Freya Oxton-Grant
Small to medium sized construction companies are the ideal user of marketing automation systems. Smaller teams have little time to be focussing on marketing campaigns while also struggling with keeping on track of sales follow up and lead nurturing.
By implementing a marketing automation system into your construction business, your team can streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows all while increasing your efficiency and growing your sales.
Did you know, in the next 2 years, it is thought that 85% of customer relationships with businesses will be managed without any humans being involved in the process?
Modern businesses embrace technology, especially systems that helps them grow through massive ROI. Although the construction sector is a ‘no-frills’ industry, marketing automation is the sort of tech stack that is essential in this digital era. Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to connect with customers in the present and the future, when they are in their moment of need.
In this blog we will cover the best practices that will help your business’ marketing and sales teams once you’ve chosen your automation system of choice.
Best Practices for Your Marketing Automation Implementation
Understand your Buyer’s Journey
Knowing your specifier’s buyer’s journey will allow you to set up the automated workflows relevant to them and what will move them further down the sales funnel. If they are on your pricing page, set up a trigger for an email with decision stage content that will help them further with their buying decision.
This is a great example of sending the right message at the right time and taking full advantage of the marketing automation software. This sequence can be triggered by any number of website visitors, at any time of day, but still works hard for the benefit of your team’s lead nurturing.
Humanise and Personalise
Even if you are automating your marketing, it still needs to be human and helpful. Your automated customer service rep should be just as lifelike as a real one, but this is easy to do as you will be the one to set up the automated campaigns, adding your personal flair and tone of voice.
Customers will appreciate your reactive and supportive marketing as the longer they have to wait for that e-book or pricing quote, the more likely they are to go to one of your competitors.
Marketing automation allows you to engage your customer and stay top of mind, while providing answers to every question that that customer has- before someone else answers them.
Plan Out Your Automation Campaigns
Marcus Sheridan, content marketing thought-leader, states that there is a magic number of touchpoints that a prospect needs to interact with before they (sub-consciously) trust your business, and (consciously) convert.
For his own company, Marcus realised that potential customers who viewed 30 pages on his website of content (blogs, product information, videos etc.) had an 80% closing rate, compared to his average rate of 15%.
Using your marketing automation system, you can plan out sequences that make sure your prospect hits this number through emails with key content pieces relevant to their product interest. Targeting interested specifiers in this way means you have a higher chance of converting through little ongoing work.
Look Ahead for Sales Follow Up
Marketing Automation allows you to save time and money through planning ahead. You will never again forget to follow up on existing customers as the software will do it for you. This is so useful in the construction industry when projects can last for months.
You can set up sequences to follow up with your completed deals, even if it’s after a year, when there is a good chance that that specifier has finished with their previous work and is primed for their upcoming projects.
With marketing automation, you can maintain that awareness and relationship with all your past sales, as well as send out requests for testimonials or reviews. Existing customers are 4x more likely to refer someone to your business!
Conclusion
Marketing automation allows you to nurture your leads through automated emails, interactions and follow 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!
Automated lead nurturing allows you to track, slowly engage, and convert your prospects to paying customers. It makes your life easier when you never have to remember again to follow up with customers.
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.