Successful inbound marketing is a hard road to travel. The problem is that too many people think it isn’t, especially with all the new, “magic bullet” automation technologies out there that pretty much do everything for you. Or at least that’s the idea… that you can “set it and forget it.” But without a target strategy and the right processes in place, your marketing team will just keep spinning your wheels, with no real success.
The bottom line of any business is productivity. If you aren’t delivering on your ideas within a promised time frame, you will lose clients — no matter how great your ideas or services may be. So, in anticipation of our upcoming webinar (Disappointed in Your Hubspot Results?), let’s take a look at 5 indispensable processes that your marketing team must have in place to build a scalable marketing machine that produces predictable ROI month after month.
1) Information-Gathering Process
Getting to know your client is vital if you hope to deliver on her expectations, so it is critical that you have a process in place for uncovering a client’s goals. This is true whether you’re conceptualizing a complete marketing campaign or working on a specific, one-off project.
To gather the information you need, make sure that all necessary team members can meet with the client prior to commencing work. Create a templated question sheet to guide your conversation. Once this process is complete, summarize campaign notes and receive a sign off from the client indicating approval.
2) Client Onboarding Process
Once you’ve gathered all the necessary information, it’ll be important for you to have a process which you can use with every client to lay the groundwork for all of your marketing success to come. There is no one size fits all to this process, but for the most part, look for it to involve some of the following items:
- Marketing automation platform clean-up (Including lists, forms, lead scoring, etc.)
- Fleshing out buyer personas
- SEO research/strategy
3) Client Management Process
When you deliver creative material to clients for review, teams often see their production come to a temporary standstill. Despite the fact that these materials and services are often costing the client a lot of money, it isn’t necessarily their first priority, and that can easily bring your own productivity and results to a halt.
To aid production on your end, have a process in place that will streamline client interaction. Ensure that your client knows exactly what is needed from them to move forward and on what timetable. Remember, this isn’t about you becoming a nagging presences in your client’s ear. Work with them to ensure that your needs are met, while not overwhelming their busy schedules.
4) Content Creation Process
Creating a piece of target content is no easy feat. There’s plenty of work and set-up that goes into creating every new offer. What happens then, when team member don’t know their responsibilities for a specific piece of content? Who’s in charge of the call-to-action, the landing page, the thank you page, the social media posts, etc.?
Clear expectations and responsibilities help with individual output and set up the entire team to collaborate and communicate with the right person. Look to outline and assign all the different tasks involved in creating a new offer, and set deadlines to ensure success.
5) Data Management Process
So how do you know if any of these processes actually work? How can you determine if they’re helping improve productivity and bringing ROI? The best way to measure your team’s success is by having a reliable data management process in place.
For this to be successful you must ask questions such as: What metrics will you be measuring? How often should you be looking at these metrics? What format will you report in? What’ll mark a successful campaign vs. a failed one? By collecting data from past and present campaigns (through Hubspot, Google Analytics, heat maps, client surveys, etc.), your team can analyze this information to look for areas of inefficiency and ways to improve your processes.
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