1. Automate, Delegate, and Eliminate
Getting the day-to-day marketing tasks off your plate should be the ultimate goal for any business owner. It’s not the best use of your time and chances are, someone else may be able to do it better and pay more attention. However, in the early stages, that might not be entirely feasible. Here are a few ideas to help you out.
Automate
- Schedule social media posts. I know I already said not to do this but sometimes you just have to do it rather than doing nothing. I’ve already mentioned Hootsuite, but Meta Business Suite offers free calendar scheduling to pre-plan your Facebook and Instagram posts.
- Create email flows. When done correctly, email flows print money. You can segment customers, email them based on their interests or activity, and warm them up to a purchase without ever having to do anything once you create the email message flow.
- AI. Artificial intelligence is changing marketing. Now you can have Facebook Messenger automatically respond to customer questions and schedule automated posts in your Facebook group. We’ve implemented a chatbot on a website that mined hundreds of blog articles on the site and answered customer questions (better than we could!) by pulling its answers from the blog.
Delegate
- Outside Vendors. This is often where a small business begins. In the beginning, you may hire a web developer to create your website, advertise online, or maybe even manage your social media (yikes). Results range from great to terrible depending on your budget, ability to vet the vendor’s qualifications, and how well they follow through.
- Employee. Typically, we see business owners delegating low-level marketing tasks like social media to an employee as a side project. This can work but the marketing plan and social media guidelines need to be very clear so the employee has operating parameters. Hiring a full-time marketer may make sense depending on the amount of work. A marketing plan is crucial in these situations to ensure the employees stay on brand and on task.
- Fractional CMO. Once a company reaches a certain size, a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer is their best option. An fCMO will be able to strategize with ownership, take responsibility for the marketing plan, and manage the various vendors and employees while keeping an eye on KPIs to ensure the best result.
Eliminate
Cut loose bad marketing efforts. With a good marketing plan and good analytics, you can safely stop doing what doesn’t align with that plan or isn’t working. This creates more time to focus on what does work or other ownership roles.
2. Repurpose Content
One blog post can become a week’s worth of social media content. A long-form video can be broken into 30-second reels. A series of photos can become a slideshow. Turn a topic into a meme, create a video explainer, and hit your audience again with a photo and short blog excerpt in the description. You don’t have to keep coming up with new things to talk about, simply discuss your core topics in a variety of ways. And, as always, analyze what gets the most engagement.
3. Focus on Quality Over Quantity
Whatever you choose to do, posting on Facebook, utilizing email, blogging… be consistent and provide engaging, informative content. Entertain or inform with each piece and be sure it’s relevant to your audience. You may want to post three times a day on social media or you may find that simply posting three times a week with great information is more than enough.
Incidentally, if you’re a local restaurant, post daily. Post your specials, who’s bartending today, a good-looking plate, a customer review… never make a potential customer have to look too hard to find what they want.