Split test”, where a web site presents alternating versions of images or sales copy to visitors and measures which features convert better. With marketing automation in place, the process is automatic.
Finally, marketing automation helps to ensure proper follow-up. Many salespeople and small business owners struggle to organize, track, and recall each of their prospects for follow-up. Good marketing automation systems allow them to pre-plan for the various circumstances they encounter and automate the processes in such a way that prospects can’t tell the difference. Personalized emails and postcards, make prospects think they are being contacted by the same people they spoke to the first time; and it works. Many users of a properly-implemented marketing automation system report receiving phone calls and sales “out of the blue” from prospects they spoke to months prior, who act as though they’ve been in touch all along (when in fact, most actions were system-based).
Joe Martinico, a marketing automation expert and author of an upcoming book called none other than “Marketing Automation”, explained, “The ideas behind marketing automation have been around for 20 years but the technology is just now catching up. In fact for the past 5 years this technology has only been affordable for the largest corporations. Today, small business owners can set up automated marketing systems very reasonably, but they usually need some help to do it right. There’s too many choices and it can be overwhelming.”
Martinico is writing his book to guide salespeople, small business owners (and fathers) through the process. The book is due out in the fall. Mr. Martinico points out, “I’ve worked on some holidays throughout my career. I hope my book can give small business owners more time so they won’t have to.”
