Five ways to automate your small business marketing

Automation is important for any business but even more so for small businesses who more often than not contend with limitations in resources such as personnel, budget and time.  Automating marketing tasks in particular frees up the business owner to focus on other areas of business.

As marketing continues to evolve into more tech-based solutions, it is crucial for small business owners to take advantage of the technology to improve the customer experience as well as customer response times.

While social media updates may come to mind as the first step in marketing automation, there are actually many other ways that small businesses can automate marketing to increase business visibility, improve revenue streams and increase customer recall. 

The following are five ways that small businesses can engage automation to maximise time, save money and build brand awareness: 

1.    Use an email signature – Your email signature says who you are, what you do and how to find you.  Those few lines are powerful for establishing yourself and your business as a legitimate contender within your industry.  The fact that you don’t have to retype it each time you send an email, is an added bonus.

2.    Use an auto-response for emails and social media touch points – Increase responsiveness to the customer by setting up automated responses to emails as well as on your social media touch points.  This buys you some time as you process the customers’ requests and the business will benefit from the boost in the customer’s perception of your business.

3.    Use appointment reminders – As a small business owner, doing it alone, it is easy to forget an important meeting or telephone call to a prospective client or investor.  Most email platforms offer a calendar which allows you to schedule reminders; mobile phones and computers/laptops also offer the same facility. Use it to remind you of important appointments so that you remain efficient.

4.    Email marketing – Emails are still a great way to keep the lines of communication open between the business and its client group.  Providing weekly or monthly marketing updates to customers can be a time-consuming task especially with the other demands of the business.  Have a content plan for your email marketing.  It outlines what is to be communicated to your client group and when.  Of course, allow room for adjustments as things can change on the fly but be prepared to generate those specific marketing emails in bulk and schedule for delivery as required.

5.    Social media marketing - Updating social media platforms can prove to be a time-consuming activity.  Utilizing social media scheduling tools such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social, can help small business owners to appear more active on social media than they really are.  Dedicating one or two hours out of the week to schedule the week’s post frees up the entrepreneur to focus on other critical areas of the business. 

 

5 ways to find fresh content for your social media platforms

While there are small entrepreneurs who sail through content creation and consistently share on their social platforms, there are others who struggle to find fresh content, let alone post consistently. They complain that the information they share is exhausted and overused. 

Another popular complaint is that they feel like they are repeating themselves, repeatedly! However, repeating content is not such as bad thing, after all repetition increases recall.

The reality is that no business whether large or small can get away with creating no content.  Content creation should be at the heart of any strong, effective marketing campaign.  When customers make major buying decision, it is useful and effective content that influences those decisions.

As always, it is not recommended that the entrepreneur takes on the task of content creation if they are incapable of doing same.  There are several marketers and marketing agencies that provide support in this area.

For those entrepreneurs who do it well, but struggle a bit, here are five ways to find fresh content to share with your audience regularly:

-       Repurpose old content and reuse – Nothing wrong with that.  Change a few words, add some new insight and reshare.

-       Comment on what’s happening in your industry – All industries are experiencing some level of change in the current climate, there must be something that keeps you up at night as an industry player … put it in writing and share it

-       Use video – Video is 60% more likely to be viewed than your written content (Google) and by 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all internet traffic (CISCO)

-       Share something learnt at your last webinar/e-training session – Capture the key points in that webinar you’re attending and share it with your audience.  Put your own spin and interpretation on it … and share

-       Conduct research – Scour the internet, check the newspapers and watch Television for issues and problems facing your specific client group and address them. Whether you use video, your social media platform or your blog, put your consumer solutions on display by highlighting the benefits of using your offering.

Pivoting: the key to Marketing in the era of COVID-19

The word ‘pivot’ is probably the most trending word for businesses in the era of COVID-19.  Businesses both small and large are encouraged to pivot i.e. change the way they do business to serve their current customers, attract new ones and increase their business visibility and ultimately profits.  For pivoting to be effective, marketing plays an important role in crafting an effective message. 

In the era of COVID and beyond marketing must be part of any business’s significant plan to identify, target, reach, attain and retain customers.  After all, customers are the lifeblood of business.  In the era of COVID, marketing must meet some simple criteria to be effective.  The following are my suggested ten:

1.    Agile – focus your teams’ and marketing efforts to ensure that you deliver value to the end customer.

2.    Responsive – Identify current trends, events or activities and create relevant solutions that ties your brand to the activity while becoming a champion for your customers.

3.    Solutions-oriented – Aim to highlight the ‘how’ of your products and services.  How does this benefit the customer? How can it improve the customer’s life or a regular activity? Highlight benefits instead of features.

4.    Differentiable – Innovation is as important in marketing as it is in business.  Differentiate your marketing tactics by embracing new ideas.  Remember, your business is not for you, it’s for your customers and they will reward your attempts to please them.

5.    Out-of-the-box – Out of the box thinking in marketing will get your everywhere, especially with customer groups who are unafraid to explore, try new experiences and go outside of the box themselves.

6.    Strategic – Ensure your marketing plan incorporates an overall game plan with short, medium and long-term goals.  Planning must be included in the process, taking into consideration customer responses, budget and realistic expectations.

7.    Logical – Customers make buying decisions based on emotion and logic. While emotions may rule for small or not so significant purchases, large purchases are most often than not based on logics.  Highlight features for logical marketing --- in buying a house, a customer will always go for all the features that the house offers, emotions will seal the deal.

8.    Structured – Your marketing should take into consideration your current position, the direction of the organization and a plan to achieve your goals. Place your plan into easy, manageable steps, evaluate as you go along and pivot i.e. make changes when necessary.

9.    Cost-effective – Marketing is not an expense, it is an investment but it can be an expensive investment.  Identify cost-effective ways to reach your target audience without breaking the bank.  Tried and true marketing tactics such as networking, referral marketing and customer engagement tactics must always be included.

10.  Inclusive – Inclusive marketing requires that all of your stakeholders, not just your customers feel part of the conversation.  Ensure that your marketing messages leaves none of your publics out of the loop or without important information.