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.