Small Business Marketing

Marketing Automation in Business

Written by Jay Shapiro for Gaebler Ventures

Often we find that the simplest of tasks are the ones that take up most time. In a commercial sense, the old adage is true - time always equals money. Therefore, if you're wasting time or even just failing to use it wisely you will in effect be squandering money. So can you automate time consuming tasks and cut time and expenditure?

Technological advancement often claims to represent savings in time.

With marketing software and automation systems that's not merely a shallow boast. In the world of online marketing campaigns and e-commerce, there's much to be said in support of putting a customized auto marketing system to use.

How does that help?

Jobs you'd have had little choice but to deal with by hand can now be set up to automatically occur at a scheduled time. This leaves you at liberty to do the things you are good at - like running your business.

Consider this:

Have you got newsletters to send out? It makes sense to use an email campaign. What about your newest press release? How about submitting that in multiples to all the news directories?

By way of example, let's look at the previously laborious business of sending out your press releases.

We will assume that the hardest part has already been dealt with; therefore you have a ready prepared knock-em-dead release that alerts the attention of the media and encourages them to give your company column inches by publishing articles based on the info you sent them. You may have written the release to the very best of standards, maybe you even hired a professional to write it for you. But there's more hard work ahead; that is if you're still using traditional manual methods of distribution.

There are literally many thousands of possible recipients for your release, but sending each and every one of them a copy of your press release, by hand could take an inordinate amount of time. By the time the last release had been posted, your news might be old news.

What you need is to get your message sent fast to numerous directories. Even that can take a lot of time though, unless you are using an automated system. When you do it will undertake multiple submissions on your behalf to many article and press directories.

All the time the world of technology in e-commerce advances we are offered better ways to handle all those time-consuming jobs. New means to automate submissions, etc., are invented and being implemented all the time. Automation software and systems are the solution that admin-heavy businesses have long been hoping for.

Of course it isn't just with press releasing that automation systems are considered a boon. Automation systems can:

• Dramatically reduce the amount of hands-on time spent on article submissions
• Automate send-outs of newsletters and subscriptions
• Efficiently keep track of campaigns and monitor their effectuality

A few people have been reticent to embrace marketing automation, but it really is worth bearing in mind that the automation can be tailored to suit you. Therefore, although it seems robotic, the human touch is needed to set the criteria.

Jay Shapiro is a freelance writer based in the UK. Jay has a particular interest in the emotive aspects of the entrepreneur's character. "Alongside the nuts and bolts of business, the character of the person is often the ingredient responsible for success."

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