Marketing for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can certainly be a difficult endeavor. Between needing a budget, a whole marketing team and the know-how to be able to do it all effectively, there’s a lot of moving parts that can make it more difficult for smaller brands to juggle.
A recent study by Constant Contact illustrates that an SMB’s biggest barriers to marketing success are a lack of time and marketing expertise. According to the study, over half of SMBs have less than an hour each day for marketing and 73% of respondents expressed doubt that their strategy is effective.
A Small Business Marketing Solution
To help make marketing easier for SMBs, Constant Contact just launched Campaign Builder. By leveraging AI and other technologies, this platform generates multi-channel marketing campaigns in only minutes.
“Small businesses know they need to market themselves, but they rarely find the time they need to do it well; the process is time-consuming, complex and there are too many places to get stuck if you aren’t a marketing expert,” says Russ Morton, chief product officer at Constant Contact.
“We want to alleviate that stress for our customers by being the marketing arm they don’t have and enabling them to maximize their results with minimal effort,” he continues. “Campaign Builder transforms an SMB’s ability to market their business through a quick and easy experience that empowers them to spend less time on marketing while expanding their tactics and instilling confidence that they are making progress toward their goals.”
How Campaign Builder Works
Campaign Builder is currently available to all Constant Contact customers who have signed up for either their “Standard” or “Premium” plan, according to Morton. For SMBs that aren’t on one of those plans, you can still try Campaign Builder as part of a free 60-day trial.
“We created Campaign Builder to make digital marketing feel less overwhelming for small businesses by speeding up the process and helping them overcome areas where they typically get stuck — creating content and choosing the best marketing channels to reach their customers,” says Morton.
To get started, Constant Contact first asks businesses what they are trying to achieve with their campaign. This can be any number of objectives, including:
- Attracting new customers
- Hosting events
- Promoting new products
After giving Campaign Builder this information, the customer then receives an action plan that tells them exactly what messages they should send, when to send them and which channels they should leverage, according to Morton. It also includes recommended content that can be adapted, as needed.
“The best thing about Campaign Builder is that you don’t need to be a marketing expert to take advantage of what it can do,” says Morton. “Now, in just a few clicks, small businesses can get a marketing campaign that works across email, social media, text and events — and it’s completely tailored to their unique business goals.”
Personalized Marketing Recommendations
Campaign Builder is an outcome-based feature that creates recommendations based on specific goals that a small business inputs. Morton cites that the most popular ways SMBs are using the program is to attract new customers and keep shoppers informed about business news.
“Let’s say I own a pizza restaurant and I want to get customers to visit the new location I’m opening next month,” explains Morton. “Instead of being stuck with writer’s block for hours and wracking my brain to figure out how to get people to visit that new restaurant, I can use Campaign Builder to help me do it more efficiently.”
The program may also recommend that you build toward a grand opening event by starting with a teaser post on social media and then following up with a more detailed email the next week.
“Then, perhaps I send a text message later to my most loyal customers that includes a discount code for a free appetizer when they place their first order at my new restaurant,” advises Morton. “You can imagine all the different ways it might help me market my grand opening to attract new customers.”
So far, Morton says Constant Contact has received great feedback from current Campaign Builder customers. And since the program just launched, this is only the beginning.
