We know that automation is absolutely essential to online marketers because it saves time and energy. I also think it can save money as well. When you get routine tasks “off your desk” through automation, this frees you up to handle more important things that make you money.
Today’s episode is How to Automate Your Online Marketing – Part 2.
Hi there. This month I’m going over 15 ways to automate your online marketing.
I am Lisa Wells, your Virtual Assistant Trainer.
We know that automation is absolutely essential to online marketers because it saves time and energy. I also think it can save money as well. When you get routine tasks “off your desk” through automation, this frees you up to handle more important things that make you money.
Continuing on with Part 2.
4. Offer Educational Tools
Another idea for using your automated email software is to offer educational opportunities. You can create an email course that sends each lesson automatically according to a set schedule. For example, you can offer one lesson a week. Each lesson builds on the last and teaches your subscriber how to do something, like set up an e-commerce business, build a website, and so on.
You can charge for the course or offer it free. You can offer it to customers as a freebie or a “thank you” for their purchase, or as a lead magnet. This means offering it for free upfront to potential customers in exchange for their contact details. When they receive valuable, useful, and free content from you, it builds a relationship that can lead to future sales.
My entire Systems Sunday process is automated, everything from scheduling the video in YouTube to go public, scheduling the post in WordPress to be published, notifying me of comments using a plugin, email broadcast scheduled in Keap, and if anything is purchased, there is a follow-up email sequence that happens.
5. Checking Your Work
While you can’t automate content creation, you can automate a very important part of it – editing and checking grammar and spelling.
Not everybody is a great writer or proofreader, but spelling and grammar mistakes make you look bad and cost you trust. There are programs that not only clean up your mistakes (like the spellcheck on your Word program) but also programs that can offer ways to clean up your text.
Automated editing programs can identify overly long sentences for you, suggest simpler words and phrases, and provide you with dictionaries, thesauruses, and other useful tools to help you write better.
One of my favorite free tools is Grammarly.
6. Searching for Content
For online marketing, you need a steady stream of content to keep your audience engaged. You’ll create some of this content yourself, but you can also share others’ content. Examples include news articles, infographics, blog posts, YouTube videos, and so on.
While you can’t automate content creation, you can automate some aspects of finding and sharing content. You can sign up for notification programs that bring relevant content to you, which you can then sift through and choose to share. This saves you the time of hunting down this content yourself.
Another idea is to add someone else’s feed to your social media scheduler. For example, I love Amy Porterfield’s business advice and she always brings new content with her podcast. I set up a feed so that posts automatically are added to my Edgar’s OPS queue. OPS is other people’s stuff.
For content curation, check out The Tweeted Times.
7. Renewal Reminders
You can send automated renewal reminders to customers whose memberships, contracts, or subscriptions are nearing their end. It’s easy for people to forget and let their subscription lapse, and this is a good way to remind people. This is a task that would be overly time-consuming to do yourself.
Renewal reminders are helpful to your customers and can thus help you build a relationship with them. A renewal reminder also offers a great marketing opportunity. It allows you to keep in touch (giving you an excuse to contact your client or customer) and also gives you an opportunity to remind them of the unique value you offer or to mention new deals and offers.
Check with your email management software to see if it will support an automation sequence. In Keap, I use field timers so that after x amount of time, the contact is sent a follow-up email.
If you enjoyed this episode and want more automation tips and strategies, check out my How to Automate Your Online Marketing training system.
I will show you how to:
- Identify exactly where in your business you can benefit most from automation
- Create a social media automation plan that cuts down on the amount of time you spend on social media while increasing engagement
- Develop an email marketing automation strategy that builds your list of leads and customers while getting more sales from the subscribers you already have.. And more!
Includes a comprehensive training guide, workbook with course worksheets, and a bonus social media scheduler template in Excel.
You can find the product below or head over to my VA Business Builder Boutique by clicking on Shop by Type in the menu bar and you’ll see a link for all of my Ebooks and Training Guides.
Join me next week as we go over more tips on how to automate your online marketing!
See you then!
Catch up on other “How to Automate Your Online Marketing” episodes + resources mentioned in the video:
Did you enjoy this episode and want to put it into action? Check out this training system!
How to Automate Your Online Marketing
$25.00
Whether you’re a one-person show or you have a small team to work with, I doubt your marketing budget is limitless. But it’s not just a matter of time and money, the more marketing tactics you’re juggling, the more likely it is that a ball will be dropped somewhere.
You might forget to send a customer a thank-you note. Or forget to post to your Facebook Group for days. Or maybe you’re just not bothering to send emails to your leads or create new content for your blog, Because you just don’t have the time to do it all!
And then there are all the profitable opportunities you might miss because you’re just too busy with what you have on your plate already.
Think about the prospective customers you’re losing because you don’t know which ones to spend time on. Or the follow-up sales you’re missing out on because you’re too busy working with current clients.
All these challenges can be tackled with AUTOMATION!
No, you can’t run your whole business on autopilot. There’s a big personal element that’s always critical.
But when you use the power that technology gives us today, you can free up huge chunks of time to focus on the personal stuff, and….
You’ll be running every single part of your business more effectively, more efficiently, and more PROFITABLY.
However, the huge range of automation possibilities can be overwhelming. Especially if you’re not a ‘techie’ to start with.
That’s why I created this training that will guide you through all the different automation possibilities for your business, and help you pick the right ones for you.
In Online Marketing Automation, I’ll walk you through each of the main areas of marketing automation and the tactics you can apply.
You’ll look at how automation can improve every part of your sales process, so that you can get more leads, more customers, and more sales.
Finally, you’ll put together a plan for where you’ll start implementing automation in your own business and the tasks you need to work on right away.
By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to:
- Identify exactly where in your business you can benefit most from automation
- Create a social media automation plan that cuts down on the amount of time you spend on social media while increasing engagement
- Develop an email marketing automation strategy that builds your list of leads and customers while getting more sales from the subscribers you already have
- Outline tactics for automating your content marketing and using tools to speed up your content creation
- Design customer follow-up approaches that will help build long-lasting relationships while increasing the lifetime value of all your customers.
- Draft an integrated automation plan for your overall online marketing strategy.
I’ve divided up the guide into easy, bite-size sections so you won’t get overwhelmed. And, you’ll have no reason to procrastinate! You’ll even get a Workbook to take notes as you complete the activities.
Want the specifics?
Here are the topics we’ll cover in each major section of the guide:
Module 1: Introduction – How Automation Helps Your Online Marketing
We’ll start by discussing the meaning of the term ‘marketing automation’ and all the benefits for your business. The biggest benefit is usually time, but you might be surprised at some of the others.
Module 2: What is the Goal of Your Marketing Automation Strategy?
In order to create an automation strategy, you need to understand what you hope to accomplish first. In Module 2, we’ll look at different types of goals you might want to achieve and how they line up with your sales process.
Module 3: Social Media Automation
Social media can be one of your biggest time drains, sometimes with the lowest ROI. In Module 3, we’ll look at how you can cut the time you spend on social sites, automate different aspects, but still keep your social media marketing highly personal.
Module 4: Email Marketing Automation
Email is the heart and soul of many businesses, especially when it comes to developing relationships with both leads and customers. In Module 4, you’ll see how you can automate many aspects of email marketing so that you do a better job of converting leads to customers and retaining the customers you already have.
Module 5: Content Marketing Automation
Content creation is something that’s often pushed to the side because you ‘don’t have enough time’, but content marketing is also a key part of building your credibility online. In Module 5, we’ll be looking at both ways to automate some of the marketing side of content, as well as tools that will speed up your content creation.
Module 6: Customer Follow-Up Automation
Your current customers are your best source of repeat sales and additional revenue, but you’re probably not taking advantage of all the automation available for making this happen. In the last module before we finish up, you’ll learn about some powerful tactics and tools for using automation in your ongoing customer relationship-building.
Conclusion: Create Your Marketing Automation Plan
By this point, you’ve learned about some astounding ways to use automation that will make an enormous impact on your business and your life. In the concluding module, you’ll spend time putting it all together by building your personal automation plan and identifying your next steps.
Once you complete, you’ll be well on your way to:
- Freeing up huge blocks of time in your day, so that you can focus on the places you add the most value….. or on spending more time with your family and friends!
- Creating a more reliable, quality-driven experience for your leads and customers…. throughout your sales process
- Decreasing your costs, increasing your sales, and ultimately growing your profits dramatically….. both from new and existing customers
….and taking a whole lot of stress out of your life when you know that you don’t have to worry about a big chunk of your marketing!
TDLR; don’t waste hours on marketing tasks that can easily be taken care of by automation.
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