Petra OdakWriting and sending business proposals is one of the key parts of winning new clients. And with Marketing Proposals it is no different. For this article we are going to take a magnificent marketing automation proposal as an example. It provides trust and shows you are the right agency, in-house marketer or consultant for the job.
A great marketing proposal shows understanding of the customers needs and the way to get the results. But even though you are skilled in areas like Email marketing or Marketing Automation, you may not be that great at writing proposals. Some agencies will have sales people or project managers write the proposal, but sometimes a consultant, developer, designer needs to go at it!
The good news is, you don’t have to be skilled at writing if you have a great Marketing Proposal Template. Here is how to write a marketing automation offer that helps you win more clients in less time.
1. Start your Marketing Proposal with a sharp intro
In this part of the proposal template, make sure to talk about the client. Talk about their true pain points and how you can help them resolve it. You would be wrong to assume that every client wants to automate their marketing for the same reason.
For marketing automation clients, this could mean:
- Winning back time by automating their most tedious processes and tasks.
- Adding more sophistication to their marketing program
- Increasing revenue
- Increase the number of leads
- Better lead qualification / grading and lead scoring.
Your introduction should get them hooked to move on to the rest of the Marketing Proposal.
So, your customers can have a variety of reasons for using marketing automation and it’s up to you to find what makes them tick. If you’ve done your discovery sessions and meetings properly, you’re almost done. Now, you have the right material in your template for a great introduction that properly addresses their major pain points.
From marketing automation research on motives, we know that saving time is the most given reason (74%) for the implementation. This is followed by increased customer engagement (68%) and more timely communication (58%).
Another major reason is to improve sales, which can be done by as much as 14.5% when using marketing automation software. The same report indicates that this practice could lower your overall marketing costs by 12.2%.Detailed specification for your marketing automation proposal.
2. Detailed specification for your marketing automation project
This is the true meat of your marketing automation proposal.
Here you will cover technical details such as what type of apps you will be building or what kind of services they can expect. You can discuss which frameworks you will be working on and who will deliver the work. More details covered, means fewer questions later on.
Think of the detailed specification section as a form of guarantee. By showing the client exactly what you will do, you’re making sure that it is what they expect.
This could be lead generation, email marketing, demand generation or something else. That way, if things happen to go wrong later on, both you and the client can return to this section.
Some of the most common marketing tasks you can offer your clients for automation include:
- Social media management
- Email marketing
- Creating lead-gen forms and feeding the data to email marketing services
- Content marketing and blog writing
- Webinar marketing
- Lead qualification and segmentation
- Assigning leads to sales reps
- Setting up automated email sequences and drip campaigns
- Setting up upsells and cross-sells
3. The timeline and dependencies
Something as simple as a timeline is one of the most commonly forgotten elements in a marketing proposal template. State when you can start client onboarding, and can deliver milestones and the finished work and be as specific as possible.
One thing that will help your cause is if you know that a client has a specific date coming up. For example, they need to launch a product next quarter. This is why they need your marketing automation services up and running before that- so they can double down on their marketing efforts.
4. The pricing and budget
Pricing is the second most read section in any marketing automation proposal. Make sure to make your pricing super clear. And respect their budgets. Your main aim with the template is to get them to say yes.
Don’t give the client too many options, i.e. upsells. Our own research showed that having one offer and pricing works better for getting your proposal signed.
Getting your pricing right can be incredibly difficult but we do have some tips.
We discovered that it’s always better to include a single offer rather than trying to offer upsells and packages. If you have a single offer, you’ll be able to sell for 20.6% higher fees for one-time costs and a whopping 33% higher for recurring monthly costs.
Build in a guarantee to your marketing proposal
As an agency owner, you can and should guarantee that you will deliver your work in the given deadline and according to the client’s instructions. You can give a money-back guarantee or go beyond.
For example, you could build additional features for the same price or you don’t do the tasks by the deadline, you’ll give the client an additional 10 hours of work for free.
The proof
It’s crucial to have a section in your Marketing automation proposal where you show social proof. This is where you share a mini case study about a previous client where you did marvelous work, preferably with results you were able to achieve. This part of the template is more generic. Ideally, every proposal you send should have a different proof section that matches the client’s needs.
If you want to get this section right, use a case study from a similar client that had a similar problem. For example, your potential client is in ecommerce and wants to generate more leads and increase first time sales with marketing automation. You should mention a case study of a client that you helped achieve these exact results.
6. Include the next steps
This is where you tell the client the exact steps they need to take to kick off work with you. It can be reused for all of your proposals and it’s necessary because you want to give crystal clear instructions.
For example:
Sign the business proposal
Pay the invoice for half of the total amount
We schedule a kick-off call with you to determine the details
We start with our work
Often something as simple as having the next steps can be the defining piece that pushes the prospect to convert into a client.
7. The terms and conditions
You can get a T&C section that will protect both you and the client. Most importantly, it will make them feel safe about signing your proposal. An agency wouldn’t customize the Terms and Conditions, these are to be standard, you can reuse this section as much as you want.
The good news is that you don’t have to rack your brains to come up with the perfect terms and conditions. There are lots of terms and conditions generators online and you can grab a template that will be enough to get the job done.
Conclusion: Marketing automation Proposals are not that hard
Once you have all the right elements in place, writing a great marketing automation proposal will be swift instead of taking up half your workday. The key to making this process is saving the best elements of each proposal you’ve ever written and creating a template.
Once you have a template that you can reuse, you can literally create a marketing automation proposal in 20 minutes or even less.
Rukham Khan
Alli Mariam
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