2020 and then 2021 have been interesting years for the entire world. And yet, if reports and trends are to be believed, we are only at the beginning of a series of world altering trends. These trends more than ever, affect the nature of business and commerce. Before the pandemic and the ensuring lockdown, there were a mum per of companies and smaller business houses that would not have felt the need to get online and tap into the digital audience and these opportunities in an aggressive manner. Yet, here we are – at a place where even the smallest business is now online, ready for business and grappling with ways to transform the way they function. Marketing automation plays a huge role here since these businesses are overwhelmed by the following factors:
Widespread Market Opportunities: Ever since the pandemic has struck, many businesses have had to down their shutters, but they have also simultaneously had to open shop online. With the digital market place, there are a number of tools and techniques that need to be employed so as to reach out to and cater to the nurturing of the large number of prospects. This is where marketing automation for small businesses also comes into play.
Remote Functioning: Small businesses are beginning to understand that functioning online has become the new reality that they necessarily need to embrace. The store front, the back office, and everything in between is online now, and so are the customers! In order to deal with this in an organized manner, marketing automation for small businesses is the new reality that has evolved to counter the challenges of running operations online.
Competition: With everyone coming online at a fraction of the cost, it has become easier than ever to move to the digital space and set shop. Now, this has had quite an effect on competition in any and every niche. In order to deal with the competition and rise to the top in any market segment, marketing automation for small businesses would be the way to go. This would help in positioning, messaging and engagement in a far more superior manner that would be more than beneficial when it comes to the final goal of conversion after conversion.
Digital Tools: Thanks to all of the above, there has been a growth of tools that could help in setting up various tools and resources so as to meet the requirements of running a business online, or even organizing your offline business in a way that it can be optimized with simply online tools rather than a huge complex office and an even more complex infrastructure and office building. While there are many digital tools, it is important to choose platforms that would allow you to integrate a number of tools and help you get the bang for your buck. Therefore, one should choose a CRM or customer relationship management platform that also integrates marketing and sales automation. This would help in seamless implementation of marketing automation for small businesses.
Understanding Your Customer: One of the biggest challenges faced by small businesses is the niche and its audience. In order to understand your audience and to know exactly what they would want, you would need to gather the right data points as well as the insights that would power the campaigns that you run within the marketing automation for small businesses. In such a case, it would be imperative to know what the talking points for the campaigns that would need to reach out and drive engagement towards a possible conversion. For this to happen, the small business would need to speak the language of the audience. And these data points can only be found and mined through a system aligned with marketing automation for small businesses.
Better Information Handling: When we are talking about so many customers and prospects as well as their profiling which would encompass a wide range of data, it would be difficult to envision keeping tab of and using these purposefully if we are to do so manually. This is where we need to use marketing automation for small businesses. In the marketing automation and CRM system, each of the fields would be structured and framed in way that the most relevant data is captured and then used against each collateral and function on an automated basis. This could include welcome messages, milestones like birthdays and anniversaries, as well as other purposes like special deals, discounts and product launches.
Reports and Insights: This part is especially important for a small business. When a campaign is run and when data is deployed for certain functions, it is also easy to keep tabs on the lead generation and conversion results. This is done with the target of learning how these results are shaped up and what kind of action needs to be taken in case the analytics and insights do not show the desired results. The good thing about CRM in general and marketing automation for small businesses is that one can set the insights to once a month or once a quarter to see whether or not goals are being achieved and what needs to be done in order to get back on the right track, and if there are any deviations from the charted path.
Optimum Operations: Whether it is a small team or a small office with operations that require smaller resources, marketing automation for small businesses would do the trick. This is because a small business is usually low on resources and requires plenty of support when it comes to running lean operations. It would be worthwhile to invest in a CRM system that brings you sales and marketing automation, especially if you are running a small business since this will keep your resources and your energy intact. You would be managing smaller teams and getting more done as a result. The manual efforts would get automated so that the teams can concentrate on what they do best.
