Blog

Small Business Automation

When you are building a small business there will come times when you should start to consider using automation in your business.  These will help you free up time for items you were previously doing on your own.  There are generally some simple tasks that you keep doing over and over that can be performed by automation.

Here are some examples that you may want to consider.

Email Marketing Automation

There are many email marketing tools on the market that can use.  You can start doing some of your basic tasks without the need for you to constantly be doing those tasks.  These tools can be used to send pre-written emails when a potential client or even an active client does some sort of task that you are tracking.  This could be when they first sign up to your email list that you will send a drip campaign of emails.

The first step is when someone signs up for your email list.  They can be sent an email to verify their email to ensure you are not getting robots signing up on your list.  This requires an actual action the subscriber must do to ensure they are a human.  This is also known as a “double opt-in”.

You can also set up an automation to send them a series of pre-written emails to take them through your sales process.

Email marketing campaigns can also be set up as a reminder of upcoming events.

Another use of email automation is when you are giving away a free gift in exchange for their email.  This free gift is called a “lead magnet“.  When someone signs up to get a free gift you will want to have this set up so that they are not waiting on you to have to physically respond to their email with the link as a way for them to get that free gift.

Some great tools that you can use are Keap (formerly known as Infusionsoft and we offer a free consultation if this is the best platform for your business), MailChimp, Aweber, or Constant Contact.

Social Media Automation

There are tools out there where you can automate the posting on your social media platform.  With these platforms, you create your content so that it can be distributed on a drip basis.  This makes your postings a lot easier to perform where you create everything in one sitting and then it can go out on a timely basis that fits what you are trying to accomplish.

Blog Automation

Having a blog that is automated is great for your SEO to be accomplished in a timely manner.  If you have a WordPress website and a blog then when you create a new blog you can save it as a draft when you are done.  Then you can set up a date and time when that blog is published.  This is great for the creative types of people who want to brainstorm a few topics.  Then publish those blogs on a timely basis instead of all at once.  This shows you are posting on a regular basis.  Then you can manually share those to your social media platforms.

Calendar Automation

Having a calendar where people set a time to meet up with you is also going to be extremely helpful in your business.  There is some pre-coordination of work that does need to be addressed though.

The first is to sync your calendar to something like Google Calendar.  Thus, whenever someone tries to schedule a meeting with you that you have all of your blocked-out times already in place.  Those could be other meetings or even some of your personal events marked as already booked.

Thus, when you give someone your calendar then there won’t be any chance of being double-booked.

There are a few different calendar scheduling programs that you can use.  One of the most common ones is called Calendly.  They allow one calendar for free.  Any additional calendars will be in their paid version.

I use Keap which is also the CRM that I use.  They have different types of plans.  You can check them out or schedule a time with us to see which is best for you.

Customer Service Automation

There are many times when some of your customer services can also be automated.  if you have a series of frequently asked questions that are common to many people.  These are often called chatbots.  A chatbot is a human-like series of specially tailored questions that are set up to take clients through.  These are great tools to handle basic common questions.

Lead Generation Automation

Lead Generation Automation occurs when you are using contact forms and landing pages.  The potential client will fill out their personal information, and will then be on your mailing list.  By having this automated whatever initial actions can then take place.  This will work with your Email Automation as they start with your sales process.

Sales Automation

When someone is buying from your website then the checkout forms and the checkout process should be seamless.  This process should include taking their credit card information and then the delivery of whatever was bought.

Accounting & Bookkeeping Automation

When you are making sales you will need to track those transactions for bookkeeping and tax reasons.  When you are making this an automatic process, it will save you a lot of time and effort when you are approaching the end of your business’s calendar year.

Conclusion

When using automation, it’s important to remember to keep your customers in mind. Make sure that the automation you’re using is providing value to your customers, rather than just automating for the sake of automation.