Marketing automation for small businesses – This from Automation Ninjas…

Are you running an awesome automated marketing machine? Are you sending all your follow up emails manually? Booking appointments manually? Only selling your product on a telephone call or in person. Is your CRM is telling you who among your list are your hottest prospects? Are you automatically asking your customers to buy more from you?

Don’t feel bad, if we have caught you at this point, then we have the opportunity to stop you automating badly…

Or, maybe you’re already automating some things – You may be sending targeted follow up, capturing juicy new contacts, nurturing leads, following up with customers, identifying your hottest leads and many many other cool things, or you may be doing the equivalent of buying a BMW and never breaking the speed limit.

Either way, don’t buy expensive subscriptions to all-powerful marketing automation software and use it only to send a newsletter that you never measure the open and click rates for.

We’re here to help you decide how to get the best out of your existing marketing automation, or to decide where to start if you haven’t already.

The uses of marketing automation

In this specific post, we will be giving you the initial big list of uses for marketing automation. It’s for you if you:

Have started using your marketing automation, but have not got a return on your investment yet
Have not started with marketing automation, and would like to know if your business can benefit from using it, and what you should start with
Are using your system to capture leads but have no idea what happens to them after they sign up?
Are using your system to deliver a newsletter but your readers are not buying anything from you, and maybe your newsletter hasn’t changed for a decade, and still has your fax number at the bottom?

Top benefits

Just in case you are not sure what marketing automation can do for you, here’s a handy list of the top benefits of marketing automation:

• Capture leads and segment them based on what they have interacted with or signed up for (The one we will cover in this blog)
• Allow people to sign up for blog notifications, latest product news, local events, industry news, hints and tips, competitions, promotions, member-only specials, vouchers, video notifications…….
• Welcome new leads and introduce your company, employees, values, and why people should choose you
• Allows you to create an automated and evergreen way to add value to your audience
• Integrations – Deliver more content to more people across more platforms (Social Media, membership sites, letters (via a fulfilment company), patient data CRMs, and SMS), control and track webinar attendees, event management and much more via Zapier or a similar connector
• Create and deliver email campaigns
• Re-engage with lost leads
• Measure what your leads and customers are interested in
• Allow your leads and customers to book appointments with you, connected to your own calendar.
• Score your leads on their interactions with your content or products
• Score your lead sources – What gives you the best leads – Facebook, organic, Google ads, physical print, trade shows?
• Sell products online and automatically with an e-commerce option, or connect to your existing e-commerce solution like Woocommerce, or Magento
• Offer upsells and cross-sells on thank you pages, or via automated follow up emails
• Deliver products and services automatically
• React to customer engagement with your product, deliver onboarding for the product that has been bought.
• Deliver courses, training, membership sites, and community interaction.
• Follow up on abandoned shopping carts automatically
• Retain existing customers and increase customer lifetime value
• Deliver promotions and loyalty schemes
• Ask for feedback on your content and your products
• Ask for reviews/testimonials
• Ask for social shares
• Minimise repetitive tasks giving time back for more important tasks
• Schedule manual tasks that are vital to the customer journey – Purchase confirmation, event confirmation – personal touches that make all the difference where appropriate
• Reporting on your most important marketing metrics.

Phew, It’s a Long list!

…And you will add more to that list as time passes, and marketing automation gets even better and more intelligent.

As will all things you create, we never ‘set it and forget it’, you need to keep your content updated to stay relevant and fresh.

Automation should be there to save you time, capture more leads, convert more leads and help you keep customers for longer. It should always start with the goal. What do you need to do to achieve that goal? What is the overall strategy for hitting that goal, and what are the specific tactics that will facilitate that strategy?

www.automationninjas.com