There’s a myth that I see playing out daily on Facebook these days when it comes to marketing & lead generation.
Autopilot Lead Generation, Automated Business, Transplant a winning campaign into your business. Sell one of these 50 profitable products and win at business.
Now I’m into technology far more than most - and it’s not that the tech is bad - it’s that for most businesses, putting your marketing on autopilot and transplanting a campaign from someone else is just a horrible idea.
But Why?!
Surely if you can have hot leads crawling all over themselves to buy from you, wouldn’t you want to duplicate and automate that?
You’d be right. Of course you would.
Just in the same way that if the courier was to drop off $10k cash to your house every day. It'd be exciting at first, then it’d be a bit annoying & you’d want to automate that into your bank account.
There’s one tiny thing missing though… it’s a fantasy. Sexy idea, easy to say, not so great in reality.
You don’t just transplant a “proven” landing page sequence into any old business and have it work straight out of the box. Marketing campaigns just don’t work like that.
When it comes to “transplants” - the medical industry does a lot of this - and it's a great analogy.
Think about organ donors, first they run all these tests to make sure the new organ is a match for the recipient and that the recipient actually needs that organ. They don’t just transplant new hearts into people because they want to diversify their blood pumping channels. They put hearts in people who NEED new hearts - because there is a problem that the new heart will fix.
..and even after they do the transplant, they don’t just chuck it in there and walk away and never touch it again. There’s a detailed monitoring process of checkup’s and making sure everything is going according to plan.
Same thing goes with your marketing campaigns. They don’t just run on autopilot. They are highly tuned (and at times temperamental) machines that need to be monitored and adjusted CONSTANTLY. ESPECIALLY when the leads start coming in. They need ONGOING attention, focus and care.
It’s super sexy to say that you can transplant winning campaigns with swipe files from one business and industry to another…. but in reality it tends to end in tears. What works for a celebrity in one industry is not going to work for Joe the typical entrepreneur who’s in the same field who doesn't have 200,000 people on his database who thinks they are a god.
What works in B2B marketing consulting may not work in the coaching industry. The list goes on.
There’s more to it than just copy and paste. Strategy is the real key. What's going to work for YOUR business.
I guarantee you I could write a brilliant campaign to get leads:
“Are you stuck? Not sure how to take the next step? Struggling to get out of bed in the morning? I can help…. download my free thing that will help you …...”
I could automate that thing like crazy. I bet I could get hundreds and thousands of leads on that message alone.... I see it every day on Facebook.
Do you see the problem though? I did all the right things. I talked about their pain, I talked about their experience, I offered them help…. what’s not to like??
I’ve committed the crime of copying tactics rather than developing a strategy.
Can you imagine working with these people on a daily basis? Can you imagine the conversations and mindset they’d have?
They’re likely to be broke, clinically depressed, confused and have difficulty taking action. We've quite literally asked for stuck people who can't get out of bed and don't know what to do next.
Now imagine having this campaign running, having no knowledge of how or why you’re getting these leads…. just that they are not good leads.
But it’d be automated.
And that’s why you’d be screwed.
Autopilot, by definition, means without intervention. It does it all by itself. Question is though, who’s the ACTUAL pilot of your business. You? or some shiny object downloaded from the internet.
When it comes to your sales and marketing you DO want to intervene. You want to change things FREQUENTLY. You want to track, measure and ensure that you are headed in the right direction.
If left unchecked, an autopilot will happily fly you to the wrong destination...
All the people I know who run successful campaigns WORK really hard to hit that one or two campaigns a year that crushes it. The rest of the year they are tweaking, refining, doing The Work.
That’s why its so important to take responsibility for being the PILOT of your business. You need to understand the marketing & sales strategy, you need to know what’s going on.
You can’t automate what you don’t understand the strategy behind. Understand the strategy first, get great results, then add automation set up your autopilot from there.
