There is no shortage of people promoting software, systems, funnels, templates to virtually guarantee your overnight success.  

That when your marketing is automated all you have to do is sit back and watch your bank balance rise and rise.

It all seems to make perfect sense, follow the system, “the exact same steps”, “the proven formula” and all your dreams will come true.

I’ve seen countless people go down this path full of hope and promise only to find the reality is a million miles from the dream.  A huge investment in both time, money and lost enthusiasm is flushed down the pan.  

You see before you automate your marketing communications, you need to sort out your end-to-end marketing strategy and the experience you want your customers to have on their journey.

Do you like being bombarded with emails making outlandish claims day after day?  
Do you want the tone of your emails to be from some internet marketing hot house?

You need to do the work first and work out the answers to these key questions:

• What is your brand promise?
• Who is your perfect client??
• What are their needs and wants?
• How do you solve those for them?

These fundamentals in your business need to absolutely nailed in detail, then you can start designing your products and services along with the appropriate messaging to lead strangers into prospects, prospects into customers, and customers into raving fans.  

To do this..

1. Map out the customer journey from not knowing about you to becoming a raving fan?
2. Design product stages to clearly lead customers down a well-rehearsed path?  
3. Identify the challenges and drop off points that commonly occur along the way?
4. Develop effective processes for monitoring, prevention and remedial steps for each of the challenges in step 3?

Then train your team to deal with the predictable situations and give them guidelines on how to deal with the less predictable situations?  

When you have all these things in place, you'll have a business worth shouting about, and you'll be able to design a coherent set of messages that can be timed and automated to effectively help you on your way.  

That’s when investing in marketing automation makes sense.