Automating with Authenticity: Streamlining Your Marketing Efforts for Better Results

Take a look at your company’s marketing efforts. How much of it involves manual effort?

With the evolution of tech, it’s becoming increasingly easier to ditch mundane tasks and free up some time for the more important things. By leveraging automation, you can increase productivity and efficiency, especially within small businesses. Automating your marketing allows for a more streamlined process and gives you freedom to focus on the big picture. 

Benefits of Automating:

Automating your marketing efforts can have countless benefits, particularly if you are a small/growing company or nonprofit with limited resources. Benefits of automating include but are not limited to:

• Improved Efficiency 

  Automations help streamline your marketing process and  maximize your team’s efficiency by creating structure and eliminating busywork.

• Time Savings

  By minimizing your need to engage in repetitive tasks, such as posting on socials or inputting data, automations help free up valuable time. 

• Consistency

  Automating your marketing efforts can help ensure consistency through SOPs and content calendars, rather than putting things together on the fly.

• Higher Productivity 

  With time being saved and efficiency being optimized, productivity levels naturally rise through the use of automations.

• Cadence Regulation

  Having a regular cadence in marketing is key to nurturing leads. From email campaigns to  posts on social media, automations can help pre-plan a strategic cadence of message delivery.

How to Implement Automations:

Now we know that by automating and delegating marketing tasks, you can free up time and resources while ensuring that your brand's messaging is still authentic and on brand. Automation is a total game-changer, and it’s easy enough to do. Here’s how:

• Identify Repetitive Tasks for Automation

  The first step in automating your marketing processes is to identify repetitive tasks that consume valuable hours. These tasks often include data entry, social media posting, email responses, and more. By automating these efforts, you save time, ensure a regular cadence, and reduce the risk of human error.

• Select the Right Tools and Resources

  Choosing the right tools and resources is crucial for effective marketing automation. Start by researching marketing automation platforms that address your needs. Here are some of the tools we like to recommend at Social Canvas:

  • If you’re looking to automate your emails, check out Flodesk, click here for 50% off. 

  • If you want to automate your social media strategy, look into Loomly, here. 

  • For data automation, try Swydo. Click here.

  • Zapier is useful for integrating multiple platforms.

  • Dubsado is great for Workflows, like sending proposals and tracking lead funnel stage. Click here for 20% off your first month or year.

  • Check out Apollo for researching and finding leads here

Odds are, you’ll want to use more than one automations platform. Do your own research before picking a software that suits your needs and budget.

• Build a Resource Library for Efficient Delegation

  To ensure that your marketing efforts remain authentic even when automated, create a comprehensive resource library for your team. This library should include brand guidelines, tone of voice documents, and content templates. Equipping your team with these resources empowers them to maintain consistency and authenticity across all marketing channels.

Maintaining Authenticity:

While automation can be a powerful ally in marketing, authenticity should always remain a priority. Here are a few tips to maintain authenticity as you begin relying more on automations:

• Humanize Your Automation:

  Craft messages and responses that are personal and relatable. Avoid overly robotic or generic content, and make sure your brand’s voice shines through.

• Regularly Review and Adjust:

  Automations are meant to free up time and headspace, but be careful never to fully go on auto-pilot. Regularly review your automated processes to ensure they're still aligned with your brand's evolving voice and goals, and of course adjust as needed.

• Engage with Your Audience:

  Don't rely solely on automation. Regularly engage with your audience genuinely by responding to comments and messages promptly. 

Using automations should not impact the priority level of your marketing strategy. Automations can run so smoothly that it can be easy to forget to pay attention to some of these automated tasks. Be sure to always stay on the ball and leverage automations as a complement to your strategy, not as the be-all end-all.

If you want help in building your automations, whether that’s an email campaign to nurture leads, a social media calendar, or simply a project management system, Social Canvas is here to help. Schedule a time to chat here.