At this point, too many of us have tried, failed, tried again, and failed again to scale our businesses through marketing, but what many of us don't think about are the necessary foundational and structural updates that need to be made to assure our businesses can carry the load.
Today's marketing minute is all about automation.
We'll discuss what simple steps can be taken, but here are the main ways that we ask ourselves whether our business, or a client's, can be improved by automation.
Would we be able to handle an increase in clientele with our current operations structure and team?
Would our Sales Team be able to handle a surge of new qualified leads and properly lead them to become customers?
Does our team have the capacity to work on growing our organization?
If the answer is no to any of these, it's time to consider automation.
Automation Might Not Seem Important Right Now...Oh Wait...
The graphic above also points out to us just how much automation is changing. This graphic made in 2019, right before the pandemic, was a prediction showing that 44% or more of experts in the field thought that Marketing Automation specifically would become one of the most important aspects of business growth.
We all know that 2020 went differently, and now it is more likely that automation is THE single most important way to grow your business. Being able to handle scale, and up the capacity of everyone on your team to handle moments of mass interest... or the need for more interest, can define if you keep up with competitors or even stay in the game.
What should our automation accomplish?
When it comes to automation, the common feedback we hear is - "Well we don't want our business to feel impersonal..."
The reality is that automation does nothing more than replicate and speed up your already existing processes. If your business is dependent on the hand delivery of every email, scheduling process and every task that is done throughout the day - you likely are going to experience extraordinary overhead costs that will at some point hinder your growth.
The areas that our company tries to utilize automation include:
Simple Processes that are Done Regularly - If a process is done many times regularly the same way - a robot should do it, not a human.
Attract - The ways that you bring attention to your business can be automated. How can you create the same experience for your viewers without increasing your capacity. A good example of this is automating your PPC and Social Media marketing from post scheduling to automating comment responses.
Capture - How do you capture lead and listener information? Automating the ways that people can get in touch with your company can make it easier to find time with your team, but also lighten the administrative load you may feel when bringing new people in. Automation for us replaces the need for 2-3 admin roles... our spend $150/month as opposed to 2-3 full-time salaries.
Nurture - Once someone is in your funnel, how do you keep them there? Regular email updates? Do you send them industry information and previous work to show why your organization is worth supporting? Sounds like something you could put into an automation sequence and schedule out once and duplicate for thousands of people to experience.
Convert - This part can feel daunting. This is the core of your sales process, but once someone has expressed interest, you can automate their experience down to the contract being sent out. Mapping out your sales process and then figuring out, with the help of an automation expert, what parts can be automated to save your team time and sanity is the easiest way to get started. With or without an expert, simply mapping your business operations out can make it easier to have a big-picture conversation with your team.
Retain - While most marketers and sales individuals get stuck in the world of conversions and onboarding, figuring out what works best to keep your customers happy, informed, and at peace with your service or product can make a world of difference.
It Doesn't Have to Happen All At Once
As a business owner, I know this can feel a bit chaotic, and simply realizing the amount of planning and manpower needed to make this move can feel daunting.
Rest assured that it all doesn't need to happen today. Automation can start at any stage, macro-company-level or micro-employee-level. Here are some takeaways we'd love for you to rest in:
Automation lets you start small.
Automation keeps your plans flexible. Writing a massive 40-page marketing automation plan is great, but sometimes it’s better to jump in and fail fast.
Automation lets you know what works and what doesn’t work for your company before you’ve sunk a chunk of budget into it.
You’ll be building on success.
We've created a list for some further reading, check out some of these blogs below:
7 Ways to Automate Your Marketing for Better Results - https://replug.link/66db3400
What is marketing automation? - https://replug.link/ba49dc90
A Comprehensive Guide to Marketing Automation - https://www.spiralytics.com/blog/marketing-automation/
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