If you run a small or medium-sized business, you have to use a range of tactics available to get the word out about your company. While some firms successfully use flyers, newspaper adverts, and billboards, many others focus on digital marketing because it’s more powerful and comprehensive. Business owners who would like to increase their reach should use small business marketing software or collaborate with marketing specialists.
There are many tools available for businesses that want to improve their digital marketing strategy. The most cost-effective way to get started is to purchase comprehensive software that includes a wide variety of features. However, you can also hire a consultant, who can set up a digital marketing strategy that includes social media marketing, responsive website design, and search engine optimization.
What Marketing Tools Are Available to a Business?
Many business owners are great at coming up with new ideas for their company, manufacturing their products, or delivering their services. However, they might not be trained in marketing, so they sometimes have trouble finding enough customers and gaining access to their target audience. Fortunately, there are tools out there that can help CEOs widen their reach and attract the right kinds of people.
The cheapest option is to purchase marketing software, which can organize and automate many digital marketing tasks. This tool saves businesses a lot of time and can even replace an employee. Despite this, a lot of effort is required to set up the program and coordinate your marketing efforts. Companies with a lot of financial resources sometimes choose to hire a consultant to handle these tasks for them.
What Can Small Business Marketing Software Do?
CEOs who are looking to improve their marketing strategy should purchase software. Before you choose a program, you have to make sure that it can perform all the functions you require. Otherwise, you might have to buy and set up additional tools. Good software can improve your entire marketing strategy. It starts by helping you attract more leads through regular social media posts.
Then, it can help you manage your contacts and automate the marketing messages you send to them. To optimize the frequency of your communications, your software can send you a text message or email reminders. It can also store all your data, so you can reuse content that worked particularly well, and it can track your data to help you find out which marketing messages were the most successful.
Automate Your Social Media Accounts
Social media marketing is one of the best ways of reaching new audiences. Setting up and running accounts is free, so this is a very cost-effective marketing strategy. But to make the most of these platforms, you have to post to them several times a day. Interrupting your regular work to write and publish a post can be tedious and time-consuming. With marketing software, you can automate the process.
This means that you can write all your posts days or weeks in advance and schedule when you want them to appear on your account. While social media automation is important for everyone, it is particularly effective for businesses that have overseas customers. By scheduling your content throughout the day and night, you can reach your followers who live in different time zones.
Manage Your Leads
Once you’ve set up a beautiful website and engaging social media profiles, you’ll start to attract more people. These followers have to be categorized, so you can send them the correct marketing messages. With marketing software, you can store your leads’ data and split them up into groups. That way, you can avoid generic marketing emails, and you’ll make sure each person receives a message that speaks to their individual situation and tastes.
Automate Your Marketing Messages
Have you ever been asked by a company to tick off what kinds of marketing messages you want to receive? If so, you’ll know that businesses can communicate with their customers through email, over the phone, via text messages, and even on WhatsApp. There are many marketing channels, and the most successful firms use several of them.
If you’re doing your own marketing, you might find staying in touch with your customers overwhelming. You’ll have to compile and send out emails, write text messages, and even call some of your customers. Marketing software can automate your marketing messages just like it automates social media posts. You can write your content well in advance, and it will be sent to your leads and customers at the right moment.
Remind You with Text Messages and Emails
A comprehensive marketing strategy is made up of a lot of individual elements, including various social media accounts, a website, blog posts, an email newsletter, and text message marketing. Keeping track of everything can quickly become impossible, which is why your software will remind you with text messages or emails when it’s time to complete a marketing-related task. That way, you’ll never let any leads go cold or forget to reach out to customers.
Store Your Documents and Photos
Experienced marketing specialists are good at saving time wherever they can. They might re-use content they have previously published. If you’ve come up with a great marketing message or you’ve put together a wonderful picture or video, you should post it to several social media profiles and your website. Remember, some people will only follow you on one platform.
You can also re-use content that has worked particularly well at a later date. People love to be reminded of things they love, so a “throwback”-style post can be extremely effective. To make it easier to recycle content, marketing software allows you to save your documents and photos. As long as you label everything clearly, you’ll be able to find your old content whenever you need it.
Track Your Data
When you put a lot of effort into your marketing strategy, you’ll want to know whether it’s paying off. Good software shows you which of your campaigns attracted which customers. That way, you can see where most of your new followers are coming from and whether they are high-quality leads or not. In the future, you can adjust your strategy to include more of the types of posts, articles, and messages that were highly successful.
What Can Marketing Consultants Do for Small Businesses?
As you can see, small business marketing software can be extremely effective. However, you still have to write your own posts, set up your own website, and send marketing messages to all your customers. If this sounds like a lot of work or you’re not sure how to handle these tasks, hiring a consultant could be a good idea.
A marketing specialist will work together with you to come up with a comprehensive strategy that might include an intuitive website, several social media accounts, and regular communications with your existing customers. They can take over tasks like posting to your accounts and writing blog posts. Because consultants have years of experience with marketing strategies, they will be able to optimize all your content so it reaches the target audience.
Coming Up with a Comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy
The most important reason why many businesses work with a consultant is that they receive a personalized service. To begin, your specialist will spend some time analyzing your company’s values, product or service, and current strategies. They will discuss each aspect of your business with you and ask you about your goals and targets. Then, they can let you know what you’re doing well and where there is still some room for improvement.
If you already have a website and social media accounts, the consultant can take over and produce content that is relevant, engaging, and search engine optimized. If not, they will set up accounts for you and help you gain engaged followers.
Responsive Website Design
Nowadays, most people don’t only have a laptop or computer, but they also have various mobile devices like cell phones and tablets. They might use all of these to access your website, so you should make sure that they have a good experience, no matter what device they are on.
Responsive website design is an approach that allows you to change the layout of your website depending on the size and shape of the user’s screen. It improves their experience and makes browsing your content more enjoyable.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines like Google use an algorithm to determine which websites are displayed first. Some of the criteria they use include the frequency of keywords, the relevance of the content, the age of the content, and the loading speed of the website. A good marketing consultant will optimize your website to make sure you rank highly and are therefore seen by relevant customers.
Company owners who would like to widen their reach and improve their reputation should purchase small business marketing software. This tool can help you manage your leads, create marketing messages, keep your social media accounts up to date, send you regular reminders, and track your marketing data. Call us at Anthem Software to find out more about the tools we offer or to book a strategy session with one of our consultants.
