Author: Dear Coach Team

Automation can save a small business time and money if it is started in a small, focused and concentrated manner. The first major decisions will be what to automate, and why. Then it will be a case of implementing the automation and monitoring its success.

Setting Your Goals

Your main goals for automating key business tasks will be to save time and money. There are many tools available that can help automate many of the mission-critical business tasks you need every day. Once you have them automated, your business can start to grow because you will be able to get more done in less time, freeing you up for more marketing, product creation, and so on.

Processes to Automate

There are a number of key areas you can automate. One might be automating your email marketing in order to build relationships with your target audience. Another might be reporting, such as metrics that show the success of your latest email campaign.

Successful Automation

Successful automation will usually start with breaking down the task into a number of essential steps. For example, if you were going to automate your email marketing in order to let your autoresponders do most of the work, you would:

• Create a list
• Create or locate content for that list
• Upload content into the autoresponder
• Set the schedule for the content to be delivered
• Deliver the content = automated
• Check the results of the emails in the autoresponder

While it is true that four out of these five tasks will have to be done by a person, once it is set up, the automated part will do the work for you over and over again. Set the report on the metrics to be delivered to you automatically and you have a virtually hands-free marketing system you can monitor in only a minute per day.

Online Reputation Management

If you are concerned about your online reputation, you could search on Google and other websites every day using your business name, or you could set up a Google Alert that would deliver results straight to your inbox daily or weekly. This can save you hours of time. It also means that if anything negative does crop up, you can put out a small blaze before it becomes a forest fire.

How to Decide What to Automate

There are a few characteristics to consider:

• It is repetitive – It is basically a task that requires you to do the same thing over and over again without any significant variations.
• It has a simple workflow – It has a few steps that are each repetitive and easy.
• It is focused and targeted – The process is designed to accomplish one task, not several at the same time.
• You find it dull or boring – If you don’t like a task, chances are you will procrastinate, or not do it very well. But if it is mission critical, automation can help ease the pain.
• You don’t have the time for it – There are only so many working hours in the day. The more time you spend on sending out emails and digging through metrics, the less time you have for everything else. Automation will save you time and can also increase your profits, because you can focus more on tasks that earn money directly such as product creation and marketing.
• Tasks that are impossible to scale – Using email marketing as an example again, you would never be able to manage a list manually and get anything else done. Sending out welcome emails to 1, 2, 5, 10 people would take up more and more of your time. With an autoresponder, however, it doesn’t matter if you have 1 person or 100, it will do its job.

We wrote last month about five skills you need to succeed as an entrepreneur. Have a look at hour second part.

If you want to read the first part, please visit this LINK

Branding your business:

You have to build a business where not only you have sell but also believe in. Playing a role game here could be a good idea: would you be interested in your brand if you’re a customer? Would you buy your product and recommend it? Your brand doesn’t have to identify you but it has to be strong enough to survive during the years, your personal changes and the trends. Also, it has to show your business values and philosophy, your mission and vision.

Spreading the word through Social Networks, Website and a Blog is part of your branding so make sure everything goes with the same symphony.

Your network can be the key:

And this is not only to get more clients, this is also to get providers, efficient staff and people that can help you succeed in your field. You can learn from other entrepreneurs or other professionals that already went through what you’re doing. It’s very important to be surrounded by people that believes the same as you, breath business and have similar business values; this is not only to have a network where everyone can help each other with material assets but also to inspire yourself. Make sure you are available on Social Networks and have other ways to be reached out, don’t make it hard for that fellow entrepreneur to contact you.

Marketing

This is an important aspect of your business growth, having the ability to sell your product through different channels is important to succeed. You don’t know how to? You have two options: learning or hiring some help, but you definitely need it. This will drive traffic to your website, expand the brand, teach your audience, share your culture, among others.

Results:

Yes, now you have the design, website, and presence on the main Social Media accounts. Now it’s time to analyze your target behavior. The UX is important to determine what they like, what they’re after and what is the thing they enjoy the most from you.

This information will lead to most of your decisions to keep updating your website and posting on your Social Media, after some time of research you’ll be able to post what it makes more and better reaction and what you think could lead to more sales. Google offers a good service for this and provides you good information to start with, also you can compensate with other platforms to get more information. These tools will help you recognize trends and maybe predict some of them!

You’re a learner and will you always be.

Being a learner is not a skill but being able to compromise to learn every time you can it certainly is.  This is part of Business 101, you need to keep your mindset updated and realize that you’ll never know it all. Nowadays, all the technology we’re using and the tools that help us succeed are being updated all the time or becoming obsolete, even when we sleep. That means you’re not allowed to get rid of that pen and notepad because you’ll be writing pretty often! Be ready to learn every day about new technologies, and the old ones that are updating or changing every day.