EP 16: How To Automate Your Marketing And Sales

We're all looking for ways to make life easier. Today, I'm going to share with you my favorite tips that not only streamline your operations but also have the potential to take your business to the next level.

I'm talking about marketing automation strategies.

When we implemented this in our own business (and started helping our clients do the same), it literally changed everything! I went from being a solopreneur making $250,000 a year to growing my business to a team with 14 members, which made $650,000 in 12 months. 

I say it all the time: business owners win and lose based on the fundamentals. And today, I will be sharing those fundamentals that can make all the difference.

If you've listened to any of my previous podcasts (or read my blog), you'll know that everything we do centers around Lifecycle Marketing (LCM).

LCM is a mix of strategies a company uses to communicate and move its target audience from being a prospect to becoming a customer, an ambassador, and eventually a life-long customer.

Today, you will see EXACTLY how we use the LCM process to create what I like to call…

The Invisible Marketing And Sales Machine.

There are 9 campaigns that make up the Invisible Marketing And Sales Machine.

The Building Blocks Of The Marketing And Sales Machine

Before I dive into the campaigns, I want to share the methodology we go through to give you a clear picture of what we are trying to accomplish, how we will build the individual campaigns, and, ultimately, how the machine will work in the end.

As a bonus, I am also going to show you HOW we build these campaigns as well!

Whenever we create a marketing and sales machine, we start by first asking:

• Who are we trying to help?

• What problem are they struggling with? What are the things keeping them up at night?

• How can we help?

After we have answered these questions, we can design our irresistible offer.

I know this is very basic, but here's the thing. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of designing their offer - then trying to find a market to buy it. There’s very little planning involved.

In our experience, this approach sets entrepreneurs up for failure. If you start with your perfect ideal customer in mind, identify their problems, then design the offer, you have a much better chance at creating and building something that the market wants and needs.

As a result, you have a much better chance of selling it!

At this point, we know who our market is, and we've created an irresistible offer. The next thing to do is walk through the machine identifying the communication and marketing automation strategies we want our perfect ideal customer to experience as they move through the LCM process.

Creating Awareness With A Facebook Ad Campaign

We begin by asking, "Where is our perfect ideal customer hanging out?" This could be at an upcoming event, or we may find them while networking. This person may also find us through online searches. If this is the case, we may need to improve our SEO. We will also consider whether we can find them by running Facebook ads.

In the example we are using today, we've decided that we are going to run a Facebook ad campaign to find our perfect ideal customer.

Capturing The Lead With A Lead Generation Campaign

Next, we decide what free resource (aka lead magnet) we will offer our perfect ideal customer that will allow us to capture their contact information. Doing this will enable us to add them to our machine and begin moving them through the process.

When it comes to lead generation, target audiences are less receptive to free resources than they used to be. This is because when business owners initially discovered this strategy, many promised a free resource, only for the consumer to find it was less valuable than they claimed it to be.

Whatever free resource you are offering as a lead magnet needs to be unbelievably valuable. This will guarantee you are making an unforgettable first impression while capturing those prospects. When this person receives their resource, you want them to think, "If they are willing to give this away for free, I can't imagine how valuable their paid stuff must be."  

Nurturing The Prospect With Your Welcome Indoctrination Campaign

After adding a new lead to your system, it's time to begin nurturing the relationship with that person. This is where you'll design a Welcome Indoctrination Campaign.

This campaign is a formal introduction to you, your team, your mission, or any other messaging that you feel is important that your new prospect knows.

If you think about it, when you meet someone in person, you typically spend time getting to know more about each other. You may chat about your business, clients, family, etc.

The Welcome Indoctrination Campaign is designed to do the same thing - allow a new prospect an opportunity to get to know more about you, your team, your mission, history, and your business.

Our indoctrination campaign also includes our purpose, core values, and coaching philosophies. As you begin thinking about your prospects, what are some things you want them to know about you so that you can welcome them into your community?

Converting Via The Sales Pipeline

The next campaign is critical - the sales pipeline. The sales pipeline allows you to track where your prospects are in the sales process. It also gives you visibility into your business.

I've worked with multi-million dollar organizations that don't have (or use) a consistent sales process, which seems crazy to me.

I had another business in the past where I trained over 1,800 salespeople. There's nothing worse than watching a salesperson work their tail off and not get results. Most salespeople are paid on commission, and as business owners, we are obviously paid by the sale. If they don't get results, it affects not only their confidence but also their bank account.

There are two keys to getting results when it comes to converting customers:

1. You must develop a proven system for closing sales.

2. You must have a way to track where your prospects are in your sales process.

Here's what so many business owners do. They spend a lot of time and energy on the front end of the funnel, meaning they'll spend a ton of money on Facebook ads to capture leads. They might spend time nurturing that relationship. But what they want to do is convert that new prospect right into a customer. Yet they have no way to nurture, follow up, or keep track of where their leads are at in the sales pipeline. This creates a situation where all of those opportunities fall through the cracks.

The sales pipeline will eliminate that from happening and give you a system and a process to follow up with people consistently. When you think about someone who has entered your sales machine, how you treat prospects is equally as important as how you treat customers. Those experiences will set the stage for the kind of relationship you will have with them.

Delighting With Your Onboarding And Customer Satisfaction Campaigns

There's nothing better than having your hard work pay off and finally acquiring a new customer!

Unfortunately, many businesses think this is where the journey ends. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The key to the next two campaigns is that you're intentional about creating a delightful and consistent experience for all of your new customers with an automated onboarding campaign.

There are two campaigns you want to have at this stage in the LCM:

1. Automated onboarding campaign. This campaign allows you to be intentional about how you bring on new customers and communicate with them. It enables you to provide warmth, clarity, and community.

2. Customer satisfaction campaign. This will allow you to monitor and gauge how your new customer is feeling and how you are doing in bringing them on board.

If you're consistent with your onboarding, and you ask for their feedback (and implement their recommendations as they make sense), it's more likely that you will have happy customers that turn into ambassadors.

Creating Ambassadors With Online Review And Refer-A-Friend Campaigns

If you are privileged enough to have earned ambassadors in your business (ambassadors are people who can't help but tell other people about their experience working with you, your team, and your products and services) - then you must make it easy for them to spread the word.

In this stage of LCM (and the machine), you want an online review campaign asking your ambassadors to give you a shout-out online. You also should have a refer-a-friend or referral campaign.

Small businesses pride themselves on their word-of-mouth growth. And they should! After all, they've earned their customer's trust and are rewarded with referrals.

Imagine, for a moment, if businesses asked for referrals instead of just hoping they get them! A refer-a-friend campaign is a great way to incentivize and reward your ambassadors for their referrals.

Businesses with a referral campaign get more referrals than those that hope their ambassadors will remember to talk about them.

Gaining A Life-Long Customer With And Upsell Campaign

And the last campaign in the machine is an upsell campaign.

This campaign is designed to introduce your happy and satisfied customers to new programs, products, and services that you offer so that you can continue to support and add additional value to them.

An Automated Marketing And Sales System To Make Your Life Easier

What you have here are all the campaigns that make up each component of the Invisible Marketing And Sales Machine. I know it seems like a lot to keep up with, but now, I'd like to show you how easy marketing automation strategies can be, causing your LCM process to run smoothly.

When creating a machine, you create a campaign centered around one specific goal.

To automate our machine, we use a software tool called Keap. We love this software because we can manage all aspects of our sales funnel in one place! With Keap, we can:

• Track our entrepreneurial scoreboard (all of the numbers any business should keep track of)

• Manage contacts, appointments, and tasks

• Contact customers through the business line provided by Keap (via phone, email, and text messaging)

• Create a sales pipeline, quotes, invoices, recurring payments, and checkout forms

• Create forms to collect contact information and landing pages, email broadcasts, and text messages

Of course, Keap supports you in automating your marketing and sales, too. Here's how it works, flowing from left to right:

• In the left navigation menu, head over to "Automation."

• Select "Advanced" to create a campaign. This will take you over to a campaign builder.

• Begin with the first campaign - a Facebook ad by dragging in the note icon and labeling it "Facebook Ad Campaign" *Expert tip: add a link to your ad campaign to track which campaign is driving to the funnel.

• Bring out the landing page icon to start the next campaign. Inside this tool, you can set up the landing and thank you pages that correspond to this funnel. Once someone signs up for a resource, they are sent to a thank you page where they are invited to join our Extraordinary Entrepreneur group on Facebook. This is something you can do on your thank you page, as well.

• Pull in a sequence and attach the landing page. Since we are focused on capturing leads in this step, we will label it "Deliver Lead Magnet; Apply Behavior Tag; Adds Prospect To Sales Pipeline."

This is how you set up this step. If you double-click the sequence, you can set up a series of emails to go out to the individual on a timely basis. (This is the start of the automation process.) To do this:

• Drag in the email icon and set up an email that delivers your lead magnet.

• Then, bring in the "apply/remove tag" icon. This will allow you to track who has requested specific resources so you can provide them with future offers.

• Bring in the icon that says "create a deal." This automatically adds the individual to your sales pipeline as a new opportunity or lead.

• To nurture your leads, bring out a new sequence. Label it "Start Welcome Indoc Campaign." Double-click on the sequence to set up the campaign.

• Apply a new tag. Each tag should be a process that will move the prospect into the next one. The goal is to onboard the prospect and build trust so you can convert them. Setting up a series of time-delayed emails will help you get the job done!

As you can see, automating your sales and marketing processes with Keap is simple. Once the system is in place, the software helps you keep track of your leads and nurture them as you capture the sale.

The thing about The Invisible Marketing And Sales Machine, the process that I just walked you through is the exact same one we use in our company every time we have a new product or service that we are offering in our company.

We inquire about our target audience so we can design our irresistible offer. Once that is established, we go through the LCM to determine where our audience is hanging out. Do we have people on our existing email list that are interested in what we have to offer? This is how you build a sales funnel. 

You can automate or bury yourself in endless busy work that will cost you your business. If we were responsible for sending out every message or reminder in our business, we would not be set up for success - especially when it comes to creating an excellent experience for our prospects and our clients.

Automation changes everything for you and your business. The sooner you start leveraging these tools, the better off you will be.