Getting Started with Automations

When you're a solopreneur, you're wearing ALL the hats - client work, marketing, operations, accounting, and probably many more. What if you could get some time back, either to focus on areas of your business that you love, or time just for yourself or your family or your life outside of work? Sounds pretty dreamy right?

Let's dive into the world of automation! 

What IS automation?

Automations use technology to perform repetitive tasks automatically, meaning you don't need to think about it. This frees up your time and mental space, helps reduce manual tasks, and increases your efficiency and productivity.

What can you automate?

Automations can be part of any aspect of your business. It could be anything from email marketing and social media posting to customer relationship management. We'll dig into some of these ideas a little deeper in a minute.

But first, how do you know where to start?

The first thing to do is think about tasks that you do over and over again that take up your time. These could include responding to emails, scheduling appointments, invoicing, and updating social media.

And how many of those routine tasks are you doing manually? Even if you've been doing a process in a way that works, is it efficient? Take a step back to evaluate how you're doing your tasks. If you could build an automation that saves you 5 minutes every time you use it and you use it once a day, that's over 30 hours a year! And that's just one 5-minute automation.

Another idea to figure out what to automate is to track your time and look for where you're spending your time. Are you spending a lot of time on a specific app or tool? How many hours a day are you in your email inbox? How much time do you spend on simple tasks like invoicing that you do manually but on a regular basis? Tracking your time by activity or project might reveal where you can automate a task. 

Now that you have some ideas of where you might want to build automations, let's look a few examples of simple automations that you can implement in your business.

Appointment Scheduling

This is one of the easiest automations that every online business should implement for a seamless customer experience. Not only does it look more professional, but you will save yourself (and the client) the headache of the back-and-forth trying to book appointments. Tools like Calendly or Acuity allow you to send a booking link with your availability and have clients book a time that works for them. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing helps you connect with your audience and building relationships, which will hopefully lead to sales. Automating email campaigns means you can pre-schedule
emails to your subscribers based on specific triggers or timelines. This could include a welcome series for new subscribers or a nurture sequence for leads. Automation ensures that these campaigns run seamlessly, no matter what, whenever you get a new subscriber or customer.

Another benefit of automated emails is to create excitement leading up to a launch. A series of pre-launch emails can build anticipation, share sneak peeks, and generate buzz around an upcoming product or service.

You can also use email automation to tailor content to your potential customers and increase your sales. You can have different emails based on your customer's preferences and past purchases, and you can send emails with promotions/discounts or product or service recommendations.

There are true email service providers like ConvertKit, Flodesk, Mailerlite, or all-in-one tools that combine your website and email marketing like Kajabi, which would be my recommendation.

Social Media Scheduling

Another easy to way to save yourself time is to use tools like Later or Canva to schedule your social media posts. Planning and scheduling content in advance ensures consistency and allows you to batch your content creation or take time away from social media.

Invoicing and Payments

Another must-have automation for online businesses is allowing online payments and automating recurring invoices. You will need a payment processor like Stripe, and tools like QuickBooks or all-in-one tools like Kajabi. No more e-transfers or manual tracking of payments.

Final thoughts

Automations will help take manual or repetitive tasks off your plate to free up your time to and increase your productivity and efficiency. It's really the best way to work smarter, not harder.

Want to build automations but don't know how? Let's build together in a Strategy Session.