Marketing automation image. Source: Getresponse
Have you ever wondered how to reduce the time spent on marketing activities while increasing your ROI? Implementing marketing automation in your business may be the solution. This article will show you how.
Marketing is a complex and time-intensive job. And over time, it has become more complicated with several channels and touchpoints. Customers now go through several touchpoints before conversion. There is social media (about 5 or 6 popular platforms), blog posts, Facebook ads, Google ads, Messenger, SMS, and emails, to name a few channels. The bottom line: marketing for a small business has become more challenging.
This increase in marketing channels has increased the need for market automation. According to this report, 67% of marketers use automation software for their marketing. And over 65% of businesses outgrow the competition by using marketing automation. So in this article, we will look at why you need marketing automation. And I will share the top 5 marketing automation software for your small business.
Why you need Marketing Automation in your small business
- It saves time
As a marketer, there are several tasks you need to handle. With automation software, you can reduce the amount of time you spend on repetitive tasks.
- Improved productivity
You can set up important tasks and automate them. You can then focus on other non-automatable tasks. According to this Nucleus Research, there is a 20% increase in sales productivity when using marketing automation.
- Increased leads generated
You can get and nurture leads with a simple automation setup. 77% of marketers report increased generated leads after using automation software.
- Increased conversion rate
Using an automation tool, you can set up the software to nurture and convert those leads.
- Increased Revenue
According to this article, 78% of businesses using automation software report an increase in revenue.
Top 5 Marketing Automation Software for Your Small Business
There are over 800+ marketing automation software tools, source: Capterra, so it is easy to get confused. Marketing automation software has several categories. Popular categories include email marketing, social media scheduling, webinar, and onboarding software.
But there are a few marketing automation tools that top marketing experts swear by. And in this article, I want to share the top 5 marketing automation tools for a small business.
- Autopilot
- Hubspot
- Manychat
- Omnisend
- Platform.ly
Autopilot
Autopilot takes a visual approach to marketing automation. You can customize your customer’s journey and the actions to carry out based on conditions and triggers. For example, you can set it up to send a follow-up email to a customer that attended your webinar. You can set it to send a push notification to offer a discount to an abandoned cart customer after 2 hours and follow up with an SMS after two days. You can move customers from Facebook ads to landing pages to the email list and nurture them till they buy. The best feature of Autopilot is the visual interface. It makes marketing automation easy to carry out. Autopilot has a free version, but premium plans start at $29 monthly.
Hubspot
Hubspot is the complete marketing stack platform. It is a tool to help you manage all your customer interactions, from landing pages to email automation. But it also offers a marketing, sales, and services hub to expand the scope of your marketing efforts. The best thing about Hubspot is the completeness of the platform. You can generate leads, nurture leads and complete the sale all in Hubspot. And while it is an enterprise marketers tool, it also offers plans for small businesses. Hubspot has a free version, but it starts at $50 per month for advanced features.
ManyChat
Manychat is the perfect marketing automation tool for a small business owner. It covers all the fronts of a customer’s touchpoints. Touchpoints such as email, SMS, and Facebook (and Instagram messenger) are covered. And because Facebook is a 2.4 billion community, it means you can meet your customers where they are. The best feature is you can build automated flows from the first contact to conversion using a graphic interface. So you do not need to be tech-savvy to use this platform. Manychat has a free version, but the premium version costs $10 per month.
Omnisend
Omnisend is a lightweight version of enterprise-level marketing automation software. Omnisend is a cloud-based app that connects directly to your eCommerce store. It is compatible with stores hosted on Shopify, Woocommerce, and Bigcommerce. The best feature of this software is that you can manage multiple eCommerce stores from one account. You can even manage stores on different e-commerce platforms from one dashboard. Omnisend has a free plan, but monthly paid plans start at $16.
Platform.ly
Like other platforms, platform.ly comes with an easy-to-use interface. It helps generate leads and move them through the buyers’ journey (no matter how complex it has become). The best feature of platform.ly is the link attribution feature. This feature helps to track revenue from individual channels. So no matter how many touchpoints and how convoluted a customer’s journey is, you can see how different channels drive revenue growth. You can now choose the marketing channels to focus on based on data. This software starts at $19 per month.
Conclusion
With marketing automation, you can run your business on assisted auto-pilot. However, you must note that it is not a set-and-forget system. You will need to track and tweak the variable to achieve your goal. This article aims to guide you to make choices and start on the marketing automation journey.
