Why Small Businesses Should Embrace Marketing Automation
As a small business owner, your to-do list never seems to end. Between managing operations, serving customers, and growing your business, it can feel like there’s no time left to market effectively. This may never be more evident than during the holidays.
Well, this became even more evident for me over the Thanksgiving week. I had some big plans for my own marketing efforts, I was gearing up for the final push for Black Friday, juggling some client pitches and hoping to somehow enact a stroke of marketing genius! BUT, there was apparently a different plan in the works because I quickly became very ill with pneumonia and spent the entire week sick and hospitalized instead.
The reason that I share this is not just to share my health situation, but to share that it made me very aware of how my business functions (or doesn’t) if anything prevents me from being active for a few days. It became very evident that I am the bottleneck in my business. The business only does as much as I can do in any given week.
In this particular week, I wasn’t able to take calls, make videos, or even spend much time on my computer, which is not ideal for a digital marketer.
That’s where this week’s topic of marketing automation comes in. Prior to becoming ill, I had scheduled my social media and blog posts for the entire month of November. I knew that I wanted to have some free time over the holiday and had planned ahead to free up my week. Fast forward through two weeks of severe illness and not working at all, and you can clearly see a difference in my business online during the last week of November when I was sick but had automated my content, and the first week of December when I am still sick but have not automated anything…
In November, you would not have known that I was sick if you hadn’t reached out to me directly so that I could tell you. Through the first nine days of December, if you follow along on social media, you probably have been wondering where I disappeared to! Sorry about that!
So, with the subject fresh in my mind, I figured that this was a great opportunity to share with you why you too should consider some basic marketing automations if you run a small business. If you aren’t sure what marketing automation even is, think of it as your personal assistant for managing repetitive marketing tasks. It helps streamline your efforts, freeing up time while at the same time helping to improve the results of your efforts.
At Lange Digital Solutions, here are a few ways that we use automations that you can start to use today for your business.
Save Time Without Sacrificing Quality
Time is one of your most valuable resources, and marketing automation helps you make the most of it. With automation tools, you can set up campaigns in advance and let the technology handle the rest. This includes tasks like:
Social Media Scheduling: We use a tool called GoHighLevel to plan and post content across multiple platforms. The benefit here is that you can post to multiple platforms at one time, and you can plan those posts out days/months in advance!
Email Campaigns: Platforms like Mailchimp or GoHighLevel let you automate welcome emails, follow-ups, and special offers. With a little pre-planning, you can save a lot of time later!
Lead Nurturing: Create workflows that automatically send the right content to leads based on their actions, like downloading a free resource or signing up for your newsletter when they fill out a form.
Stay Consistent with Your Marketing
Consistency is key in marketing, but it’s also one of the hardest things to maintain when you’re busy. Plus, life happens… we get ill, snow days keep the kids home from school, or maybe we just want to go on vacation. Automation ensures that your messaging goes out on schedule, keeping your brand top of mind for your audience so that you can afford to take a break when you need to. Schedule your email newsletters, pre-plan your blogs and social media posts, automate reminders for your upcoming webinar or promotion, and then move on!
Boost Lead Generation and Conversion
Automation doesn’t just save time; it also helps you generate and convert more leads. By setting up systems that engage customers at the right time, you can move them through your sales funnel more efficiently.
Use forms on your website to capture leads and automatically add them to your email list.
Set up email drip campaigns that educate and nurture leads until they’re ready to buy.
Automate abandoned cart emails to recover lost sales from online shoppers.
Affordable Solutions
Many small business owners assume automation is only for big companies with big budgets. The truth? There are plenty of affordable tools designed specifically for small businesses. Plus, as your business grows, these tools can scale with you, making them a smart long-term investment.
Some Popular Tools for Small Businesses:
Email Marketing: Mailchimp, Constant Contact
Social Media: Hootsuite, or SproutSocial
We use a single software that we mentioned previously, GoHighLevel, that is a paid software platform, but it does all of these things and more, in one place. This saves us a lot of time since we have all of the tools to run our business in one location. If money is a limiting factor, there are ways that you can integrate multiple software platforms together to build a basic marketing automation plan.
If you are interested in trying out the GoHighLevel software platform for yourself, you can check it out by using our affiliate link and as a thank you, you will get a free 14-day trial of the software by clicking here. If you do any marketing for your business, this software is a game-changer, and it is what we use for all of our business marketing functions at Lange Digital Solutions.
Final Thoughts - Focus on What You Do Best
Perhaps the most compelling benefit of marketing automation is that it lets you focus on what you do best—running your business. Instead of spending hours on manual marketing tasks, you can use that time to create better products, connect with customers, or take a well-deserved break.
Marketing automation is a game-changer for small businesses. It helps you work smarter, not harder, by saving time, improving consistency, and delivering better results. Whether you’re just starting out or looking for ways to scale, automation tools can help you grow your business while reducing the stress of day-to-day marketing. And as always, if you are looking for a partner that can handle all of these things for you, Lange Digital Solutions would be happy to help!
Best wishes,
Dr. Travis Lange
