Communicating to sell: the benefits of automation
To turn your prospects into customers, you need to communicate via a variety of channels. It's up to you to assess the relevance and benefits of each one, and activate them wisely. Find out more about our tips for using marketing automation.
The different types of communication
The nature of the communication to be deployed is determined by the objective pursued. Grouped into typologies, we find :
- external communication. This covers all messages addressed to your zone of influence and your network, whether customers, prospects, partners or even competitors.
- internal communication: on the other hand, this is what circulates within your organization. It's aimed at your employees and the various departments at your different sites. It's also known as corporate or institutional communication.
- marketing communication: this is a form of external communication, more specifically that which relates to your offer, brand image and customer benefits.
- sales communication: part of marketing, this focuses on prospects and customers, encompassing canvassing on the one hand, and customer relations on the other.
- event communication: when you host a reception or organize a special event. It's a chance to say thank you, to call on your network, to introduce a new product or to make an announcement. Your invitations, like any teasing - such as D - x days - are a very specific kind of communication effort.
The different communication channels
There are many channels. It's up to you to identify the most appropriate one for each situation.
Old-school communication
These are the traditional means of communication - now classic, but not necessarily obsolete - such as the landline telephone, post and fax.
Media communication
These are channels with advertising space: television, radio, websites with advertiser banners, print (paper press, magazines, etc.).
Non-media communication
This involves more two-way interaction, with more personal media such as cell phones and e-mail addresses.
Which one to choose?
Variable impact
What's the right channel? There are no rules. And in the end, that's just as well, otherwise we'd be witnessing an impoverishing homogenization of approaches across the board. The fact remains, however, that not all approaches are created equal: more or less judiciously carried out on one channel or another, the results will be less satisfactory or, on the contrary, very positive.
A cost to be optimized
Communicating remains a source of expenditure: you allocate internal resources or call on external service providers. You may also spend money on advertising or search engine optimization. So you want to optimize its impact. How do you identify the right channel?
A few points of reference
The best way to find out is, of course, to test. However, you can already prepare the groundwork beforehand. Start with a benchmark: what are your competitors doing? What are industry practices? In the industry, paper, for example, will sometimes hit the bull's-eye, while it will be forgotten elsewhere.
Marketing automation
No more mass approaches
Whatever the channel and type of communication you deploy, there's one thing you've got to get rid of: the mass approach. Of course, the challenge is to address as many people as possible, in order to generate as many interesting contacts as possible. Converting your leads into customers is a priority. But quantity must not be at the expense of quality.
Recipients are more demanding
With spam messages on the increase, you can't afford to make mistakes. It's time to personalize your message. Your contacts are increasingly demanding. They want to receive the right offer at the right time. An ill-focused or overly generalized message will bore them and cost you image capital.
Setting automation parameters
So how do you go about it? Marketing automation is today's way of personalizing campaigns while systematizing them. Its principle: finely segment your database and assign automatic actions to it. With a solution like Plezi, you specify your profiling criteria in advance, then program the sending of such and such content to recipients with such and such characteristics.
Multi-channel variation
This type of mechanism is also useful for multi-channel campaigns. With a tool like Send-Up, all channels are covered. This means you can orchestrate your campaigns to make the most of each one: one part of your campaign may focus on direct mail, while another completes the picture with paper mailings. The two most widely used levers are e-mail and SMS. That's why solutions like ActiveTrail have specialized their scope in this direction.
Marketing automation has revolutionized the communication challenges associated with sales. Today, you can refine your targeting while personalizing your content: a decisive means of differentiating yourself.
Article translated from French