I hear it every day. Yeah, Will, automation sounds great but I don’t even know where to start with my business.
Well let’s do a little exercise, and by the time we are done you will know exactly where to start, how to get there, and gain some resources to help you along the way.
I know you’ve heard the saying “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” right? Well today you’re going to walk a mile with your customers glasses on.
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Step 1.
Take a Look at your customers journey through their eyes. Think of the entire sales process from the point where they don’t even know you or your brand exists, to the point they have converted into a paying customer (the most forgotten part of the customer journey), and to the moment in time when they are screaming from the mountaintops that everyone should buy from you.
Take a look at this journey through their eyes and write down every step of the way. Write down what happens or in some cases what should happen. Write down every touch point and every time you want that contact to interact with your brand. Now hold on to that list.
Step 2.
I want you to take off those glasses and put on your business glasses. Now, think about what goes into making each one of those steps on your list happen and write that down on a corresponding list. This list should contain every contact, every touch point, every document received. Everything the customer gets from Facebook messages and welcome emails, to deliverables and confirmation. From confirmation to receipt, to thank you letter, and follow-up survey. What happens? What is the process that has to happen to make that customers journey complete.
Step 3:
Now take those glasses off and put the glasses of your coworkers, your sales team, your support team and everyone in between. Think about the same customer journey what processes have to happen along the way to make these things work behind the scenes. What are the puzzle pieces that are missing from your first two lists. Where’s the glue that’s going to hold it all together? Got it written down? Ok, let’s move on to the fun part.
A popular slogan by Active Campaign is “process before software” and it holds true for every aspect of business. You have to think about and analyze the process first. In order to make well-informed decisions about how to proceed. (You would be amazed at how many people get this far in the exercise and figure out that they need to work on the process before they can even think about automation)
Step 4.
Alright. You’ve got the process nailed down and based off of that you can figure out which software you’re going to use to engineer the most elegant solution possible my favorite is Active Campaign paired with Integromat, but there are many more. (More on this in another article coming soon)
Step 5.
You have made your lists, and checked them twice. It’s time to move on. Time to build some automations into your process.
At this point, most people want to build one big automation that “hopefully” covers the whole process. This is NOT what you are going to do. I repeat, you are NOT going to build one big, complicated ginormous automation. You are NOT even going to build 3 or 4. You ARE going to take individual steps from the lists we made, like pieces of a puzzle you are going to create your very own automation puzzle. The complexity of your processes are going to determine how many puzzle pieces you will have.
Take The simplest tasks on the list and ask yourself…
Does it make sense to automate this?
What is the benefit of automating this?
What is the consequence of automating this?
Step 6.
Lastly, analyze these three questions and determine how to automate this step, wash rinse and repeat making sure to test each automation extensively before adding more.
This is the foundation of Trebl Digital’s process and if you’re still struggling or just don’t want to take the time or energy to figure it out we’ll be glad to help you. No matter how big or small the project, whether you want to learn how or just want us to do it for you, we have the solution.
So, next time we talk, I don’t want to hear that you don’t know where to start. I’m even going to include a list of the most popular tools we use on a daily basis below. (Yes, we are affiliates, but we only “affiliate” ourselves with the best of the best in our opinion)
Lastly, if you hear of anyone else that “just doesn’t know where to start with automation ”, share this blog with them, like and follow us on social media where we’ll be posting valuable tips and tricks regularly. Introduce us and we’ll be forever grateful.
Until next time. Enjoy your time, life’s too short not to.
Will Taylor
PS. Here’s that list of tools I was talking about.
Active Campaign for email marketing, automation, crm, lead scoring, landing pages, chat bot, site bot. It’s really an amazing all in one tool for a very good price considering what all it can replace.
https://www.activecampaign.com/?_r=XZY531R8
integromat and Zapier for making connections befall your apps and sending data and triggers between them. Both tools are awesome. Zapier is a little more user friendly but integromat is a little more capable.
https://zapier.com https://www.integromat.com/en
ClickFunnels for landing pages and simple user friendly funnel design. https://www.onefunnelaway.com/challenge?cf_affiliate_id=2197669&affiliate_id=2197669
elfsite for awesome cheap website apps and widgets https://elfsight.com/?ref=0ccdc366-d473-4519-8b36-50504f407dc2
Canva for easy cheap no hassle digital design. https://www.canva.com
Thanks for reading… more to come soon
