Running a small business can sometimes leave you wishing there were more than 24 hours in a day. You have to do it all – sales, customer service, research and development, content creation, phone calls, emails, social media presence and so much more. There is never enough time to get it all done, but you cannot ignore any of these tasks, either.
Fortunately, you can automate many of these time-consuming aspects of running your business, giving you back hours every week to focus on your bigger picture and bottom line.
What is automation?
Marketing automation simply means using software or platforms that let you complete certain repetitive tasks, like emails and social media, automatically. This can save you hours of time each month and increase your return on investment. The more tasks you can turn over to automation, the better off you will be.
It can be difficult to implement an automated marketing strategy, but these three tips can get you started:
- Automate social media content promotion
Promoting your content across your social media channels can be a huge time-killer. If you find yourself spending precious hours struggling to come up with tweets or posts to promote your original content on social media, consider an automating app. These powerful tools will connect to all of your social media accounts and automatically generate promotional posts every time you upload new content to your website.
- Streamline your inbox
You can also use marketing automation software to handle your emails. Set filters for important clients, business partners, employees and others that you need to hear from. The software serves as a gatekeeper, so you only receive notifications when emails come in from your preferred contacts. This can save you a significant amount of time reading and responding to emails that should be ignored.
- Automate lead flow processes
You can easily cut the number of hours that you spend on lead flow processes through automation. From email campaigns to downloading data to uploading lists, today’s automation software can integrate with just about any lead flow manager to handle the entire process effectively, start to finish.
While it’s true that running a small business is one of the hardest ventures out there, you can significantly improve your scalability and growth – not to mention the elusive work-life balance – through marketing automation. Giving tedious tasks over to a capable programme can give you back the time you need to focus on what’s truly important in your business and your life.
