Best Marketing Automation Tools For Small Business

Today, there is a technology that can help businesses in any field move all or part of their operations to the cloud. Now is the time to use the cloud for your marketing.

Expert in marketing Clara Price says that companies around the world have been investing in automation for decades. “That investment really paid off in 2020 and 2021, when there was a pandemic. Because of automation, workers could quickly switch to working from home during the first lockdowns.

Price is the CEO of Octain Growth Systems. Octain Growth Systems is a global strategic planning consulting firm that helps companies make more money, be more productive, and run more efficiently. She says that large companies were better prepared for the hybrid work environment, which includes both in-office and remote workers because they already had the automated tools in place.

Price said that small businesses and people who work for themselves weren’t so lucky. When the lockdowns happened, they had to work hard to get back on track. What happened? Price says that small business owners now have a better idea of how automation can help them run their businesses more efficiently.

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Today, there is a technology that can help business owners and marketers in any field move all or part of their operations to the cloud. Price suggests that you automate the five marketing tasks below:

Appointment Booking: “Scheduling appointments online frees you from the boring. It gives customers options and makes sure their time is safe when they need it. You should take a look.

Software like Calendly and Calendarwiz that lets you make appointments for individual clients is a great choice. Try TimeTap if you want a more powerful way to make appointments and virtual administrative support for scheduling classes and training. TimeTap has features for multiple locations, scheduling classes, making booking forms unique, and making payments automatically.

Software for making proposals. “If your company sends out proposals for jobs by hand, especially if you offer professional services, I strongly suggest you buy proposal software.

Proposal software not only cuts down on the time you spend on your proposal that you can’t bill for, but it also keeps track of when what, and how prospects respond to what you send them. Imagine if you knew when your prospect read your proposal, so you didn’t have to guess and send follow-ups in the dark. Now think about what it would be like to know what pages they liked.

Was its benefits? Features? Pricing? If you know this, you can send a follow-up message that is more likely to be relevant to their interests. Software like PandaDoc, Proposify, and BidSketch can help you do just that. Most offer a free version or trial that has some limits.

Email Marketing Systems. “If email marketing is the main way you market your business, there are many effective and cheap ways to do it now. Many basic marketing tasks can be done automatically with marketing automation software.

This lets your team do a great job of generating demand and leads. You can choose from email marketing systems to more advanced platforms for lead generation, demand generation, and prospecting. Marketing Automation is a key part of the digital and social media marketing that makes it work. ActiveCampaign, Autopilot, Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), Hubspot, SharpSpring, and Ontraport are the six marketing automation tools that I like the most.

CEOs can improve their work and deal with problems in three ways.

Taking care of customer relationships (CRM). “No business should be without a strong CRM tool as a cloud sales enablement tool. The whole point of CRM software is to build relationships with customers. They let your sales team get in touch with prospects and keep track of what they do with your business from the first time they talk to you until the sale is made. CRM systems help you keep track of your contacts, leads, opportunities, and sales forecasts. Some connect to marketing automation systems, both theirs and those of other companies. Salesforce Sales Cloud, Nutshell, Copper, Pipedrive, and Zotto CRM are my top five choices for CRM.

Customer Service. “If you want to work remotely, you need to keep your clients happy by giving each of them a smooth customer experience (CX). They want help as soon as possible through a variety of ways and devices. Customers now expect every supplier to be as good as Amazon. In today’s hard times, phone and email support alone just aren’t enough. With just two online CX investments, any small business owner can make a huge difference in their customer service. Live chat is another technology to put money into for customer service. With live chat, your website goes from being a place to find information to a place where customers can get help in real-time.

It lets you get responses in seconds instead of hours. The most important thing is that it helps you sell more. The American Marketing Association found that when B2B companies used live chat, conversions went up by an average of 20%. Live Chat, ZenDesk, and Olark are three live chat software programs that I think you should look into.

Bottom line: Automation has both top-line and bottom-line benefits that help your team, no matter how small, make more money, be more productive, and save time.