Small Business Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is a technology that automates the marketing and sales process across multiple channels, including email, social media, inbound marketing, and CRM (customer relationship management).

It can:

Save time on repetitive tasks.
Create a more targeted and personalized approach to marketing.
Improve customer engagement and response rates.
Measure marketing performance more effectively.
Boost marketing productivity.

We’ll integrate automation into your broader plan of inbound marketing, email communication, and whatever else makes sense for your business. And it will save you time and money when we do.

Please call us to learn more.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is never a standalone service. An automation platform is only as good as the people configuring and operating it.

But a well-run marketing automation campaign will:

Help you focus on your most promising leads.
Score and grade leads so you can prioritize your outreach.
Nurture leads with automated but personalized content.
Automate your email communications.
Help you close more deals, faster.
Improve customer retention with automated messages and offers.
Make it easier to upsell and cross-sell customers.
Save time on repetitive tasks.

Marketing Automation Myths

Myth 1: Marketing automation is only for big companies.

Marketing automation can be a great solution for companies of all sizes, from small businesses to enterprise organizations.

Myth 2: Marketing automation is only for B2C companies.

Any company, in any industry, can use marketing automation to improve their marketing campaigns and generate better results.

Myth 3: Marketing automation is expensive.

Some automation platforms are pricey, but others are surprisingly affordable. At Culture Cube, we don’t subscribe to the most expensive automation software, just the most effective for our clients.

Myth 4: Marketing automation will replace an entire marketing team.

This is definitely not the case! Marketing automation can automate certain tasks and processes, but it still requires skilled humans to create and execute campaigns. Marketing automation can’t (and shouldn’t) replace an entire marketing team.

Automation & Inbound Marketing

“53% of shoppers say they always do research before they buy to ensure they are making the best possible choice.” (Think with Google)

They educate themselves about your products and services before they ever call you or visit your store. They’re checking out your website and the websites of a half dozen competitors.

But if you can reach them during the evaluation process, you’ll convert a percentage of them into loyal customers before they go somewhere else.

Automation Gives You Better Leads

B2B marketers say the #1 benefit of marketing automation is the ability to generate more and better leads. (Pepper Global, 2014)

71% of companies say closing more deals is their top sales priority, but 40% of salespeople still use Microsoft Excel, Outlook, or Google Docs to store leads and customer data. 32% of salespeople spend an hour or more on data entry every day. (HubSpot, 2017)

Corporations and large e-commerce sites clearly benefit from a well-run marketing automation campaign. But small businesses with limited resources are the biggest beneficiaries of all because automation lets them do so much more with less.

The Benefits of Automated Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a term coined by HubSpot founder Brian Halligan to describe a new approach to marketing that attracts new customers. It doesn’t interrupt them with ads. Honey, not vinegar.

Helpful, informative, and search-optimized content draws customers to your website or blog. Lead capture forms and email list segmentation turn them into leads. Lead nurturing workflows convert those leads into customers.

The result is a complete inversion of the traditional marketing funnel, where customers are pulled through the conversion process by helpful content, rather than pushed through by aggressive sales tactics.

Inbound marketing is more effective and efficient than outbound marketing, and it’s the only type of marketing that scales as your business grows.

That’s why inbound marketing should be the foundation of your overall marketing strategy, and automation can help you do it more effectively.

Inbound marketing automation lets you:

Attract more visitors to your website with targeted content.
Convert more visitors into leads with lead capture forms.
Nurture more leads into customers with email workflows.
Measure and improve your results with analytics.

Marketing Automation & Social Media

Platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social make it easy to post content and track engagement across multiple social media channels. And since social media is all about building relationships, it’s the perfect complement to marketing automation.

You can:

Schedule and publish content to multiple social media channels.
Engage with your audience in real-time.
Track social media metrics and ROI.
Build relationships at scale.
Improve customer retention.
Generate more leads.

Marketing Automation & Email

Marketing email is the lifeblood of marketing automation. Most automation platforms are really just email platforms with added bells and whistles. That’s because email is the best way to nurture leads and turn them into customers.

With marketing automation, you can:

Create targeted email lists.
Send personalized emails.
Schedule and send email campaigns.
Measure email performance.
Improve email deliverability.
A/B test subject lines and email content.

You can segment your list by any criteria, including interactions with your website, engagement with your emails, or even location or job title, and send recipients highly personalized and relevant emails.

For example, you could send a lead who visited your pricing page but didn’t convert an email with pricing information and a special offer. Or you could send a customer who’s been inactive for six months a reactivation message.

Marketing Automation & Lead Nurturing

The goal of lead nurturing is to build relationships with prospects until they’re ready to buy. And again, the best way to do that is by email.

Marketing automation lets you create targeted email lists and send personalized emails at scale. You can schedule and automate your lead nurturing campaigns, so you’re always staying top-of-mind without having to lift a finger.

And when the leads are ready to buy, your sales team will cover the last few steps of the thousand-mile customer journey.

Marketing Automation & Reporting

Marketing automation is built on data. That’s one of the best things about it because you can track everything from website visits to email opens to sales conversions.

Most automation platforms come with robust reporting features showing how your campaigns perform and where you can improve.

You can integrate data from other sources, like Google Analytics, for a more complete picture of your marketing efforts. Marketing automation gives you the power to make data-driven decisions, not guesses.

Our Approach to Marketing Automation

We build a quality database of customers and prospects who have opted into your email system. We segment the list according to buyer personas.

Existing client contacts
Lead captures from your website
Opt-in contacts via other resources or events

We create quality content worth viewing and sharing.

Blogs and articles
Newsletters
Infographics
Videos

We can repurpose existing content (easy-peasy) or develop new content. For example, for a home and garden store, we might write a blog series on xeriscaping to help homeowners with their yards during the California drought.

We hire experienced automation managers certified in the platforms and software that deliver campaigns, capture customer behavior, and share leads with your sales team’s CRM system. We select automation and CRM software based on your needs and budget, and the needs of other Culture Cube clients.

Marketo, Hubspot, and Sharpspring are well-known automation platforms that do many things well but not everything. As an agency subscribing to multiple platforms, we can provide everything for your marketing automation.

We code custom builds, software, and widgets to integrate marketing automation with your CRM (customer relationship management) or POS (point of sale) system — and we don’t need an existing API to do it.

Getting Started with Culture Cube

Call us to discuss your needs, wishes, and business goals. We’ll audit your current marketing efforts to see where automation can fit in. Then we’ll put together a proposal with recommendations and projected costs.

Our team has several decades of combined experience in marketing, and we’ve helped businesses of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 500 companies — grow their revenue with our holistic and client-centric approach to marketing.