Marketing
Sweet Wine: More Leads with Marketing Automation
By Ryan Parlee
Building a marketing automation system is a lot like planting your own vineyard. With the word “automation” in the name, one would think that it’s easy to set and forget. That’s not the case. Maintaining a marketing system takes constant attention, just like growing your bountiful vineyard.
It would be nice to be wined and dined right off the bat, but making great wine takes time. Your level of dedication to marketing automation is fundamental to your success, and it will take time, too. You have to learn some new things, practice a ton and constantly ask advice from people who have done it before.
One: Select Your Site
Asking for or hiring the best help is absolutely vital to the success of your marketing automation strategy. And, just like marketing automation, 90 percent of the work is done before the vines are in the ground. Make sure you do your homework and figure out the automation system that will work best for you. There are many services and softwares out there to help make your job easier (at Flying Hippo, we are certified in the HubSpot marketing automation software) but they all require time and training. When you cut corners with your marketing automation, there will always be a trade-off with what you can cultivate in terms of quality leads.
Your goal with your marketing automation is to get your content in front of as many qualified leads as possible, plan to get it exposed well before it’s written.
Two: How Much Am I Going to Get?
“How much am I going to get?” is the million-dollar question for both wine-os and business executives. And the answer is: it depends. Some harvests will be better than others. Your marketing automation plan should be easy to manage, and the pace of content creation should be based on the vigor of your growth goal. The amount of time and money you have to put into your marketing automation strategy is determined by how well you match your goal to your plan.
Three: Assessment
With marketing automation, the key is to fail quickly. You no longer are stuck with a static plan. Marketing automation strategies are intentionally data-driven and fluid. But the power of your success is the frequency with which you assess the data and your willingness to try something different along the way.
Four: Plant
You’re almost ready to plant some vines and grow some grapes. But planting is tough work, and it’s not really done by yourself. Lean on experts who have been down the road before to make the most out of months and months of planning. The better data you have collected and used during your planning process, the better and faster your “planting” phase will go.
Five: Enjoy The Fruits of Your Labor
The real benefit is that all the hard work you put in at the beginning will still be working for you during the next planting season. The content you produce in month one is still working for you and generating page views, leads and sales in month 12. The more you research and plan each element, the more successful your marketing automation will be. But it takes a team to plant, cultivate and grow a vineyard.
Ask experts, hire the best help, buy the best equipment to meet your needs, be attentive and think differently. Every hour of planning and study that goes into your marketing automation will save 100 hours of hard labor in future seasons. Even a small marketing automation plan will require weekly maintenance before you see the fruits of your labor. The leads you generate will directly reflect your effort, and your effort will influence your sales.
Once you have your automation system setup, you can watch all of your work come to life. And that will taste just as sweet as the first sip of cold, red wine.
