Clever marketing tools for email and social media allow you to reach your customers with unique messages in one hit – but automating these tools is the next step for saving time and effort.
Automating your digital channels at the click of a button, from EDMs and blogs through to popular social media channels like LinkedIn and Facebook is getting easier. So how can a small business automate its marketing channels? As we delve deeper into the benefits of content marketing automation for small businesses, we’ll discover how you can do it and why it’s an effective strategy that saves time and money.
Here are 5 reasons to consider automating your content marketing channels.
You’ll save time
Spending too much time curating the perfect social media post? When you’ve mapped out your customer journey and established a customer base, you’re in a good position to consider automation. In fact, research suggests that 43% of small businesses spend 6 or more hours a week on social media. That’s time well spent on other areas of the business.
There are plenty of social media management tools which offer social media scheduling services on a simple dashboard across popular channels. The good news is that they’re free up to a certain number of scheduled posts. The most popular are Buffer and Hootsuite which are great for scheduling in advance. It’s as simple as choosing which date and time you want to post.
You can plan your content ahead of time
It’s no secret that automating your marketing channels gets you organised. It’s good to plan your content ahead of time, and even to plan your content in one go.
Consider planning ahead in order to:
- Get more organised
- Plan social media content two weeks in advance (or more!)
- Implement a content calendar so you know what to focus on each month
- Make sure relevant messaging/posts are targeting the right customers.
Curating great content isn’t easy, but it’s one of the best ways to build your brand’s online presence. So, it’s worth spending more time devising and planning your digital strategy so you’re in a better position to produce amazing content.
You can automate customer journeys
Content distribution is an important part of automating your content marketing strategy. Marketing collateral such as ads, newsletters, emails, and social media all hold tremendous potential in amplifying your content. Many people use email marketing as a way to nurture potential customers and automate interactions along their journey.
If email marketing is part of your business’ digital strategy, your emails will be more effective if they:
- Use personalised fields (e.g. first and last name)
- Target a particular audience or customer
- Maintain regular campaigns to keep customers top-of-mind.
There are great email marketing services which automate the process from start to finish. Mailchimp is one marketing automation platform that can harness all your efforts to help you convert leads into customers. In fact, most email marketing tools let you send automated emails, so leads or potential customers receive messages at appropriate times – and it’s all set up automatically.
You’re able to analyse your marketing efforts and data more easily
Far too often, key data is missed during content marketing automation. Once things are starting to churn automatically and you’re not spending so long creating individual posts and emails, you can look at the effect your marketing is having and respond accordingly.
As a guide, metrics you’ll want to consider are:
- Impressions
- Click through rate
- Likes and comments
- Bounce rates for emails.
You’ll have more time for research and creativity
The more content marketing tools and strategies you use, the more likely you’ll free up time to be creative. You have more time to focus on things like search engine optimisation and finding innovative ways to reach your audience. Similarly, the marketing automation tools you’re using might introduce you to the latest features and techniques and help you find time to explore what’s possible on your new marketing platform.
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