Small business marketing automation can be a big challenge for a lot of companies. It doesn’t have to be.
In this two-part series on small business marketing, I’ll be sharing what I do to automate my own marketing.
Our leads at Agility Automation come from a combination of different platforms. We get leads from Facebook and Google Ads, cold email campaigns, LinkedIn activity, content (i.e. blog articles like this!), lead magnets, organic search, social media and referrals.
Yes, that sounds like a lot, but once it’s on autopilot, it’s barely any work day-to-day to manage it.
The best part is that appointments just appear in my calendar as a result of the marketing machine!
At the heart of all of our marketing campaigns are automated systems that create a consistent experience for every lead coming to my business. Here’s the breakdown:
Cold Email Campaigns
‘Cold email’ is almost like a dirty word in many circles, and if it’s done wrong it can be disastrous. But if it’s done right, it can yield surprising results. The key with this is making sure the emails are really personalised, and relevant to the recipient.
I use the platform Reply to send the emails, and an automated prospecting system to feed the leads into Reply. I use Phantombuster to get leads from LinkedIn (from a very targeted search), and using an email finder, get their details and add them to my email list. From there, we just wait for the replies and call bookings to come in.
LinkedIn Activity
LinkedIn can be a great source of new leads, but can take a lot of effort to maintain. We also leverage Phantombuster to automate new LinkedIn follows, connections, and more. So in the space of a week, I can have 25-50 new LinkedIn connections with eyes on my updates and content, all without even logging into LinkedIn.
Advertising
We run ads on Facebook and Google, to landing pages, lead magnets, and my website. For Facebook ads, I integrate with ActiveCampaign to automatically add or remove contacts to Facebook custom audiences, so I have a highly unique group of prospects that syncs with my CRM.
Website & Content
Our website is designed around landing pages and blog articles specific to industries, different apps/software platforms, and other commonly asked questions about automation (e.g. pricing). Organic search results link through to those landing pages, with each of those pages having a consistent call to action to book a strategy call, which is handled automatically by Calendly.
If someone has previously clicked a link on a content or marketing email, or completed a form on my website, through ActiveCampaign I’m able to track their visits on my site’s pages, and automatically send them highly targeted emails based on their website behaviour. For example, if a lead visits my Airtable landing page, an automation may send them an email with a link to my Airtable Guide for Small Business (based on certain conditions about that contact).
Social Media
Using OneUp, I have a constant social media posting machine. Using evergreen content, I can schedule posts to specific timeslots, and to repeat on a regular basis (I usually show an article again after 6 months). As I create new content, I feed it into the system and it goes on autopilot indefinitely. It takes less than one minute per post to schedule it across the major social platforms and even Google My Business.
Lead Magnets
Lead magnets may have gone out of style a bit, but this tried-and-tested method still works if you have the right content, and can be automated so easily! When a prospect clicks on an ad, they reach an ActiveCampaign landing page, which when completed enters them into a drip email sequence, and eventually on to my main mailing list. The great part is that once they’re in the marketing system, we can tailor content to what they’re most interested in.
Whether you choose to use one or all of these automated marketing approaches, they each offer the ability to get maximum results with the least effort day to day. Of course, it takes time, some expertise (and a touch of Zapier magic) to set up the automations, but after that’s done, it’s a hands-off process until your first call with your new prospect.
In the next part of this series, I’ll reveal what happens after a prospect books a call, or makes an initial enquiry, and what I do to maximise first impressions and have almost zero call no-shows.
If you’re stuck on how to build your small business marketing automation, book a free strategy call with me and my team to brainstorm some ideas, and come up with a solid plan for your own marketing automation.
