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Non-profit organizations, small businesses, and solopreneurs may not have the budget to invest in expensive marketing tools or software. However, there are still many ways they can use AI, automation, and bots to improve marketing efficiency on a shoestring budget. 

Over 50% of businesses utilize marketing automation, with almost 60% of B2B companies planning to adopt automation software in their marketing process. The same trend applies to the online community space. The high workload, influx of competitors, and limited budget make it hard for community managers to keep their members engaged.

To sustain their marketing edge, community professionals must utilize modern technological innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation tools, and bots. Read on to learn more about the marketing benefits and methods of using these technologies and how email and social media management can be automated.

Benefits

There are several advantages to incorporating AI, automation, and bots into your community marketing strategy.

Cost Reduction

A lot of a company’s marketing resources are spent on repetitive tasks like feedback monitoring, campaign scheduling, and data gathering. Modern AI with machine learning and other automation tools can handle all of these tasks simultaneously 24/7. Moreover, chatbots can engage with users and answer their queries, so you don’t need to hire additional customer representatives.

A company with a robust AI solution can save costs by up to 20%. AI allows you to remove the budget allocated for menial tasks and spend them on more important aspects of the business.

Improved Accuracy

Human error costs companies over $3 trillion annually. Humans are fallible creatures that tend to miss important details and make improper calculations, especially when tired. In contrast, an AI machine with good programming can constantly deliver accurate and reliable results without tiring. Current AI solutions already have an accuracy rate of 95%, and it wouldn’t take long before the 99% threshold is reached.

Ultimately, a competent human workforce with access to a reliable AI tool is less likely to make critical marketing errors.

Improved Efficiency

AI systems automatically collect and organize important community user data and send it to relevant parties like the marketing team. Hence, your team no longer has to manually sift through countless member information in your online community platforms. They also don’t need to decipher or segregate each data they find afterward.  

The AI system will do all these and present the data in a digestible report. Hence, AI improving marketing efficiency is natural as your team can immediately focus on adjusting marketing strategies and make decisions based on real-time data.

Increased Productivity

Employees spend roughly 20% of their time on routine and tedious tasks. Incorporating an automation tool or bot into marketing operations will relieve your team of these menial duties. This will allow them to spend their time and energy on more productive tasks like improving brand awareness, researching new market trends, and creating content for the members.

Better Targeting

Community professionals using AI know that these intelligent systems can boost targeted marketing. AI systems equipped with machine learning and natural language processing can monitor and analyze user behavior patterns. This allows the system to determine the content and products that each of your community’s users prefers.

Marketers can use this assessment to understand their target audience better. It likewise makes it easier for them to develop targeted community campaigns and messages.

Chat GPT guru Scott Millard shares ChatGPT insights on Twitter

Methods

There are several methods by which AI, automation, and bots improve your community marketing process.

Personalization

AI systems learn over time and can give your members a personalized user experience based on their past behavior and preferences. For instance, if your member often searches for laptop specifications, your AI system will send them a list of good laptops or recommend any related product you sell. Hence, aside from a personalized user experience, your members will also get valuable data and promotional messages.

Automated Campaigns

Speaking of promotional messages, modern AI systems can also create and manage automated marketing campaigns. With data analytics and machine learning, AI can create promotional materials and send them to interested members. These targeted ads can be sent to your member’s email, social media accounts, or the main interface of your online community platform.

By extending the reach of the campaign to different online mediums, AI likewise facilitates omnichannel marketing. This level of marketing can yield a 250% increase in user purchases and engagement.

Chatbots

Chatbots are smart systems that can emulate human communication, thus allowing them to seamlessly interact with customers and provide personalized answers to their queries. Modern chatbots have become so reliable that 62% of users prefer talking to these AI-driven systems rather than waiting for human representatives.

Lead Generation

AI and automation tools can be used to generate more leads and potentially increase conversion rates. AI can streamline the lead scoring and qualification processes by analyzing user behavior patterns, identifying their preferences, and submitting evaluations on whether or not specific prospects fit your ideal customer profile.

Social Media Management

AI can interconnect your different community platforms, which include your business’s social media accounts. This means that the content and marketing materials your produce gets automatically proliferated and posted on all of these channels. This makes social media management less tedious and more efficient as well as facilitates omnichannel marketing that expands your brand’s overall reach.

Gmail’s new integrated email marketing tools.

What Is Email Automation and How Do You Implement It?

Email automation refers to the ability to automatically relay emails to your members at a designated time or event. This capability is highly beneficial in marketing since it allows you to send personalized messages or information to your target audience at the most opportune time or moment.

To implement email automation in your marketing process, you have to choose and integrate an automation tool into your online community platform. Here are some of the best budget-friendly email automation tools for solo and small business owners:

Canva Pro’s content planning tool.

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What Is Social Media Automation and How Do You Implement It?

Social media management tools can automate tasks such as scheduling posts and monitoring mentions, saving time and improving efficiency.

 

Social media automation refers to the process of reducing human involvement in the social media management process through the use of automated systems. Amongst the areas that are streamlined by this process are content publication, user engagement, and brand management.

 

Similar to email automation, social media automation requires the adoption of specialized tools. Here are a few popular and affordable social media automation tools you can try out:

 

Final Thoughts

AI-driven methods such as personalization, automated campaigns, and chatbots continue to benefit community managers. Overall, the key to improving marketing efficiency on a shoestring budget is to focus on automation, AI, and bot technologies that provide the most value for your organization’s specific needs. By automating routine tasks and leveraging AI and bot technologies to optimize marketing efforts, non-profit organizations and small businesses can improve efficiency and achieve better results with limited resources.

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