Marketing Automation for Your Small Business

We know that organizing marketing campaigns efficiently can be challenging, especially for small businesses. Do you want to reduce the volume of monotonous tasks whilst improving customer engagement within your business? Marketing automation may be the solution you’ve been looking for. Find out how marketing automation for small businesses could help you improve productivity, generate leads, and create valuable consumer interactions.

What’s Marketing Automation? 

Marketing automation is a combination of technology and software platforms designed to help businesses organize their marketing campaigns across multiple online channels, automatically. These platforms can streamline processes and enhance customer experience by automating targeted communications across several online channels-email, social media, you name it. De hecho, Statista research shows that 43% of marketers find improving customer experience the most important advantage of marketing automation. 

However, the benefits of marketing automation don't stop there, the data collected from these processes can also help you to understand consumer needs to provide insightful and highly personalized content, at the right time and place. Furthermore, it can reduce human error and boost efficiency in your small business by replacing repetitive and manually intensive tasks with automated systems.

Different Marketing Automation Solutions

Here are some marketing automation services for you to consider for your small business: 

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM manages consumer and potential consumer interactions with your business to build upon relationships and enable growth. This tool can track activity to help with contact management and sales forecasting, which in turn, strengthens the connection between your business and its clients.

2. Email Marketing

Automated email marketing can send emails that are relevant, personalized and triggered by the individual customer, by using predefined inputs. And, given that 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase when brands provide personalized experiences, the ability to personalize emails is an invaluable tool for small businesses. You can tailor these to your business's requirements-from responding to inquiries, to reminding the buyer that they have unpurchased items in their cart.

3. Customer Service

Automating these services-through live chats and automated emails-is a game-changer for creating a seamless customer experience. The AMA found that B2B companies who used live chat saw a 20% average increase in conversions. This is because it reduces query wait time and frees up communication agents' capacity, enabling them to more effectively deal with more pressing issues.

Other automated solutions include appointment scheduling, mobile app and text messaging, and invoicing. 

How to Choose a Marketing Automation Software for Your Small Business?

Wondering how to choose the right marketing automation services for your small business? Here are four pieces to take into account:

1. Thoroughly research in line with your business goals

To maximize the benefit of these services it is critical that you take time to decide what you want to achieve with marketing automation and which services would continue to benefit your small business as it grows.

2. Keep your options open

It is important to have an open mind when finding your fit. Services may become unavailable, or come with a catch. We recommend asking around, checking customer feedback or signing up for free trials to make sure your option is the right one.

3. Cost

Although marketing automation technology can help to improve productivity and reduce manual hours, it comes at a cost. When evaluating your options, make sure you search within your budget, read through the subscription details and always check for any hidden extra fees.

4. Service offerings 

It may seem obvious, but you need to make sure the services on offer are actually the ones you're after. For instance, if you want to create a customized WiFi experience that's unique to your brand, Optimum’s business pro WiFi may be your perfect solution. 

Popular Marketing Automation Solutions

Check out these examples of popular marketing automation software and find the perfect fit for your small business. If you're wanting to transform your email marketing specifically, then explore Mailchimp or Campaigner. However, for a more basic "all-in-one" solution for your small business, we think Constant Contact and HubSpot are great options. Finally, if you're looking to delve deeper into more advanced marketing automation, then look at solutions such as Marketo, Eloqua, or Salesforce Pardot.

For more tips you might find helpful, check out our small business tips y resource hub.