How small businesses can automate their marketing

Feel like you're constantly chasing leads, yet nothing is converting? Are you manually sending emails, following up with prospects and posting on social media, all while running your business?

In this Lunch and Learn, Bukola Odunaiya will explain how your small business can automate its marketing to save time, work more consistently and generate more revenue – without hiring a large team or investing in complex software.

Topics covered in this session

• What marketing automation really means (and what it doesn't)

• The three essential automations every small business should have

• How to turn enquiries into nurtured leads automatically

• Simple tools you can use to get started

• Common mistakes that waste time and money

About the speaker

Bukola is a senior partner marketing manager at Expedia Group, where she leads strategic communications across key hotel partners and the full Expedia product suite.

She's also the founder of AI marketing consultancy Verse Marketing, and Vintraa, an AI agent marketplace.

With deep expertise in marketing automation and technology, Bukola brings commercial thinking and emerging tools together in a way that actually drives results.

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Transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Beth: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Beth, and I'll be your host today.

For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses. I'm pleased to introduce Bukola Odunaiya, who is the founder of Verse Marketing.

In this session, Bukola will explain how your small business can automate its marketing to save time, work more consistently and generate more revenue.

If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat, and we'll do our best to answer them at the end. Today's webinar will be recorded, and we will send a follow-up email with further resources and the recording later today.

So thank you, and over to you, Bukola.

Bukola: Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Bukola, as mentioned. Today, I'll be talking to you about how to automate your business.

First, a quick introduction. I've been in marketing for 15 years. I like to call myself a full-stack marketer because I've worked across various marketing functions, including trade marketing, media marketing and product marketing. I've also worked across a range of brands you probably know, including Coca-Cola, Heineken, Always and Pampers.

For my education, I completed an MBA at Warwick Business School, and I'm also a Chartered Marketer with the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

One of my proud achievements is being recognised as one of the top 100 marketing influencers in the UK by the Technology for Marketing group.

In recent years, I've focused on partner marketing, AI marketing, marketing automation and AI automation. I'm also currently building an AI agent marketplace for small businesses, so once that launches, you'll definitely hear about it.

Outside work, I love painting, travelling and dancing. If you ever stumble across my TikTok videos, that's just my alter ego.

So what are we covering today? We'll talk about what marketing automation actually means, the three main automations every SME needs, tools you can start using immediately, the role of automation, a real example of automation in action, and how to get started without a huge budget or a team.

I want to start with this quote: "The businesses that win tomorrow are automating today". I really believe that.

If you're not automating the small, repetitive things now, you probably won't be ready for what's coming next. AI is here, and we can't underplay the role it's going to have in the next five to 10 years for SMEs and businesses in general. So the message today is simple: start automating now.

The problem many business owners face is that you are the marketer, the sales team, the content creator and the customer service rep all at once. You're doing everything, and things naturally fall through the cracks.

While you're posting on Instagram, a lead is waiting for a response. While you're following up with a lead, customer service is being neglected.

There are only so many hours in the day. If you're one person, or even a team of two or three, you need to automate some parts of the business to free up time for the things that really matter.

Before I go further, I want to clear up a few misconceptions about marketing automation.

First, marketing automation is not a replacement for strategy. A tool can help refine your target audience, but it can't define it for you. You know your market. You know what you're selling. It can't create your positioning for you or build your marketing strategy from start to finish. It's an execution tool, not the strategy itself.

Second, marketing automation is not just email marketing. Email is a big part of it, but it also includes ads, lead scoring, CRM workflows and more. It's much broader than most people think.

Third, it is not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. Once you create an automation, you still need to monitor it. You need to check that it's working properly, still fit for purpose, and bringing in the right leads. If you've built a lead scoring system, for example, you need to check the quality of the leads coming through and whether they're moving through the funnel as expected.

It's also not about spamming people. It's not about sending mass emails or messages without thinking. Everything still has to be relevant and strategic. If the message is irrelevant, it won't achieve your goal.

And finally, it's not instant success. Automation needs proper set-up and the right strategy behind it. It also does not replace creativity. Humans are still needed. You still have to bring your ideas, your voice and your judgement to the process.

So what does marketing automation actually mean? In simple terms, it's a system that works while you sleep. More formally, it's any tool or process that sends the right message to the right person at the right time without you having to do it manually every time.

That's where the real value lies. It helps you market consistently without carrying the full weight of every task yourself. It automates repetitive tasks. It helps you follow up faster. It lets you focus on growing the business instead of constantly working in it.

There are three core automations that I think every small business can start with.

The first is email automation. This is one of the cheapest and easiest places to begin. There are plenty of free email marketing tools you can use.

If you're already doing email marketing, automation simply helps you do it better. You can set up welcome emails for new customers. You can create lead nurture sequences. You can send abandoned basket reminders if you run an ecommerce business. And you can build re-engagement campaigns for past customers.

A welcome email helps people feel seen and valued. A nurture sequence helps turn cold leads into buyers. An abandoned basket reminder can win back sales you would otherwise lose. Re-engagement emails can bring previous customers back into your world.

And if you are not doing these things already, especially if you're in ecommerce, you are very likely leaving money on the table.

The second area is lead capture and follow-up automation. This is critical because if someone fills in a form on your website and hears nothing from you for hours, that lead may already be gone.

You can automate a response as soon as someone fills in a form, sends you a message or interacts with an ad. That might be an email, a WhatsApp message or an Instagram DM response. It could say, "Thanks for getting in touch. We've received your request and someone will be in touch shortly."

That immediate response matters. It tells the person they have been heard. It builds trust. And it keeps them warm until you or your team can step in.

For Instagram DMs, a tool like ManyChat can help automate responses. For WhatsApp, there are AI agents that can handle that initial stage of the conversation. For websites, forms and landing pages, you can automate the first few steps of the journey so no lead feels ignored.

The third area is social media scheduling. Social media is a big challenge for many business owners because it takes time and consistency.

The good news is that lots of content can be created in batches and scheduled in advance. That includes evergreen content, promotional campaigns, recurring weekly themes and seasonal content.

For example, you might have weekly posts such as testimonials on Tuesdays or tips on Fridays. You can batch-create these and schedule them in tools like Buffer or Meta Business Suite. That way, you're not scrambling every day for something to post.

And I also want to add a fourth category, which is AI automation, because we really can't have this conversation in 2026 without talking about AI.

What AI does is add intelligence to automation. Basic automation might mean sending an email when someone fills in a form. AI automation can go further. It can understand what the person needs, decide the best response, write it, send it and log the interaction, all without you touching anything.

You can use AI agents to qualify leads and respond in your tone of voice. You can use chatbots on your website to answer questions, capture leads and book calls. You can use AI to turn one idea into a newsletter, a blog post and a LinkedIn post. And you can use it inside your CRM to track activities, flag hot leads and remind you to follow up.

These are not future possibilities. These are things you can start doing now. I want to show you a real example of this in action.

We built an AI agent for a car dealership. The agent was trained on all the relevant details, so when someone asked about a particular car, it knew the model, the VIN number, the features, the price and other key information.

The customer could have a proper conversation with the AI agent, and it felt like they were speaking with the business. Once the conversation reached the point of arranging a test drive or moving towards purchase, the human sales team stepped in. So the AI handled the early-stage questions and filtering, and the team focused on closing the deal.

That is the ideal use of automation. You don't replace the human. You free the human to focus on the work only they can do.

Now let's talk about tools you can start using today.

·        For email marketing, you can look at Mailchimp, MailerLite, HubSpot or Brevo.

·        For social media scheduling, you can use Buffer, Meta Business Suite or Later.

·        For lead capture, HubSpot Forms, Typeform and Tally are all good options.

·        For AI automation, Zapier is great for connecting tools. Claude and ChatGPT can support content creation and workflows. Make is also a strong option.

And I'll do a shameless plug here as well. There's also Vyntra, which is an AI marketplace for agents, something I'm currently building. That's coming in the next few months.

I want to leave you with this thought: automation is not about removing the human from your business. It's about freeing the human to focus on the work only they can do.

That means letting automation handle invoicing, social scheduling, repetitive emails, funnels, lead flows and routine admin, while you focus on strategy, customer understanding, relationship-building and growth.

That's everything I wanted to cover, so I'm happy to open it up for questions.

Beth: Thanks so much. We've had a lot of comments in the chat saying this has been really helpful. Thank you. And we've had a lot of questions about the tools and platforms you'd recommend, which you've just covered.

One question we've had is: how do you set up an automated response to an Instagram inquiry?

Bukola: There's a tool called ManyChat. If you search for it online, you'll find it easily.

You can set up triggers based on things like keywords in comments, DMs or other interactions. For example, if someone comments a particular word on one of your posts, ManyChat can automatically send them a message. Or if someone sends you a DM, it can reply instantly with the response you've programmed.

ManyChat has a free plan to get you started, and even the paid version is relatively affordable. It's a great tool for Instagram automation.

Beth: Brilliant, thank you. Another question that's come in is how to strike the balance between automation and personal contact.

Bukola: That's a really important question. My view is that automation should handle the repetitive, low-value tasks.

Things like invoicing, initial responses, basic lead nurturing and routine customer queries. Those are the things technology can do very well.

The human part should come in at the moments that matter most, especially when someone is close to making a decision. That's when your one-to-one input becomes really valuable.

So if we go back to the car dealership example, the AI handled the early conversations because it had all the necessary information. But once the lead was serious and ready to move towards a test drive or purchase, the human stepped in.

That's the balance. Let automation do the groundwork, and let your people focus on the relationships and the final decisions.

Beth: Thank you. We also had a few questions about the CRM platform shown in your car dealership example. What platform was that?

Bukola: That was a bespoke system we built for that business. Alongside Verse Marketing, I also run an AI marketing agency, so we build bespoke AI agents for businesses based on their needs. That example was custom-built specifically for that client.

Beth: Great, thank you. We've got time for one more. What are the biggest signs that a business is ready for marketing automation rather than continuing manually?

Bukola: Honestly, once you start losing sleep, you're ready. But more broadly, I'd say every business, no matter how small, should automate something.

Not everything needs to wait until you're overwhelmed. The goal is to free up time early so you can focus on growth rather than getting stuck in repetitive work.

Most of the tools I mentioned are free or low-cost, and many of them are simple enough to start using without a lot of support. So I wouldn't wait for a perfect moment. Start automating the repetitive tasks now.

If you're spending all your time replying to emails, posting manually, following up individually and moving information from one place to another, then you're not really building the business. You're just servicing it.

And I like money, so I'd rather automate what I can and spend more time growing the business.

Beth: I think a lot of people in the chat will relate to that. Thank you so much. That's been a brilliant session. We've had so many lovely comments, and people have said how useful they found it.

As mentioned earlier, we'll be sharing the recording of today's session along with some follow-up resources later this afternoon. I've also dropped Bukola's links in the chat, so please do connect with her afterwards if you have more questions.

Thanks again, Bukola, and thanks everyone for joining us today. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Bukola: Thank you. Bye.

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