As a small business owner, you spend a lot of your time meeting the needs of customers as they come into your location or contact you. Yet, equally important is having access to a new stream of leads, and to do that, you need to have a marketing plan in place. Marketing today is very different from the way companies did it 20, 10, or even 5 years ago, but there are some insights into ways to streamline and make the process more efficient that could help your small business compete better without the hassle.
And that’s by considering a marketing platform. Like many of the other software programs you are using to operate your business, a marketing platform helps to contain all of the information and activities you need to take to move your company forward. The difference is that today’s more modern solutions have given breed to a new era of marketing, all-in-one marketing platforms.
That means that instead of having numerous individual tools for email, content publishing, lead management, reviews, and so on to reach your potential customers and build your brand, it’s all done in one location. This makes an incredible difference as a small business owner. That’s because an all-in-one program will improve the flexibility of your marketing reach, integrate all of the necessary data you need, and provide you with team collaboration. The most modern solutions go a step further by integrating AI-driven insights.
What does this all matter to you, a business owner who wants more customers?
Marketing requires a shift in thinking from sales-focused tactics to building relationships. When you have so many steps along a customer journey to master, you need some help along the way. That’s what a marketing platform like this can offer to you. Take a look at some of the benefits this switch can provide to you as soon as today.
Work from Anywhere: The Power of Mobility
One of the best benefits of an all-in-one small business marketing platform is that it allows you to tackle tasks from anywhere. You can take steps to connect and communicate with customers from anywhere, whether you are at your place of business, at home, or on the go.
Why does this matter?
- Many of today’s business owners need the flexibility of doing things when it fits their needs wherever they are.
- It’s a big part of today’s dynamic work environment. Whether you are doing it yourself or you have a team doing the work for you, working outside the confines of an office building is a part of most companies in some way.
Consider a company that is always on the go, such as a junk removal, roofing, or HVAC company. They can use the tools we offer at Surefire Local to easily manage their business’s online presence and tend to customer inquiries where they are and when they need to, no matter where they are working.
Unified Data Management: Centralizing Your Marketing Insights
Another important benefit of utilizing these services is having access to data. Without it, you are making decisions based on hunches or guesses, which can prove costly over time. The better option, then, is to ensure you have all of your marketing data in one place so that you can refer to it and make decisions about it at any time.
Our platform does this by integrating data from various sources into one tool. All of the data that you need is in one place, including:
- Social media
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Reputation management
- SEO tools
- Analytics
- Online advertising
- Email marketing
- Your business listings
With everything you need readily accessible, you can then use that information to make decisions over time. That means you can change your campaign to optimize it for a fast-changing trend, or you can spot patterns in where people are coming to your website and make decisions about investing more resources in those sources. Having a unified view means you have one tool where you can gather and analyze data from across your entire digital marketing landscape.
AI-Driven Insights: Elevating Your Online Presence
Data is everywhere. The better able you are to take that data and apply it to your business, the more effective you can be at mastering your marketing. With AI integration, you are able to get more of the support you need to create results.
Artificial intelligence has become one of the many tools that make up your marketing efforts if you are utilizing modern strategies. Consider a few of the ways you can incorporate AI into your marketing right now and how that may change your outcome.
- AI-powered chatbots: When you have an AI-powered chatbot on your website, anyone who visits you at any time of the day or night can ask a question and get an answer. With modern AI tools, most questions can be answered, meaning that your customer gets the help they need right then when they need it, rather than turning to the competition for help. That means you’re providing good quality customer service 24 hours a day.
- Landing page and content: Another way AI can help you is to analyze the data present online and create a dynamic landing page and content that resonates with your clients. Because content needs to be up to date and constantly evolving to meet keyword and algorithm changes, this type of AI support tool can be vitally important.
- Autonomous ad management: Nearly all local businesses can benefit from tapping into paid advertising to some degree. The problem is that it can be costly and ineffective when not managed well. Since you may not have time to monitor these platforms on your own, autonomous media building can help you. That means that you set up the rules, and it goes to work navigating the digital advertising platforms with ease. You stay on top of the marketing without having to be constantly monitoring it.
- Automated content suggestions: When you have a tool like AI in place, you never have to worry about what to say or how to say it. It can create automated blogs or social media posts for you. That means that it can help you get in front of your customers with ease and provide quality content without requiring time commitment.
- Lead scoring: Not every lead is a good one, but those that are likely to convert need the most attention right away. With AI tools, you are able to capture that lead faster and take action to support that person’s needs. That could help convert that lead faster.
These are some of the tools that you can use and the results you can get, but not all of them. When it comes to AI in marketing platforms, make sure you consider how it can work for you, including as it:
- Analyzes data for you
- Predicts trends that impact your business
- Recommends personalized strategies
These three areas alone can help to enhance any marketing campaign for your business. It helps improve ROI in every situation.
Team Collaboration: Breaking Down Silos
A very important way that an all-in-one marketing platform for small businesses can help is by improving communication. Without a doubt, you have a lot of components to your business, and every part of it must work with others to achieve the goals you desire. Yet, bringing all of those components together seems to take a team itself.
With an all-in-one platform like this, you gain cross-functional collaboration. Consider what could happen if your entire team was working towards the same goals with the same focus. With a platform like this, it is possible to streamline communication across all components of your business, including:
- Your sales team
- Your support staff
- Your office teams
In doing so, you are able to stay on top of everything at once. Let’s say that something changes within your company’s promotional campaign. You need your sales team to know about this immediately, but you also need to ensure your customer service teams and support staff can also be readily informed. Whether it is something like a change in a product or a broader change in the way you plan to meet customer needs, having a seamless process to communicate the most up-to-date information is critical.
Real-time updates and shared insights can create better outcomes in many ways:
- Reduces errors in communication
- Solves customer problems sooner
- Minimizing the risk of losing a customer to the competition
- Helps to build your brand image and awareness
- Enables you to reduce your stress load!
As a Business, You Need Efficiency and Effectiveness
An all-in-one small business marketing platform can help to streamline your marketing campaign from the ground up. You can use it anywhere to master every task you need to, and you can ensure that every member of your team has a way to collaborate and communicate effectively with leads and customers. Then, each member of your team has access to up-to-date information and the AI insights they need to make decisions faster and more effectively.
Embrace this new way of marketing. Doing so can change your outcome. Explore our platform’s capability and transform your marketing efforts. Attend a Surefire Local demo now.