Using Marketing Automation to Drive Lead Generation

Marketing Automation is a software platform (like Hubspot) that streamlines, automates, and measures marketing tasks and workflows. Marketing Automation allows you to be more efficient, increase revenue, and grow into a more powerful marketing team.

A few things that Marketing Automation allows you to do more effectively include:

• Email marketing

• Landing page creation

• Cross-channel marketing campaigns

• Lead generation

• Segmentation

• Lead nurturing and scoring

• Cross-sell and up-sell

• Retention

• Measuring ROI

• Website personalization

To start, you need to create an enticing offer.

Identify a pain point or challenge faced by many of your buyers. Can you share some DIY options (some that work and some that don’t), and offer a solution that involves your own services or products? Then you have the basis for an offer that is so good people would pay for it. In this case, the “payment” will just be a little bit of contact information. Not a huge commitment for them – but very useful to you.​

If you ask other experts in your field to contribute, not only will you add value to the offer, but you may find these experts are willing to help promote your offer for you.

Create your offer in any format you like. If you want it to be downloadable for use and printing, save it as a .pdf.  While we often think of an “offer” as an ebook or whitepaper, an offer could also be a webinar signup, exclusive video content, a slideshow, free trials, etc.

Create Your Landing Page and Form

Landing pages should be simple and not include distractions like navigation, sidebars, etc.

When creating your form, include (at least) First Name, Last Name, Email, Company Name, and website URL. Add at least one field that will help you start segmenting your lists (A checkbox for what’s your biggest ______ challenge? Industry, Job title, etc.).

HubSpot makes it very easy to create landing pages that integrate with the rest of your automation, but if you’re willing to export your subscriber lists to your email provider later (or check to see if your provider integrates), you can also use a program like LeadPages.

Create a Download/Thank You Page

After a user submits your form, they should be redirected to a page that provides them with a link to download your offer and gives them options to get more related information right away. You might link to recent blog posts, related offers, or a contact page.

Create a Call-to-Action (CTA)

A CTA is text or an image that links to your landing page. You’ll want to use these in emails, blog posts, Website pages and on social media. It shouldn't be hard to miss, provide a clear offer, and difficult to resist.

Create a List for Segmentation

In HubSpot, you can create a smart list that adds every contact filling out a certain form to a specified list. This allows you to keep track of who is interested in what and makes for more targeted email campaigns in the future. It’s likely you could do something similar with your email provider.

Create Emails and a Workflow

Once you have contact information for your downloaders, you'll want to use it. Create several emails for follow up:

• Create a “quick follow up” email that thanks people for downloading and provides the download link again.

• Create two or more nurturing emails – these should build on the topic of your offer. You could share links to related blog posts, other offers, videos, case studies, etc. Anything that would be helpful to someone interested in the original content offer.

• Create an email that offers assistance. You could offer a free trial, a consultation, or a demo.

Set up Workflows or Auto-Responders

Schedule your emails to go out to your downloaders. Set the delay between emails appropriately. For example, if they downloaded a 90-page ebook, don’t email the next day to ask how it’s going. Give them a little time.

When a contact reaches the end of the Workflow or AutoResponder series, send yourself an email that alerts you (or your client, or a salesperson) that a contact has made it to the end of the workflow.

Write and Publish a Blog Post

Announce your new offer! Describe the problem you are solving and the value you will provide. Give readers a number of reasons to click through to your landing page. Remember to add your CTA to this blog post.

Notify Existing Subscribers with an Email

Create and send an email announcing your new offer, making sure to focus on “what’s in it for them?” Insert a CTA and at least one more text link to your landing page (more links = more clicks). Send the offer to all your contacts, or only to those who have expressed interest in the subjects related to this ebook.

Share on Social Media Channels

Post updates linking to your landing page on all your social channels, scheduling several updates to Twitter. Email or send a tweet to any collaborators, sending a link to the landing page or blog post and thanking them for their contribution. Tag them in updates where appropriate.

Let your partners or employees know the ebook is up and ready to share. Encourage them to share and comment on your social media updates.

Do a little social prospecting and share a link to the landing page or blog post if you think it’s appropriate.

From time to time, share your landing page again on your social channels. Try different images and different text, different days and times and watch your results.

Watch the Results (and Adjust)

Numbers to watch include:

• Initial email open and click-through rates.

• Follow-up email and click-through rates (edit your workflow or autoresponder emails if one is underperforming)

• Landing page conversion rates. If your conversion rate is lower than expected, look at how enticing you’ve made the offer, the number of form fields you’ve included (more fields, more barriers to entry), the submit button text (never use “submit) and compare to previous, higher-performing landing pages.

• Call-to-Action performance. In HubSpot, watch which CTAs get the highest number of clicks. Swap these out for underperforming CTAs and add the best CTAs to older blog posts on related topics. If you’ve used a different shortened link for each CTA, check click stats on those.

Follow Up

With a Marketing Automation system like HubSpot, as you see contact reconversion emails, receive “hot lead” emails or get your “So and so is finished with the workflow” email, and decide how you or your sales team should follow up.

No matter which methods you use, you now have a segmented list, so you can target future email campaigns to people’s expressed interests.

Keep these lists in mind when you create new content that might be of interest. It doesn’t need to be another ebook – a blog post, video, case study, slideshow or other asset is worth sending, too! When you do send this kind of email in the future, remind your users why they’re getting it, so it doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of the blue. Your content offer may have been fantastic, but chances are, a few weeks later they have only a foggy recollection of having seen it.

Source: HubSpot

If you need help with Marketing Automation (specially Hubspot), please contact us to learn how we can help.