Freya Oxton-Grant
Wouldn’t it be great if technology could take up some of the strain and become your next technical sales rep? Well with marketing automation, it can!
One of the key elements of marketing automation is automating your lead generation and nurturing process.
According to a VentureBeat survey, marketing automation allowed 80% of the surveyed participants to see an increase in number of leads, and 77% found their number of conversions increasing, demonstrating that automating your lead generation can help with your business growth.
Automating your construction business’ marketing combines software and strategy to create a better marketing system for you and your construction business’ customers.
In this blog I will cover 5 ways you can implement marketing automation into your lead generation process, what they are, and how they will revolutionise your marketing processes.
1. Lead Nurturing
Following up on leads without having to do anything? Done. Nurturing your relationships with present and future customers? Achieved. Staying top of mind in your market? Completed it.
Marketing automation allows you to nurture your leads through automated emails, interactions and follows ups.
When customers who engage with your website content show interest the software will automatically begin that relationship on your behalf, even out of hours!
Here at Insynth, we recently got an response from a potential client who had interacted multiple times with one of our pages and received an automated follow up, that we set up nearly a year ago!
Automated lead nurturing allows you to track, slowly engage, and convert your prospects to paying customers.
2. Marketing Automation Lead Database
A marketing automation lead database is similar to a CRM (customer relationship management) system and holds all of the information on how your website visitors are behaving and interacting with your marketing, across website, social and email.
The main benefit to a lead database is it will track and develop each prospect’s ‘lead score’, notifying you when they reach a stage (score) where human intervention will get them over the final sales finish line.
A different score can determine a different playbook of marketing tactics including frequency of contact and even from which person/department they receive emails from.
It all works in the end to where you know those prospects with a high lead score have a high intent to purchase from you, meaning you can approach them with the information you need to close the sales and provide them with what they really want from your service.
3. Drip Campaigns
Drip campaigns send content to your leads at regular intervals in order to maintain your business in the top of mind position in the customer’s decision-making process.
It also allows you to offer specific, follow-up content at that perfect time, depending on their behaviour. Content that provides them value and advice in their product search!
Here’s an example:
Your customer is looking at one of your product pages for the 3rd time so then they are automatically sent an email containing an e-book or CPD link all about your product and the service you provide.
Drip campaigns slowly and regularly interact with your prospect until they know enough about you to decide to specify or purchase your product. Even just the exposure you are gaining can work in your favour, as people are more likely to trust and buy from a business they are familiar with.
And drip campaigns don’t have to just be through email, you can even start up the conversation over social media or other channels, which is an even more personal approach.
4. After-Sale Follow Up
When you are busy with current leads, following up with your past sales can often be forgotten. But this is so important as returning customers are easier to convert than new ones. They already know how great your product is!
It can be hard, especially in the construction industry where the project life cycles can be so long.
However, with marketing automation, you can maintain that awareness and relationship with all your past sales, giving you a better chance for when they next have a project where they need to specify your product.
You can set up the software to follow up, even if it’s after a year, when you know your specifier has finished with their current project and are back in the market.
Other benefits of the automated after-sale follow up is that you can encourage those customers to write reviews or testimonials for you in a simple, pre-made email, turning them into advocates for your business.
Existing customers are 4x more likely to refer someone to your business!
In the scenario where they weren’t completely happy with the service you provided, it is also an essential opportunity for you to find out what went wrong, make it better, and turn the problem around. Especially if they could potentially be influential in putting off any future customers.
5. Dynamic Landing Pages
Marketing automation can even alter your website to provide dynamic landing pages, which respond to whoever is visiting your site.
The software will respond to the person who is visiting your site, taking into account their company, job role, location and age, and provide them with a personalised landing page design.
Your images, content, layout, calls-to-action, and promoted products can all be configured to show them exactly what they are looking for, increasing their chance of becoming leads.
This automation provides customers a greater website experience as it personalises their engagement with your site and reduces their need to scour your product pages and testimonials for the perfect product they are looking for.
Dynamic landing pages work best with PPC (pay per click) campaigns as this provides the automation with the right variables to go off to make sure the personalisation is precise to the user. However, it still works with organic search too.
Conclusion
Marketing automation can provide so many benefits for your construction business, but the best part for your sales and ROI comes for the opportunity to automate your lead generation.
The technology streamlines your marketing team and becomes an additional technical sales rep on behalf of your company.
It works with the rest of your marketing activities to improve your efficiency, nurture your leads effectively, and personalise your customer interactions, to improve their experience and increase their engagement with your business.
Want to learn more about marketing automation for your building products or construction business? Read our BEGINNER'S GUIDE to Marketing Automation for Construction Companies.
About Insynth
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.