The U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy states that 26.9 million small businesses across the United States account for 99.9 percent of all businesses in the country. How will your business grow when you are competing against many other similar brands?

This is where digital marketing comes in and changes the game for small businesses. It improves customer interaction and brand transparency, which humanizes a brand to its target market. Moreover, it boosts online sales, enabling brands to reach their business goals. As such, it increases brand visibility and encourages business growth.

Given this, it pays to look into SEO and content marketing strategies that improve website traffic and drive online sales. It also pays to amplify these efforts with a marketing workflow that provides consistent results.

With a streamlined workflow process, you may expect:

• Reduced amount of work
• Adherence to the deadline
• Efficient collaboration and task delegation

To get there, however, a thorough understanding of marketing workflow is necessary.

What Is a Marketing Workflow?

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While you might think that you have your marketing workflow down pat, it doesn’t hurt to take a step back and re-evaluate it.

A seamless workflow begins with plans to engage with potential customers. It continues with a strategic guide to the buying process. In other words, it is a series of automated actions that bring in leads and, ultimately, contributes to business growth.

Marketers come up with a workflow based on initial contact with the target audience. They look at the market’s online behavior and contact information. This initial knowledge, however, is not enough. A more streamlined, strategic workflow is necessary to keep a potential lead. To achieve this, you can focus on content marketing, social media engagement, or an SEM strategy. Whichever you decide to pursue, a well-oiled workflow is crucial to success. It draws in the right audience and enables you to save valuable time, effort, and resources. Furthermore, an established workflow can heighten the impact of your digital marketing strategies.

Content Marketing Workflow: From Creating to Boosting Content

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A content marketing workflow begins when you’ve established buyer personas and an overall strategy. This workflow covers everything from drafting your content to distributing it to the target audience. Here is a simple pattern:

1. Creating a blog post
2. Proofing a blog post
3. Publishing the blog post
4. Boosting the blog post on search engines and subscription lists

A tried-and-tested content creation process leads to favorable results. Among other things, good content benefits your market and makes your brand consistent. And these are necessary for marketing success.

Search Engine Marketing Workflow: From Conceptualizing to Uploading Ads

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Search engine marketing is a lot like content marketing — you must research about the target audience and base your work on the findings. It is more direct than the latter, however, so the SEM workflow is different. A typical workflow involves:

1. Determining SEM goals and budget
2. Narrowing down the target audience
3. Conducting keyword research
4. Writing and proofing ad copies
5. Creating images for the copies
6. Reviewing and testing the ads
7. Scheduling the ads for upload

This general workflow simplifies the creation of pay-per-click ads and other types of ads for search engine marketing.

Social Media Marketing: From Monitoring Feeds to Revising Strategies

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Marketers may also include social media marketing in the marketing strategy. In this case, a typical workflow would look like this:

1. Monitoring feeds
2. Managing a posting calendar
3. Preparing and posting blog content, videos, and images
4. Observing audience engagement and response
5. Running reports to improve the strategy

A similar workflow improves audience engagement through social media. It brings businesses closer to the target market on platforms that they use every day.

Why Are Marketing Workflows So Important?

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Marketing workflows are vital to business growth, as they allow you to respond to the behaviors, needs, and preferences of your market. Furthermore, they give you a solid online marketing plan so you save time and effort on your given tasks. Marketing workflows show how a simple routine can increase the efficiency of your marketing efforts. In other words, an efficient marketing workflow, regardless of which digital marketing strategy you adopt, can trigger a significant effect on business growth.

How Can You Make a Marketing Workflow Work for You?

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Marketers are aware that there is no one-size-fits-all marketing workflow. This notion goes two ways — first, different types of inbound marketing strategies require different workflows. Second, the process changes depending on the target audience and the business goals.

As such, be adaptable. Establish a reliable work process that encourages creativity and efficiency. Get rid of the one-size-fits-all notion and customize a marketing workflow for a specific audience, goal, and measure of success. Keep in mind, however, that this is only the first step of making a workflow work for you.

Aside from the benefit of customization, a marketing workflow drives the research results you are looking for. It also helps you stay updated on the latest marketing trends. Comprehensive research includes all aspects of inbound digital marketing, from identifying the target audience to pinpointing what keywords they best respond to. Thus, your research must cover every aspect that affects your marketing strategy. In turn, you should then incorporate your findings into the workflow. Moreover, be on the lookout for the latest marketing trends. A current workflow may be driving great results for business, but a minor shift in trends can make or break it. So, stay updated and include whatever is suitable to your marketing workflow.

How Do You Streamline Marketing Workflow?

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You can make a marketing workflow work for you by customizing it to suit your target audience and business goals. You can make it even better by streamlining it with digital marketing tools that can do the following:

• Analyze your SEO content and backlinks
• Measure your site’s potential SERP rankings
• Identify the best keywords to help you rank
• Discover the sites that your target audience visits
• Run analytics to find the gaps in competitor sites

Such tools bring you one step closer to a streamlined marketing workflow. As a result, you cut down the time and effort to do what you need to without compromising the quality of your work.

Establish Your Marketing Flow Today

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Marketing is often chaotic, what with shifting priorities and constant changes that you must make to stay on top of your game. But with the right tools and information, you can create a marketing workflow for your unique needs. This allows you to establish a more seamless marketing process to meet your long-term business goals.