Let’s face it. It’s 2013, and we’ve made resolutions as individual and as businesses for the New Year, just like we did last year and like we did the year before. Did we keep them? Maybe. But most of the time we’re so busy keeping up with our daily work that we don’t “have time” to fulfill those resolutions. I’ve made this excuse, and I’m sure a lot of my friends and colleagues have as well.
It’s important as a business to keep up with your goals. Otherwise, you’ll never grow into your vision of what it could be. Marketing automation is a great way for a business to grow and expand their prospect pool. If you don’t have some lead nurturing or scoring process in place, then you’re missing out on possibly hundreds of leads. Instead of saying “I don’t have time to do that right now,” let’s talk about some ways that you can make more time for marketing automation:
1. Create a “marketing” calendar.
What kind of promotional email campaigns do you have in your queue? When do you want to analyze and reach out to leads every week? Are you tracking the success of your landing pages? If these are things that you’re asking yourself, then create a calendar for your marketing and sales teams to complete those tasks. Assign owners to specific tasks, and give them a deadline for those tasks. Stay a month ahead. Even have a shared document/spreadsheet/calendar so that everyone is on the same page.
2. Have a time slot every week to review your marketing activities.
Every week, I have a specific day and time slot that I pencil in my calendar to work on internal marketing. I won’t answer client emails, I won’t work on anything else. I just focus on internal projects. Whether you have something due that week or not (according to the marketing calendar), it’s a good idea to get in the groove of reviewing the marketing activities for that week.
3. Schedule meetings with team members to discuss marketing automation activities.
Marketing automation isn’t generally an individual effort – it’s a team effort. The best way to making time for marketing automation is to hold others and yourself accountable for marketing automation activities by scheduling time to discuss the activities you’ve been doing to help those efforts. Have an agenda, talk about the specific tasks each team member has, and ask how you can help.
Want to ensure that you’re going to make time for it? Make a meeting with your team next week. Get started and go!
Guest Blog by Jenn Lisak with DK New Media @jlisak
