How much time does your business waste on marketing?

Not "invest." Waste.

It's easy to tell yourself that writing emails and engaging with people on social media is driving your business and building your image - but, without a comprehensive strategy in place, you're probably wasting your time.

It doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to toil for countless hours, putting in unpaid overtime every week just to make ends meet. Why?

You can automate the whole ordeal. Keep reading to understand why marketing automation will be your new secret weapon.

Cutting Through the Jargon: Marketing Your Business 101

Running a business is hard enough on its own.

Having to market not only locally, but globally in a cutthroat environment, is a chore. It's only made worse by the long lists of seemingly meaningless marketing terms like "leads," "outreach," and "marketing funnels".

At its core, marketing is really about attracting more customers to your business. A strong social media presence backed up by well-designed email campaigns is your bread and butter. Everything else is fluff on top.

Customers aren't simply looking for products to buy - there's enough of that available online that you'll drown at sea if all you're doing is offering products for sale.

Instead, your customers want value. They want to make purchases from businesses that resonate with them. For your business, that means that you exist entirely to solve your customers' problems. They found you because they have a specific pain point in their lives, and you should be there to guide them to a solution. Also, your customers are people, so make sure you're talking to them like people rather than dollar signs with legs. Find their exact problem and help them solve it in a way that feels personal to them. This will help you to create impactful marketing campaigns that reach the right people and stay with them long after they've made a purchase.

Marketing Automation vs. Doing Everything by Hand

Time is a precious commodity. You can't manage a thriving social media presence and blast hundreds of emails daily to your customers while also analyzing what works and what doesn't, you do need to sleep every now and then!

Marketing automation - that is, taking mundane tasks like email writing, social media updates, and blog writing and automating them - reshapes your marketing landscape. With quality marketing software, your customer interactions become personal; your emails tailored to the individual. It's liberating, both in terms of time saved and in the rewards you reap in the form of greater reach and more business.

Understanding Marketing Automation

Automated marketing technology, usually installed and maintained by a software provider, lets you focus on running your business. It nurtures leads and optimizes your marketing efforts, meaning customers are encouraged to interact with your business even if they aren't yet ready to buy something from you.

Online marketing consists of a lot of moving parts. Tracking web visits, sending emails and reminders, and analyzing social media engagement aren't things most small businesses are equipped to handle. With automated marketing software, you can create campaigns targeted to the types of people interested in what you sell and schedule your blog and social media posts to update without your oversight.

Marketing Made Easy

Without a doubt, the best thing about marketing automation is that it's marketing made simple. The second-best thing is that it saves you time, a LOT of time.

The right marketing software automates those boring, repetitive, time-wasting tasks that make you want to pull your hair out (think: writing individual emails, posting on social media, following up with leads).

Why is it easy to use?

1. It gives you one place to organize, plan, and send out email & social communication

2. It allows you to post on multiple social channels without having to log into them separately

3. It ensures you stay on-brand with consistent messaging across all your marketing

With marketing automation software, everything happens at the click of a button. Lead nurturing, email writing, social media management. All you need to do is engage your target audience.

Emails, Leads, Social Media: The Comprehensive Funnel

A strong marketing funnel converts leads (interested people) into customers.

Marketing automation software helps you create a comprehensive funnel by automating lead generation, nurturing, and conversion. With it, you capture leads through landing pages - the pages a lead "lands" on when they click on a link (like a homepage).

Then, you track their behavior and send personalized emails on autopilot based on their interactions.

Why Bother With Email?

Okay, time out.

Who even reads email anymore? Not work emails or emails from friends and family - the endless tirade of marketing emails akin to the ones you're trying to write?

Does anybody?

Well, yes, actually. In fact, email marketing tends to yield the greatest on-the-dollar returns when compared with investment, averaging up to $40 per dollar invested capital. It seems counterintuitive when everybody's inboxes are fit to burst and email providers like Google automatically filter out marketing emails into their own categories.

But think of it like this: How many times do you "unsubscribe" from a mailing list? How many times do you simply move annoying marketing emails into your trash folder?

Most users rarely bother to unsubscribe from mailing lists because, in our hearts, we're lazy. In the moment, it's easier to ignore an email - or to toss it in the trash - than it is to remove oneself from a mailing list.

And eventually, everybody bites.

Building Customer Personas

Marketing software helps you build customer personas, or fictionalized generalizations of what your average customer will look like. These personas help you segment your audience based on various criteria. Think of them like placeholders for what you (or rather, your marketing software) think your average customer looks like.

It involves a meticulous examination of audience demographics, including:

• Behaviors

• Interests

• Average income

• Age

• Race/Ethnicity

• Gender

For example, average incomes outline the economics of your customers, while behaviors tell you whether they're likely to make a purchase. On the other hand, interests and ages tell you how to capture their attention.

All of them factor into customer personas and, by creating them, you can tailor your marketing messages and campaigns to better resonate.

This level of personal engagement enhances the experience for your customers. Ultimately, it makes it more likely they'll turn into buyers.

Data Analysis

There are two sides to data analysis. The first is understanding data. The second is using that data to get better at what you're doing.

Marketing automation software excels at both of these things. It offers robust analytics and reporting, allowing you to measure the performance of your campaigns over time. It gives you a reliable test bed to try new strategies without leaving you in the dark about whether or not they actually work.

Key metrics like traffic and conversion rates are how it does this. Knowing how many people open emails versus the number of emails that go unread helps you switch gears and refine your approach to writing attention-grabbing headlines and sales-boosting copy.

Closing the Deal

At the end of the day, the goal of marketing is to drive sales. The goal of marketing automation is to save time while doing it. It's not enough to reach more people if they're never interested in buying what you sell.

More eyes on your products won't help you unless your marketing efforts can captivate (and hold) their interest.

You need an ace in the hole to close the deal and convert leads not only into customers but into recurring customers. Repeat business is one of the most reliable earners. Oftentimes, that means the right message needs to hit at the right time.

And marketing automation software helps you get it and keep it by:

• Nurturing leads

• Optimizing your sales funnel

• Enhancing customer experiences with personal touches

• Analyzing and reporting on marketing campaigns

• Freeing up time to work on other things

• Building customer trust and repeat business

How Marketing Automation Maximizes Conversions

Compared with traditional approaches, marketing automation excels because it does what humans can't. It analyzes huge quantities of data and uses data-driven insights to adapt to the needs and wants of your customers. Beyond mere personalized experiences, it is in these analytics that it truly thrives.

Tracking and analyzing user behavior is critical. Understanding who engages with what paves the way for rational, informed decisions that enable small businesses to improve continuously.

In essence, automation is a tool that allows you to pinpoint exactly where your marketing efforts should be directed.

It takes what's usually a boring, unengaging journey for the customer and transforms it into a curated experience that draws them back and keeps them engaged. At its core, the power of marketing automation lies in its ability to meticulously tailor and optimize the customer journey, fostering a seamless progression from awareness to conversion.

Automate Your Way to Success

If you haven't yet taken the plunge into sales & marketing automation, now is the time to do so. In today's digital world, it is a necessary component for productivity and efficiency - two factors that are vital for long-term success. What's more, automation can be the tool that allows small businesses to compete with larger organizations.

Are you wondering if you should invest in marketing automation while running a small business? Well, we believe you should have access to affordable, world-class tools and services that help you grow your business and thrive. Arrange an initial consultation with AVAIRY Solutions to start automating your business today.