Automated Marketing Solutions: Gathering Data
Most people know when they’re ready for some quality automated marketing management. While many larger firms still keep marketing management duties in-house, smaller businesses are the perfect candidates for streamlining their marketing efforts – that is, a marketing automation system.
Why does it take start-ups so long to look into marketing automation? There are as many answers to that as there are small businesses out there who need to automate. In many cases, the person running the show in a small business (hiring, managing projects and doing the accounting) is also the person managing leads, rating their quality and following up. A new company’s chief may find him or herself in a rut when it comes to carving out time for developing new marketing programs and following up with leads.
Automated Marketing Solutions and Strategies for Small Business
Marketing automation is perfect for this kind of small business. Many small business owners don’t even know marketing automation is possible – others have trouble picturing how to effectively gather up their data and put it all into one place. Think of it as lead ‘hoarding’ – it’s much easier to sit on the data sometimes and keep using the comfortable ‘old way’ rather than develop new systems that confront and tackle organization problems.
Gathering Your Data
Again, here’s a situation where marketing automation would fix the problem. You don’t have to develop a new system as a small business when companies are ready to do this for you. Out-of-the-box automation is more popular than ever for a reason. For what you pay, many marketing automation platforms give you a solution that is easy to implement, such as importing your contacts and subsequently segmenting it into contact lists. Once this is finished, a week or two of interaction with any marketing automation interface should begin returning some data on the quality of/interaction with your leads and where they stand.
You should also be able to download segmented email contact lists from many popular programs – including the bigger email service providers – and upload that info right into your automated marketing program. If you’re auditioning marketing automation companies, feel free to live chat with a rep and ask about how their company will help you pull data from your existing sources.
Marketing automation software generally has a learning curve. The right solution will make sure you’re either daunt-free or will provide inexpensive and effective customer support so you can best utilize the program. If your marketing automation solution doesn’t offer consultation time or a way to pay someone in their company to help you audit your data, simply ask. Most companies have this level of support available and will be happy to work with you.
If all else fails, hire a virtual assistant! At $10 an hour a reputable virtual assistant should be able to help you pull and populate data from various resources – then transmit that data into your marketing automation solution.
If you need tips and help gathering data to populate your automation solution, just ask a rep at a marketing automation company to help. There’s no reason to be left in the dark – they want your business, and part of getting it means providing a feasible solution for your lead management needs over time. Let us have a part in helping your business! Contact Lead Liaison today.
