It’s no secret that marketing is a time-consuming endeavor. The good news is that there are ways to automate many of your marketing tasks, making them more efficient and effective. In this blog post, we will discuss how you can automate your marketing efforts using a variety of tools and platforms. We’ll also look at some of the benefits of automation, and how it can help you achieve faster business growth. Let’s get started!
What Is Marketing Automation and What Are Its Benefits
Marketing automation is the process of using technology to automate marketing tasks (duh!). This can include anything from email marketing and social media management to appointment scheduling. Automating your marketing efforts can save you a lot of time and effort, while also making your business more effective.
One successful example of marketing automation is Barrack Obama’s 2012 presential campaign. By automating the capture of volunteer information, the Obama team was able to quickly qualify potential volunteers and pass over those who weren’t qualified. This contributed greatly to Barrack Obama being reelected for a second term.
While running for president probably isn’t your #1 goal, marketing automation can help you grow your business. Even though it sounds like something that only big businesses can afford, the truth is that marketing automation is within reach of any size business.
For consultants, marketing automation can be a game-changer. It can help you free up time to focus on high-value tasks such as meeting prospects or servicing clients. It can also help you come up with quality content faster, without costing a bomb. Plus, it lets you automate repetitive tasks so that you don’t have to waste your mental bandwidth on them.
And if that’s not enough, marketing automation can also help you avoid costly mistakes such as missing out on new leads or accidentally scheduling appointments that clash with your personal commitments. In short, marketing automation lets you build relationships with potential clients without hiring extra staff or doing all the work yourself.
Now that we’ve looked at some of the benefits of marketing automation, let’s take a look at how you can automate your marketing using a variety of tools and platforms.
7 Marketing Automation Tools for Consultants
There are many types of marketing automation tools designed for different purposes. The following are some free or highly affordable tools that we recommend for consultants, coaches, agents, advisors, small business owners, sales professionals, and marketing professionals:
Content & Copy Writing: Jasper is an AI content and copywriting software that helps you come up with content and copy faster by allowing you to spend more time focusing on what you want to say rather than how to say it. You can use Jasper to write anything from emails to website content to blog articles to Facebook ads to Google ads.
Jasper also makes it easy to write ecommerce product descriptions, social media posts, SEO meta titles and descriptions, and more. Plus, Jasper comes with Grammarly out of the box so you can be confident your writing is error-free. And if you need an extra layer of protection against plagiarism, Jasper has an optional plagiarism checker built-in. Also if you need a little extra help with SEO, Jasper has optional SEO tools built-in as well.
All in all, Jasper is an incredibly powerful tool that can help you automate your content and copywriting process.
Social Media Management: SocialBee is a social media posting tool that lets you automate your posts so that you can “set it and forget it”. It works with Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok posts. You can assign your posts to different categories such as awareness, engagement, or conversion.
You can then schedule your posts in advance so that you’ll be covered for weeks. My favorite feature in SocialBee is its ability to automatically repost variations of the same content in an evergreen fashion. SocialBee makes it easy to keep your social media presence active without having to constantly post new content.
SocialBee is definitely a valuable tool for anyone who wants to free up their time by automating their social media postings.
Chatbot: Manychat is a Facebook Messenger chatbot that is useful for automatically starting or following up with your prospects on Messenger. You can set Manychat up to automatically start a conversation with your prospects when they visit your website or Facebook page, or when they leave a comment on your Facebook post.
Manychat can also automatically follow up with your prospects when they respond to your Facebook ‘Message’ ads. Manychat makes it easy to stay in touch with your prospects and nurture them through the sales process.
If you wish to build a relationship with your potential clients without hiring a staff or doing all the work yourself, Manychat is the answer.
Lead Management: Privyr is a mobile app that helps you stay on top of your leads when you run ads on Facebook. With Privyr, you’ll get notified as soon as a new lead is generated by your ads.
It also lets you easily manage and follow up with your leads using their user-friendly app. Plus, Privyr automatically distributes leads to your team in a round-robin fashion so everyone stays up to date.
So if you’re looking for an easy way to manage leads from Facebook, Privyr is the answer.
Graphic & Ad Design: Canva is an online design platform that enables users to create beautiful designs without any graphic design knowledge or Photoshop skills. Canva offers a wide range of templates for various purposes, such as social media posts, blog headers, or advertisements.
You can also upload your own images and illustrations, or use Canva’s free photos and icons. Canva’s interface is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy to create stunning designs in minutes.
With Canva, you can come up with professional-looking visuals for your website or blog, without spending a lot of time or money.
Appointment Scheduling: Calendly is an online tool that makes it easy for your prospects to schedule an appointment with you. With Calendly, there is no need for back-and-forth trying to find a time that works for both of you. Simply send your prospect a link to your Calendly page, and they can choose from a range of available times that work for them. Calendly integrates with your Google Calendar, so you can be sure that your appointments will not clash with your personal commitments.
You can also set buffers before and after an appointment so that you have time to rest or prepare for the next meeting. In addition, Calendly allows you to qualify your prospects by asking questions in the appointment form. This way, you can be sure that you are only meeting with qualified leads who are serious about doing business with you.
Overall, Calendly is a valuable tool that can help you save time and stay organized in your sales process.
Email Marketing: AWeber makes it easy to create campaigns that send emails to your subscribers at set intervals, or schedule your emails to be sent on specific dates, at specific times. Unlike MailChimp and most other email marketing tools out there, its free tier doesn’t restrict you from using its advanced automation features.
BONUS – Workflow Integration: Integrately allows you to connect different tools that otherwise wouldn’t be able to work together. For example, you can use it to automatically send recordings of your Zoom appointments to your Google Drive to free up space on your Zoom account. Compared to Zapier and most other workflow integration tools in the market, Integrately offers substantially more tasks for a lower price.
The above is by no means an exhaustive list of marketing automation tools – there are many more out there. The ones that we recommend are those that we’ve used before and found useful, especially for consultants.
Now that we’ve looked at some of the available tools, let’s take a look at how you can get started with marketing automation.
How to Get Started with Marketing Automation
Marketing automation can seem daunting at first, but the best way to get started is simply to jump right in. Pick one tool that you think will save you the most time, money, or hassle, and start familiarizing yourself with it. Once you get familiar with one tool, you can move on to the next until your entire marketing process is automated. By taking small steps, you can quickly gain a huge advantage in productivity. And as your business grows, marketing automation will help you keep up with the demand.
Conclusion
Marketing automation is a powerful tool that can help you save time, money, and hassle in your marketing efforts. By automate your marketing process, you can free up your time to focus on other areas of your business. In addition, marketing automation can help you scale your business quickly and efficiently. If you’re not already using marketing automation, we hope this article has given you a good introduction to the topic.
What are your thoughts on marketing automation? Let us know in the comments below!
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