In part 1 of our article on using technology to grow your Automotive business we looked at Why you should improve efficiency and effectiveness, Where to start, the types of technology you have, and the areas that can be improved. Here's part 2...
As always you can listen by watching this video or read on...
This time lets put that all together into a streamlined process
Use this example journey to see if your process is smooth from generating website visitors, sales leads, winning new customers, and closing sales. I'll use HubSpot in this example as it's the all-in-one sales, marketing, and website software that our clients use to grow their Automotive businesses.
- Meet James. He’s the Commercial director at The Tree Group and he helps Automotive companies with at least 10 staff and a desire to grow by 15% in 18-months.
- Now meet Bob. Imagine that he is the owner of an Automotive company that wants to sell to vehicle manufacturer, dealers, and consumers and he wants to hire a company to help grow his business.
- Although Bob realises the need to pursue digital tactics to improve the growth of his business, he finds himself two-minded because previous attempts at in-house marketing efforts and partnerships with agencies have failed, mostly due to limited technical knowledge.
- Bob goes to an event, talks to his peers about the challenges with his business, and hears about a Business Growth agency and that it’s possible to track the ROI from his website, sales and marketing activity. Bob gets back to the office and goes to Google to do some research. He finds a great blog article, written by James (using HubSpot’s blogging tool), about innovative trends and this gives him ideas of how to utilise them in order to gain a competitive advantage.
- Bob finds James’ blog so useful that he clicks on the call-to-action (created in HubSpot’s CTA tool) at the end of the blog article. The call-to-action leads him to a landing page (created in HubSpot’s landing page tool) with an offer for an ebook that educates Bob on how to differentiate his business from competitors by utilising the various technology advancements.
- Bob thinks the ebook will be useful, so he submits his name and email address, then downloads the ebook.
- Impressed with James' ebook, Bob returns to James’ website the next day to dig deeper. He notices that his company offers Business Growth services specifically for his industry and type of company, but he's not ready to sign up quite yet.
- Thanks to HubSpot, James can personalise his website (using HubSpot’s website CMS) to Bob's interests and send him customised emails (using HubSpot’s email and marketing automation tools) to nurture his relationship with Bob over time.
- A few weeks later Bob returns to James’ site. This time he's closer to making an enquiry and visits the services page.
- Seconds after Bob visits the services page, the salesperson at James’ company assigned to Bob gets an alert (from HubSpot’s notifications tool) notifying him of the visit.
- James’ salesperson contacts Bob to see if he can help and offer some advice. The next day he agrees an Exploratory meeting for James to meet Bob. DING!
- James is very happy he’s opened a conversation with Bob who could be a great fit to help him grow his business. And Bob’s excited to make his business run more efficiently!
What are the next steps?
Investing in technology, that's more than just Outlook and Excel, can be daunting. It's one reason I decided to setup my company. For a few years I worked outside of Automotive, in the marketing and technology space, and it made me realise how old fashioned so many B2B Automotive companies are with respect to how they market and sell their businesses, even though they have excellent products and services.
When deciding on what technology to use, you may well be thinking:
- Can I trust you?
- Who uses it?
- What will be the return on my investment?
- What does it actually do?
- How will I know that it will work?
- Will it provide me with measurable growth tactics?
- Can somebody help me get started quickly?
They're all common questions that you will have before making an investment. Do your due diligence, speak to your peers, do your online research (such as on G2 Crowd and other technology comparison and review websites), take your time, and do some testing. We have a Get started with free technology offer but before getting to that you might like some of our free whitepapers on business growth.
To learn more about how technology can improve your efficiency, start with How inbound sales and marketing works.
This article is part of our series on Business Growth for Automotive companies. In previous posts we've talked about Driving revenue by understanding your buyers, What is profitable growth, Working with a Business Growth Agency, and The importance of a sales and marketing strategy.
