What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation for small businesses is essential for your small business marketing strategy, and great for any business, whether you are a one-man band or have a marketing team or sales team that does the work for you.
This is a key subject that we spend a lot of time training and coaching our small business membership on for a reason; and it is one of the very best ways to nurture cold individuals into paying customers. The return on investment is high, and it has been responsible for significant results for our client base.
With Marketing Automation for Small Businesses, automation tools are used by businesses to automate repetitive tasks that would otherwise be done manually. This allows you to focus on more important things such as growing your company, creating new products or services, and improving customer service, to name a few.
How does marketing automation work for small businesses?
Marketing automation can be used in a variety of different areas of your business, and Marketing is just one of them. It can help you with email marketing, social media, customer experience and so much more. Technology is at the heart of this marketing automation for small businesses, so once you’ve identified what you want to automate, there’s always a tool to get the job done.
What can marketing automation do for you and your small business?
Marketing automation tools should be used to nurture leads and provide value along the prospect’s journey, and in the process build better relationships with them. Whilst you serve your customers, you can have this superb functionality working hard for your business in the background, warming your leads for you, and getting them ready to say ‘yes’ to what you sell.
Many business owners struggle with time. Automation can assist by helping you do much more with your marketing, in much less time, so the pressure is relieved.
It’s also very common for businesses not to really understand the results they get from their marketing efforts. When you automate, you can track and manage the leads that are coming into your funnel, as well as what does and doesn’t work in your marketing.
In addition, if you feel like your leads are often not converting, it is likely to be because you do not have enough touch points with the customer, and therefore a very leaky sales funnel, due to you not being able to continually nurture the relationship. This is yet another problem that automation will fix within your small business. Not only does that mean your conversions will be higher, but it will also minimise the time and budget you spend on each lead.
Last, but by no means least, small businesses can often be inefficient, and automation is most definitely the fox for this. By automating crucial manual workflows, your time becomes more abundant, and you become more effective at lead generation.
How do you move forward with marketing automation for small businesses?
You should choose your automation tools based on what you need to automate, so your first job is to identify what example it is that will support you most.
Marketing Automation for Small Businesses – First Steps
1. Email Marketing Automation
This can be used to welcome new subscribers to your database, to welcome new customers, request testimonials or survey feedback, to remind customers of an abandoned cart and so much more. So think about the regular emails that you send. Where could you start the process?
Once you do this, you will be able to look at the marketing automation tools and the marketing automation software that is right for you.
2. Customer Journey Automation
Whilst email automation will be a key part of this, you can use automation to map out exactly how you engage with prospects and customers, whether in the sales funnel, or as part of the service you offer.
For example, in our business, when someone signs up for one of our training courses, it will not only confirm and welcome them via email, but it will also automate a notification to any member of staff that needs to take an action. You can plan out an entire lifecycle of a customer to make sure they get the very best service.
3. Scheduling Automation
Whilst ‘in the moment’ social media is great, it’s important to be as efficient and effective as possible. For that reason, it is ALWAYS worth automating your core set of social media posts. We call this our “Lights On Social Media.” Finding a reliable tool that will allow you to automate this is important, and there are so many great ones on the market, for example, buffer.
This is just a few of your opportunities, in a very long list.
Need help with Marketing Automation for your Small Business?
Marketing Automation for Small Businesses is what we teach, so if you need some guidance, get in touch. We will ask you some questions about your business, and find out what it is you need to learn and implement to get your time back, and to create leads more easily.
We will ask you some questions about your business, and find out what it is you need to learn and implement to get your time back, and to create leads more easily, and will help you to understand:
– The repetitive tasks you wish to automate, including your email marketing
– The Marketing Automation software that may work for you
– The Marketing Automation Solutions that will work the best
– How to get true marketing efficiency
– How this fits into your short, medium and long-term marketing
Here’s our contact details.
info@allstarmarketingclub.com
02381 040150
