The Power of Marketing Automation for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Marketers

The Power of Marketing Automation for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Marketers
By Dave Lee, VP Marketing and Sales, Infusion Software

For most entrepreneurs and small business owners, the problem isn’t that they don’t know how to market their business, but that they simply don’t have the time to do it right.

Marketing is a process of testing information, products and services to customers in order to grow a business. Businesses owners often wonder how to be more effective in running their company by spending less time marketing their websites and more time developing loyal customers and increasing sales.

The ability to automate marketing tasks will not only free up time but will result in far more effective marketing programs.

When a prospective customer visits a website, it’s easy to peak their interest from tepid to piping hot with a value-packed opt-in newsletter or free gift. And when prospects enter their names and email addresses into the information box, that information has the ability to go right into a database—if a good customer relationship management (CRM) software program is in place.

Automation is Your Friend
It seems like businesses would rather work harder than smarter. But in a short time, using an automated marketing system, built for small businesses, can significantly increase leads by investing less time in the process. It’s a matter of capturing customers and being ready for them once they visit your website. Leveraging CRM software enables small businesses to keep an ongoing flow of communication with customers, ultimately building loyal followers who are informed about the company’s product or service.

With an in-depth CRM program, coupled with Marketing Automation capabilities, this ensures that a company website works for the business owner, instantly sending a confirmation email after the first opt-in, supplying another touch point for the prospect, without an interruption your work day. A comprehensive CRM system can also manage newsletters and send additional communications to the database by email, fax, voice, direct mail, etc., automatically upon initial implementation.

The Power of Thank You
One easy way to stay top-of-mind to a potential customer is this: once a prospect opts-in, it’s important that the website opens a ‘Thank You’ window that features more offers. It can be thought of as ‘Thank You’ marketing. After all, these prospects are likely to appreciate and take advantage of additional reports or killer discounts. The CRM program gives a business the ability to understand a customer’s interests better by tracking what deals they are taking advantage of. Now a business can market its product better by following up with special offers tailored to a prospect’s interests (which increases the chance they'll buy.)

Here are some hot tips for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners looking to take their marketing to the next level:

Share a vision with your customers and their goals: As customers increase their knowledge of the web they often seek interactive shopping help, which may include product reviews and customer support—it’s their way of interacting with your brand. Service oriented customers are looking for pieces of valuable information they can forward to co-workers and tools which make their jobs easier. Most customers are researching and comparing, so make this easier for your prospects to easily review your features and prices. Often a downloadable list of features will aid them further into the buying process.
Test, measure and tweak. Then retest: It’s important to stay ahead of the curve and anticipate the customer’s needs and wants. In return gives you the ability to naturally begin to behaviorally target their response to offers, thus increasing your ability to close a sale. Tracking tools are most important in pulling off this quest, such as Google Web Analytics.
Provide helpful communication touch points to send to prospective customers: Even though a customer is dealing with a website, it’s important to them to be able to ask a question right away. Small companies and larger corporations often include online chat, email forms and ‘call me now’ services to assist in increasing trust by opening lines of communication. Also, displaying guarantees, product features and secure check out features gives you the authority and validity that the customer subconsciously is looking for.
CRM and customer communications: Choose a customer management software solution that will save money and time, so you don’t have to deal with the integration of multiple systems that can be costly. You will be able to increase profits by not having to switch between a disparate system set. In order to be sure, view online demos and ask about implementation time.
“Be” your customer. Anticipate their questions and provide answers that are easily scannable on your site: Are they looking for store locations or customer service? Place links in your communications that take them directly to places on your website they use most often. The simplest online presence is to create blogs on blog hosting sites such as blogger.com, wordpress.com, or myspace. This is a simple way to talk about those things your customers are looking for and using on a regular basis. Then refer them using simple links back to your main website. Host a form that generates leads into your customer management system and automatically emails valuable information to visitors of these external blogs. This will allow interested customers to recognize your services or product and begin to build a relationship with your organization.
Brand yourself: Create a brand for yourself using purposeful colors, fonts, graphics, and buttons that request an action of your customers. Consistently use these things on all of your communications, most importantly your emails.
Be in multiple places at once using marketing automation: Single person businesses often feel that they should be in several places at once. Marketing automation of phone calls, emails, faxes and product update alerts will help your customers feel a close relationship to your business without endless hours of work on your side. Set up a campaign process and use tools to automate it.

Infusion Software is based in Gilbert, Arizona with clients worldwide. Infusion CRM offers a feature-packed solution is most valuable when marketing automation helps your customers build a personal relationship with your organization. Infusion CRM will help you to build trust and reduce cost of converting prospects. We regularly hear success stories from our customers describing how Infusion CRM cuts costs, makes more revenue, and frees up time. For more visit www.infusionsoft.com.