Marketing automation for your small business has become increasingly vital to the survival and growth of revenue streams in recent years, three-quarters of all companies now use marketing automation. The digital revolution is in full swing and competition is fierce. Software algorithms are playing a massive role in how products are marketed and who they are marketed at. Wouldn’t it be excellent if you could display your product to a customer who needs it at the appropriate time – marketing automation can make it happen.
It does this through a range of processes and technologies, such as chatbots, that segment your target audience and targets them based on data collected on your CRM or company database. As your company functions daily online, and people interact with your brand through content, the marketing automation software can learn and become more efficient. With so on offer and so much at stake, we take a look at some of the best marketing automation software around.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is all about using algorithms to improve customer experience through personalization and grow the business with more efficiency. Many businesses now automate repetitive tasks such as email, social media, ad campaigns, and sales paperwork, and use retargeting tools to ensure the businesses run and grow optimally. You can use tools like Instagram automation tools, Facebook tools, etc. for best results in social media automation.
Email marketing automation is the process of sending the target customers’ emails at particular times. It might be an automatic welcome email when they subscribe, or an update when new content is published. It differs from traditional email marketing, in that it only targets a relevant audience. It is not a blanket strategy.
Social media automation is the process of optimizing a brand’s social media accounts, so they continue to engage the target audience without the need for personnel. It could mean scheduled content (use Buffer or Missinglettr to automate) or reposting polar content. Not only do brands benefit from more engagement on social media, but their resources can be channeled into other areas of the business.
Automated Ad Campaigns can be set up through search engines or social media accounts. They used powerful machine learning technology to identify relevant consumers, or potential consumers, at times that matter most – such as when they are in a particular location and searching for a particular service.
Retargeted Ad automation refers to the practice of automating processes to retarget customers and clients who have visited a page on a website and shown some interest in a product or service. The activity on the web page might indicate the visitor could become a customer, but if it’s not flowed up, the opportunity will be lost.
How is Marketing Automation Used?
By far, marketing automation benefits small businesses and brands looking to grow in the digital environment, 63% of marketers are planning to increase their budgets as automating processes, previously done by personnel, can reduce a small business’s costs whilst simultaneously increasing its revenue and building its brand, all under the radar.
It Promotes the Brand
Marketing automation software can easily and simply grow the brand of a small business by increasing its visibility and improving its reputation. Marketing automation will create professional emails and send them to relevant users at the right time. Furthermore, it will maintain a strong social media presence and respond to customer queries.
It Converts Prospects
Marketing automation tools are used by small businesses to convert potential customers to paying clients through nurture campaigns, call tracking campaigns, appointment scheduling, and retargeting campaigns. The automation tools work efficiently to target and retarget relevant individuals and groups and convert leads through the sales funnel.
It Drives More Sales
Marketing automation is not only used effectively to convert potential customers; it also drives sales by integrating small business websites with major CRM platforms for better productivity. Integration with Google, Outlook, Goto Meeting, and Zoom, creates leads and drives sales by opening up one integrated network channel.
It Analyzes and Reports
One of the massive benefits of marketing automation for small businesses is the analytical opportunities it provides. The software can monitor and track emails, phone calls, and website activity, then make detailed reports. It can take advantage of KPI dashboards, report scheduling, google analytics, and Facebook ad integration to help small businesses to make better strategic decisions.
Marketing automation also has a major role to play when it comes to personalization of your marketing campaigns. By leveraging the power of data, you can seamlessly understand the likes and dislikes of your target customers.
However, for this it’s important to derive insights from the big data that you collect. That’s where a degree in data science can help you. It can equip you with the requisite skills to harness the power of marketing automation for personalization.
The Benefits of Marketing Automation
Firstly marketing automation is an incredible time-saving technology. For example, it can allow you to create advertising campaigns inside the space of a day or week that can be scheduled across an entire month. Many small businesses do this with Facebook campaigns to ensure that brand content is visible and consistent.
Marketing automation also allows businesses to segment customers automatically instead of the manual processes of the past. In a small car dealership or car care, for example, the marketing software can be set to detailed information on customers who buy a certain car brand: ads and promotions relating to that car brand can then be sent to relevant customers and specific times.
As well as building more efficiency into the business, marketing automation reduces costs and increases the value of staff resources. One staff member can now program entire campaigns in a short period to connect with many customers. Staffing costs can be reduced or their skills used in other, more specialized, areas of the business.
We’re also seeing more Digital Marketing Agencies using lead generation automation as a standard service being offered. Growth Hackers Hong Kong, a digital marketing agency in Hong Kong, for example, offers services that are both “traditional” whilst also offering automation services too.
Marketing automation allows you to stay consistent across all platforms and ensures you have relevant, up-to-date, and engaging content to offer regularly. If your social media accounts are not operating in this manner, it could be a sign to customers that your business is not a serious enterprise, and your brand will lose credibility.
Marketing automation is also excellent for analyzing the performance of your business, allowing you to optimize it for better efficiency and create more leads, lead generation was cited as the top priority of 61% of marketers in a recent poll. What if you could tell when your most relevant customers are online, what location they are in when they enquire about a product, or how long they spend on the pages of your website. This data can all be used to better products and content. You can even use a dynamic QR Code Generator and CRM in conjunction to create and measure your offline marketing campaigns.
Tools for Marketing Automation
Outfunnel
This marketing automation software offers excellent integration with your company’s CRM and supports revenue streams. You can send revenue-generating emails to relevant customers stored on your CRM database. Since your CRM already contains relevant customer data relating Outfunnel can prioritize the best leads for particular campaigns. It can then track the success of campaigns and detailed outcomes. This software is probably underpriced for what it can offer.
OptinMonster
OptinMonster uses the data you have in your CRM or otherwise to generate more subscribers to your website and to convert more leads and sales. The software is extremely user-friendly and simple to set-up. Choose from several pre-made template designs or build a customized one from scratch. Then, segment and target your audience using the powerful OptinMonster engine to meet the right customers and the right times.
EngageBay
EngageBay is another marketing automation tool perfect for small and medium-sized businesses. It supports things like B2B analytics and account-based marketing solutions. It is an all-in-one tool to automate your marketing and sales tasks in a minute.
It offers free marketing automation software which has dedicated and popular features like marketing automation, sales automation, help desk, and live chat.
Omnisend
Omnisend doesn’t exist in the generalist category of marketing automation software. Instead, they are tailored to suit teams operating in the e-commerce world. They can help with workflow as well as relevant texts and emails. Due to their involvement with the e-commerce niche, their processes are efficiently optimized for ecommerce trends, which helps improve workflow and time management issues. Benefit from excellent email targeting and retargeting options tailored-made for online shoppers.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an excellent all-rounder if you’re a small business looking for a marketing automation software that does it all. It can help you launch email campaigns, create a professional website, upload products to an online store, build brand awareness on social media, and much more. Regardless of what business you are in Constant Contact will ensure that it’s perfectly optimized for success.
Marketo
Marketo is another excellent all-rounder offering professional marketing automation services to small and medium-sized businesses looking to grow. They provide everything you will need to set up a professional website and organize targeted email campaigns. Marketo marketing automation software also provides valuable analytical insights, digital Ads, and high-quality content to drive traffic and support lead generation.
Wishpond
Wishpond makes an invaluable companion to small businesses operating on limited budgets. Focused on growing small businesses it provides all the tools needed to advertise online, create social media campaigns, create segmented email campaigns, and more. Wishpond also provides excellent analytical feedback and retargeting software that is particularly useful in the e-commerce sector. It has a record of success in growing small businesses by offering an excellent balance of cost and features.
SendPulse
The company skyrocketed from a mere email marketing automation service into a fully-fledged marketing automation platform and now offers an array of channels and tools to generate leads and nurture customers. Users can create cohesive marketing campaigns around one or several communication channels: email, SMS, web push, or a chatbot for Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram messengers. SendPulse also provides its email verification tool, a landing page builder, and even a free CRM.
Optimizely
Optimizely is your silent backend engineer that will improve the efficiency of your business by increasing customer engagement with your product and improving process velocity with excellent features. Optimizely does not only improve product engagement and sales it tracks and measures processes across platforms such as websites, backend code, mobile, and conversational apps. Not bad for a solo software solution.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a professional all-in-one software solution for small businesses that need across-the-board solutions to marketing automation. Email marketing, SMS marketing, and Chat are leading features of Sendinblue opening channels of communication with customers. It’s stand out feature is all the features you didn’t know you needed when setting up your business and searching for marketing automation software.
Adplorer
Adplorer is an all-in-one local marketing software for your digital marketing. With this software, you can organize your processes and automate virtually all aspects of your work. PPC advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, and Reporting are already combined in single marketing software. Adplorer will help your agency to work smarter, faster, and with greater precision. They help your salespeople sell, your search analysts analyze, and your managers manage. Use Adplorer to automate all tasks of your work.
About The Author
Darya Jandossova Troncoso is a photographer, artist, and writer working on her first novel and managing a digital marketing blog – MarketSplash. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, cooking, creating art, and learning everything there is to know about digital marketing.
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