Pros and Cons of Local Marketing Automation

December 30, 2015 By Jeff Price No comments yet

The Cons Of Marketing Automation

If you’ve thought about automating your marketing, you might feel daunted by the learning curve or price tag associated with many of the automation tools on the market. First we’ll explore some of the “cons”, like time and money investment, and why it can sometimes hold small businesses back from taking steps into automation.

Then we’ll see the “pros” and the power that marketing automation can have in your business.

Merchants Don’t Have Time To Become Sophisticated Marketers

For one, small business owners are busy. The time and required focus it takes to send frequent email campaigns and build their customer lists is challenging. A recent survey by Streetfight in partnership with Thrive Analytics highlighted that 42% of Merchants rate a lack of time as their biggest digital marketing challenge, followed by budget and expertise. While they recognize that digital marketing is effective, they don’t have the time to run their business while also becoming a sophisticated marketer.

According to a survey by Constant Contact, SMBs spend an average of 33 hours per week on marketing activities, including SEO, online banner ads, website updates, and email newsletters.

Merchants would love to reduce this time, but only if they were able to do so without decreasing the return they see from existing local campaigns.

One of the most effective tactics for gathering email addresses is tying email acquisition to loyalty program registrations promoted in-store. Add in marketing automation for small business and you have a pretty powerful tool. Still keeping you on the edge of your seat, aren’t I? Read on.

It’s Expensive

Believe me. I know. I’ve evaluated all of the major marketing automation tools, and been a customer of two of them. While they’re very effective and offer a wide variety of features and functionality, they can be out of reach for small business budgets. Plus, most small businesses don’t require all of the features they’re paying for. Most require hefty implementation fees and some require yearly payment (in the ten thousands) up front.

Small Businesses Lack The Tools To Measure Marketing Effectiveness

Again, this goes back to not having the time or expertise. Most local small businesses are ill-equipped to measure marketing effectiveness. 58% said they asked their customers directly while only a third said they even tried to determine where every lead came from. Only 55% use some kind of a dashboard, and that’s most often a social media platform.
– via Social Media Today

What Are The Pros Of Local Marketing Automation?

So people get stopped from putting marketing automation in place for their business because of the learning curve or investment – but if you can overcome those hurdles, what can automation do for you?

It’s important not to take the cons above as absolute truth – yes, automation can be complicated, but doesn’t HAVE to be. It can be expensive, but doesn’t HAVE to be.

For many businesses, marketing automation is the key to outstanding, lasting success. Below are just a few of the reasons why.

Whether you’re managing 500+ locations across the entire county or several locations within a given region, there are benefits and efficiencies to be gained from automating, including:

Improved search engine rankings. Accurate business listings and optimized landing pages can boost search engine rankings. Search engine crawlers are increasing their reliance on site authority and validation — which come from accurate and consistent business information across a range of directories and backlinks. Automating listing distribution and landing page development and optimization expedite these processes and can help move individual store or dealer locations to the top of SERPs.

Increased productivity. Manual tasks such as SEO and schema markup, online directory listing management and distribution, search engine map management and development and maintenance of local landing pages and mobile-optimized pages are time-consuming and tedious. Automating these processes frees up both your corporate marketers and your local managers to focus on their primary roles: marketing your brand and selling your products and services.

More cost-efficient marketing. Case studies from national retailers show that automating local marketing functions can help to lower CPCs due to better SEO.

Better message coordination and consistency. Local marketing automation tools foster coordination between national and local marketers through CMSs that centralize brand marketing messages, campaigns and product information, as well as location data including addresses, product selections and business hours. The result is the ability to disseminate brand-approved, consistent, accurate marketing information across locations.

Expanded local marketing expertise. Digital marketing expertise varies widely across local networks of dealers, franchisees and retailers. Many local marketing automation vendors offer strategic services to help clients engage local businesses and make local marketing a more successful endeavor.

– via Marketing Land