Despite the many advantages of utilizing marketing automation technology, if it’s not done right, your efforts will fail.
Without fully understanding how marketing automation can benefit your mortgage or real estate company, you will not get the results you expect. Here are seven tips to help you get the most out of your investment and every lead.
By: John Seroka
The main benefit of utilizing marketing automation technology is that it can help you scale your mortgage or real estate industry business by managing many more leads more efficiently than ever before. However, the goal of automation should be to support your marketing strategy, not drive it. So, before you try to automate everything that marketing touches, it’s important to take full stock of the platform you chose and make sure you know how to use it to its full capacity. That way, you’ll be able to clearly see how its features can help you grow your business.
Accordingly, to take control of your automation and use it to support your marketing efforts, here are some tips that will help you get started.
How do I make my marketing automation successful?
1) Set your goals and objectives for your automation: By design, marketing automation should help you execute your content marketing plan. So, before you invest in a platform, thoughtfully identify the long-term goals and short-term objectives you want to address.
Here are some simple goals you can set immediately:
- Increase lead generation
- Segment your audience
- Nurture leads to drive conversions
- Identify who is actively engaged with your marketing
Some key objectives you can focus on could include:
- Boosting productivity
- Improving marketing efficiency and ROI
- Personalizing campaigns
- Measuring results in real-time
2) Develop an audience engagement and content strategy: Given that a lack of strategy is one of the top reasons marketing automation fails, it stands to reason that developing a top-notch audience engagement and content strategy is the best way to start down the road to success. The days of throwing marketing tactics out there and seeing what sticks are long gone. A good strategy will help you build relationships, connect with your audience, educate, create a sense of community, increase your visibility and position yourself as an expert.
3) Outline content tracks (also called journeys): How are you going to reach each audience and how often? Set up tracks in your marketing automation system that include a variety of automatable tactics, such as posting to social media platforms, sending emails, placing calls and sending texts. However, be careful about how you use these tactics. There are regulations you must follow so that you don’t find yourself in legal hot water.
Creating impressionable content that can be deployed through automation is incredibly important. It’s about quality and quantity. Your content may include:
- Videos
- Email messages
- Text messages
- White papers
- Case studies
- Blogs
- Social media posts
Once your content is developed, you can easily repurpose it. In other words, you can use some of the same content but tweak a few words to personalize it for different audiences.
For example, baby boomers might want to take out a home equity loan to update their homes, enjoy retirement or take a vacation. But a Gen Xer might want to use that money to help pay for college tuition. Or, someone may wish to buy a home due to a growing family, whereas an empty-nester may wish to downsize.
After you have identified these differences and altered your content accordingly, you’re ready to add that content to your marketing automation platform and execute your campaigns.
4) Allocate resources: If you find yourself spending countless hours trying to figure out how to populate your platform with compelling content, you are clearly lacking the resources you need to generate it.
If you don’t have the luxury of dedicating an internal team to understand, operate and optimize your platform, consider getting some help from a marketing agency with experience in content creation and marketing automation systems. Our team at Seroka can provide you with a free consultation and the level of assistance you’re looking for.
5) Leverage audience segmentation and personalization capabilities: Automating your marketing efforts can only take you so far if you don’t understand your prospects and clients and what motivates them to respond. If an email doesn’t resonate with an audience, you’re either not targeting the right people or you are not speaking their language.
To be effective with your targeting and personalization, begin by collecting data that will help you better understand your clients. This data can include pain points, frequently asked questions, goals and more. Then create a content strategy for engaging with them throughout their buyer journey.
6) Using the right marketing channels: Consumers use the channel that best fits the moment they are in or the task at hand. And, if you aren’t using that channel at that moment, you risk losing a meaningful exchange.
It’s more than using as many channels as possible (though a cross-channel approach can be very effective); rather, it’s about learning how your prospective clients prefer to engage and using those channels to communicate with them. You must understand your target audience and communicate with them wherever they are.
7) Measure engagement: Measuring engagement with your content and adjusting is how you will improve and succeed over time. And, given the resources and effort you’ve put into your marketing automation platform, why wouldn’t you?
Engagement includes…
- Website visits
- Various social media interactions, including likes, shares and comments
- White paper downloads
- Ebook downloads
- Newsletter sign-ups
- Email opens, click-throughs
- And much more
Marketing automation is not a fad that will disappear in the years to come. Rather, it is an evolving practice that will be sharpened and improved as technology advances. As a mortgage or real estate industry professional, nurturing relationships at scale is essential if you want to thrive well into the future. Prudent marketers today understand this and are using marketing automation to create a more personal experience for prospective clients that will lead them down the path to closing, generate referrals and even serve as a source of repeat business.
If you need help with content creation or strategy development, contact Seroka. We have the experience and talent to ensure the successful deployment of your marketing automation efforts.