When you run a small business, it’s easy to let marketing fall by the wayside. It seems expensive, time-consuming, and difficult.
In reality, marketing is what helps set you apart from your competitors. It reminds your audience that you exist, and can incentivize them to return to your business.
Thankfully, the internet has ushered in a new era of automated marketing.
From ads that track people as they use the internet, to automated emails, here’s how you can harness marketing automation for your small business.
What can you Automate?
The world of marketing automation grows every year. So far, you can automate a lot of business tasks, like address books (with CRMs), reporting (with an ERP or WMS), and invoicing (with software like QuickBooks).
You can also automate marketing tasks like emails, text messages, direct mailers, and internet display ads. While you will have to set up your marketing campaign first, you can sit back and relax after doing so. Your automated marketing software will continue to create leads, nurture prospects, and follow-up with customers without your interference.
What Software can I use?
There are thousands of marketing automation software programs, with more appearing all the time. Here are three that offer plenty of features and reasonable pricing to help you get started.
1) Ontraport
Ontraport is a software that helps you understand exactly how your marketing efforts are paying off. It offers automated tracking whenever a customer responds to an email or fills out an online form, then imports that information into a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager). Once you’ve recorded your customer’s details all in one place, you can follow up with them to nurture leads.
This robust program helps you take the guesswork out of your marketing, and can lead to more customer relationships with lower effort.
2) Delivra
While you don’t often hear about Delivra when automatic email programs are being discussed, it has plenty of tools to help your business succeed. In addition to helping you automate your email, Delivra offers customized insights into how well your campaigns are doing. It also performs A/B testing, and has a built-in drag-and-drop editor to make your emails look great.
But Delivra doesn’t just stop there. You can also use it to assist with direct mail campaigns and e-commerce stores.
3) TextMagic
TextMagic is the most popular way to send marketing text messages to customers. After getting your customers to opt in with freebies or other incentives, TextMagic allows you to follow up by texting them.
Texting is still a relatively unsaturated marketing channel. That means your message can stand out from others. In fact, TextMagic boasts that 95% of all text messages are read (compared to industry standards of 2-4% for email).
While TextMagic doesn’t offer the same marketing features other automated software does, it’s a brilliant way of automating text messages to your customer base.
Automation Helps you Grow
Vodigy encourages small businesses to delegate some of their marketing tasks to software. Doing so frees up your time and brainpower to work on other business tasks.
Vodigy Software is a trusted custom software provider to the St. Paul and Minneapolis area. We specialize in providing expert guidance and assistance to businesses. If you need help integrating software with your business, contact us today!
