Sales calls and other manual methods of making sales are becoming a thing of the past. This happens as technology becomes more advanced and people get busier. Luckily, there are many ways to take advantage of ever-changing technology to automate your business.
1. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is still a relatively new concept and even newer still when applied to small businesses. Even so, using AI in sales can help with all sorts of tasks, from gathering information to sending emails and more. All in all, almost any task that can be scheduled to be completed automatically can be done by AI.
One of the most common ways AI is used in businesses is for lead generation. Lead generation, also called email lead generation, is used to collect the email addresses of potential or current customers. Businesses can then send newsletters, sales, and other offers to these email addresses. When customers are directly sent this information, they are more likely to head to a business’s website than if they were left to their own devices to look up sales.
2. Social Media Post Scheduling Software
Any business operating in the 21st century needs to have some kind of social media presence. Using social media on a consistent basis is one of the best ways to build an online reputation. Of course, there are so many different social media websites these days it can be difficult to know which ones to use. As of 2022, some of the most popular social media websites are Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram (listed in no particular order). Which social media sites are most popular varies year to year. Just in 2020, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube were hardly on the list of the most popular social media websites and apps used by businesses!
While business owners should focus on posting on the more popular social media websites, posting on any social media website is better than posting on none. Posting on all of the sites listed above can be time-consuming if you don’t know how to do it correctly– or if you don’t know how to automate it. There are dozens of social media scheduling websites and apps that businesses can use for free. So, instead of manually posting every day, several times a day, on who knows how many apps, business owners can plan all their posts at once and schedule them to appear on different social media platforms throughout the week.
3. Help Chatbots
Oftentimes, different customers will need help with the same kinds of problems, whether it be with navigating a website, placing an order, or something else. Rather than having an employee spend their time answering the same questions over and over again, it can be helpful to install a chatbot on your website or social media page that can answer simple and repetitive questions automatically.
Most Chatbots can be programmed to answer specific questions. They do this by catching keywords in a customer’s questions. With some other Chatbots, the customers will pick from a dropdown menu of commonly asked questions. From there, the Chatbot will redirect them to a page on the website that will be able to help.
To make the Chatbot function even better for customers, it is best for the website to have a FAQ page with answers. This is where most people will need to be redirected to. Also, make sure to give the Chatbot an option to connect the customer with a human employee. Sometimes robots don’t have all the answers that people do. Sometimes customers just prefer to talk to a human.
Running a business is difficult already, so there’s no need to make the job even harder by doing everything manually. Small business owners should try to automate as much of their business as possible without taking away the aspect of a human connection for customers. This will make business flow smoother and faster.
