The Best Marketing Automation Strategies for Small Business Owners

With the right approach, marketing automation can free up time and help you reach your customers more effectively

As a small business owner, it’s impossible to successfully tick every box while trying to convert new customers and keep up with your competitors. You might have the knowledge and skills to cover every area of your business, but it’s not always easy to juggle various hats without the help of technology and efficient automation software.

Marketing automation offers plenty of benefits, if used for the correct reasons. Automated marketing strategies for small businesses have the potential to improve areas which are lacking, as well as give your business a competitive edge in the market. With the correct customer relationship management (CRM) tools, such as Clickatell Touch, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, you’ll be able to communicate with your customers in a way that appeals to them.

Here are a few tips to remember when using marketing automation for your small business.

Conduct regular data cleansing activities

With the latest General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) which apply to SMS and email marketing, you constantly need to keep up to date with your data lists and ensure that every detail you have about your customers is protected and that each individual has agreed to you making use of their details for marketing purposes. Cleansing is also beneficial because many “once interested” customers delete their accounts, meaning that their details are no longer helpful to your business anyway.

Gone are the days where the bigger your email list is, the better.

Because, let’s be honest, the majority of those contacts never added value to your business anyway. It was just a numbers game. Today, it’s about creating long-term relationships with people who want to connect with you. These are the people who will help you to generate accurate feedback and make decisions on behalf of your business. And the only way to achieve that is to do a data cleanse every couple of months to ensure that you’re marketing to the right people. If, on the other hand, you’re a business to business (B2B) company, make sure that your database consists of people who are able to make financial decisions.

Keep expanding on your content approach

Content marketing drives sales. In short, it’s the key ingredient to successful online marketing strategies for small businesses. What you feed your customers can either have a positive effect on your business, or the exact opposite. But in order to succeed with your marketing and sales efforts, you need to understand your audience and their needs. Outbound strategies are not the way to go. They’re simply not personal and trustworthy sources for your business.

Focus your energy on creating relevant content that will appeal to your customers.

Depending on the type of business you own, look at your products or services and compare them against those of your competitors. Look at which channels your customers prefer to communicate on, the type of blog posts they want to read and, generally, the type of content they enjoy consuming. Based on the results, you’ll be able to automate according to your customers’ needs.

Always remember to add a personal touch

While technology and marketing automation is most certainly a help for small business owners, as it assists with time-consuming tasks, it does not mean that what you automate shouldn’t be personalized. Local business owners often think that by automating their tasks, they’re going to lose that personal touch. But it’s inevitably more about what you make of your campaigns. For example, if you choose to send bulk messages to push lead generation, without any strategy around how you’re going to customize each message to appeal to different target groups, you can forget about adding a personal touch.

Show instead of tell on social media

Small business owners need to pay attention to social media and visual content if they want to connect with their customers in moments that matter, and to improve the chances of your customers actually “seeing” your content. According to this Hubspot article, “80% of marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing. Video (63%), alone, has also surpassed blogging (60%) in usage as a social media marketing asset.” This shows that customers are more drawn to visuals because it’s easier to process, mentally. And it’s clearly more fun.

If you’re not going to make use of visual content, at least leverage social media to help increase your brand’s potential. By offering existing and potential customers an opportunity to contact you via social media, you’re providing them with a convenient solution that suits them. If your small business makes use of a CRM tool such as Clickatell Touch to track conversations, you’ll also be able to send and receive messages on one easy-to-use platform, quickly. This will make it a whole lot easier for you to respond in real time and monitor your customers’ conversations about your brand.

Help your team understand the benefits of marketing automation

Small business owners can save plenty of money on labor costs when using a marketing automation platform. However, existing employees should never feel threatened by these tools.

Your salespeople should learn how to maximize automation to the best of their abilities, so teach your employees the ropes and help them help you.

You can offer your business great potential if your employees know how to use the tools you provide them.

Keep measuring, changing, and growing

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to marketing strategies for small business owners. It’s going to take a while to find what works for you, but it’s worth taking advantage of the marketing automation tools already available to you. Any extra help will allow you to improve day-to-day business operations while working on new ways to grow your bottom line.

The digital industry is constantly changing. And so is your business’ customer experience.

You need to be resilient in your actions, and willing to take advantage of the latest technologies to help your business grow.

Kickstart your marketing automation efforts today

If you want to keep your customers happy, you need to make time to analyze your interactions and adjust your approach according to the feedback you receive. Clickatell Touch is a marketing automation solution that allows you to engage with your customers anywhere and on any platform. It’s a live-chat tool that enables you to unify your response teams across inbound channels for consistent, real-time messaging and on-demand customer service delivery. And let’s face it. That’s exactly what you want. Now, you can resolve hundreds of queries at once and provide superior customer service without increasing workload or manpower. Have a look at this video to see how Clickatell Touch can benefit marketing strategies for small business owners.

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