Help Put Your Small Business Sales and Marketing on Autopilot With These Four Tips

There’s not enough time in the world, is there?

Time management has been the bane of small businesses forever, but how we manage out time has perhaps become more important than as modern marketing has so many moving pieces.

Think about it: the demands of modern content marketing and social media didn’t exist a decade ago. Likewise, competition is absolutely fierce due to the fact that many small businesses entering the marketing sphere day after day.

In short, time is money for small businesses struggling to juggle so many different roles.

Is there a solution in sight?

The answer for many SMBs is to buckle down and assess what aspects of their operations are eating up the most time and which can be put on autopilot.

If you’re struggling with time management or are interested in exactly how you can ensure that your business is productive as possible in the coming years, keep the following tips in mind.

Beef Up Your Project Management Performance

Project management is much more than just a buzzword in the modern business world: in fact, many SMBs lack an understanding of exactly how they delegate tasks to their respective teams.

Content creation. Social posts. Networking goals. You name it.

There’s a good chance that you’re leaving money on the table and wasting time simultaneously if you don’t have your project management on point.

If you’re a project manager struggling to get tasks done in a timely manner, perhaps it’s time to get your PMP certification and take your team to the next level.

Put Your Emails on Autopilot

The benefits of email marketing are crystal clear: from the ability to keep in touch with your customers to a dirt-cheap cost-per-message, email is absolutely essential for any SMB. That being said, if you don’t have your email on autopilot, you’re likely pulling your hair out trying to chase your contacts.

Setting up autoresponders and effective drip campaigns cost little more than an investment of your time (thanks to free email platform such as MailChimp) and can keep you in touch with your customers minus the headache.

Savvier Social Media

Social media is perhaps one of the most notorious time-sinks in modern marketing. That being said, you are expected to have at least some sort of social presence across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to let your customers know that you’re alive and well. 

So, what elements of social should you focus on to prevent wasting time? 

• Sharing your content with customers, which can be put on a schedule so you don’t have to manually update your base
• Responding to customer inquiries: don’t let this one fall to the wayside
• Boosting others in your industry with retweets and shout-outs 

Social media doesn’t have to be rocket science: oftentimes a more stripped down approach is more than enough.

Smarter SEO

Finally, SEO represents the elephant in the room for many struggling businesses. Impossible to ignore but difficult for newbies to tackle, it’s important for businesses to focus on a simplified SEO strategy that focuses on long-tail keywords and simple link-building outreach versus trying to punch above your weight.

Take a look at your analytics to understand what keywords realistically rank for and take a “quality over quantity” approach to content creation. For example, the “80/20” rule of content creation, noting that you should spend 80% of your time promoting content versus 20% creating it, may be a more prudent approach for your company.

Don’t get it twisted: running an SMB involves an incredible amount of legwork. That being said, you should strive to let “work smarter, not harder” be your mantra as you head into the new year. Assess where you can save time in regard to your day-to-day tasks and delegate them accordingly.