As a small business owner, you’re probably under a lot of pressure. It’s understandable. There are so many things going on in your business it can be hard to prioritize and get everything done. Whether you’re running the show yourself or are the manager of a small team, it can still be hard to have enough time in the day to complete all your tasks. Success as a small business owner might come down to simply having enough time in the day to do everything.
There’s one way you can really help yourself and your business, and that’s by automating certain tasks. If marketing isn’t something you’re that experienced in, you might leave it as an afterthought. While other tasks could be taking up more of your time, you shouldn’t ignore the power of marketing. After all, it could help your business grow in the long-run. More customers mean more money, and ultimately that should be what you’re aiming for.
In this article, we’re going to look at how you can automate a number of marketing tasks. That means you could start getting more leads, reaching new customers and ultimately making more sales—without taking up too much of your busy schedule. Let’s have a look at nine ways to automate your business to marketing success:
- Email marketing
This one is the foundation of many online businesses. If you’ve got a website that gets a fair amount of traffic, you don’t HAVE to make a sale to every new visitor. One way to get ahead it by simply getting them to op-int to an email list instead. That way you’ll be able to reach out to them whenever you like, automatically.
Come up with a series of autoresponder emails that get sent out at certain intervals. Make sure they’re not spammy and offer the reader something. You want them to be opened and read rather than dumped to email trash. If you can build a rapport with your subscribers you’ll be able to sell to them further down the line. Most of this can be done automatically with software like aWeber. Email marketing is one of the best ways to automate your marketing.
- Social media automation
Similarly to email autoresponders, you can get software that takes care of a large number of your social media tasks. Social media is relatively new in marketing, but you’d be foolish to ignore the power and reach it brings. That’s because it’s a great way to interact with new, existing and potential customers. Every time someone “likes” something you post on social media, they’ll spread your message to their existing friend group. It’s a level of marketing power that was previously unheard of, and it doesn’t cost much to do.
That being said, it can take a lot of time to manage. And if you’re already busy taking care of core business duties, it might be something you fail to prioritise. If that’s the case, simply use a social media management suite to do everything for you. You can automate posts and manage interactions without taking up most of your time.
- CRM software
Customer Relationship Management has come a long way in the last few years. There are tons of different software packages, like Salesforce and more. Some of these are free, and many of them can add value to your business. You’ll be able to learn exactly what your visitors are looking for and what is and isn’t working for them on your site. With this information, you can come up with better marketing strategies automatically and fine-tune their experience.
- Content automation
Simple things like posting blog posts and other tasks can also take up a fair bit of time. But these tasks don’t have to. With some content automation software, you can schedule a load of posts and then let them take care of themselves. Don’t spend hours every time you want to post something new on your site. Let content automation take care of it for you.
- Outsourcing smaller tasks
If you’ve got a load of other things that need doing in your business like web-design, SEO and graphic design but don’t have the relevant experience or staff to get them done—you could consider outsourcing them. There are plenty of places to do this online. This might not be considered pure automation, but it can certain take a huge amount of workload off your hands and add value to your business.
- Search engine automation
Creating internal links and other SEO tasks can be time consuming and boring. Instead of having to do all this by hand, you should consider some SEO software to take care of it for you. Get automatic META tags, internal links and other useful SEO tasks done for your without spending hours every day. SEO is one of the most important tasks you need because it defines direct traffic as more sales in your business.
- Phone automation
If you want to be able to call customers who’re interested but simply don’t have the time or staff to do it, you can get automated phone responders to do it for you. While these automated messages can be annoying to receive and you’ll need to be careful, they can still help your business if done properly.
- Chatbots
Chatbots have come a long way recently. Some of them are clever enough to fool people into thinking they’re talking to a real person on those live chat systems. Even the ones that aren’t that realistic can still be a big help to you and your business. Try installing chatbots to give your business 24.7 support and answer people’s questions at all times—so you never lose a sale.
- Virtual assistants
Virtual assistants are great for small business owners who have got a tone of different things that need doing. If you’ve been having trouble scheduling tasks, remembering what to do and reducing distractions, virtual assistants can help with everything.
Hopefully, these nine tips are enough to get started on your way to automation success. Put a few of these things in place and you’ll be able to spend more time on other areas of your business.
