Running your own business is a big challenge in 2022. One of the biggest problems for entrepreneurs is the lack of time. Daily corporate duties can be overwhelming. Do you feel that you're spending more time on mundane tasks than on strategy or business development? Sales results in your company lagging because there is not enough time to implement planned activities consistently?
Suppose you answered "yes" to any of the above questions. That's a sign that you need something to help you eliminate repetitive tasks. Automation is the solution! Fortunately, in 2022 you can automate almost any area of your business. This will save you a lot of time and money and greatly increase your productivity. In this article, you'll find a handful of innovative ideas for an automated business. Thanks to them, you will avoid monotonous tasks, and you will be able to focus on the development of your company.
What exactly is business automation?
Let's start with a bit of theory...
Process automation is the use of technology to improve the performance of everyday tasks. This may apply to almost all areas, i.e., management, marketing, finance, or IT. The use of automation significantly speeds up the closing of many repetitive (and often tough) manual works.
What do you gain by automating your business?
As we mentioned, automated business processes save you time and money… But the benefits of automation don't stop there!
The main benefits of automation include:
Improved workflow
The business automation process will improve the workflow in your company. It will focus on more important tasks without wasting time, motivation, and energy on monotonous activities.
Increased efficiency
Automating your business processes is a great way to increase productivity. Both company owners and employees no longer have to waste energy performing repetitive jobs, i.e., completing tables. Instead, the team can focus on looking for new ways to reach the customer, more sales, in short: business growth.
Eliminate Errors
Most mistakes in document processing and data entry result from human error. Marketwire report showed that human error causes a huge loss in productivity. For this reason, some US and UK companies reported losses of up to $ 37 billion over the year. Automated data processing will allow you to eliminate all problems that result from human omissions and omissions once and for all.
Cost reduction
Business automation is an investment that has a highly positive impact on your final profits and costs. The improvements brought about by technology are an effective way to reduce the costs associated with running even a small business. You work faster and spend less (or not at all) on external specialists.
Better Customer Experience
Today's customers demand quick responses and impeccable service. If your company does not provide them with this, they will compete. The implementation of automation will help you meet customers' growing expectations and bring customer service to the highest level! Thanks to automated solutions, you can significantly improve communication with customers. For example, chatbots on your website will increase the response speed to user questions. As a result, users will be happy to return to your website, increasing the chance that they will become your customers.
Satisfied co-workers :)
Automation is not only a great help for business owners. Freelancers and employees are also more satisfied with their work thanks to it. In approximately 60% of occupations, automation can facilitate at least the responsibilities in a given position. Thanks to this, the daily work of marketers, analysts, IT specialists, and many other employees can become much easier and more efficient.
Types of business automation
Here are the types of automation that will help you improve the most critical areas of your business. Consider which of them will provide the most benefits for your company!
Marketing Automation
Almost nobody thinks marketing doesn't matter. Unfortunately, marketing activities are costly, especially time-consuming. Therefore, its automation may turn out to be the most profitable! Marketing automation platforms will help you measure and analyze the results of your company, facilitate the leads' acquisition, and boost the conversion of promo campaigns. Thanks to this, just 1 person may control the company's marketing without much effort.
Automation of accounting and finances
Business means bureaucracy. You like it or not; you won't avoid it.
But thanks to accounting and financial automation, you can make it easier, saving much time. And remember, time means money. This will allow you to speed up payment management, invoicing, and data processing.
Automating Customer Support
You've already come across automated customer support, for example, on Facebook Messenger. Automated sending of text messages on social media significantly reduces customers' waiting time who report various problems there. Automatic messages such as:
- "Thank you for your interest"
- "We will reply as soon as we can"
- "Our consultant will contact you in a moment"
are a proven and effective way to increase the quality of customer support.
Automating e-commerce
Automated e-commerce solutions will give you more control over the purchasing process and encourage more buyers to return. And buy again. Have you observed that customers are increasingly abandoning their shopping carts in your store? Perhaps shopping in your store is not intuitive for them, or they face problems. Automating the shopping path is a way to make the purchasing process as easy as possible for users and encourage them to return to your store. Automated solutions, i.e., a request for an opinion after the purchase, will allow you to build a positive image of your brand.
How to implement automation in your business? Ideas + tools
Automation can be implemented in many business areas - from employee management, sales, customer service to accounting. However, before choosing specific automation tools, it is worth considering which areas of your business most urgently need them. Then you will save the most. Do you have no ideas for automating your business? So let's take a look at a few of the most popular areas where companies often use automation services.
1. Communication and planning
Communication is another important area that will improve the functioning of your company through automation. Here are ideas for automating planning and communication:
Meetings
Systems or platforms for automating meetings will help you improve the planning of business meetings with clients or colleagues. You can do it with tools like Calendly or Acuity. Automated planning is a way to avoid wasting time searching for the optimal time for a meeting. You send the potential customer a link to your Calendly, and the client chooses the most convenient time for you to talk to.
Managing Tasks
Using task management tools such as Asana or Trello, you can easily assign tasks, monitor your employees' progress, or organize your work on projects. In this way, you will also get feedback from the clients to execute orders faster. Share a task with selected people on your team to obtain project status updates or comments in real-time. In addition, these tools automatically send messages with reminders and notifications to team members assigned to the project, ensuring that no task is missed.
2. Digital Marketing
Thanks to the use of technology, it is possible to track and analyze customer behavior and create marketing processes that unify customer service in many channels. Automated digital marketing is a way to engage your audience and turn them into customers. Here are some examples of online marketing automation: Mailing
Automation
Email marketing automation programs will help you maximize your sales. Thanks to such solutions, you will efficiently manage emails and gain complete control over communication with leads and customers. The programs will allow you to send personalized email messages in real-time based on the customer's actions, i.e., triggered emails, and manage the subscription process. You can send various follow-up emails based on specific user behavior with email marketing automation. You also gain access to statistics to know what areas need to be improved to achieve better results.
Here are examples of messages that you can automatically send to your customers to save valuable time:
- Welcome message - You can use the welcome email after subscribing to a newsletter, for example. It's a great way to invite your audience to get to know your brand better.
An example of an automated welcome message might look like this:
Welcome to [brand name]! Thank you for signing up to our newsletter!
Don't be afraid to use emojis in your message. Thanks to this, you will warm up the brand image and stand out positively.
Below is an example of a welcome email used by Virgin America.
Welcome email from Virgin America.
- Thank you email - is an excellent way to thank a customer for purchasing or joining the newsletter. Use simple phrases such as "Thank you for your purchase" or "We're glad you joined us". You can also use the thank you email to encourage a customer to recommend your products to friends. This idea was used in a thank you message from Harry's who additionally offered a promotional code for their purchase to be used by their friends.
Thank you email in Harry's.
Conversions
A well-thought-out and designed Landing Page (LP) is the driving force behind any successful campaign. But what does well-designed mean? It is an LP that will guide visitors to purchase or subscribe to the newsletter. Of course, creating such a landing page by hand would be a chore. Fortunately, some tools automate the creation of landing pages, making it extremely easy to create a high-level landing page. I'm talking about page builders. You will quickly create a remarkable landing page thanks to the wide range of sales-optimized templates and easy use. This will have a huge impact on the results of your campaign!
A proven tool for creating pages and landing pages is BOWWE. This coding-free drag-and-drop builder makes pages as good as built manually by a web developer! Thanks to this, all pages created in this builder rank higher in Google, load faster, and are fully responsive!
Landing page template advertising the event.
Moreover, at BOWWE you can create an unlimited number of landing pages within one domain (and single plan). Builder lets create in every possible way - starting from scratch, using hundreds of templates or +570 ready-made sections or blocks, and by placing your own code (if you've it).
3. Lead Acquisition
Automating lead generation will allow you to build better relationships with potential customers from the very beginning. Thanks to this, the key processes most critical to B2B marketing can be very intuitive. Automating marketing in this area will help you efficiently manage customer acquisition processes in your company without external help from marketers.
Here are examples of automation in the area of lead management:
Lead Nurturing
Using lead management programs, you can create a contact database. The program will allow you to import a database with contacts and configure the automatic sending of emails to them. What's more, you will be able to set detailed shipping guidelines, e.g., if a given contact does not respond within 3 days, they will receive another email.
As you can see, thanks to marketing automation, you can send different messages to recipients at various stages of the so-called customer journey. And so, over time, the potential customer will receive more sales information. And your actions will be much more effective!
How to go about it?
Automated forms
Registration forms are a way to collect data on leads automatically. They work automatically: website visitors fill out a form and the data ends up in your database. Thanks to this, you will quickly expand your contact database. The collected information will help you identify and segment your website visitors. You can divide them into demographic categories (age, gender, place of residence) or behavioral (website activities, shopping habits) and direct different messages to them, tailored to who they are and what their habits are. Then you will achieve much better results!!
You can place this form on your website by creating an account at BOWWE. Forms can be connected to any CRM system
4. SEO and analysis
Enterprises can improve the analysis and measurement of results by using data processing automation and SEO.
SEO is essential to finding and retaining new visitors when it comes to marketing. Unfortunately, this process is quite time-consuming. How to start? Use programs and tools that will make it easier for you to work on SEO in your company. They will help you maximize your productivity and enjoy high-quality results. Here are some of the most important examples of SEO automation:
Keywords
An analysis Keyword analysis is an essential step that should not be overlooked. Adequately selected keywords and phrases will help you achieve a higher website ranking. However, conducting a thorough keyword analysis is time-consuming. Applying keyword analysis automation will help you speed up the process. The automatic tool will show you the value of individual keywords, suggest similar long-tail phrases and allow you to view the statistics. Thanks to this, you will make the best decisions for your business.
Keyword Tracking
Tracking your keyword trends is very important as it allows you to choose the best SEO tactic for your business. Thanks to SEO automation, you can quickly check where your website is displayed after entering various keywords in the search results. You can also track changes and use the conclusions drawn to refine your marketing strategy.
Backlink Analysis
One of the ways search engines verify which pages are the most trustworthy is to look at how many links to them are. The more links to a page, the more valuable it is, and thus it ranks higher in the search results ranking. Usually, the best way to get more links is to become an authority figure in your niche.
Backlink analysis allows you to check who links to your website and what quality the links are. Unfortunately, manually analyzing backlinks is very time-consuming and requires specialist knowledge. With the help of automation tools, you will not need expert knowledge to improve the SEO of your website and achieve the highest possible search position.
Report Creation
Automation is how digital marketing reports are created and automatically updated using the software. Manual reporting requires that you manually generate reports that can take up to several hours. However, thanks to automated SEO reports, the work of analysts is much easier. The right tool can generate dozens of reports in a few minutes.
How to choose the best tools for automating business processes?
Today, many automation tools are available that can help you simplify your company's workflow. However, this doesn't mean that every device is right for you. What to look for when choosing the best automation solution for your company?
Here are the features that comprehensive automation systems should have to bring the expected results:
- Access to intuitively presented data - if the automation system provides access to your website statistics, you get a real-time overview of how many people visit your website and what content is the most popular.
- No-Code - pay attention to whether the automation platform requires coding skills. It is worth choosing automated systems whose functions you can use without a code. Low-Code or No-Code solutions increase business efficiency by 50-90%.
- Additional possibilities - choose a tool with additional applications to boost your business even more
Tools for Email Marketing Automation:
There are many tools for automating email marketing. The most popular of them, such as FreshMail or MailChimp, will allow you to reach your recipients precisely. Thanks to the functionalities of the tools mentioned above, you will fully automate sending messages to customers, creating newsletters, or managing mailing lists.
Tools that will help you implement online marketing automation:
Digital Marketing Automation will help you quickly implement marketing strategies in your company, translating into sales results. Popular marketing automation platforms, such as:
Them will enable you to successfully conduct marketing campaigns using emails, landing pages, newsletters, or mobile devices.
Thanks to the web builders, you will effortlessly build a professional, beautiful website, online portfolio, or landing page and turn your visitors into paying customers. BOWWE also offers a plethora of perfectly integrated and seamless install applications that integrate with the website and increase its profitability. These applications include Portfolio, Reviews, Vouchers.
Tools necessary to automate SEO:
There are many SEO programs on the market today with different capabilities. The most popular SEO tools in 2022 include Ahrefs, SEMRush or Google Search Console.
What to consider when choosing the best SEO automation tool? First, it's a good idea to consider which features you'll be using the most. It is a good idea to use one platform to automate analytical tasks that will allow you to achieve all your business goals in this area. This is a better solution than using multiple programs for different analytical activities.
Keyword Profiler in Marketing Miner
Comprehensive automation platforms, ie, Marketing Miner will help you carry out all stages of SEO analysis, from keyword selection to tracking your website results in search engine rankings.
Be sure to automate your business in 2022!
Doing the repetitive activities of running your business every day only slows you down. Use ideas for automated business to avoid monotonous filling out of tables and focus on creative work. Automation is possible for almost every area of your business. Implementing improved solutions to problematic business areas will help you in the rapid development of your business. That is why we wish you to automate at least one area of your company's operations this year. See for yourself how many benefits it will bring you!
