Once accessible only to big-budget brands, automated marketing tools are finally within the price range of many SMBs. But with these tools come a whole new set of challenges.
According to our research, businesses without automation spend approximately 71% of their time and resources planning and defining businesses processes. Consider that there are more than 36.2 million small businesses in the United States, and you’ll realize how much time is being wasted — and how much money is being lost.
The big name companies and brands have found a de facto solution to this problem in automated marketing tools. In fact, 79% of marketers in top-performing companies have been using automation for at least two years, but until recently, the cost of this software has been prohibitive for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Smarter, Cheaper Technologies
Fortunately for small businesses, smart technologies have become increasingly more affordable, even as they become smarter. Automation of communications processes, for example, is having a major impact for companies large and small. Robotic secretary services automatically route calls and block unknown or unwanted numbers, thereby greatly reducing the number of workplace interruptions (the average office employee spends 28% of her time dealing with interruptions, costing companies $900 billion a year)
Cloud-based communication and collaboration systems are bringing automation to SMB’s technology suites, allowing managers to easily organize emails and documents, as well as streamline scheduling, among other things. File sharing in particular is a powerful tool, enabling large teams to update documents in real time to keep everyone on the same page. Meanwhile, new messaging platforms are reducing the need for emailing internally altogether.
While critically important for any organization, these improvements in efficiency are especially valuable for small businesses without much surplus in money or personnel. In some cases automation can actually allow organizations to operate at the same capacity as bigger competitors by freeing employees previously tasked with menial work to do higher-level tasks.
Communication Automation
There are 5.6 billion active social media users around the world, according to Wearesocial, with Americans spending an average of 1 hour and 37 minutes on social media sites everyday. Regularly engaging on platforms like Facebook, X, and Pinterest should therefore be a top priority for any company, and particularly for newer organizations. Maintaining an active presence is a job in and of itself, but technology is making it easy to schedule and automate posts across channels.
The same is true of email campaigns, referral programs, and lead-scoring, all of which can be streamlined by individual digital tools, helping small business owners generate and capitalize on their early leads.
New Challenges
But as effective as these systems are for small businesses, they present an entirely new set of challenges that larger companies have been dealing with for a long time — chiefly, a confounding jumble of tools and platforms. The problem is that each new system meant to address an individual problem still requires a great deal of time and energy not only to master, but to continually use and optimize.
The task of individually sending emails or posting to social media may be automated, for example, but the platform now needs constant supervision to ensure that it’s working properly. In other words, one time-consuming job was eliminated, only to be immediately replaced by another. Moreover, all the data and information produced by these disparate tools is completely unwieldy, especially for a small team that may be unfamiliar with analytics and data science. The information is only as valuable as the insights they give you, and the more data streams you have, the harder it is to pick out the useful pieces.
For these reasons and more, artificial intelligence and autonomous marketing far outshines automated marketing. All your campaigns — from email to social media to PPC — can be simultaneously monitored around the clock. And because autonomous marketing platforms can make independent decisions based on what they’ve learned from the constant flow of consumer information, you’re free to focus on your business, and not the business of your business.
