Infusionsoft Secret Sauce: Part Six - Digital Marketing Excellence

Infusionsoft Secret Sauce: Part Six – Digital Marketing Excellence

Update June 9, 2016

In order to achieve the status of digital marketing excellence, by using Infusionsoft or any other marketing automation software as one of your tools, you need to assess your views, your actions, your ability to execute on a strategic plan. Digital marketing excellence with Infusionsoft requires a digital strategy that is measurable, actionable, customized to your business plan and has a high impact on your overall success – online and off.

Now that you have a well defined avatar (buyer persona and perfect prospective customer), have researched and surveyed your audience's pains and problems, understand the differences between the online and offline buyer, have defined your advantage through a SWOT analysis and crafted your position statement it is time to audit your business so that you can take it to the next level. The results of this audit will help you appreciate what you do well and what you need to take action on.

Viral Solutions is an Expert Member of Smart Insights. They have a chart that we use in our strategic planning sessions with clients and prospects. This tool helps us assess your digital capability and outlook. Your answers help pin point your areas of digital marketing strength and areas that need further consideration.

Assessing Seven Areas of Your Digital Marketing Capabilities

digital marketing excellence — When the team at Viral Solutions brings their minds to your business, you are getting all of our collective experiences. We will never sugar coat the reasons behind our input. We will not withhold our best solutions. We will not limit our implementation strategies. Instead, we tell you exactly how we see it and how you can proceed with your digital marketing to experience the best results. These results will be the sum of your strategy, your defined target audience, your commitment to serve your customer and our process of delivery. That means we are an integral part of your team!

You would assess your strategic approach as:
- No written strategy
- Prioritized marketing activities
- Defined vision and a written strategy
- Business is aligned with strategy
- Agile and strategic
You would assess your measuring your digital marketing performance process as:
- Not using regular key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Volume based KPIs
- KPIs based upon last click
- KPIs that measure actions based on weighted value
- Lifetime value KPIs
You would assess management's buy-in as:
- Limited
- Verbal support but inadequate resourcing
- Sponsor through an increasing investment
- Championing and an appropriate investment
- Integral part of strategy development
You would assess your resourcing and structure as:
- No specific internal skills relative to digital marketing
- Have core skills and support from an outside agency
- Dedicated department and resources in-house
- Constant certification / education, broad based experts in all divisions and committed leadership
- Excellent blend of internal and external marketing skills throughout the organization
Your data and infrastructure would best be assessed as:
- No customer database
- Data, tools and IT services are separate
- Systems and data are partially integrated
- Systems are integrated and data comes from electronic and physical in-person sources
- Our approach is flexible, systematized and optimized.
When reviewing your customer communications your assessment is:
- No integration of customer communication with our systems
- Basic push notifications are somewhat in sync
- Integrate inbound communication only
- Integrated, personalized based upon value actions with paid and owned media
- All forms of media optimized for ROI and maximum CLV
The customer experience would be assessed as:
- Website is not integrated with our systems and processes
- Digital support for the customer is not personalized to need
- Some aspects of digital inbound queries are personalized to need
- Web, mobile, email and social media are all integrated and our responses can be personalized – inbound and outbound – digital and physical.
- The entire customer experience and our recommendations are personalized and the tone matches our strategy at all points of contact.
From this assessment are you a laggard? In the process of developing your capabilities? Competent and above average? Well above your peers capability? Leading your market segment?

What does this have to do with Infusionsoft?

Infusionsoft, as well as any other all-in-one marketing automation software, is only a tool for your business. The information you put in it, how you maintain it, what you deliver with it and how you measure what it does for you is not just the tool itself. To use Infusionsoft like a pro requires a well defined marketing strategy, well trained users in operational management and process designers that get your business model.

REMINDER: The secret sauce to successful use of Infusionsoft, or any other SaaS automated marketing platform, does not contain tactical marketing knowledge as its key ingredient. The most successful users of Infusionsoft are smart digital marketers that have a defined strategy. They do not start with a bunch of widgets, gadgets, plugins, API or other integration tools in order to succeed at digital marketing. They start with strategy, not with tactics!

To achieve digital marketing excellence with Infusionsoft means you have integrated it with every aspect of your business sales and marketing process at a minimum.

Infusionsoft pros are agile, strategic, KPI nuts, developers of systems that match their business model, flexible, systematized, optimized, integrator of everything digital as well as non-digital – they know that the customer experience needs to be balanced with the organizations needs for data and metrics that can be managed.

What happens when an Infusionsoft subscriber does not use the secret sauce?

They try tactic after tactic until they either find what works or they run out of money.

Here is a list of marketing tactics that many small businesses waste money on when they do not employ strategy at a high level.

Word of mouth – email marketing – new website – products nobody buys – SEO – social media – SEM – public relations – print collateral – video production – print and digital advertising – live events and trade shows – discounted offers – multiple sales channels – partnerships – joint ventures – direct mail – surveys – giveaways – branding – logos – lead generation – outbound telemarketing – fancy presentations – sales tools and software – virtual assistants.

Ever waste any money on any of those?

In our next article we will discuss how to take the key ingredients of the Infusionsoft Secret Sauce and put it all together into an agile and methodical plan so that you know exactly what you need to do to stay on top.

Here is how you avoid paying tens of thousands of dollars going to seminars, live events, paid webinars and corporate universities in order to be successful with digital marketing while using Infusionsoft as one of your tools.

Reference Links for Infusionsoft Secret Sauce Articles:
Copyright 2016 Viral Solutions LLC

by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer

We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.

Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords.