6 Automations To Improve and Save Time for Your Small Business
If you own a business, you’d understand that 24 hours a day would not be enough to get things done; if you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner, things even get worse. This is where automations kick in as a helping hand that can help save not only time and money but also improve productivity.
Why use automation for your small business?
Let me start with a small story.
Let’s meet FiletOfFish1066 a reddit user, him being a tech-savvy person, he found a way to completely automate his work for a complete 6 years and still get paid the same.
The above snippet is his own words, but not working for 6 years can take a toll on anyone, he forgot his most important skill and lost his job. But this gives one a fair idea about how automation can be used and how it can help provided it is used in the right way.
Coming back to the question why use automation for your small business?
Any task can be automated it’s only a matter of finding and researching “how to get it done”. There are modern no-code builders that can help you build these custom automations using no code at all.
Handy automations for a small business that can help
- Automation of the complete onboarding process for customer
- Getting all your news on your slack
- Getting rid of unwanted email
- Reimage how you schedule meetings using automation
I am just skimming the surface, the sky is the limit when it comes to automation for your small business.
How can automation save time?
“Time is money” we’ve all heard it and we know it’s true.
Small business owners run into a lot of mundane tasks and simple automation can help prioritize tasks such that it can contribute to goals making a huge difference.
Automation will not only help save time but will also help find time that you never thought you had. A couple of ways how one can save time using automation is
- Monitor your brands or competitor via slack
- Find the most time-consuming tasks using rescueTime and send them directly to your slack
- Inboxes are filled with emails, get the emails that matter the most directly to your slack
The list can go on.
Now that we have a fair understanding of automation and how it can help, let’s move to the automations itself
Related Topics
6 must-have automations for small business owners
- Schedule meeting automation
- Priority notifications only automation
- Automated brand mentions on Social channels
- Automate chat upto an extent
- New user onboarding automation
- Usage of AI tools
Automate scheduling of meeting
Email is great but it can not be used for scheduling businesses meeting.
Scenario:
You own a business and you already have a packed schedule. Now, it would be a waste of time to back and forth discussing finding the right time for your next business opportunity.
The Solution:
Automate the whole process using simple tools like
- Zapier – Used No code automation
- Calendly – Email provider
- Zoom – to schedule a meeting
Priority notifications only automation
As a small business owner, it’s inevitable that your inbox is full of unread emails, but among those emails, only a few hold value and require attention.
This simple automation will help filter out those emails and send them to a specific channel in my case a slack message pop in every time an email is sent with the trigger that I have set.
Scenario:
Emails usually tend to get lost with email being a wide channel being used by everyone. A filtered view of your inbox to get only the emails that are important to you.
The Solution:
This is a simple automation using the no-code automation tool zapier
- Zapier
- Gmail workspace
- Slack or text message
Automated brand mentions on social channels
It is said that there are about 3 billion people who actively use social media. That’s a massive number.
Social media is all about trends and not jumping on a trend can be a lost opportunity. One great way to keep track of trends is to keep an active ticker to find what different brands are doing instead of taking the time and going through social media for hours and hours. I bet you have better and more important tasks that you might want to focus on.
Scenario:
Find and follow a business or a competitor to keep track of their social media strategy and their current social media updates.
The Solution:
Automate the whole process using simple no-code automation tools like
- Zapier
- Twitter or reddit
- Slack or email or sms
Automate chat upto an extent
Everyone customer needs prompt responses to their questions and being a small business owner this can be difficult.
Even though this is important one cannot leave other priorities and just work with leads unless a person was hired for that.
Scenario:
Most of the time, there is a set of questions that a person always wants to know like the pricing or getting in touch with the support or raising a ticket these are simple tasks that can be easily automated using no code automation
The solution:
Voiceflow is a low code automation tool that helps you create simple bots for WhatsApp or your website. The bots are simple to create and easy to implement. You can check them out here.
New user onboarding automation
Automate what your lead needs to know about your product or services using new user onboarding automation. If done right it can help your leads get educated about your product and build a rapport that can turn into a sale.
Scenario:
Create a simple use journey like using a timeline and automate the complete process.
Ex of a simple onboarding journey
Day 1 – Welcome email
Day 2 – Product and features
Day 3 – Testimonials
….
You can decide on the frequency and the number of emails that can be sent to the users.
The solution:
This no-code automation would require
- Zapier
- WordPress or a DB of emails
- Activecampaign (email provider)
Usage of AI tools
Artificial Intelligence or AI has come a long way. It can help with various tasks and it has numerous applications and can be almost used everywhere.
A very simple example would be using AI to write content, this can save time and give your content a new twist.
A simple no-code automation that can help here
- Zapier
- ChatGPT
The simple integration can help you write and schedule content based on your needs.
Summing up no code automation for your business
To enter the new decade with extra time on your hands, choose low-code or no-code tools that can help make adjustments to the way you do business. You can put the extra time you’ll have to devote to growing your business and helping consumers.
Automation is a long-term plan, so don’t try to make sweeping changes all at once or develop overly intricate procedures for your current business. Task yourself in finding the gaps and inefficiencies that can be bridged with help of no code automation and will have the biggest impact.