Social Network: Increase business sales through marketing automation

I recently attended the Asia Professional Speakers Convention in Singapore and there was a session that completely caught my fancy. 

James Taylor, a UK-based professional speaker demonstrated how he was able to get 200 sales leads by automating his marketing and sales process. 

At a time when the biggest problem for most businesses is getting clients, it really woke the audience up to take notice. James explained how he used a combination of tech tools to reach out to his prospective customers.  

This fascinated me and I decided to dig deeper into this subject. Marketing automation is the process of utilising technology to streamline and automate marketing campaigns across email, social media, mobile, online advertising and more. 

It encompasses a suite of tools to help marketers drive more leads, convert leads to sales and optimise spendings. This includes features like landing page builders, built-in CRM, reporting capabilities, social media management and more. By automating repetitive tasks, it frees up marketers’ time to focus on strategic projects and campaigns. The best marketing automation works to capture sales leads and convert them into paying customers through personalisation. 

By paying attention to your engaged leads and their behaviours, you can craft targeted campaigns that meet their needs and ultimately captures conversions. The top two marketing tools that I’d recommend are: ActiveCampaign: It’s the most cost-effective tool for small businesses to start with. At US$9 per month to start with, it makes sense for businesses new to the entire marketing automation game to get started with. 

Ontraport: While Ontraport is more expensive at US$79 per month, it has far more features to make it a serious contender. It’s also the tool that I find many seasoned marketers recommending. 

a) Encourage readers to  opt-in to your email list: The only way you can continue to keep in touch with your prospective customers is to have their contact details. Offer them something of value to encourage them to give their email address.
b) Deliver on your opt-in promise: A good way to do that is to give them a free e-book or a report. Quickly follow up and send the promised stuff to 
the people who signed up for it. Don’t delay or you could tarnish your reputation.
c) Offer extra content that is very relevant and highly useful to your subscribers: Continue to provide value by offering highly customised and curated content. They key here is to make it very interesting and valuable.
d) Give warm leads to your sales team: Let the sales professionals carry the conversation forward and help convert the leads into paying customers.
e) Warm up cold leads and re-engage: Continue to be in touch with people who don’t show much interest as some of them take a longer gestation period to make up their purchasing decision.

Good luck with your new marketing and sales initiative. Make the best of what technology offers to up your business.