Why you shouldn’t rush to Automate all your Marketing
Automation is a marketing megatrend.
It allows your lead generation efforts to scale because you don’t have
to guide every single prospect through your sales cycle. The promise is
alluring; you sit back and watch your business grow.
But there is a cost to scaling via complete
automation. It’s the ‘human powered’ touch points in your sales cycle
that help build trust, create a genuine connection, and set up your
customer for a long-lasting partnership with you.
Given the positives of a human-centred
approach to marketing, maybe you shouldn’t automate every single aspect
of your sales cycle. Yes, automate where it makes sense, but if you can
also understand where human contact really matters, you will benefit the
most from marketing automation options.
What is the promise of automation?
Automation is a current marketing buzzword. It makes
all sorts of promises: use technology to automatically grow your
business. The fantasy is that you can set-it-and-forget-it with your sales process. Simply create a funnel – drip campaigns, chatbots, autoresponders – and then automate.
But things are different in practice. Yes, you can
market at scale, but put yourself in your customer’s shoes. When you’re
sold to without ever interacting with a human, how does that make you
feel?
For most small businesses, it’s exactly that
familiarity and personability that allows them to compete against larger
rivals. So don’t just try to ‘out automate’ the large-scale automaters; try to give your customers a personal touch at the critical touchpoints of your sales process.
Do you really want to ignore customers and leave critical moments to autoresponders?
What is lost with automation?
How you handle moments of ‘high emotion’ is crucial
to how your business is perceived. The first time a potential customer
calls you, when they’re ready to buy, when something goes wrong;
handling these scenarios well are how you can differentiate from your
competitors. People remember how you treat them in these moments.
As customers find you and explore your offering, you
are building trust. Quite simply, you won’t make a sale without building
trust. For customers to stick with you for the long term, you need to
make connections and foster partnerships. Make sure you create human
moments in your sales and marketing process where this connection can
form.
If you are able to make a genuine connection as you
market and sell your product or service, then you create the foundations
for a sale and, crucially, a lasting partnership. Human-centred marketing means more understanding and empathy, and therefore a long-lasting, loyal customer. Don’t let automation suffocate your efforts to build trust with prospects.
What can choosing people first do for your business?
There are crucial times in your relationship with
customers when it makes sense to offer people the chance to communicate
with your business rather than opt to automate.
When prospects are hesitant, support them. When
something has gone wrong, help them. By recognising key moments of
anxiety and encouraging human interaction with you during them, you can
make people feel positive about doing business with you.
Automation can be
used to remove people entirely from your sales process. In theory, you
can scale indefinitely. But for most businesses infinite scale is not
the goal and isn’t even desirable. So don’t automate away areas where
you can compete with larger competitors: use your size to help people.
Don’t put a ‘noreply’ email address and chatbots in the way.
Look for moments of human connection
There are many ways to inject humanity into your
business processes, even as you grow. The key is to carefully consider
when to automate and when not to. Don’t make it hard to talk to you when
customers are at important junctures in your sales cycle.
You can handle these critical touchpoints yourself or with your in-house
team, but you can also explore other options. A live answering service,
for example, can handle calls and chats for you, giving your customers a
friendly voice even when you’re busy or if customer communications
occur out-of-hours.
Consider an answering service that allows you to
leverage the power of the human voice while also keeping your costs
under control. Creating better relationships with your customers will be
worth the investment.
People buy from people. Choose human-centred marketing with HelloSells’ live answering service.
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