Online Marketing Automation for Small Businesses: What It Is, & Why You Should Dive In

Most small business owners we’ve spoken to around NJ & the Lehigh Valley are pretty savvy when it comes to the web & how technology can be used to drive growth in your business. Most of you know about Google Analytics, many of you have accounts with Email Service Providers such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact, and some of you even use CRM systems to help track leads. Many of you also spend some significant money on PPC campaigns or SEO services.

But unfortunately, many of you would also confess that you’re not exactly thrilled with the return on investment those initiatives generate. You’re doing all the “Right Things,” but not seeing the right results.

How do you turn the tide and generate true success and lasting ROI from your online marketing efforts? By integrating with a marketing automation solution.

We’ll answer your three primary questions here…

• (1) What is marketing automation?

  Whenever someone visits your site, that visit should trigger a flurry of activity, based on that visitor’s behavior. Some of the activity should be performed by a real human – you or a member of your sales or customer service staff.

  But why should the interaction stop there? Or what if the user didn’t fill out a form… Perhaps all they did was click on a PPC ad, download a brochure, or click a link in a promotional email? Marketing automation is the process of creating customer interactions and communications that are automatically deployed as a result of a lead’s behavior. The following are just a few ways these communications can be used:

  • Remind a user of a behavior they abandoned (such as a visitor who abandons a shopping cart or leaves a page without filling out a form) and prompt or entice them to complete the action
  • Present offers to entice customers to engage in repeat business (such as periodic oil change reminders or discounts on products related to a previous purchase)
  • Offer additional materials (such as free downloads) to users early in the sales cycle, with offers directly related to their demonstrated interests or preferences
  • Prompts to encourage social media sharing of a completed activity, with incentives for doing so

  The possibilities are only limited by creativity and time to execute the ideas. Virtually any user activity on the site can be captured and used as the impetus to send that user follow-up communications that will develop your relationship. And metrics are collected every step of the way to help you continually evaluate and refine the effectiveness of your efforts, and improve the results of your marketing initiatives.

• (2) What are the benefits?

  • Capture more leads.
    Through a variety of tools including tracking visitors who don’t submit a form by IP, automated email follow-up that can be scheduled weeks and months ahead, and be based on the user’s interests & activities, landing page & form creation aids and more, a marketing automation platform, in the right hands, will result in a significant increase in capturing leads online.
  • Nurture existing relationships
    A good marketing automation platform provides insights into your lead (and customer) activities and engagements online. By analyzing pages that the user visits, or offers they respond to, you can better align your services with that customer’s needs, inform them about other services that they’d likely find valuable, deploy communications that will be highly relevant, and essentially reinforce your position as the best possible choice for that person. Through email list building & deployment, you can remind window shoppers, turn 1-timers into repeat business, turn repeat customers into brand ambassadors, and remain top-of-mind.
  • Track success, Trim excess
    The metrics and analytics provided by marketing automation platforms provide crucial insights into what advertising sources, social platforms, content topics, etc. are working, and which are underperforming. Based on that information, you can then make highly educated business decisions on what marketing initiatives to pursue, with appropriate priorities and budget. Even in cases where a medium is successful, such as PPC for example, metrics provide information that can be used to refine those strategies and generate better results from the existing spend. Which leads us too…

• (3) What’s it cost?

  In a word: less. If your small business is serious about online marketing, and investing accordingly, the bottom line is that marketing automation costs you less than continuing without it. The ability to capture more leads will directly result in more revenue and higher ROI for your online initiatives. And the ability to employ metrics-driven decision-making in your marketing expenditures will result in overall cost savings. A subscription to marketing automation software typically costs a few hundred dollars a month, but has a significant positive impact on your bottom line.

We’ve just scratched the surface here, and I’m sure you have more questions and additional concerns. In an upcoming post we’ll showcase the online marketing platform we’ve chosen to partner with, SharpSpring and use them as a case study of the types of benefits you can reap with online marketing.

And if you’re understanding that as great as all these capabilities sound, they’re worthless without someone with the expertise to put them to use, we’d love to talk with you more, so give us a call at 908.989.0577.