Start Marketing Your Small Business Plus the Benefits of Marketing Automation

By Lenka Davis

Long gone are the days of tracking customers and prospects manually and in several different systems, in addition, there are so many choices of automated solutions, where do you start?

Founders only have so many hours in a day to get through their to do lists so automating is a necessity. 

For new business owners and tech startup entrepreneurs here are our recommendations for the best marketing automation software tools.

Definition

What is Marketing automation? It refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.

Benefits

Benefits of adding marketing automation to your business from the beginning are building a foundation for managing your customer relationships. Data entry, repetitive tasks and human error are all minimized when you integrate these tools to your workflow.

Efficiency comes from setting up templates, workflows and other processes within these tools even in the free account versions. You can set up a newsletter template in MailChimp, specify criteria and a workflow for an email campaign for any new prospects in Hubspot, and set up a standard calendar for social media posts in Buffer.

Improving your customer experience and offering customers the solutions they need can be done by looking at the analysis and reporting each marketing automation platform provides. 

• Hubspot and MailChimp have email campaign tracking that shows information such as what percentage of the recipients opened the emails. 

• Buffer tracks your social media analysis on likes, impressions and comments along with other metrics. 

• Google Analytics 4 is the latest from Google that takes data from both your website and your app, if you have one and offers standard and customizable reporting.

List of Benefits

1. Minimize repetitive tasks and human errors

2. Set up workflows to be more time efficient

3. Interpret what customers need so you know what they need next

Functionality of marketing automation

1. Campaign management so you can build your campaigns

2. Customer and lead management so you can stay organized

3. Analytics and reporting so you can see the success of your campaigns

4. Integration of multiple points of contact so you can focus on where your customers are

Manage your Customers

HubSpot

CRM - Customer Relationship Management

Cost: Free

Set Up Needs: Your name and email address

Best all around

Email sends per month: 2000/month

Contacts limit: 1 million

Sign up at HubSpot Get Started

Manage your Newsletter

MailChimp

Email marketing platform

Cost: Free

Set Up Needs: Email address, user name, and physical mailing address

Email sends per month: 2,500 sends/month

Contacts: 500 limit

Sign up at MailChimp

Manage your Social Networks

Buffer

Manage accounts in social networks

Cost: Free

Set up Needs: email address

Ten posts on up to three social media channels

Sign up at Buffer

Manage your Analytics

Google Analytics 4

Measure traffic and engagement across your websites

Cost: Free

Set up Needs: connect to your company website

Set up at Google Analytics

Fun Fact

Hubspot CEO, Brian Halligan, is known to take naps in the office. As the world of work changes and adjusts from work for home to in the office and a hybrid of the two, we might want to review all the ways we can be most productive. Who knows how much work-from-home employees were napping but that may be one reason for people claiming to be more productive. Harvard Business Review put out an article way back in 2010 that claims naps are a source of competitive advantage. And I would add it helps you be more creative, too!

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