Creating automation in your marketing plan is a topic a lot of people don’t realize they have strong opinions about until they think about it in the context of their own business. Today, let’s unpack the idea of automation with all its pluses and minuses, as well as some of the guideposts I’ve settled on as I’ve explored using automation in my own business.
First, what do I mean by automation? Generally speaking, any process in your business in which you do the same thing repeatedly is fair game for automation. This could pertain to any systems in your business, not just in marketing.
Any process in your #business in which you do the same thing repeatedly is fair game for #automation. #smallbusiness #smallbiz #biztips Share on XAre there any parts of your marketing plan that involve doing the exact same thing over and over again? For many businesses, certain types of follow up you have directly with your contacts (such as outreach that is prompted by particular actions they take, purchases they make, etc.) could be one of those things that gets automated. A different example is that any manual process you have to add contacts to other platforms could be automated, such as adding contact information for new leads to multiple marketing, bookkeeping, or other tools.
There also may be some parts of your marketing that you instead choose to outsource to a human. Tasks that involve human decisions or human creativity can be passed along to a new team member or assistant, and you can train that person up front to make sure they are making decisions in alignment with your brand.
Some tasks, though, can be more efficiently and accurately done by creating an automated system, thus releasing the humans in the business to do more focused work.
The topic of automation is actually a controversial one for microbusiness owners. The smaller your team is and the earlier you are in your business, the harder it can be to imagine delegating tasks or having anything happen in your business that you don’t directly trigger. Then there are the business owners I talk to who basically like the idea of offloading work, but they don’t think about it seriously because they don’t know where to begin. For other business owners, there is an imminent desire to take work off their own plates and/or free up their teams for more pressing tasks that truly leverage their skill sets.
If you are at a point in your business where it is clear that something has to give, where you feel like you are running to catch up all the time, where you are bogged down by menial tasks that prevent you from growing your community or you client base, automation may be the answer.
What do you need to be aware of if you choose to automate? Here are some things that you may perceive as positives or negatives:
- Setting up any automation is a project. It involves assessing what needs to be automated, what tool to use to do the automation, understanding the impact it will have on the business, then actually configuring whatever is going to be automated. It takes time up front to set up an automation. BUT, if you can carve out that time now, it saves you time for the rest of your business moving forward.
- You’ll want to play a little 3D chess in your head to make sure what you are setting up will stand the test of time. Once you have set up an automated process, it continues to happen in the background without your thinking about it. So, if something changes in your business, you’ll want to make sure you have kept track of what is automated so you know if anything needs to change. It’s better if you can minimize the changes needed by making the process as timeless as possible.
- Of course, having systems taking place in the backgrounds is also an upside. You don’t have to take the time to do the same tasks over and over again. They’re already happening. You set it and forget it, and you have put time back in your day to do the other things that only you can do.
- You may want to establish some rules for your business on to what degree you automate processes that are customer facing. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way to set rules for this, but it is about knowing what your brand is and staying true to it.
In my own business, automation in many areas became imperative, but I was initially worried about losing the essence of my brand in the process. I didn’t want to seem like a robot. I didn’t want to seem unapproachable. I’m not those things, and I don’t want to come across that way to anyone who interacts with me or Melissa Forziat Events and Marketing. But, creating more efficiency in my business was still vital. So, I asked myself hard questions and set some parameters.
One example of a process that I needed was what would happen when someone downloaded an eBook from my site. From most pages of my website, you will get the opportunity to access my free eBook. In the early days, once someone filled out the form to get the eBook, I had about half a dozen MANUAL steps to complete in my business. I got pinged with a notification email that the form got filled out, I had to send them the eBook and a thank you message, I made sure to capture their details so I knew who they were. And if they filled out the form at midnight, I still had to do it all. If I wanted to take a day off or got tied up with other work, and they didn’t get the thing they asked for right away, it reflected badly on my business.
The eBook was important for my business, but it was also a burden. At this point, I’ve had thousands of sign-ups for my eBook. I knew people were going to get ignored because I couldn’t keep up, and I didn’t want that to happen.
The first step I took was to map out the process I wanted to automate. I made sure I understood exactly what needed to happen when someone signed up. I planned out what I wanted them to hear from me. I thought about how to make messages feel personal if they were automated. I made decisions about what times a personal message written on the fly SHOULD be in the process and what would trigger it. My objectives were not to seem robotic and not to ignore people, and I found there was a lot of middle ground there to explore.
At this point, I’d have no way to calculate for you the hours it has saved me to have a process like this in place. The stress I used to feel about being away from my computer and missing these notifications isn’t there anymore. I reinvested that time to building my relationships in other ways that only I can do. I’ve also built on my initial more basic automations and founds new ways to nurture new relationships.
If you are looking for examples, I am pulling back the curtain. I challenge you to look at my own marketing to see what triggers systems and what triggers personal interaction from me. Use what I have created in my business or what other business owners have created in theirs to set your guideposts on how you do or don’t want your brand to come across.
Think about your own business operations. Is there something in your marketing plan – or any other aspect of your operations, for that matter – that would actually be done better by removing yourself? If the answer is yes, it may be time to explore automation.
If you want to learn more about this topic, check out this Marketing Tip of the Week on 4 Steps to Finding the Right Automation Platform.