There’s a few ways to use automated marketing for a small business. By using multiple marketing methods you can attract customers from many sources. For starters you can create a website. Building a website in a specific way can help you get free traffic and an affordable search engine ranking. This is particularly useful if you have a locally based business. You can target your city name in your website domain and more easily rank near or at the top of Google.
Another simple strategy to use if you haven’t already done it is to get a Google My Business listing (formerly Google Places).
Google offers locally based businesses a completely free listing which shows at the top of a relevant search query. If you’ve ever looked for local businesses in your area, you’ll see the top results are locally based and have a free listing. All you need to do is fill out the details and verify your address.
Automated Marketing For Small Business
Now, with a website and a Google My Business listing you have two ways to attract customers. You can optimise your website for your main keywords. This can give you more chance of ranking at or near the top of Google’s listings. This is done through both on-page and off-page SEO. See search engine optimisation in digital marketing.
A prominent Google business listing can bring in free customers for years, so it’s definitely worth doing. You can also use some paid advertising and start at a very low budget. Checkout Google Adwords or Microsoft Ads to get started.
With a paid advert, you specifically target search queries which are relevant for your business. So if you have a cake shop for example, you could show your ads only when this search is performed in your local area, saving you heaps on ad budget and sending you targeted visitors.
Automated Marketing For Small Business – Email Marketing
Once you have a website you can start sending targeted visitors to it. A “targeted” visitor is someone who is very likely to buy from you. Learn more about customer avatar and target audience here.
Many visitors won’t take any action on your website, at least not on their first visit. So you might see a lot of website visitors, but few of them become customers. A visitor needs several touch points with a website before they make a buying decision. That’s why it’s a good idea to offer something on your website to give your visitors in exchange for getting them on an email list. This is typically something like a discount code, ebook or free piece of digital information you can send them.
An email messenger service allows businesses to automate delivery of messages and keep in touch with their subscribers. It gives you the business owner the ability to build a relationship via email, and let potential customers know about your offers. See also email marketing for small business owners.
Automated Marketing For Small Businesses – Blogging, Sharing, Syndication
While blogging is a lengthy process when you’re doing it, there’s a huge potential to automate blog post syndication once you’ve built some content. Plus, if you build content wisely, you can get found through the search engines and attract customers for free. If you can find low competition long tail keywords, and rank for them with your content, you can attract free traffic through the search engines: Google, Bing, Duckduckgo.com etc.
Once you’ve built content, you can use plugins such as Revive Old Posts and post planner to syndicate content automatically.
Social media share buttons are also another way you can get your visitors to share your content as they see it. Once set up there’s nothing left to do; people can share to social media any content which they find valuable.
Facebook Page
Building a Facebook page is free and you can target specific keywords for your page for greater coverage. So if you have a pie shop in Wolverhampton, you can use those keywords within your page name, if they aren’t already taken.
You can use your business page on Facebook to connect with people and share content. This can be automated using an email marketing service such as Aweber, too. You can also use some paid advertising too, in the form of an advert or through boosting a post. Here’s a page I recently set up to help attract traffic for this website:
People use Facebook search feature to find information and for local business search. So you can set up a page which helps people find your business.
Summary
There’s other strategies you can find through the many social media platforms online too. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter and so on all offer opportunities to add another stream to your advertising. Start with the basics and learn a single strategy first. Once you can successfully bring in customers from that source, add another one.
Over time you should have a few good sources to attract traffic to your website and bring in new customers.
