What problems are you currently facing a client?
As an agency?
Do the same things seem to pop up no matter who you are working with?
When we think about problems agenciesandface, we have seen reoccurring themes and have been working hard to help solve them. We want to dive into the three primary pain points that seem to be the root cause of most of the issues you might be facing…
The Problems
- Buyers Distrust: Potential buyers spend so much time researching, seeking approval from others and trying to get the best deal because they don’t trust what marketers are saying about their products. Could something you are (or are not) doing be causing this?
- Buyer Anonymity: Buyers don’t want you to know who they are! But marketers need to know who buyers are in order to figure out where they are in the buyer’s journey so they can understand how to market to them better.
- Attribution: There is so much data available and with that privilege comes the cost of continually having to explain how the money you are spending is impacting these results. You need to be able to demonstrate when value is delivered, not so that you can keep your client(s) but so you can get credit when it’s due!
Now that you know the main problems where do you start? Below, we have created a toolkit for agencies. Some of them might seem like basic concepts but if you really think about it, are these things you are actually doing? Are you using them if they are available? Do you have access to these tools but hate them? Maybe they’re outdated, broken or just a bad fit?
Remember if you are using the right tools then you won’t feel like all marketing is, is a manual, repetitive movement, you can’t even keep up with. Instead, you will find yourself enjoying the work you do with your clients (not for them) as you are filling your days with the creative part you love!
Let’s Fix It
In 2017 it’s all about automating the marketing process and removing the manual practices. Let’s face it, you can’t do it all, so you have to stop trying to. My bet is if you are still the one logging in, gathering, entering, organizing, importing and creating everything on your own you are not only wasting a lot of time and money but probably making a lot of mistakes.
When you remove the manual parts of marketing you can do your job faster, more accurately, reduce costs, fix errors quickly and improve quality and results! The five tools we are going to talk about all help solve the above three problems and help marketers deliver value consistency because you are able to track all stages of the buyer’s journey and prove results with data.
Click Here To Subscribe To Our Blog
1. Email Marketing
When you used to think of email and automation together you probably think of blasting hundreds if not thousands of people with the same exact email, cluttering their inboxes and then wondering why you weren’t getting any results?
So much has changed since then! Marketers have realized the value in providing an email with value.
Email is an essential tool because it works, but the inbox is a very cluttered space because a lot of people do it wrong. This is why you need to find an email platform that lets you create lists, segment them, easily integrate with other tools, track and communicates results efficiently.
When it comes to email, you need to produce content that is engaging so your audience wants to have a conversation with you! This isn’t done with one email that goes out to 50,000 people that says SHOP NOW! It’s done through email drip campaigns, that trigger certain events based on your potential buyer’s behavior.
Maybe the buyer visits your website, is looking for curtains and adds them to their cart but never actually make a purchase. Are you able to send an email reminding them they still have something in there? Let them know they have this promo code for free shipping or an extra discount if they purchase now? And send them information about other items they might love based off of that one?
Or maybe your buyer downloads your e-book about how to install ceiling fans and you are then able to atomically drip other emails to them about DIY projects in the home as well as send coupons for supplies to contacts for local trusted contractors?
The above two emails demonstrate how both, you and the buyer can find value in these email conversations. You can learn more about the buyer based on their behavior, and the buyer is ready to receive the information they find useful. This then helps you figure out how to market to them which eventually leads to sales and maybe even building customer loyalty.
Email allows you to have personalized conversations like this which help buyers follow through on making purchases. But you can’t have those conversions unless you have a really good tool that allows you to do it. There is no way you could make the above happen if you were doing anything manually or don’t have pre-built events on your platform that are triggered by a potential customer’s actions. You need have an email automation tool you love!
Recommended Tool: MailChimp
2. Landing Pages
When I think of getting a potential buyers email address, I think of a landing page.
How do you get someone’s email? Often it’s by creating a lead magnet and getting them to give over some information for them to receive your magnet. Maybe it’s an e-book, coupon, free trial? But you are asking your potential buyer to give up information, removing their anonymity and most of the time the page you are doing this on is a landing page.
Or at least it should be…
Why are landing pages important? Because you need a single web page to push people to when you are asking them to complete a single action. If you drive them to your website, they might get distracted by the other tabs of pages, pictures, who knows but anything else could cause them not to take action and follow through on what you asked them to do. By creating a landing page, you are eliminating those distractions and helping the potential buyer focus and complete the task, the task where they are willingly giving you information about themselves by filling out the lead form, which enables you to understand them better. And when you get to know your buyer, you can then figure out where they are in the buyer’s journey.
There are platforms created solely for making landing page easily and quickly! This is something you defiantly have to have in your tool belt as a marketing team.
Recommended Tool: Leadpages
3. Call Tracking
More exciting than an email response is an actual phone call. How often does someone call you ready and willing to make a purchase? If they are it’s because you have done everything else right. You have built trust in the buyer, were able to identify them and understand where they were in the buyer’s journey and put the correct information in front of them. So now they call you and make a purchase!
Exciting yes, but don’t you want to replicate the process? Figure out how they got to this point in the joinery? Well, call tracking platforms allow you to do that. This tool gives marketers the ability to track inbound calls which are the most critical lead types.
When you can track this process you start to understand the consumer better and what got them to the final purchase. This is data and information you can then use to replicate the process by creating better ads, lead magnets, landing pages, and email drip campaigns and put them in places your potential buyer will see so they can eventually act on it, with a phone call too!
Recommended Tool: CallRail
4. Reporting
If you are in the agency world, then you might hate your monthly reporting responsibilities! Which is no good because you have to do it A LOT!
So what do you hate about it?
Is it because you have to log in, collect data from the platforms listed above plus some more for each client individually? It takes a lot of work to create those reports, sometimes you are well into the next month and still getting those ready for clients. How are you supposed to provide insight into the present and future if you are looking at data from the past?
This is why automating reporting is so critical. It keeps you from having to pull all this data yourself, from so many platforms and it prevents you from talking to Executives and clients with statistics instead of actual information they can use. When you have a platform that ties in reporting capabilities you can turn that raw data from the buyer’s journey and show how all those numbers are impacting the business in terms they understand.
If one of the three problems you identify with the most in proving value then your reporting might be where you are struggling the most. It’s important to find a tool that can take this process off your plate, so you have time to analyze the numbers and show the impact marketing is making in the business.
Recommended Tool: Converge
5. Dashboards
I am not sure if I would call the dashboard a tool but maybe the toolbox. This is the place that should integrate and house all your other marketing tools. It’s a customized marketing intelligence platform that gives you one single login but lets you see everything you are using to rock your client’s world first hand.
It is able to pull data from your email platform, your landing page platform, call tracking, plus all the other channels like social, web and offline sources we did not talk about and even generate reports. It lets you readily answer those so how’s it going questions by making you view all your data visually, in one place and identify wins and problems easily.
Marketing can’t work in the silos, and a dashboard lets everything come together so you can see what is and is not working.
Recommended Tool: Converge
Wrap It Up
So what do you do from here? You know the problems, and you now understand how to solve them! It’s time to find your tools and a new toolbox to carry them in. You need to create a multi-tool approach in your agency where everything comes together to solve buyer trust issues, anonymity and proves value time and time again.
The five tools listed above allow you to focus on the client and creative side of marketing and there is nothing more important than that!
Want a SIXTH tool for FREE? Then download our FREE e-book, How To Escape Your Agency’s Reporting Nightmare, here.
And check out this post, Building A Data-Driven Culture for more tips on marketing.