Marketing Automation for Small Business – Key Functionalities & Benefits
Even as we write this, more and more business owners are seeing the potential of marketing automation for their enterprises. What’s equally great is that it’s a tool that has already begun to branch out. The more focused approach of marketing automation for small business offered by many a Digital Marketing Agency nowadays serves as crystal-clear proof.
If you happen to be an owner of such an enterprise yourself or simply want to familiarize yourself with the positive impacts of marketing automation software for small businesses, then let this article be your detailed guide.
What Is Marketing Automation for Small Business?
It’s basically marketing automation that’s focused on overcoming the initial challenges often encountered by small businesses. Without a doubt, this starting period is the most crucial and most difficult for most owners.
Marketing tasks take up time. Time is money, and this is especially true at this point for many SMBs. Automation can lighten their burden by taking care of these repetitive but important steps.
For example, email marketing trends point toward automating email sending at the most ideal times (i.e. when the customer is most likely to convert). On the other hand, integrating a chatbot contributes to customer support, another crucial aspect of modern businesses.
These are but a few scenarios and examples, of course.
Here is a few marketing automation for small business stats that highlight its rise:
- Lead nurturing is the top reason why marketers use it. Up to 57% of them use marketing automation for that purpose.
- Regardless of size, businesses that utilize it enjoy a 20% boost in productivity.
- Over 45% of SMBs rely on automation marketing for managing social media posts.
How Marketing Automation Uplifts Small Businesses?
Think of most of the tasks related to marketing that you have to do on a daily basis. Chances are, the best marketing automation for small business will have a ready solution for all of them. These could be sending follow-up SMS and emails, reminders, creating reports, or drafting emails.
Once you capture your leads from, let’s say, the forms you handed out on a webinar, you can already start using SMB marketing automation tools to begin the lead nurturing process. After expressing your gratitude through an email, you can start scheduling the sending of offers and case studies relevant to them.
All of these follow a step-by-step automated process. You can program marketing automation for small business in such a way that it will continue to send follow-up personalized emails and then stop once the lead performs your desired action (e.g. make an appointment or click on an offer).
Key Functionalities of Marketing Automation Software
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Nurtures Customer Relationship
Marketing automation tools for small business capitalizes on follow-up emails. Regular correspondence does wonders in leaving a positive impression on customers.
This is especially true if you can personalize and individualize the messages you send, which is one of the best features of marketing automation software for SMB. Done manually, this would require plenty of time and effort. -
Eases Sales Follow-Ups
Stats prove that follow-up emails can improve the reply rate by as high as 13%. Oftentimes, the right one sent at the most opportune moment can convince a client to not abandon his or her cart but click the ‘Checkout’ button instead. Marketing automation can do these follow-ups for you.
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Maps Customer Journey
Every marketer needs a vivid view of the customer journey to perform deeper analytics. The ability to do this gives you valuable insights regarding which actual steps to take and improvements to make on your funnel.
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Reports Automation
Marketing automation takes care of all your reporting needs. Undoubtedly, you want to do away with the manual effort involved in arranging and preparing the data you acquire.
You only need to connect your data source with marketing automation software to consolidate data and create reports for you. -
Social Media Automation
Marketing automation steps include posting on social media, which is why some software opt to focus on automating that process for you. You just need to come up with all the posts, including the copy, caption, link, hashtag, and image, and the software will do all the posting for you.
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Addresses Communication Challenges Using Chatbots
Chatbots automatically send replies to various concerns customers have. They can answer simple and advanced questions with regard to how users can solve an issue they’re having.
They elucidate and provide support with no human intervention whatsoever. Some even help capture user data
Attain Automation Services To Empower Your Brand
You’ll be able to comprehend precisely where and how to automate your procedures to maximize your sales with the assistance of an experienced partner.
Why Marketing Automation Is an Almost Perfect Fit for SMBs?
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Not Complicated To Set Up
When comparing CRM vs Marketing Automation, it’s evident that both share this quality. Automating your marketing endeavours shouldn’t necessarily be done on a comprehensive scale from the get-go.
You can start small by integrating a chatbot and automating your emails, for example. From there, you can start automating your social posts, especially as your following continues to grow.
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Saves Time and Boosts Productivity
Almost any marketing automation platform for small businesses should be able to offer this benefit. The key is for you to make sure that anything you can automate should be considered to be automated.
Performing everything manually only ups the risks of mistakes, deviates your attention from what matters the most, and impedes productivity. Workflow automation for small business is a prime example of this.
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Cuts Costs
This is another given. After all, you can forgo hiring personnel that will perform the said steps for you. Your small business automation consultant should be able to lay out how a specific software will be able to help you economize your marketing endeavors.
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Lengthens and Widens Your Reach and Helps You Acquire High-Value Customers
Marketing automation prioritizes lead acquisition so this should also be obvious. Stats showing that companies enjoy a lead increase of up to 80% upon deploying marketing automation software underscore this further.
This, in turn, allows you to focus on knowing your users more intimately instead (i.e. find out how they behave and what interests they have, etc.)
High-value customers are those unique users on that you will inevitably focus most of your sales efforts. Of course, you’ll need all the help you can get to reach them first and foremost.
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Reliable Reporting and Tracking
Consistent tracking and report creation are hard to do regularly without automation software to lend you much-needed aid. It’s not just about automation as well as most solutions help you acquire invaluable and actionable insights that would have been difficult to get otherwise.
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Multi-Channel Compatibility
This only means it works well with other marketing platforms. For example, while the two are often regarded as “rivals”, CRMs and marketing automation tools actually work well together.
This is also clear in how it integrates well with SEO tools and social media in general.
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Mitigates the Negative Impact of Human Error
Mistakes only eat up time and dampen productivity. These are weak points that your competitors, which undoubtedly use marketing automation, can endlessly exploit. Continuing to shun it may already mean you are consistently at a severe disadvantage.
Conclusion
Considering its revolutionary advantages, Marketing automation for small business clearly pair well with other convenience-centered options such as enterprise mobility solutions and small business sales automation. The next time you weigh your SEO Services options, feel free to ask them about it.
What’s important is for your business to make the most out of what marketing automation can offer. Given the facts stated above, you shouldn’t end up taking the shortest end of the stick at all.
