Marketing is evolving at a rapid pace, empowering businesses of all sizes to reach more prospective customers and increase engagement with their existing customers. The old way of working won’t be effective anymore. To increase your efficiency, it’s important to reimagine your marketing systems and processes.
But just because you have to reexamine your marketing systems and processes doesn’t mean you have to make it complex. You don’t need advanced AI, machine learning, or total automation. What you need to do is automate routine tasks, reduce human intervention, save time, and increase your conversions.
In this guide, we will explain marketing systems and processes and share ways in which you can incorporate them into your business.
What are marketing systems and processes?
Marketing systems and processes include a series of steps that empower businesses to find customers, analyze their problems, discover market opportunities, create products or services rooted in customer insights, plan creative campaigns, and develop and distribute marketing content through the most effective channels.
It would be tempting to limit marketing systems and processes to advertising and public relation functions. But they cover a wide gamut of activities that are both internal and external. With the right systems and processes, businesses can streamline their functions and deliver compelling campaigns that convert customers.
Why do businesses need marketing systems and processes?
Without a clearly defined set of protocols, marketing can end up being a bunch of ad hoc tactics. While these might keep everyone busy, there won’t be any increase in efficiency. But when you incorporate marketing systems and processes, you will notice these advantages.
Greater clarity
Marketing systems and processes help individuals and units understand their roles. Instead of having to manage multiple tasks, people would be able to specialize in domains they’re more suited for. There will be no need for back-and-forth communication. This speeds up the creation, distribution, and analysis of campaigns.
Better coordination
When people know their responsibilities, they would know whom to get in touch with for specific information. Teams will be better prepared to help each other because they know what’s expected of them. This not only increases internal cohesiveness but also makes sure that you don’t waste time duplicating work.
Alignment between teams
Marketing will be more effective when the sales and marketing teams are on the same page, working toward the same objectives. Since campaigns will be created according to audience needs and competitor analyses, this domain alignment will improve lead generation, customer acquisition, conversion, and retention.
Equitable work distribution
Employees get overwhelmed when there is too much communication and no clarity on their specific responsibilities. This leads to lesser engagement and decreased productivity. Marketing systems and processes ensure that no individual or unit is overburdened. This helps you improve both the quality of work and team morale.
Repeatable protocols
One of the greatest advantages of having marketing systems and processes is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you have to develop, distribute, or research a campaign. Your team members would know what needs to be done, in what order, and who’s responsible for those functions.
The three main units of a marketing system
Every business needs to focus on three fundamental units when implementing marketing systems and processes. At Heycollab, we refer to it as the PPR (people, process, and resources) framework
People
Although marketing functions are steadily getting automated, people are still at the core of it. Domain expertise across categories isn’t something you can develop overnight. That needs continuous investment in individuals.
Whether it’s a market researcher, brand planner, copywriter, art director, PR manager, social media manager, automation director, or programmatic buyer, their roles should be clearly defined. Business leaders must understand the resource requirements of these individuals and provide them with the necessary resources to grow.
Process
In marketing systems and processes, the focus has to be on empowering individuals and teams with the resources they need in a transparent and efficient manner. At the center of that process is a streamlined flow of information.
Important information in the form of text, multimedia assets, campaign briefs, feedback, research insights, or media planning strategy, should be available to all participants. What’s important here is to give everyone the access they would require without the need for manual intervention. That’s where a tool such as Heycollab comes in handy since it has dedicated channels of conversation specific to projects and tasks.
Resources
People are important but they will only be innovative, creative, and productive when backed by the right resources. When you equip your team members with the tools they need, you make the whole system more efficient by automating routine chores.
But it isn’t merely about more software or applications. It’s also about focusing on the important aspects of a project and outsourcing the rest. You can hire freelancers or virtual assistants for insignificant and time-consuming tasks while focusing on ways to improve the product or service quality.
Essential marketing systems and processes for your business
To build greater awareness for your product, generate leads across channels, and nurture them for conversion, these are the basic marketing processes and systems your business would need:
Lead generation
To increase lead generation, you need to break the process into actionable and repeatable steps. It begins by defining your customer persona with specific information on customer demographics, psychographics, and other traits and interests.
The next step is to make sure that you attract leads that align with the customer persona. This can be done through inbound strategies using compelling marketing content. Along with that, there should be an emphasis on cold outreach and engagement with your audiences through channels they use to interest them for a meeting or demo.
Search engine marketing
The next step is to be found by those searching for solutions that your product delivers. PPC or pay-per-click is an effective method that allows you to place ads on search engine results pages. Unlike organic SEO (search engine optimization) tactics, this gets you faster visibility.
PPC is mostly about finding specific keywords that your target audience would be using. Secondly, you need to create a landing page that carries forward the conversation. The landing page where you divert your traffic should be clutter-free and needs to have content that establishes your authority.
Lead nurturing
Collecting leads is irrelevant if you can’t nurture them to consider your product or service. To successfully nurture leads, marketers should segment their audiences to understand who they are, what motivates them, what options they might have tried before, and their expectations from the category.
Companies that are efficient in lead nurturing use website content, ebooks, training, blog pieces, webinars, and other content to interest their prospects. Keep in mind that both content creation and delivery need to be customized to the specific needs of the audience. This will build your credibility and encourage your prospective customers to believe in you.
Social media marketing
All successful digital marketers have one thing in common; they use the power of social media to expand their audience base and connect with them. When done well, social media marketing allows you to build awareness, direct traffic to your website, engage with your current and prospective customers and promote your brand.
Social media marketing begins with a comprehensive analysis of your audience. Next, you have to identify the platforms they use. Once you know where to position your brand, you need to develop engaging, compelling, and helpful content. Marketers should also integrate user-generated content to increase engagement with their audiences.
Content marketing
Content drives the world. It introduces brands to people and converts consumers into believers. But more than anything else, great content is a leveler. You could be a small business or a new entrant in your category but if you have unique and imaginative content, you will achieve more than established businesses with their expansive budgets.
Your content could be a blog post, infographic, video, podcast, white paper, case study, or email. It needs to be customized to the traits of your audience and, importantly, be interesting to them. You should also repurpose content to amplify its reach and promote them across channels.
User onboarding
To maximize customer retention, businesses should deliver engaging user experiences. User onboarding can appear challenging but the good news is that automation can make the job easy. From a welcome email to a personalized note, relevant prompts, and notifications, there’s a lot a business can do to welcome its new users.
Other than improving engagement, user onboarding is also a crucial step in up-selling. Once a user is satisfied with your product or service, it becomes easy to encourage them to migrate to a paid or premium plan.
Marketing systems and processes will be more effective when they’re backed by an advanced project management tool. Heycollab has many features – docs, chat, calls, time tracking, and more. Your workflow will be smoother and more efficient. Sign up now to experience the ease that Heycollab brings to collaboration and productivity!