As an entrepreneur, you know that time is money. That's why saving 20 hours per week is essential if you want to grow your business faster and easier. Discover three digital marketing automation strategies that will free up valuable time so you can focus on other aspects of your business.
Are you struggling to keep up with the demands of digital marketing? You're not alone. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are often so busy that they don't have time to focus on their marketing efforts.
Don't worry, though! There are ways to automate your digital marketing so that it doesn't take up all your time.
By implementing the three following automation strategies, you can free up valuable time to focus on other aspects of your business. Let's get started!
1. Social media marketing automation
Automating your social media marketing is one of the fastest and easiest ways to save time in digital marketing. There are many tools available that allow you to schedule posts, monitor engagement, and more.
At the beginning of each month, create a calendar by planning 30 days worth of social media content ideas. For example, each day of the week, you should vary your content by type (i.e., educational, entertaining, inspiring, tips and tricks, behind-the-scenes, etc.). This will help keep your social media audiences engaged and interested in your posts while making it easier for you and your team to create the content.
Similar to how manufacturing facilities streamline production processes by batching work, the same technique should be applied to your marketing efforts. Instead of creating marketing content from scratch and posting to social networks daily, batch your workload by producing content in one sitting and then schedule your posts for the rest of the week. This will make it easier for you and save you a lot of time so that you can move on to other areas of your business.
When filming videos or shooting photos for social media, aim to capture a variety of content that can be reused and repurposed for various posts. This will cut down on the content creation time, as you're utilizing one shoot for multiple pieces of content.
You can also share UGC (user-generated content) featuring your company's products or services (either by hired content creators or real customers), which shows social proof while giving you easy-to-post original content that doesn't require extra work or effort on your part.
In addition to these social media marketing tips to save time and energy, you can also reshare posts from several months ago. For example, if you had a popular post on Instagram from at least 3-months ago that got a lot of engagement, repost that with a slightly different caption now. This drastically cuts down on your content creation time, helping to attract a wider audience of potential new followers interested in your business.
2. Automating email marketing
Automating your email marketing is a great way to save time and increase efficiency while staying in touch with your customers and prospects. You can use an email automation platform like Flodesk, Mailchimp or Constant Contact to create automated campaigns that send personalized emails to your subscribers based on their preferences and interests.
For example, creating an email sequence workflow that automatically is scheduled to send to people who opt-in to your email list is the absolute best way to streamline your email marketing process. It's also important to segment your audience lists so that you optimize your email workflows — this way, you know where each person is in the customer journey experience.
For example, if someone opts into your email list by signing up for a lead magnet (such as a free ebook), then you'll want to add them to a cold lead list (since they're just learning about your business). That way, you start to warm them up through emails before selling them on your products or services.
By comparison, if you set up an audience list of past customers, you can remarket to them by offering reward-based promotions (such as exclusive Thank You coupon codes) to encourage them to purchase again.
As you can see, setting up audience lists makes it easier to create different types of automated emails that drive brand awareness, boost sales conversions and incentivize repeat purchases.
3. Implementing content curation tools
Content curation is another excellent way for entrepreneurs and small business owners to save time on digital marketing. Using a content curation tool, such as Buzzsumo or Curata, you can quickly find and share relevant content in your industry without spending hours researching articles and sources. Content curation tools allow you to easily search for the best content related to your target audience, save it for later use, and share it on social media.
In addition to sharing industry-focused content, you can also share inspirational quotes that relate to your target audience's mindset. For example, suppose you're selling beauty products geared toward women. In that case, you might consider quickly creating a beauty image (even a stock photo will suffice) with a caption by an empowering female icon (such as Coco Chanel or Marilyn Monroe). Women are inspired by motivational messages from these figures and will often engage with this type of content on social media (by liking, commenting, and sharing it). This is an easy, effective way to create content that gets results quickly.
These are just a few simple ways that automation will help you save time in digital marketing. Implementing these strategies will allow you to focus more energy on other important business areas while growing brand awareness for your company and acquiring new sales leads.
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