Article post by Laura Grahm.

There is no downtime in marketing. To stay on top in the highly competitive, dynamic Australian market, marketing strategies need to be managed around the clock.

Utilizing marketing automation tools in your SMB gives you experienced marketing strategy management 24/7, even when you’re off the clock.

Marketing automation can help streamline your business practices and optimize time management by automating time-consuming tasks, increasing lead generation and customer engagement, and improving customer retention.

Here are four strategic ways to use marketing automation to boost your small business.

1. Strategically Send Emails

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, and its success has withstood the test of time. Because of its reliability, 80% of SMEs still use it as their primary source for customer retention. This is because the success of email marketing is tried and true and delivers an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent.

Email marketing also has a high rate of customer engagement. For example, welcome emails sent as part of lead generation have an open rate of 82%. Since email is such a large platform, estimated to grow to 4.3 billion users in 2023, it is a marketing automation strategy you cannot afford to ignore.

One example of how to easily incorporate effective email marketing automation into your business strategy is by using abandoned cart emails. Statistics show that sending customers reminders about their forgotten merchandise can increase sales by almost 70%.

2. Schedule Social Media Posts

Social media marketing may seem as easy as hitting “post”, but that assumption can cause your SMB to lose out on lead generation and sink your business. A successful social media campaign takes into account data such as target audience demographics, platform user demographics, peak posting times, user intention, and much more.

Each social media platform has a peak engagement period, which is the ideal time to post to drive results. Automating your social media marketing ensures your posts always go up when scheduled, even if you can’t be online to do it yourself. Social media automation also drastically cuts down on the time wasted individually writing and sharing posts to each platform.

Half of the world’s population uses social media, and of those users, about 50% use social media to research products they intend to purchase. This makes social media marketing an extremely lucrative strategy when done correctly, and effective at increasing brand awareness. In fact, 71% of users report that if they have a positive interaction with your small business, they are likely to recommend the company to friends and family, making your SME a household name.

3. Optimise Your Website

A good SEO strategy is crucial to successful digital marketing. Your website is your company’s face in the online world, and you want to put your best foot forward to make a good first impression. Over 90% of web pages get no organic search traffic, which leaves a lot of money on the table. This is because most internet users are not likely to venture past the first page of Google results, so having a high website ranking is imperative.

Using a marketing automation agency to best optimise your website for browser crawler bots will boost your rankings on search engine results and drive organic search traffic. A good SEO marketing professional can also help cut down on load times, which is vital for customer experience. Most shoppers will wait a maximum of three seconds for a web page to load before exiting. Online customers hate waiting so much that sales can increase by 10% if your page loads just half a second faster than your competitors.

When optimising your website, it’s crucial to take mobile webpage optimisation into account as well. Over half of all internet users use mobile devices such as tablets or phones to complete search queries before purchasing. People are always on the go, so quicker is better when it comes to eCommerce.

4. Create Meaningful Content

Customers love content that feels tailor-made to their interests. Take video content, for example, making informative videos about your products can increase your sales drastically. In fact, over half of shoppers want to see more video content from businesses and 96% reported watching informational videos about the product before buying.

In 2022 it is predicted that a majority of internet traffic will derive from video content. In fact, 93% of content marketers have reported gaining new customers after implementing video content into their marketing strategy. More customers interacting with your content means increased brand awareness. Producing high-quality video content for consumers increases brand awareness by over 50%, according to reports. Last but certainly not least, quality content drives sales; 80% of shoppers made a purchase after watching a product video. The numbers don’t lie, content is king when it comes to customer engagement.

While all of these strategies are good on their own, they are much stronger when used together. Utilising a marketing automation service to streamline your digital marketing campaign makes eCommerce a breeze and gives you more time to focus on the next step in building your small business.