Entrepreneurs, startup founders, and executives like doing things their own way. That’s how they got to the top, or why they struck out on their own: they trust their own instincts and require a certain level of control.
When it comes to top-level decision making, that attitude serves them well. They know their company inside and out, and they probably are the best person to make major, forward-thinking leaps.
But within the everyday reality of running a business, there are a myriad of processes that would be better managed with partial or total automation. Yet, some business leaders still refuse to allow those tasks out of their hands, insisting on doing things the old-school way.
In some cases, refusing to automate can cost a business time and money, which could mean the difference between success and failure. If the company’s founder is tied up in the minutiae of bookkeeping or marketing, they’re not spending their energy where it matters — growing the business, networking, and innovating.
If this sounds like you (be honest), consider starting small and automating one or two processes at a time. With the right tools, you can take some grunt work off of your hands, without sacrificing performance (and instead, improving it).
1. Marketing & Sales
Marketing is obviously a huge part of your company’s success, but there’s a big difference between high-level strategy and day-to-day marketing tasks, like managing email campaigns.
With platforms like Mailchimp and Emma, it’s easy to automate email marketing, so that you can worry less about how to send your campaigns and more about what your customers want to hear.
For example, automated programs can handle the scheduling, sending, and formatting of email campaigns, and you can take advantage of features like A/B testing to improve your results.
Take automation a step further by automating leads and sales with programs like Leadformly and ActiveCampaign. These valuable services automate lead capturing and segmentation, as well as handling basic customer communications.
2. Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping probably isn’t your favorite task, but it might be the one you’re hesitant to automate. Your books are a vital record of your company’s financial health, and accurate bookkeeping helps you reach your goals and prepare for tax season.
It makes sense that you might be nervous about automating the process, but with a trustworthy program like Botkeeper, your bookkeeping will be in good hands. Because bookkeeping is a complex and personalized task, Botkeeper combines top-quality AI with human oversight so that your books are always accurate and organized in a way that works best for you.
Enrico Palmerino, CEO of Botkeeper explains, “Our founding team designed Botkeeper to help businesses scale, at every stage, in any industry. We work with with Solopreneurs, Small businesses, Enterprise Organizations, Franchises, and everything in between. We took this approach because every business needs good bookkeeping- it’s the backbone to a healthy business model.”
Botkeeper reconciles your accounts, categorizes transactions, and provides detailed reports, so you don’t have to.
3. Social Media
Posting on social media is an unavoidable part of running a business, but you may not enjoy creating daily updates or poring over Twitter, checking for mentions. Then there’s the possibility of getting sucked into an internet binge every time you check Facebook.
By letting a social media management service like Hootsuite take care of the day-to-day scheduling, posting, and analytics, you get to stay busy helping your company do all the cool things you want your social media followers to know about.
With automated social media management, you can stay on top of your company’s presence across all platforms and make the best use of the power of social media.
With advancements in automation software, and tons of great options to choose from, it’s not hard to find programs that work for you and free up your time, so you can focus on scaling your business.
And when those menial tasks are off of your plate, you’ll have more time to do the complex work that only you can do for your business. So take a deep look at your daily workload, and find a few things that you’re willing to automate — you won’t regret it.