For many entrepreneurs, marketing automation is the key to unlocking major growth opportunities in their business. When approached strategically, automation gives business owners more control and efficiency in their operations, allowing them to focus on what really matters: growing their business. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to use automation and why it’s an essential tool for success. If you are a busy business owner who dreams of significantly growing your company, keep reading to discover all of the amazing benefits you can achieve from working with automation!
Marketing automation has quickly become the most important tool for small business owners in almost every vertical. It’s a great way to save time and effort while simultaneously gaining valuable insight into the likes and interests of both customers and prospects. With marketing automation, you can achieve clear and measurable results with simple sales and marketing campaigns that include personalized follow up emails, happy birthday campaigns, re-engagement campaigns, lead generation, social media posts, and much more.
In a recent interview, Automation AgencyCo-Founder, Jason Benedict, talks about how marketing automation has transformed the lives of the thousands of business owners that he has worked with. “Marketing automation is literally the backbone of our business. We coach, train, and onboard about a hundred small businesses every month using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform called Keap. Automation Agency is Keap Certified Partner, which means that everyone on our team is an expert at using and implementing the marketing automation software. We are automation evangelists; We absolutely love it! We use it very successfully in our own business. We eat, sleep, drink and breathe automation, but without losing the personal human element and relationship with each prospect and client!”
The Automation Agency teaches their clients their C3 Growth Framework, a proven and tested process that helps business owners to consistently grow sales by focusing on three main growth engines: collecting leads, converting clients, and creating fans. The C3 Growth Framework, developed by Jason & Therese Benedict, ensures that businesses are able to create a frictionless and personalized experience for customers so they keep coming back again and again! To help businesses identify their biggest challenges, gaps, and opportunities for growth the Automation Agency has created a free assessment tool called the C3 Quiz
Founded in 2014, the Automation Agency has experienced exponential growth in the last three years as companies have invested more and more into their digital strategies since the pandemic. Their well-rounded team of experts specializes in all things digital marketing: email acquisition, cold list marketing, email marketing, lead generation, copywriting, reputation management, social media marketing, integrations, website development, and much more! Their true passion is tying it all together with automation.
Utilizing automation to unlock growth in your businesses will ensure that you connect with your contacts during the most important touchpoints in the customer journey. This includes following up with current clients, reaching out to prospects, gathering information, and patching up any gaps you may have in the sales process.
The Automation Agency begins this process by launching a deep dive into businesses and mapping out their customer journeys. We call this first step a Flowchart or a Funnel Diagram. The Flowchart is a visual representation of how your company wants to take its customers through one of the categories in the C3 Framework (collecting leads, converting clients, or creating fans). Mapping out the full process and doing a series of discovery meetings makes sure to identify and fix any gaps that may be holding a business back from achieving more growth.
The Automation Agency Team loves getting to know new business owners and learning about their processes, all while creating an unforgettable impact. From providing professional copywriting to finding the perfect timing to send automated messages, to utilizing SMS or voicemail drops – they have it all covered!
One of the Automation Agency’s most popular solutions for busy entrepreneurs is their innovative LinkedIn automation solution. It empowers business owners to save time and get the most out of their online presence. Through the revolutionary BEEP Method (Build, Engage, Educate & Promote), this powerful tool enables company leaders to connect with their target audience in an effective, yet personal way. Thus, freeing up resources for activities like engaging current customers or hosting webinars.
Automation is one of the most useful tools at any business’s disposal today, but many business owners don’t realize just how much they could be benefiting from its use. From providing better customer service at scale and tracking ROI across multiple channels, automating certain processes can help your business save time and money, all while delivering top-notch results. If you’re looking for ways to increase efficiency without sacrificing quality or accuracy, then automation is definitely worth exploring!
Keeping track of the latest developments in an ever-changing technological world is challenging. One thing has become increasingly clear — businesses need to standardize their technology stack. It means having a specific set of technologies used across the board to unify processes and simplify operations.
Standardizing your technology stack brings several benefits, including cost savings and increased efficiency. Let’s look at the 13 reasons businesses should standardize their technology stack in 2023.
1. Having A Standardized Technology Stack Is Critical To Growth
It becomes difficult to scale up without an organized system for managing your technology. Imagine being in a situation where you can increase your workforce and your base of operations. However, you experience multiple delays because you cannot create the same platform for the other location.
There are no common apps, software, or hardware used. Your company has been surviving, but there’s no standard to follow. You limit yourselves and must create this organization first, delaying your expansion and a profitable year ahead.
A standardized tech stack will allow you to identify what you need to update or replace. You can do so without disrupting operations or creating unnecessary costs. Imagine having a set platform for cloud solutions or communication apps. You only need to add more or upgrade to the next level of service to accommodate the scaling.
When you haven’t prepared it yet, you’ll spend a lot of time looking for applications and might settle on something beyond your budget. It can even be small inefficiencies, but they add up and make it difficult for you to grow.
It all begins with what you have now. Organize everything you need to keep your business running. Take note of all the applications and platforms to see if it’s possible to scale up with them down the line. When you find they are incapable, you can address them now instead of stopping your momentum in the future. Make sure everything has a paper trail for easier reference.
2. Eliminates Technology Crossover & Redundancy
When different departments are using varying software solutions, it risks redundancy. It usually happens when there’s no set standard and a communication gap between these areas.
Your marketing company may use a different project management tool than your developers. When they need to work together, it creates confusion, and departments begin arguing about which tools to use.
It also creates an environment where people are trying to look for the information they need. However, they have to communicate with the other department. It can also cause delays as there is no standard platform for all the work.
Another scenario is when both departments did not communicate their software needs. This leads the company to pay for two subscriptions of a single service. One account is enough to accommodate all, but there’s no standard, and the company spends more for both to have the same set of tools. It’s redundant and only affects your efficiency. You want to have a standard set of tools for all departments. This reduces the chance of data overlap and unnecessary costs. Not only that, but you’ll also experience a more efficient and productive work environment.
Solve the technology crossover by addressing them now before they become an issue. Talk to all your teams and learn what platforms they use and what can benefit your company. From there, help the other departments transition into a single set of tools to use company-wide. They’ll thank you later when work is easier with the same programs and platforms.
3. Reduces Technology Costs
Standardizing your technology stack can save you money in the long run by avoiding costly customizations. It also keeps you from buying multiple versions of the same software solution for different departments or users.
Instead of dealing with technology issues as they come, you address them as a company-wide application instead. For example, if the company needs a tool, you can ask the heads of each department if they need any specific add-ons or if there’s any software they prefer.
You’ll get input from each part of the organization, narrowing the costs and helping you identify what features you need. You’ll be able to save money by choosing the right software that hits all the boxes and then only paying one cost for everything.
Standardization makes it easy to manage spending because you know what tech solutions your company uses. That goes for every department across your organization at any given time. It will be less stressful to budget everything as a whole instead of smaller individual pieces.
On the other side of this issue, a company with a standardized technology stack may suffer from overspending on one platform. You only get software for one department, but another needs it too. They cannot borrow the other accounts, so you have to pay for another subscription. The costs double instead of only slightly increasing from your initial spending.
With standardization, you know what your company needs and can evaluate when something is no longer necessary. For example, one of your tools gains another feature once unique to another app. The other app becomes redundant, and you can remove it from the company, removing unnecessary spending.
4. Less Staff Training
When you implement a standardized technology stack, every company member accesses the same tools. This goes for software and hardware too. With it, you’ll only need one set of training manuals to teach everyone to use technology adopted by your organization. You’ll save time and money by having a single training session from a central point everyone learns from.
Staff can also help and support each other because they use the same tools. When you need to improve through training, you only need one cost to help your entire organization. You’ll also gain valuable insight as there are likely people in your company with the expertise to use these tools. They’ll also act as help for those onboarding, making transitions easier.
There will also be only one point of reference for any issues with the software. Compare it to a company that uses software that fulfills the same thing. Having two different software means you’ll train each group separately to become experts on their respective tools. Not only that, but it will be difficult for them to collaborate because each tool’s features may be different.
Not to mention there are also compatibility issues. Some tools do not work well with others, leading you to start from scratch to replicate the same results. You can easily avoid this with a technological standard that applies to all. It does not matter if one tool is better than the other. What matters is that everyone understands and uses the same ones.
5. Increases Efficiency & Understanding
With a standardized tech stack, your team can become more efficient because there is only one system for them to learn. This is better than grasping multiple systems that require extra time and energy. It may be a challenge to find ways to make them work together. With everyone in the same direction, it’s easier to support one another and transition to different projects using the same tools.
A standardized tech stack will also help understanding grow between each department. Collaboration is much better when everyone can understand the things they’re using. Everyone will be on board when one references something they did for the project.
It also makes transitions, transfers, and new hires easier. Imagine having everyone able to answer questions and teach people who are still trying to get the hang of operations. It’s a much better scenario than waiting for a few experts who are the only ones equipped for the job. Minimizing the amount of technology used also lessens the burden on your staff, especially those who need to work on several things.
As a result, you’ll get a less complex system, simplifying operations in each department. You streamline everything and have everyone working together within one system. This goes the same for hardware, software, policies, and equipment. It will take some time to apply, but the increase you get will affect you for far longer than it takes to set things up.
6. Easier Software Management
A standardized tech stack gives you complete control over aspects of your software management process. Without it, you’ll worry about software compatibility issues with different systems. Not only that, but the same software may even have different versions, which affects the overall workflow. Suddenly, one software has a feature that the others don’t, requiring you to adjust to unnecessary costs.
With a standard, you don’t have to worry about these things. Everything works seamlessly with a unified technology stack in place. Using it will improve your software in many ways:
Have a single software used for specific tasks in the workplace. You’ll have one for documentation, projects, time management, work, and more. In some cases, one software can handle multiple functions: like Keap, a client retention management software that also includes powerful sales and marketing automation solutions.
Have a set policy that updates all software use at regular intervals. It ensures everyone is on the same page and one gets left behind on software changes.
The ability to get multiple licenses at a lower cost with bundling instead of buying software one by one. The more you’ll buy, the higher your bargaining power with a vendor.
It’s easy to budget software needs and check if some departments are lacking specific software.
Onboarding new staff members is also faster because you already know the technology they’ll use. It’s also easier to train them in something that’s your company’s expertise.
7. Requires Less Technical Support On Disperse Systems
You eliminate potential issues by having one unified system rather than disparate systems. Most problems stem from incompatibilities between platforms or issues due to version differentiations. With a single tech stack, you reduce the need for technical support in these areas. It allows you to prepare everything, improving the chances of everything working together.
The uniformity works by decreasing the need for people and guidelines to follow. Everything works as it should for your company.
For example, when your support team uses a single tool, they can easily access it to find solutions. A simple search using the same platform will reveal to them guidelines on how to handle tickets. You give them direction and support without unnecessarily overstretching your resources. They won’t have to grasp at straws when a challenging issue arises because they’ll have a standard.
Over time, your team will learn shortcuts that will make things more efficient with how they handle work. They may have already encountered the issue before or can smoothly navigate the tools to find a solution.
Of course, there will be some situations where it will still be challenging, even if they have standards. It exists to help minimize these scenarios to ensure that your company is operating at its best.
8. Consistent Reporting & Data Analysis
Having a unified platform makes it easy to report and analyze because you can easily compare them across the board. Not only that, but a standard creates a baseline that provides more accuracy toward the results. You’ll know when a marketing strategy isn’t performing as expected or notice if there’s a new trend developing in a specific niche.
All of this operates in a centralized database that you can access, and will contain information from all your departments. You’ll know what to improve, eliminate, change, or add. The best part about accurate data is that it gives you a clearer picture. Many studies prove that data analysis can lead to better business decisions.
As such, all your decisions will be based on statistical facts rather than a gut feeling or second-guess. You don’t have to try and go into your company blind, hoping that the following application you create works. You’ll see if your actions impact the results because you have information gathered to back you up.
Without a standardized tech stack, things will end up as a mess. Even if you have similar categories to measure, it will be hard to determine the best solution because of inaccuracies. There is no baseline, meaning higher performance in one department may not reflect the entire picture. It’s performing better because you see data skewed, favoring one software over the other.
9. Promotes Information Sharing
With all team members working on the same platform, it is easier and faster to share. You’ll be able to do it efficiently. In any sharing scenario, it’s easier for someone to open up and give their ideas when they know that all the others understand them completely. It leaves no room for doubt, and people can also use the ideas shared to add their own, improving upon them.
A standard technology stack also reduces the need for manual processes. There’s less time spent figuring out if other people are using the same software. In the worst-case scenario, you could share solutions to help the team, only to realize that they can’t because they’re using a different set of tools.
With less time spent trying to fiddle and figure things out, staff can dedicate more time to the work. They’ll know what to avoid, including the pitfalls, because other people have shared information about what went wrong with them. They’ll work faster because they see how others do it using the same platform, applying it themselves. The team can also transition faster and support each other when needed, with minimal distractions.
A single platform is also a lot more secure. There is a higher risk of managing information between different platforms. It might lead to sudden corruption, or one of the other platforms may be more vulnerable.
10. Minimizes Downtime
Everyone is ready to start the day. They boot up their systems only to realize that many don’t have the latest update available. They spend half the day updating their programs, and the company cannot proceed with any project while waiting.
With a standardized tech stack, all system and software updates happen on schedule. It also happens to everyone, and no one gets left behind. Because of this, there will be fewer issues of downtime due to problems with updates or outages.
Another issue that can cause downtime is compatibility issues. Everything seems to be working well so far, only for the team to discover that several applications cannot read or open the file. They have to spend time remaking the entire thing, troubleshooting, or even downloading software that does not work. All of these could’ve been avoided with standardization.
Downtime is a serious threat and one that many companies dread happening. A delay in one area can cascade into problems for the entire company. It can cause delays which affect productivity and profitability. Time is money, and a standardized tech stack will help you save both. The only challenging part is the start, as you transition everything and make the policies to keep things running smoothly.
In cases where downtime is unavoidable in a standardized environment, you can evaluate what went wrong. From there, you can apply whatever necessary solution the company comes up with to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
11. Improved Customer Service
A uniform platform streamlines operations across all departments, meaning people respond faster. Your customer service team will stay on top of inquiries and can access data that your platform tracks. When the company doesn’t have these standards, they will spend time communicating with other platforms and teams. The information should be easy to access. Recent trends show us that customer service helps improve brand trust and loyalty.
Put yourself in the shoes of the customer. Without standardization, you’ll likely get calls or support chats that take too long. You already spend minutes in line and get service that will take a few hours to complete. There will also be cases where you’ll get transferred to another service, and the call drops because of compatibility issues. It is frustrating and will only sour your impression of the company you’re contacting.
A standardized tech stack addresses the concerns, improving your business in customer service. Customers always receive the best possible experience, no matter who they’re talking to in your organization. It’s vital for your customer service team to always remain on the same page. They can do that if they’re running with the same guidelines, software, and hardware.
12. Less Time Managing Vendors
Third-party vendors are essential to most businesses. You have to rely on them because they provide the resources, expertise, and skills your company may lack. There are also times when you have to work using their services and products, all while saving you money. The issue isn’t with the vendors themselves, but what happens when you’re managing multiple of them at once?
Having an unorganized tech stack will cause headaches and also lead you to compromise on subpar tech. You’re trying to keep everyone appeased, but it’s hard to keep a record of everything because they’re on separate platforms. It’s better to have a standard and set that standard with the vendor you’re doing business with. Once they cannot comply with that standard, you’ll narrow your options and find someone better to do it.
In another scenario, standardization allows you to have a single provider that handles all of these vendors. You’ll only have one point of contact, and the provider handles everything else as it’s what they do best. You save time and money, not needing to spend resources unnecessarily. There will be no more contract negotiations and vendor disputes. You’ve directed everything into a single entity to manage.
13. Increased Profitability
A unified platform bridges all your business operations to stay interoperable. You reduce costs while maximizing productivity, translating to increased profitability over time.
You want a standardized tech stack because it helps you free up resources. You’ll be able to automate some tasks and reduce the time needed to fulfill others. You have more people to use up for other things, and it’s also easier to scale up operations. The time you save means more time is available for work.
You’ll also have a happier workforce, and good morale is a strong driver for performance. You can give people more time to rest and take a break. Standardization also gives them an idea that you’re looking into improving their experience as employees.
If there’s any argument that stands above the rest, it’s this one. Businesses are always looking to improve their bottom line. Profit is correlated to success, and the extra money you get opens more opportunities for your business to grow. People have made significant sacrifices to ensure profitability. Standardization is only a bit of a setback to set up in comparison.
Putting It All Together
Standardizing your technology stack may seem intimidating, but its benefits are undeniable. You get greater efficiency in reporting, analysis, and customer service. There is better information sharing with teams, and you’ll ultimately get better profitability. With so many benefits it provides, businesses should make this transition sooner than later!
You don’t have to start unless you want to fulfill a deadline. Standardization can begin small. Begin evaluating what your company uses and what it needs to help with operations. Talk to management teams and department heads to see things from the perspective of your workforce. You can begin drafting software, checking the budget concerning it, and implementing guidelines.
You can do it one at a time. Change your client relationship management (CRM) platform first, then apply a good project management tool. Give your team time to adjust to each one. Over time, they’ll be more receptive to changes because they experience the benefits themselves.
Not only will it help save time and money, but it also ensures you remain competitive. The digital landscape is ever-changing, and standardization helps you focus on the future.
Transitioning to a new technology stack can be daunting.
But it doesn’t have to be! The Automation Agency has the experience and expertise to help you through every step of the process – from planning to execution. We’ll make sure your new technology stack is tailored to your specific needs and that the transition is as smooth and seamless as possible.
Let us take care of everything for you so you can focus on what you do best – running your business. With our help, you’ll be up and running on your new technology stack in no time!
As a small business owner, you are always looking for ways to increase your profit margins. You may think the best way to do this is to cut costs or find new revenue streams. While those are both important, there’s another way to increase the profit margins that you may not have considered — systemization and automation using Keap.
Keap is a software that helps small businesses automate their sales and marketing processes. By leveraging Keap, you can free up your time so that you can focus on other aspects of your business. Additionally, Keap can help you streamline your processes so that you can save money on things like labor costs. Let’s take a look at business automation and how tools like Keap can help you increase your profit margins.
What Is Business Automation?
Business automation allows companies to enhance their offerings and provide a better experience for their customers by using technology to its fullest potential. By automating business processes, your organization can avoid spending time and energy on mundane tasks.
Having your team’s time and energy freed up by automating routine processes like lead generation funnels, sales reports, conversion tracking, email marketing, order monitoring, and more will allow them to better apply their skills to more strategically significant initiatives.
The development of digital banking is a prime example of customer-centric business automation. Customers can avoid long wait times at the bank by handling their financial needs right from their mobile devices.
How To Scale Your Business Through Automation
Here are some guidelines for successfully automating and scaling your organization, no matter your industry or strategy.
Have a Clear Idea of What You Want
Without a doubt, growth and scalability are at the heart of why you should adopt Keap marketing automation in your company. However, before implementing an automated system, it’s crucial to have a firm grasp of your desired outcomes and accomplishments and the areas of your business that need the most attention. Understanding your objectives for automation will help you establish milestones and priorities. After that, you can create long-term plans of action.
Establish Reasonable Objectives
The key to success is setting reasonable objectives and expectations for the many areas you plan to automate. However, don’t establish unrealistic goals or compare your company’s procedures to those of others.
Make Use of Automated Processes Whenever Possible
To successfully expand your business and see the results you seek, you must focus on the tasks that significantly impact your bottom line, such as marketing and sales. Nevertheless, try to think out of the box. Every company can benefit from adding a bit more automation to several processes. It’s time to take stock of all the manual work you put in each day and make a list.
Create a Checklist To Measure Growth
Since tracking your progress is essential for making informed decisions and changes in direction, it’s crucial to establish a set of criteria in advance that can be used as milestones. If you make it a habit to review this list regularly, you’ll have no trouble keeping tabs on the many aspects of your business’ automated processes and determining which are performing as intended, those that require tweaking, and ones you can safely do away with.
Pick the Correct Platform or Tool for Automation
The automation tools and platforms you use should be tailored to the specific business process you’re looking to streamline. There are several specialized platforms available, each with its own set of pros and cons, that can be used for various business operations. When it comes to sales and marketing automation, Keap is one of the best tools out there.
Areas Where Automation Improves Process Efficiency
The process of automating work processes is not without its challenges. Nonetheless, companies can take baby steps in this direction. Here are several areas in which automating might help increase productivity within an organization and, by extension, its bottom line.
Sales and Marketing
Thanks to automation, businesses can better develop sales and marketing strategies that successfully attract and retain new customers. Companies can streamline their sales and marketing processes by automating tasks like lead management, email marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), and social media marketing.
Human Resources
Using automation, the HR department will be able to streamline the hiring process. Automating tasks like interview scheduling, candidate screening, and communicating recruitment status updates can relieve pressure on HR teams and improve prospective employees’ experiences.
Finance and Accounting
By implementing automated accounting systems, companies can eliminate the need for human intervention in a wide variety of financial processes, including computation, auditing, and payment processing. Automating routine tasks allows teams to get more things done because less time is spent on processing.
Project Management
Managing projects effectively is essential for organizations in various industries. When the project management process is automated, the team can spend less time on non-essential administrative tasks and more on strategic activities like development, testing, and new releases. Businesses can save time and effort by automating various processes, including report generation, and resource allocation.
Essential Marketing Processes You Can Automate
Using automation software, you can streamline several marketing tasks. Take a look at these four key marketing processes that need to be automated if you want to achieve your business goals:
Email Automation
You can use business automation solutions like Keap to set up an email drip campaign if you want to send multiple emails to the same group of subscribers or automate the delivery of personal emails like welcome messages or status updates. With this capability, your team will be able to devote less time to monotonous tasks and more to achieving strategic objectives.
An automated drip email campaign can be configured to send out messages based on specific criteria. Any time a lead meets one of these parameters or completes one of these steps, they will immediately enter the associated drip campaign. Combining triggers with email marketing helps get your content in front of customers right when they’re ready to engage with it. Additionally, the open rate for drip campaigns is 80% higher, meaning you have a greater chance of closing a deal.
Lead Nurturing
Some aspects of the buyer’s journey or customer journey can be automated as well. Various marketing and sales techniques can be used in the lead nurturing process to increase the likelihood that the lead will become a paying customer.
Your target audience’s preferences will likely shift over time. You need to adjust to the evolving tastes of your customer base when you want them to remember your brand favorably. One strategy is to learn what factors customers consider most important before making a purchase. With the help of a CRM system that also includes marketing automation, you can better understand your target demographic and re-engage with your existing customers.
Reporting and Analytics
Reports on marketing initiatives should not be overlooked, but they can take a lot of work. Keap marketing automation allows you to schedule the generation of reports based on criteria and run them at regular intervals.
One of the best benefits of automating reports is that errors and inconsistencies are less likely to occur. In addition, sales processes can be streamlined with the help of automation solutions, allowing you to better evaluate the contribution of different marketing efforts to the progress of your pipeline and the growth rate of your revenue.
The list continues with the potential to automatically perform website audits, referrals, social media promotions, and keyword analysis. The automation tools you choose will be determined by the objectives of your company.
What Is the Return on Investment of Marketing Automation?
Once you pursue marketing automation, budget and ROI are the first things that spring to mind. The marketing automation software you choose could have a significant impact on your company.
Research shows that marketing automation can boost sales productivity by up to 14.5% while cutting marketing costs by 12.2%. In addition, 80% of those who used marketing automation experienced an increase in the number of leads, and 77% saw a rise in their conversion rate. For these reasons and more, 91% of businesses that utilize marketing automation tools rate it as “very important” to the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts.
Introducing Keap: How It Works
Keap works by consolidating all your customer data into one centralized platform. This includes contact information, purchase history, preferences, and more. With this information stored in one place, you can create customized marketing and sales campaigns targeting specific customer segments. For example, if you have a group of customers who have made recent purchases, you can create a targeted campaign to upsell them on additional products or services they may be interested in.
How Can Keap Help Me Increase My Profit Margins?
As a small business owner, your time is precious. There are only so many hours in the day, and there’s only so much you can do yourself. This is where Keap comes in. By automating the tedious and time-consuming tasks that eat up your day, Keap gives you more time to focus on revenue-generating activities that will help you increase your profit margins. In addition, Keap’s tools can help you streamline your operations, which will also save you money and boost your bottom line.
Optimize Your Customer Relationship Management
Keap’s CRM features will help you keep track of your customers’ contact information, purchase history, and communication preferences. This will allow you to provide them with a better overall experience since you’ll be able to quickly resolve any issues they’re having and address their specific needs. Additionally, by segmenting your customers into groups, you can create targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to convert into sales.
Streamline Your Appointment Processes
If you run a service-based business, chances are that a large portion of your time is spent scheduling appointments. This time could be better spent working on other aspects of your business or developing client relationships.
With Keap’s appointment scheduling feature, you can automate the process of setting up appointments. This includes sending automatic reminders to both yourself and your clients before the appointment date.
Not only will this save you time but it will also reduce the likelihood of missed appointments. And because happy customers are more likely to do repeat business (and recommend your company to others), streamlining your appointment scheduling process with Keap is a great way to increase your profits.
Reduce Labor Costs
You can also reduce your labor costs by automating repetitive tasks and streamlining processes. This is because you will no longer need to pay someone to do things like input data into a spreadsheet or send out manual reminders. The money you save on labor costs can be used to invest in other areas of your business or increase your profit margins.
Improve Collaboration
Collaborative projects involving multiple people can quickly spiral out of control due to the sheer number of moving parts. Fortunately, even the most intricate projects can be monitored and carried out without a hitch, thanks to automation.
Assigning and following up with targeted prospects are two examples of time-consuming, manual processes that can be automated with Keap marketing automation. Businesses often struggle to unify these departments effectively. Thanks to marketing and sales automation, cooperation between the two areas is more productive than ever. Once everyone is on the same page, managers and team leaders can track everyone’s progress and ensure everyone is doing their part.
Smarter Decision-Making Using Data
Recently, “Big Data” has become a popular term in the field of information technology. Sadly, not all companies are effective at gathering and leveraging this information in their marketing and sales activities. With the help of Keap marketing automation, it’s much easier to make sense of Big Data, and once you have that insight, everything else becomes simple.
One of the best ways to evaluate marketing activities and anticipate customer reactions is with the help of a sales and marketing automation solution like Keap. It has the capability to generate a comprehensive profile of your leads.
Personalize the Customer Journey
Converting a one-time buyer into a lifelong supporter is one of the most challenging tasks businesses regularly face. Using automation to create content tailored for social media and blog posts is one way to accomplish this goal. Research also shows that companies that use sales automation early on also enjoy greater levels of customer satisfaction.
Statistics on video marketing indicate that more than 70% of consumers are on the lookout for content that is extraordinary, unique, and relevant to their interests. Keap marketing automation tools optimize the process of delivering the necessary content through email to the right customers at the right moment.
Another perk of marketing automation is the information it gathers, which is helpful for validating marketing leads before sending them on to sales. Using a grading and scoring system based on data about visitors, marketing automation can route qualified leads to the most suitable salesperson, further tailoring the experience for each prospect and increasing the likelihood of a sale.
Finetune the Marketing Process
Keap marketing automation software provides a means of mapping the customer journey. Your marketing plan will also help you create processes based on your customers’ needs and preferences. Implementing procedures designed around the customer journey streamlines the processing of targets and the nurturing of leads.
Knowing that 44% of customers will go elsewhere if they don’t get a response within a reasonable amount of time may cause you to reevaluate your follow-up procedure and the benefits of implementing marketing automation to boost customer satisfaction.
Boost Employee Morale
Most employees actively seek to avoid routine work. Doing the same thing over and over again can be tedious and unrewarding. If these repetitive chores can be automated, employees will have more time to focus on higher-value tasks, such as those that require them to use their intellect. If we put our brains to work, we can accomplish amazing feats. If you spend too long on dull or repetitive work, you may find that you have less energy and drive for more interesting or rewarding endeavors.
The positive domino effect that automation has on morale can do wonders for a company. The workplace culture rarely benefits from the contributions of weary and frustrated workers. When employees are happy in their jobs, they are more inclined to put in extra effort, learn more, and strive for excellence.
Capturing Leads
Keap has several features that make it ideal for lead capture. First, it offers a customizable lead capture form that can be embedded on your website or blog. This form allows leads to input their information so that you can follow up with them later.
In addition, Keap allows you to set up webhooks, which are essentially automated messages sent to leads when they take specific actions on your website (like submitting a form or signing up for a newsletter). These webhooks help you quickly respond to leads so that you can nurture them through the sales funnel.
Finally, Keap integrates with other popular marketing and sales tools (like Zapier, and Google Sheets) so that you can quickly transfer data between platforms and capture leads from multiple sources.
Creating Marketing Campaigns
Finally, Keap’s campaign feature allows you to automate your marketing efforts by sending targeted messages to groups of contacts based on their interests. For example, if you sell women’s clothing, you could create a campaign specifically for women who have expressed interest in dresses and send them periodic updates about new dress styles and special offers. Or, if you sell home goods, you could create a campaign for people who have bought from you in the past and send them updates about new products and exclusive discounts. By automating your campaigns, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are always on point and that your contacts receive the information they’re interested in.
As a small business owner, automation tools like Keap can be a lifesaver. By automating critical tasks like lead capture, sales pipeline management, and invoicing/payment processing, you can free up your time to focus on other areas of your business.
Businesses can save money on labor costs and redirect those savings to critical strategic efforts by adopting marketing automation solutions. But that’s only the beginning. Having the right marketing automation tools at your disposal can help you foster better teamwork, improve employee morale, and ultimately boost customer satisfaction.
If you’re not using automation tools for your business yet, now is the time to start.
As a first-generation black entrepreneur, Brandon Anthony Clark wasn’t always living his dream. In fact, he was living day-to-day in what he called his “regular job” that was a means to an end.
“I just wasn’t living the type of lifestyle that I had imagined living as a kid growing up, because I wanted to be a professional athlete (football player to be more specific). And, one day I’m 28 years old, and I’m working at my regular job. And I’m like, wait a minute, how did I get here. I’m not driving what I want to drive, I’m not living where I want to live, I’m not doing anything that I want to do. I’m literally just going to a job, living paycheck to paycheck – living for the weekends, for football, sports, and to get away from real life. So, I had to make some different decisions,” said Clark.
Fast-forward a few years and Brandon is now the owner of Thrive Wealth Solutions, who teaches everyday people his patent pending F.L.I.P Method that helps him and his clients to obtain more wealth through a unique life insurance investment policy.
“I had never in my life thought that I would be selling life insurance for a living, right, because I’m not even a good salesman at that,” Clark added.
When asked to explain what the F.L.I.P method is, Clark stated “The simplest way I could put it is – imagine you had this credit card, and this credit card paid you an average of 3% cashback on every single thing that you purchase, for the rest of your life. That’s what the F.L.I.P method is … Basically, what we do is we take a life insurance policy, (not something that a lot of people are, let’s say familiar with, in terms of using a strategy like this). But to keep it simple, all we do is we take the life insurance policy, and we structure it in a way that allows you to be able to use your cash as collateral and borrow against your own money.”
As you pay money into your policy, it’s like paying money towards a mortgage. As you pay your mortgage down you are creating equity in your house, right, and that equity can be tapped into it anytime. So, we’re taking that same concept, but we’re applying it to a life insurance policy that provides many tax advantages.
Brandon not only used this F.L.I.P method to create wealth for himself, but says it works for nearly anyone looking to secure their financial future.
While Brandon is living his dream life he is also no stranger to the challenges of starting and growing a small business.
“There’s a lot of legwork involved in running a business, especially when you’re first starting out,” he says. “It can be tough to keep track of everything, from sales and marketing to customer service and operations.”
That’s why Brandon decided to leverage Keap CRM & Automation Agency to help organize and automate his small business.
“I remember a point in my business where I wasn’t busy, I’d keep track of everything. I literally had a piece of paper that I would write down what I needed to do the next day, maybe five tasks, maybe 10 at the max, and I would fill up my whole day, and I have downtime. But once I started growing, the business started growing, more people started reaching out and tasks and other things started getting left behind. There were just too many tasks to put on a piece of paper. And I knew then that I was in trouble. I needed to be able to either hire somebody or develop a system that can do the repetitive tasks, the things that I don’t like doing,” Clark added.
So, Brandon decided to do both. By hiring the Automation Agency, a growth agency located in Tempe, Arizona, Brandon was able to get organized, save time, and automate many repetitive tasks after purchasing the Automation Agency’s flowchart and funnel diagram service.
When asked about Brandon’s experience with the Automation Agency, he stated “I feel like this is the best money I’ve ever invested, you know, best money I’ve ever invested. I’m naturally not a very structured person. You know, I’m more of a creative person. But when you guys were able to sit me down and ask me all these questions about my processes, questions that I didn’t even really know should be asked – you asked. And basically you were able to take that information and plug it into my flowchart. And when I saw the flowchart, I was just so impressed. I was showing everybody – like I’ve got another partner who wants to experiment with the Keap CRM system. And I showed him the flowchart, he said, Man that is “Elite,” just the start to finish.”
In order to scale his business and continue delivering high-quality work to his clients, Brandon and his team began to use the Keap CRM solution that the Automation Agency customized to their specific needs. With Keap, he is able to manage his contact lists, create and send email campaigns, set up appointments and reminders, collect payments, track his progress towards sales goals, and much more. All of these features have helped him save time so he can focus on growing his business.
“It felt like a weight had been lifted off of me. And what I experienced with you guys (Automation Agency) is just your level of knowledge, I just knew it was gonna be good, just because of how I was, I came into contact with you, I know you guys were gonna be just great. Everything from start to finish was outstanding,” added Clark.
As a young, inspiring, black entrepreneur, Brandon has always had a servant’s heart that wants to give back to others. When asked about what advice he might provide to other young professionals not living their dream or those who want to start a small business, said
“I would tell them that they will never be successful or make more money than they believe that they can make. So, the first work that you gotta do is work on your own personal attitude. Before you go out and try to change – just know that as your personal attitude gets better, as you grow as a person, that your income will grow. And you can serve more people because that’s what it’s all about. Serving more people. In order to serve more, you have to become more. It’s that simple.”
When Brandon is not inspiring other young professionals or creating TikTok videos or YouTube videos on his patent pending F.L.I.P method, he enjoys spending time with his wife and kids.
As a small business owner of a rapidly growing company, Brandon knows that he can’t do everything himself. He also knows that his time is valuable and that he needs to be strategic about how he spends it. That’s why he decided to leverage the power of automation by using Keap CRM. By automating tasks like email marketing, lead capture, and appointment scheduling, Brandon has been able to free up time with his family so that he can focus on running his business and making sure that his customers are happy.
However, Brandon isn’t the only one who has benefited from automation. His customers have also appreciated the fact that they can schedule appointments and make purchases without having to talk to a live person. This convenience has helped Brandon build a loyal customer base who keep coming back for more advice.
Thanks to the Automation Agency and the Keap CRM, Brandon has been able to streamline his business and make it more efficient. He is now better positioned than ever to continue growing his business and achieving even more success in the future. As he looks towards the future, Brandon is confident that automation will continue to be an important part of his business and help him scale to new heights.
“What the Automation Agency has done for me is give me a system that I want to imitate, like, the way you guys work with me, Jason, I was like, man, if I could take my clients through the same system, or that process. I love your guys’ process, it just is everything that I want in my business to where we’re working as a team, right. But then I can just kind of be hands off and just step in when I need to step in and just help our team members, you know, get the job done for our clients, right. But it’s been awesome. Definitely saving some time already,” added Clark.
Brandon Anthony Clark is proof that the American dream is still alive and well. By leveraging the power of automation with Keap CRM, Brandon has been able not only to build a successful business, but also inspire other young black entrepreneurs to pursue their own dreams. We’re excited to see what Brandon will do next!
If you’re a small business owner who is looking for ways to automate your business, then Keap CRM is definitely worth considering. Thanks to its powerful automation tools and robust reporting features, Keap CRM has helped first-generation black entrepreneur Brandon Anthony Clark save time and grow his business. To learn more about how Keap CRM can help your business, schedule a demo today.
As a small business owner, you know that marketing is vital to the success and growth of your business. But what’s the best way to go about building marketing services into your business?
You have options:
If you have a strong knowledge of marketing, you can hire specific marketing services on retainer from agencies, or
You can hire and build an internal team of marketing staff within your company, and/or
Our ascension program was built after hearing so many business owners share their challenges that the marketing services, they purchased from other agencies just didn’t give them the results they were after, and so they tried to build their own team – often still not achieving the results they sought.
The missing gap for many is the confidence, knowledge, and experience of HOW.
This is what our Ascension Program is designed to provide to you.
The Program is built across five (5) phases of growth enabling businesses to join at their stage of growth.
Here we explore where it is best for you to join.
Our aim is to walk with you, at your pace, some seek very fast growth, others want to progress a little slower. We will start you at the correct point and help you move across all five layers of growth.
Phase 1. Educate: Typically for very small businesses under $200k in revenues.
Our first aim is to build you the confidence and knowledge of how to go about achieving growth past $200k in revenues.
When signing up for a marketing retainer, you’re generally only paying for someone to execute on a set number of tasks each month, and you need to tell them which ones. With our ascension program, you are receiving one-on-one access to a growth coach who will strategize with you and educate you on the best way to achieve growth and help you move into the next phase of growth.
Phase 2. Launch: Your revenues are typically $200k-$800k
The Launch phase of our ascension program gives you the experience, knowledge, and resources you need to launch new products, services, and marketing campaigns quickly. What we want at this phase is solid growth.
We find the marketing retainer option at this stage of growth is less strategic and more of the support being a line item on a punch list – it becomes hit and miss and thus the disappointment in results.
We have chosen to build support around you with more dedicated resources, someone who is focused on your continued growth and specializes in launching campaigns, automations, and customer journeys. This phase requires you to consolidate your position in the marketplace, you must have the confidence now to really launch your marketing services.
Phase 3. Promote: Businesses with revenues above $800k can start here.
Revenues are typically $1-3m during this phase.
Now you really want to promote the business and drive in sales growth.
The Promote phase of our ascension program provides you with tangible assets, more robust resources, and a deeper knowledge of how you need to promote your business effectively. This phase is primarily focused on campaigning throughout your customer journey. Promoting your business can be a full-time job, so having an agency that is an extension to your team and who knows your products, services, and processes intimately can be a major advantage. At this stage our marketing team will develop targeted campaigns to help you reach your ideal customers to collect more leads, convert more clients, and create long term fans.
And we start the conversation with you now about how to build your internal team, at this size you now want to recruit some internal resources that can leverage the work you are doing. At this point we create the roadmap for building your internal team.
Phase 4. Partner: Businesses with revenues of $3m-6m typically start here.
While others on the Ascension program have now grown up to this stage.
At $3m in revenues the only way to continue to achieve growth is to start to add more product lines into the company and to open up partnerships that can help you expand.
In this phase of the ascension program, our team is deeply involved in helping you to campaign, automate, and build customer journeys across each of your marketing channels. This is where we help you identify and recruit partnerships with other businesses in complementary industries to cross-promote each other’s products or services. We are crafting custom marketing strategies and refining your unique value proposition that clearly articulates the offerings of your business and what makes you an attractive partner. Ultimately, we help you to optimize and productize your partnerships for growth.
Phase 5. Scale: You are now well above $6m in revenue. Businesses with current revenues of $10-25m+ typically start here.
Take a moment to acknowledge how far you’ve come. Scaling a business is no easy feat, but you made it to the top of our ascension program. In this phase we’re focused on helping you to develop an integrated internal team that helps you scale in your sector.
There are some common obstacles that prevent most businesses from achieving this level of growth and scalability. At this stage we are tapping into new markets to expand your product offerings and customer base. We’re helping you to invest in new technologies and processes that improve efficiency and competitiveness while also helping you to attract top talent and build a strong leadership team.
The benefits of our ascension program and its return on investment can be measured in several ways. Our focus is to build you a lifetime of confidence, vision, knowledge, and experience that delivers less stress, more guidance, more strategic direction, and sustainable financial growth. Clients see benefits from this program for many years to come.
Here are four key measurements of growth that are experienced when investing in our ascension program:
More Sales – clients that invest in marketing see sales revenues go up; this is called Top Line growth.
More Margin – this is cash in the door, it is called Bottom Line growth – profits. Automation and systemization can increase a client’s margins without the need to increase sales; and this has a direct impact on the financial returns of the client.
More Time – equally automation and systemization, reducing a client’s manual labor can save the client direct costs but can also save them considerable time. This is ‘opportunity cost’ – time saved and reinvested back into the business to achieve more sales creates direct financial benefits for the client.
More Value – this can show up in two ways a) the building of assets within a company builds long-term value which in turn will show up as increased attractiveness; this makes recruitment easier, retention longer, more partners are attracted to the company, more sponsors etc; and b) increased equity value, increasing the sale price of the company when it sells.
Ascension is not a typical coaching program or business consultancy. We focus on real, sustainable results that will help you take your business to the next level. Our program is specifically tailored to meet the unique needs of each client, and our team of growth experts has a wealth of experience across nearly every industry and vertical.
If you’re like most small business owners, you wear a lot of hats. You might be the CEO, the CFO, and the head of marketing all rolled into one. And while you might be a jack of all trades like turmeric farmer Ed Taylor, from American Turmeric Company, there’s one area where you could probably use a little help: automation.
Luckily, there’s a tool that can take some of the daily tasks off your shoulders and help you collect more leads, convert more clients, and create more fans: Keap. Keap is a CRM and all-in-one sales and marketing automation software that helps small businesses automate repetitive tasks, data collection, email marketing, invoicing, collecting reviews, getting more referrals, and following up with prospects and clients.
American Turmeric Company is one of the many small businesses that has leveraged the power of marketing automation and Keap to great effect. In the last year alone, they were able to grow sales by 52%. “It’s amazing to see our clients continue to grow revenue from the campaigns, automation, and customer journeys that we’ve developed leveraging the power of Keap and its sales and marketing automation solutions,” said Jason Benedict Co-Founder of the Automation Agency. One way American Turmeric Company was able to increase sales was by using marketing automation to launch targeted email marketing campaigns. They used behavioral data — like which products a customer purchased and time lapsed since a customer’s last purchase — to segment their list and send each group highly-targeted messages. For example, they sent discounts to first-time buyers and special offers to customers who hadn’t purchased in a while. Behavioral data is data that describes the observed actions of customers. It gives you real insights into how people are using or will potentially use your product. The Keap CRM helped the Taylors to not only grow turmeric but also grow their customer base. “It is one thing to hear what people say they want, but to see how they actually behave is even more insightful for business owners to make decisions that can lead to accelerated growth and better customer service,” said Benedict.
Another way American Turmeric Company increased sales was by using lead generation forms on their website. They used these forms to capture new leads of potential customers who had shown interest in their product but hadn’t made a purchase yet, and then followed up with them through automated email drip campaigns without losing the personalized touch required to build client relationships. These follow-up emails contained valuable content like educational tips, remedies about turmeric and what it does for inflammation, along with recipes for making everything from drinks to shakes to delectable meals with this miracle plant. With the help of the Automation Agency implementing proven and tested marketing automation strategies into their business, American Turmeric Company was able to free up the necessary time needed in their business to focus on expanding their product line into new markets like skincare and dog food. They even donated 30 pounds of turmeric each month to the North American Elephant Reserve to help elephants with arthritis! “The problem with elephants is the same problem with humans or dogs or anything – is that as we get older, our joints get stiff. We have so many testimonies Jason, from people that have experienced the healing qualities of turmeric. It’s really a privilege for us to be able to do what we do, and work with some of these people,” said Ed Taylor, Owner of American Turmeric Company. When asked about how Ed and his wife Diane balance the farm life of growing turmeric along with running a small business and keeping organized, he said, “Soon after we got our website up and got our E-commerce site going, started selling products, shipping – we didn’t realize it, but we were building a customer base. But we didn’t really know what to do with it (at that time). They were just names and email addresses in a spreadsheet. So, we started thinking, what are we going to do with it (the email list)? I don’t know who’s buying, you know, more than once, who are my repeat customers? What are they buying? Where are they located? I didn’t know any of that stuff. So, we started looking around and we found Keap and the Automation Agency and decided that Keap was the vehicle that we wanted to use to put our information in regarding our customers.” This was a leading indicator that the Automation Agency identified during their initial assessment that could help American Turmeric Company benefit from analyzing its behavioral data. By tracking, storing, and organizing their customer database in one centralized cloud-based solution, using Keap, these powerful analytics along with automation proved effective in helping them grow sales revenue and increase their efficiency. Before hiring the Automation Agency to help them build out more advanced automations and designing a frictionless customer journey, the American Turmeric Company started leveraging Keap on a basic level. “We started doing that in a rather simplistic way. And then we discovered there was this thing called Zapier, that would move our customer data out of our website every time we made a sale, and it would put into Keap,” said Taylor. Like most new Keap users who start with humble beginnings, their curiosity grows alongside their sales, leading to continued revenue growth and more efficiency in their business, which means more margin growth. More margin growth means more profits and longevity for small businesses. “The thing that impressed me once I understood what was going on… Is that this is an evergreen process. It’s not something that you need to focus on daily. Like you know, you wake up, you set your priorities, you do the important things that need to do. Once the automations are set up in Keap, you know, as far as I know, as long as there are computers, as long as there’s the internet, that’s kind of going to keep grinding it out. I don’t have to go in. And I mean, I can update it if I need to. But it just works. And that’s the miracle to me, is that we’re able to communicate to our customers, through the series of seven emails, initially, we have reminders in there, we have thank you’s in there – it’s just been very interesting. And to me, one of the more rewarding parts of what I do is work with Keap and work with Automation Agency, and see this thing work,” said Taylor.
So, if you’re looking for a way to grow your small business, investing in marketing automation software is a great place to start. Marketing automation will help you save time and money while still reaching new customers and growing your sales. Just take it from American Turmeric Company—automated campaigns helped them increase sales by 52% within their first year of working with the Automation Agency.
When asked about why Ed and his wife Diane chose to work with the Automation Agency, Ed stated “I liked your approach. I just liked the feeling of it. I liked what you showed us you could do. And I’ve said to you and to others before, that the team that you have the team that we worked with through Automation Agency, was part of my team. It wasn’t just your people. It wasn’t just Automation Agency, people that we were working with, they were our people. Because, really, we are in the middle of all of this, we launched a whole new website, that was a big deal for us to launch a whole new website. We brought on our new products and your team members were right there with us. If we need technical work done, it was done. They really went above and beyond what I had expected to help us solve some of the problems that we faced.”
Interested in getting results like the American Turmeric Company? Request A Free 14-Day Trial To Keap, (the all-in-one CRM for Sales & Marketing Automation) and receive a complimentary 1-hour assessment of your business from the Automation Agency.
It’s a controversial decision that can positively impact your business or leave you paying unemployment taxes if things don’t go as planned.
Likely one of the biggest challenges that small business owners face is knowing when to hire. However, one of the most overlooked and cost-effective solutions could be deploying sales and marketing automation solutions at a fraction of the cost to an annual salary.
As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to increase profits, grow your company, and get an edge on the competition. You want to find ways to do more with less and increase your bottom line. So, how do you know when it’s time to add an employee to your team or when you can get by with sales and marketing automation?
The Pros and Cons of Hiring an Employee:
There are a few things to consider before you decide whether to hire an employee or deploy sales and marketing automation. The first is cost. Hiring an employee obviously comes with a salary and benefits costs, which can add up quickly and repeats and increases every year. And even if you’re able to find someone who is willing to work for relatively low pay, there’s no guarantee that they will be any good at their job. In fact, it’s often said that the cost of bad hires can be twice as much as the salary of a good one. So, if you do decide to go the traditional route, make sure you take your time in finding the right person with the experience to achieve your desired results.
The second thing to consider is training. Even if you’re able to find someone with the necessary skills, they will likely need some training before they’re able to hit the ground running. This can be time-consuming and expensive, so it’s something else to keep in mind when making your decision.
The third thing to consider is maintenance. Once you’ve gone through the trouble of finding and training someone, you then must keep them motivated and on track so that they continue to do their job well. This can be a full-time job in itself! If you’re not prepared to invest the necessary time and effort into maintaining your staff, then it might not be worth it to hire someone in the first place.
The Pros and Cons of Sales & Marketing Automation:
Now let’s take a look at sales and marketing automation and see how it stacks up against hiring an employee. The first thing to consider is that it’s a fraction of the cost. While there is an initial investment required for setting up automation software, it will almost certainly be less than the cost of hiring even one employee. Additionally, there are usually nominal ongoing fees associated with automation once it’s been set up. Once it’s running, it will continue to do its job without any additional input from you. And best of all automation won’t call in sick, it won’t show up late or request to go on vacation when revenue is down or before a big deadline.
The second thing to consider is training; while some basic knowledge of how sales and marketing automation works is required, it’s far easier (and less time-consuming) to learn than training someone from scratch on how to do their job.
The third thing to consider is maintenance; unlike with employees, there is very little maintenance required once sales and marketing automation has been set up. You might need make occasional adjustments as your business changes over time, but for the most part, you can set it and forget it!
“We often encourage small business owners to look at their investment in automation as a minimum of a 5-year investment. We have many clients that are using the same automation, systems, and processes that we deployed 8 years ago. And that automation is consistently driving ROI and efficiency in their business. And that same automation has provided some of our clients a 10x – 20x ROI of their initial investment. Now, think about what that investment would have cost the small business if they chose to hire a salaried employee. It could have likely cost them upwards of $60,000 a year annually over the last several years,” said Jason Benedict, Co-Founder of the Automation Agency.
Conclusion:
Business owners should always be looking for ways to streamline their operation and increase efficiency. One way to do this is to automate as much of their sales and marketing process as possible. However, there are certain tasks that are better suited for human beings. So, how do business owners know when it’s time to add an employee or when they can get by with sales and marketing automation? By considering factors such as the type of task being performed and the frequency with which it needs to be performed. Also doing a quick comparison of the cost of implementing automation software vs hiring an annual salaried position is an easy identifier. With these key factors in mind, business owners can make an informed decision about whether they should deploy automation or bring on an extra pair of hands.
Ready to get started with automating simple tasks like collecting leads, automating follow up emails, scheduling appointments, and sending invoices so you can get paid faster?
Request A Free 14-Day Trial To Keap, (the all-in-one CRM for Sales & Marketing Automation) and receive a complimentary 1-hour assessment of your business from the Automation Agency.
As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you know that a successful sales process is key to keeping your business afloat. But do you have a clear understanding of what your sales process looks like? If not, it’s time to create a flowchart and funnel diagram. Doing so will help you visualize your sales process and identify any areas that need improvement.
A flowchart is a diagram that depicts a process, system or computer algorithm. They are widely used in multiple fields to document, study, plan, improve and communicate often complex processes in clear, easy-to-understand diagrams.
Sales processes can be long and complicated, involving many different people and touch points. A well-designed flowchart can help simplify and streamline your sales process, making it more efficient and effective.
The first step to streamlining your sales process is to define and document what your sales process looks like. This will give you a clear understanding of the steps involved and help you identify any bottlenecks or areas of improvement. A flowchart is the perfect tool for this purpose because it provides a visual representation of your sales process that is easy to understand and share with others.
2. To Identify Bottlenecks and Areas of Improvement
Once you have defined and documented your sales process, you can use your flowchart to identify any bottlenecks or areas of improvement. This is important because it can help you make changes to your sales process that will make it more efficient and effective.
Many sales processes are long and complicated, involving many different people and touch points. A flowchart can help simplify a complex sales process by breaking it down into manageable steps. This makes it easier to understand and follow, which can lead to improved efficiency and effectiveness.
An efficient and effective sales process is essential for any business that wants to succeed in today’s competitive marketplaces. A well-designed flowchart can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales process by identifying bottlenecks and areas of improvement. This will lead to increased revenues and profits, which are the ultimate goals of any business.
Flowcharts are an essential tool for anyone who wants to streamline their sales process. By defining, documenting, and visualizing the steps involved in your sale, you will be able to identify areas of improvement and optimize your workflow for greater efficiency. This will give you a significant competitive advantage in today’s marketplace. Flowcharts are also valuable communication tool that can help ensure everyone on your team is on the same page regarding the sale steps involved. Implementing a flowchart into your existing sale procedure can help take your business to the next level.
Request a professionally designed and custom-built flowchart and funnel diagram for your sales process today:
After eleven years as a retail pharmacist, Dr. Jamie Wilkey, PharmD decided it was time to ditch the 9 to 5 retail pharmacy job and transform herself into an entrepreneur by combining two of her greatest passions: consulting and online education in pharmacogenomics.
Dr. Wilkey’s one-year metamorphosis into entrepreneurship began by becoming certified in Pharmacogenomics (PGx) and starting her own business, Arches Health.
This relatively new field of Pharmacogenomics is an emerging ground-breaking branch of medicine that combines both pharmacology (branch of science which deals with study of drugs) with genomics (the branch of science which deals with study of genes) for development of effective doses and safe medications tailored according to an individual patient genetic makeup.
When used appropriately, pharmacogenetic testing can be a practical tool to optimize drug therapy and avoid medication adverse effects. In layman’s terms, it is an examination of how genes affect an individual’s response to drugs.
Like most entrepreneurs, Dr. Wilkey felt a rooted desire to share her knowledge and passion with the world, however, she knew going into business for herself was not going to be easy, nor was there an established path for success as she pioneered her pharmacogenomics consulting practice into a successful business.
A Pioneer Entrepreneur
Dr. Wilkey cited the following motivators for her decision to exit a safe career as a retail pharmacist to start a unique practice in a new field as:
• She was becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of long-term opportunity as a retail pharmacist for advancement.
• She noted while she had great experience and a terrific education to become a pharmacist, she constantly felt she was underutilized.
• The inability to innovate as a retail pharmacist was a constant disappointment.
• The onset of COVID-19 put her squarely on the frontline, at risk, and away from her isolated kids and work-from-home spouse.
For Dr. Jamie Wilkey, the transition involved much more than just embracing a new discipline and carving out a new niche in a very competitive industry, the move involved immersing herself in learning how to become an entrepreneur able to organize, launch, and manage a new business complete with service offerings, marketing campaigns, accounting, e-commerce, and time management.
One of the greatest obstacles Dr. Wilkey faced began with not knowing anyone else who had built a Pharmacogenomics consulting practice. In addition, she had no experience in launching or running a small business that required sales and marketing activity, and she had limited resources at her disposal.
Before meeting the Co-Founders of the Automation Agency (Jason & Therese Benedict), Dr. Wilkey admitted she didn’t know what a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) was or how significant the ability to create an effective and consistent “customer journey” would be to her new business. Upon hiring the Automation Agency Dr. Wilkey received expert coaching, a proven and tested lifecycle marketing framework (used by thousands of small businesses), along with her own account to Keap, the leading CRM for Sales & Marketing Automation (SMA).
Generally, a lifecycle marketing plan is a three-phase framework, Collect Leads, Convert Clients and Create Fans. In Dr. Wilkey’s case the Automation Agency identified that her new startup needed to focus on collecting leads and converting clients to help drive immediate revenue to sustain her PGx-Based consulting practice.
When Dr. Wilkey received access to Keap she immediately saw the value in having all of our data in one centralized location (which helped her to save time and get better organized), while also creating a customer journey that would help her remove many manual tasks and obstacles that she faced on a daily basis and replace it with sales and marketing automation.
“Specifically, from the moment the Automation Agency introduced me to Keap, I was able to abandon my notebook approach, categorize prospects, and identify the most likely to become my customers. Since every interaction is trackable, you can see your database grow and understand through email opens and click-throughs which communications are the most effective in creating engagement,” said Dr. Wilkey.
Creating a customer journey is the process that small businesses can use to align their marketing efforts with different stages of a customer’s life cycle. Lifecycle marketing is the process of providing your audience the kinds of communications and experiences they need, want, or like as they move from prospects to customers then, ideally, to advocates.
“It’s important for small business owners to know exactly where their prospects and customers are in the buying cycle so they can provide them with appropriate information at each stage: collecting leads, converting clients, and creating fans,” said Jason Benedict, the Co-Founder of the Automation Agency.
This ensures entrepreneurs and business owners like Dr. Jamie Wilkey are spending time and money on initiatives that will generate revenue for them in the long run (rather than just focusing on short term gains).
“By following the Automation Agency recommendations, I was able to quickly replace the chaos of ‘all over the place’ note taking and scrambling through notebooks to figure out who, when, and how to appropriately follow up with my prospects with compelling messages,” said Dr. Wilkey.
Results
After devoting months of research and conducting due diligence before attempting to launch her first online training course and consulting practice (tailored to other pharmacists looking to break free from their day job), Dr. Wilkey hired the Automation Agency to expertly assist her in developing a go-to-market strategy that included sales and marketing automation to scale her business quickly and minimize the potential pitfalls and obstacles.
The Automation Agency started by helping Dr. Wilkey create a unique and memorable customer journey that fast-tracked her success and allowed her to attract several new clients and collect $18,000 in revenue from launching her first online course, PGx Confidence Course, which teaches other pharmacists how to start their own consulting practice.
The Agency’s experience in creating highly customized individual communications, suitably segmenting prospects by category, and focusing on the prospects with the highest probability to become customers, had an immediate impact for Dr. Wilkey. The Keap CRM tools recommended by the Automation Agency helped to jumpstart Dr. Wilkey’s new endeavor. From the beginning, the agency believed what she had to offer was unique and valuable. They had a significant track record in delivering the most efficient and effective way to communicate a complex subject.
“The Automation Agency helped me understand how to target and automate the communication timing as well as the message to a seemingly overwhelming potential universe without sacrificing the personal touch. This is of particular importance to me in pursuing my goal of helping my individual patients to thrive in health using personalized, precision medicine,” said Dr. Wilkey.
The Future is Bright
With every passing day Dr. Wilkey’s positive mindset contributes to the formation of an even firmer business foundation for her future. She has continued to gain confidence in her value to other health professionals and enjoys spreading the news of the success of her company and the pharmacogenomics field.
When asked what advice Dr. Wilkey would recommend to other pharmacists and healthcare professionals who are considering starting their own business or breaking free from their day job, she replied, “invest in yourself and go all in. It’s easy to doubt yourself or to wonder if it’s right for you. But you need to invest in yourself and believe in a brighter future and take action on it. Taking action opens up so many opportunities.”
Dr. Wilkey also adds that you need to put that belief into action by hiring experts like the Automation Agency who can help support your growth and fast-track your success. “When you make a monetary investment, your skin is really in the game, and you are held accountable. And when you work with experts you can achieve remarkable success. Engaging the Automation Agency was the best move I ever made.”
Dr. Wilkey concluded that there was more risk in not initiating a career change in the long-term, than going forward in pursuit of the vision of her new endeavor. Pharmacists interested in learning more can visit: www.DrJamieWilkey.com.
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“The Automation Agency set me up with all of my contacts and communications in one place. The notebook approach I was using just wasn’t effective or sustainable. By deploying CRM tagging and segmentation tools, I have been able to appropriately communicate with every prospect in the database with the right messages at precisely the right time”, Dr. Wilkey noted.
“All of your communication is 100% trackable. It is fun to watch your database grow, the percentage of your emails that have been opened, and where exactly clicks occurred, so you get a real picture of how engaged your prospects and customers are with your message. You have a clear picture of how and when to nurture your prospects and customers.”
Born into a family of entrepreneurs, Steven McBee has never seen himself as anything else but an entrepreneur. And today, he is the founder of Apex Protein Snacks a direct-to-consumer e-commerce company that produces healthy, shelf-stable meat snack products.
Steven is also the Co-owner of McBee farms and a social media influencer. To Steven, “business runs in the blood.” “Everyone in my family, from my extended uncle to my grandparents, to my mum, my dad, all of them are entrepreneurs,” he says echoing a popular statement he always heard growing up “you are either helping build up someone else’s dream or building on your dream.”
But even though he was an experienced businessman, Steven’s foray into the eCommerce business and starting Apex Protein Snacks has opened him up to a way of running a business that was completely different from what he was used to.
With no experience whatsoever in the e-commerce realm, Steven knew where he was lacking and the challenges, he would encounter with Apex Protein Snacks. All he had was the experience and stories told by friends who have had some success in eCommerce and knowledge acquired from reading books.
“Going into this, I knew I wanted to be as hands-off as possible. I’ve read so many books From Tim Ferris’s 4-Hour workweek, Good to Great, Built to scale and all these other books about companies that are truly built to scale and can mostly be automated without much labor and I knew this what was I wanted Apex to be.” He say.
Steven knew from the onset what exactly he wanted Apex to be as far as automating processes was concerned. He also knew that to make that happen he would have to do some heavy research upfront because he has spent most of his business life so far in labor-intensive industries where automation didn’t really matter.
And by doing due diligence as far as automation was concerned upfront before the business even launched, Steven hoped to be able to scale his business quickly and with minimal headache once it launched.
To make this happen, Steven explains that he started looking into automated email marketing, automated text message campaigns, different customer service response systems that could respond automatically based on what the customer sends in via customer contact email.
“I started with InfusionSoft and in my InfusionSoft package I had 8 hours of training with the Automation Agency and this allowed me to see just how well-versed they were in InfusionSoft. I knew it was going to be a steep learning curve with InfusionSoft. It would have been very easy to learn if I could really dig in but I don’t have that amount of time as I’m always running from place to place.”
Seeing the Automation Agency’s extensive knowledge of Infusionsoft and how they navigated through to create these email campaigns motivated his decision to work with the Automation Agency beyond his initial training and so far it has been worth the expense.
“Everyone at Automation Agency has really helped me out and there’s no way I could have created these email campaigns without them.”
Discovering Automation Agency
Since discovering the Automation Agency, Steven says it’s been almost like “drinking out of a fire hose” as far as taking in information about the automation process.
And without the Automation Agency, Steven believes he would not have been able to launch Apex when he did and as easily as he did because he would have been inundated with manual customer service emails, different product questions, and other manual processes.
“The Automation Agency had a big role to play in the launch of Apex itself. I knew going into it that I had several different automated emails that I wanted to send out to our customers. I had a “New Customer Welcome” email, I had a ‘’Thank You for Your Purchase” email, “A Product Return e-mail”, and so on. We also had a giveaway in the build-up to the launch. It was a lot of information we were trying to get out and trying to get to work correctly and there would have been no way we would have been able to handle all of it without the automation agency.”
The Results
Steven says he has gotten a lot of positive feedback from customers since the launch. “It’s neat to see all of those responses from the consumers that are saying that the personal touch has helped them connect to the brand and has helped them establish trust and relationship with the brand.”
The Enter-To-Win campaign which was a major part of the launch of Apex has been a massive success as well. The plan with this campaign was to build up a social media following, build an email campaign list and a text campaign list for marketing purposes, and as the number shows, this has been achieved in just about a month since launch giving credence to how successful the launch has been thanks to the Automation Agency developing an end-to-end solution.
Rolling out the numbers, here is what Steven had to say about the success of the campaign:
“Leading up to the Enter-To-Win campaign I had zero emails, zero phone numbers, and 400 followers on Instagram. It was a new brand and there was no marketing prior to launch.”
Thanks to InfusionSoft and The Automation Agency, Apex Protein Products has been able to go from zero to sixty in just seconds.
“The campaign has helped out tremendously. Currently, we are over 15,000 entries into the giveaway, Instagram following is now over 2600 and Twitter following is now up to over 1400. The Facebook following has also grown to about 1500 to 2000 with up to six days left in the Enter-To-Win giveaway.”
But more than just a growing email list and an increased social media presence, part of the success of the launch is also reflecting on the business revenue and a growth in customer base.
So far, Steven says they have been able to convert some of those early campaign successes to real-life sales with nearly $15,000 in revenue within the first few weeks and up to 20 subscriptions in the bag on the first day of launch. The goal is to leverage this early success to create recurring revenue for the business.
“As we grow this brand, we are actually aiming to generate over 70% of the customer base into that recurring monthly revenue so we have a consistent revenue stream and having 20 subscribers on the first day alone is definitely a big deal and we are going to continue to market to that customer base that we currently have thanks to that Enter-To-Win giveaway and push them into that subscription base.”
Leveraging this early win and gaining more subscribers will be crucial. Apex is a direct-to-consumer brand and this means consumers will not be able to find the product on retail shelves at their convenience. They are going to have to keep them in stock and the only way to really do that is to have everyone on a subscription model.
Partnerships and Other Impacts of Scaling Early
Steven’s plan all along was to scale the business as early as possible and he’s glad Apex was able to achieve his projected growth curve a lot earlier than he had anticipated, and he believes he owes most of the success to an efficient automation strategy designed by none other than Automation Agency LLC, an award-winning Keap & Infusionsoft Certified Partner.
“Even beyond the reach of what I could see or feel, we were building a foundation and getting the word out there. It has really taken off from here and now as we are approaching the one-month mark from the day of launch, we are starting to get that exponential growth curve which is what I was looking for on an eCommerce sprint like this.
Currently, Apex Product has been able to score a partnership with some of Steven’s good friends that own international supplement brands. These brands have a good knowledge of the e-commerce business landscape making about 50 million USD in revenue per year and a large following on social media. The partnership with them is expected to increase Apex Protein Snacks’ growth in 100 folds and more as they already have a good base.
Thankfully, Apex has been designed from the onset to scale which means it is more than ready for such exponential growth and influx of orders that would come with it even though it is still early into the business. Steven believes he owes all of this to appropriate planning and vision.
Overcoming Challenges Before They Happen
The success Apex has enjoyed so far is proof that making the right decisions prior to getting started makes a world of difference in business. Of course, every startup is bound to face some challenges along the way but for Steven, adopting automation early meant Apex didn’t have to experience much of the challenges that came with running a business manually without automation.
Steven says he has been forewarned about going at it manually prior to starting, and he took the warnings seriously. He knew going the manual route wasn’t going to be an option which was why he adopted automation right from the onset.
“I knew from the onset that that was not going to be an option for me.”
As someone with a very busy schedule running multiple businesses all in various industries and requiring a lot of time and effort to manage, Steven knew the only way Apex would run successfully and scale exactly how he wanted it to was by automating up to 96% of the business processes.
“luckily I didn’t have to experience all of that heartache. I learned from other people’s mistake and set myself up for success from the start,” especially when signing up for the Automation Agency’s Elite Marketer Package, which included ongoing coaching and expert setup of his automation needs.
Projections For The Future
Just one month in and it is safe to say that the Apex Protein Product launch was a success. The recent partnership bears further credence to the fact that the company is poised for even bigger wins in the coming months.
Steven is hopeful about the future. Motivated by the success of Apex and the lessons learned, he plans to continue to explore eCommerce and to replicate the same automated system early with his other startups.
“As far as our other companies we are going to continue to grow those. We have several other new startups coming in the fall of 2021. Those ones will be eCommerce brands and you can bet we are going to be using InfusionSoft and Automation Agency to try and automate those brands as well”
Asked for his advice for other small business owners out there here is what he has to say: “As a business owner you really should be focusing on the growth of the company and the large-scale items. You don’t need to be digging into the minor details like emailing customers or handling customer service-related questions. You need to automate these as much as you can and focus on the growth and scalability of your business.”
One of the greatest obstacles Dr. Wilkey faced began with not knowing anyone else who had built a Pharmacogenomics consulting practice. In addition, she had no experience in launching or running a small business that required sales and marketing activity, and she had limited resources at her disposal.
