Eight Marketing Tasks to Automate Today to Save Time So You Can Focus on Growing Your Empire

 At Bumper Leads, we live and breathe marketing automation.

It’s our jam.

But for some of you, I bet the mere thought of the word ‘automation’ makes you break out in cold sweat.

Figuring out which tasks to automate in general can be a daunting process for some business owners. But once you automate just one task, be it a marketing task or an operations task, you’d say to yourself why you hadn’t done it before!

Don’t sweat it, though. It’s not too late.

The point of marketing automation is to improve efficiency, reduce costs and enhance customer experience overall.

But first off…

What is Marketing Automation:

I like to imagine it as if all of your marketing tasks were being run by robots in a galaxy far, far away.

Sounds sci-fantastic?

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of what Marketing Automation is:

Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks. Wikipedia.

Be warned, my padawan. Throughout this post, I’ll be using the word ‘automation’ a lot. (bwuahaha)

And again, don’t sweat it.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this post:

• Why planning is important before any type of automation

• How to decide what marketing (and operational) tasks to automate in your business

• I’ll share 8 tasks you can automate to help you free up more time so you can focus on working ON your business (and not IN it)

• And what is the best time to implement marketing automation in your business

TO AUTOMATE OR NOT? THAT IS THE QUESTION!

Before you start automating ANY possible task in your business, you must do some planning.

You’ll need to create a list of tasks you’re currently doing in your role. No matter how minor these tasks are. Write them down.

If you have a team, grab one of your team members to help you brainstorm.

It’s easy to get stuck on this exercise.

So when you’re brainstorming tasks, break them down into Customer Related Tasks and Business Ops Tasks.

Schedule some time in your calendar to focus on this exercise. It’s best to invest an hour or two of your time here so you can free up more time later down the track when you’re big and famous (and don’t have to worry about doing the small, admin tasks).

You’ll not only free up time in the long run, but you’ll also save money on hiring additional staff. 

HOW TO AUTOMATE YOUR MARKETING AND OTHER BUSINESS PROCESSES?

Below’s a bit more useful info for your planning!

Think about your customer:

• How do they get in touch with you?
• What are customer touch points in your business?
• Where on your website do your subscribers click?
• How do they engage with you at each touch point, eg via social media, email?
• Are they following you on social media?
• Are they visiting the same page more than once?
• Are they inactive in your database?
• Are they buying more than once from you?

And now I want you to think about your business ops tasks.

Think about your business

• What are some of the repetitive tasks you do in your business
• And what about for your team?
• What could be some tasks you can outsource and what could be some you could automate?

The tasks to automate are the ones that don’t require too much brain power to perform. For example, copy/paste information from one tool to another, doesn’t require any brain power. It can be achieved by systems such as Zapier.

You can create a zap that automatically adds a Facebook lead to your Mailchimp account. Or your Eventbrite registrants, they can also be added to your email database as contacts so you can send them further info about the events you’re running.

No more copy/paste and manually importing contacts. Yipee!

And, now, as you can see, you’ll have the time to focus on the more complex and strategic tasks to grow your business.

(If I’ve lost you at Zapier or if you have questions about system integration for your business, don’t hesitate to chat to one of our friendly team members. They’re all like me – have wealth of knowledge and are not scared to overshare! Click here to book a 30-min chat.)

8 MARKETING TASKS YOU CAN AUTOMATE TO FREE UP MORE TIME

Here are some set-and-forget types of tasks you should automate as soon as you can.

I’ll split this into Service-based business vs eCommerce Business

For service based businesses, some of the tasks you might want to automate are:

• Booking an appointment via Acuity when using Zoom.

If this is not automated, then the task of booking appointments and then scheduling the same time inside Zoom can be a pain in the butt. Literally.

Yes, you can automate this.

• Qualify your cold leads and prospects… turn them from cold to hot.

• Customer onboarding

Once your customer buys from you, the next step is to send them a Welcome Pack or the Next Steps info.

Yes, you can automate all this.

• What if a potential customer sends you an enquiry via a Contact Us Form. Will they get a confirmation email?

It surprises me how in this day and age, some Contact Forms out there, don’t send a personalized confirmation email to the submitter.

(What’s being sent instead, is a generic message displayed on the screen that sounds super boooring. We’ve all seen those ;-))

I highly recommend you automate and personalize your website Contact Form submissions for an improved user experience.

It’s one way you can leave a memorable mark on your would-be customer. Not to mention, it will help you stand out from the competition.

For example, our Contact Form enquiry confirmation emails are signed by our Chief Happiness Officer – Samantha. (Check her out here)

For e-Commerce businesses you can automate the following:

• You can automate new product launch sequences
• How can you tell if your customer has bought more than once or more than twice from you? You can automate communication based on your customer’s purchase behaviour.
• You can automate Abandoned Cart email sequences and recoup close to 30% of what could’ve been missed revenue
• Whenever you publish a post on your site, you can automatically notify your email list.
• Management and communication of wholesalers and suppliers in your database

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION?

The best time to implement automation in your business is…now.

Putting in automated systems in place from day one will free you up with more time to focus on money-making tasks, eg talking with customers on the phone, running events and workshops, face-to-face meetings, and so on.

It’s never too late to start creating automated systems in your business.

The trouble is finding the time to sit down and really focus on writing down each and every task that you and your team perform in the business. Oh, but it’s so worth it in the end!

I hope today’s post was helpful in prompting you to think about your overall business processes. We all need a bit of a push like this from time to time,eh?

OVER TO YOU

Schedule an hour or two in your calendar just to focus on brainstorming tasks you’re currently doing in your business. What are some tasks that could be automated? Mark them inside a document.

When thinking about your tasks, think about the current tasks where you’re interacting with customers, and then think about the tasks around business operations.

I’m certain you’ll find more than eight to automate.

If you’d like to read more articles, check out our other posts on Autoresponders and Lead Magnets.