When you are just starting your business, the idea of adding automation is often met with apprehension. You're probably thinking, can't I do this manually?
The answer to that question is yes, you can do it manually- but why would you want to?
Automation takes away many small tasks and time-consuming processes from your day so that you can focus on what matters: generating revenue for your small business and your personal life! This blog post will discuss nine automations that every small business should implement to increase efficiency and profitability.
How does Automation Help Small Businesses?
Automation simplifies small business processes by taking repetitive tasks and automating them for you. It makes small businesses more efficient by freeing up time that would have otherwise been used for tasks focused on growth opportunities or other important projects.
Incorporating automation into small business processes also helps businesses run more smoothly and accurately. It ensures that information is always accurate, up-to-date, and accessible by everyone in the company at any time. This creates a cohesive small business team that can easily collaborate on projects for faster results.
Read on to discover the small business automation that could benefit your small business the most!
1. Implement a CRM to Track Leads and Manage Customer Relationships
A CRM (customer relationship management) system is designed to streamline and automate small business processes like lead tracking, customer service interactions, and data organization. Because of this, a CRM could be the perfect automation tool for you!
Implementing a CRM will help your small business:
- Improve customer satisfaction.
- Improve business communication with customer demand.
- Increase small business growth by building lasting relationships with customers and tracking potential leads through your sales pipeline stages.
A CRM is an essential tool for your sales processes and customer service team. Using a CRM can save you hours per day by automating routine tasks!
Pro Tip: CRM Automation: What It Is and How It Can Help Your Business
2. Use Quoting Software to Create Quotes Quickly and Send Automated Follow-ups
Implementing small business quoting software can make it easy to create quotes for your prospects in seconds instead of hours. In addition, quoting software saves small businesses more time because it automates the manual process of following up with the person a day or two after you send the quote.
Using quoting software will help your small business:
- Save time when generating new sales opportunities.
- Automate sales follow-ups to increase your closing rates.
- Tailor quotes to prospects' needs and wants with a few clicks of the mouse.
Quoting software with marketing automation also allows small businesses to set follow-ups for each prospect based on their actions or other factors so that the quoting process is streamlined and organized even further!
How Pulse Can Help Streamline Your Quoting Process
3. Use Online Scheduling Software if You are in The Service Industry
If you own a small business in the service industry, automation is crucial. For example, suppose you don't automate your scheduling process. In that case, your employees will spend countless hours creating and managing schedules, which can be automated with online scheduler software like Calendly or CatchApp!
Online schedulers allow small business owners to:
- Save time by automating scheduling.
- Eliminate double-booking and last-minute schedule changes for small business employees and customers.
- Automate the scheduling process so that you can focus on other important tasks!
- Leverage marketing automation in your CRM to trigger further automation when appointments are booked, saving you even more time!
Scheduling software is beneficial for service industries, but it's also an excellent way for small businesses in any sector to free up time that would have been spent on scheduling appointments.
Pulse is a powerful CRM and marketing automation software that brings consistency and real-time reporting to businesses, which helps companies grow smarter and faster.
Instantly get access to Pulse's powerful tools that help companies grow smarter and faster.
4. Automate Your Email & Text Message Marketing with Marketing Automation
Email marketing is still one of the most effective small business marketing strategies available, but you must implement automation into your email marketing campaigns to make it pay off.
By automating your emails and text messages with marketing automation services like Pulse, you can:
- Save time by creating email campaigns quickly.
- Send personalized emails that will resonate with your customers and prospects.
- Save hours per day by not having to send emails or text messages manually!
Small business owners can also use marketing automation tools to create personalized email and text message follow-ups based on the customer's buying habits, so they don't have to spend time figuring out what their customers want or need!
5. Utilize Form Automation to Increase Efficiency
If you use forms on your website, it makes sense to automate this small task.
Automated forms can help small businesses:
- Improve response times on any new leads that come in from these forms because the process is automated.
- Send personalized email messages or text messages based on each prospect's interests that they specified on the form.
- Make your small business more efficient by reducing the manual entry of these leads into your CRM, which makes the process completely automated!
Small businesses can also use forms to trigger many other types of automation, which makes form automation even more powerful.
Pro Tip: Investing in CRM Software: Why it's a Good Idea for Small Businesses
6. Customer Onboarding Processes
Another small business task that you can automate is customer onboarding processes. Most businesses have routine tasks in onboarding each new customer, and since these tasks are repetitive, it makes it easy to automate them!
Automating your small business onboarding process will allow you to:
- First, improve your customer’s buying experience.
- Second, make it easy for you to get new customers on board with your product or service!
- Finally, allow you to focus more time and energy on engaging, educating, and delighting new buyers.
Customer onboarding automation is an essential part of building a successful small business, and it is one automation process that should not be overlooked.
7. List Segmentation of Your Prospects and Customers Interests
List segmentation is the process of grouping leads, prospects, and customers into different lists based on their interests. This allows you to deliver hyper-relevant messages to increase engagement and conversion rates. With marketing automation, this type of segmentation can be completely automated!
Examples of what list segmentation can do for your business:
- Create targeted emails or text messages based on list segmentation criteria like interest, behavior, location, or any number of other factors!
- Make marketing campaigns more cost-effective by sending highly targeted follow-up email messages only to the prospects most likely interested in your product or service!
- Improve customer experience by creating personalized touchpoints with customers during their buying journey.
Doing manual data segmentation can take days of work, depending on your list size. That’s why it’s essential to automate these processes.
8. Feedback and Referral Requests
Requesting business referrals and asking for business feedback can be a time-consuming task. A CRM with marketing and workflow automation features can help small businesses automate these tasks and reduce friction in their referral processes.
Feedback and referral automation tasks include:
- Sending automated follow-up messages to customers asking for referrals after they've made a purchase!
- Automating small business surveys and short feedback requests with just the click of a button or using other triggers in your CRM software.
- Automatically segment out negative feedback submissions to have your customer service team follow up with them.
- Automating processes like these will help make it easier for customers to give you good reviews and refer your product or service to their friends, family members, colleagues, etc. This will increase sales of your products and services.
At Pulse, we have pre-built automated Feedback and Referral workflows that we can add to your account for free. These workflows can not only save you a tremendous amount of time, but it’s also a simple process to implement that can increase revenue.
9. Reporting on All of Your Important KPIs
Automation can help small businesses increase their efficiency by automating reporting on critical business metrics.
Automated reports are helpful because they reduce data entry time for small business owners and provide real-time data on all of your important key performance indicators (KPIs).
Some examples of KPIs that small businesses should track include:
- Number of leads per marketing channel
- Conversion rates per marketing channel
- Email open rates and click-through rates
- Revenue per marketing channel
Using real-time reporting allows tracking all KPIs effortlessly and can be especially helpful when it comes time for small businesses to prepare their year-end reports! In addition, this will allow small business owners to more easily make data-driven decisions about how they should optimize their product offerings, marketing campaigns, etc., to improve efficiency moving forward.
When you sign up for Pulse, our experts can help you get your CRM setup and implemented using the best practices. So you can relax knowing that our experts have got you covered, and your CRM is set up for success.
Of course, you'll also get access to all other great features, email marketing, workflow automation, and much more. Try Pulse for free today, and watch your business grow.
Conclusion
In today's digital age, automating business processes is crucial for small business success, and small businesses can't afford to waste time on tasks that could be automated.
If you're a small business owner and you haven't yet automated some of these processes in your company, we highly recommend that you do so. You'll be glad when these tedious tasks are done for you! If you need help automating small business tasks, feel free to give us a call or request a demo of Pulse and how it can help your business.
