The DOs and DON'Ts of automation

Automation is a hot topic in marketing. It's something many solo business owners are particularly interested in, because it can lighten the heavy workload they already carry.

Automation is also something I generally love advocating for, especially if you consider yourself an “accidental marketer” (the term I use to describe someone who has fallen into marketing because they have a business that needs marketing, not because they love marketing). 

Why do I love recommending automation? While you’re likely always going to have to do some things you don’t love in your business, if you’re spending all of your limited resources on tasks that are draining your energy, your motivation to work on your business is going to wane quickly.  

Automation can support you in saving your time and energy, easily generating data, and improving customer or user experience. 

However, automation is also one of those things that can be a curse when done poorly. 

Here are a few differentiating factors to help you determine what to automate, and what’s best left done manually. 

DO automate:

Tasks that you don't personally need to do.

If you’re the founder, CEO, or visionary behind your company, your time is likely better spent working on the business instead of in it. 

Automating mundane tasks that don’t need you or your specific skillset to complete them, is a great way to reclaim your work-day.  

For example, while your company's social media content may require your vision and expertise to craft, you don’t need to be manually pushing it out. Using scheduling software to post on your behalf is not only going to save you the time it takes to post, but helps avoid time spent potentially being distracted by other content on the platform.  

Repetitive processes that repeat and take up your valuable time.

If you find yourself doing the same tasks or processes day-in and day-out, that could be automated, it’s worth putting systems in place to save your time. 

Whether you find yourself answering the same questions again and again, categorizing emails in specific ways, or exporting specific reports, these manual tasks likely don’t need you in the driver's seat. 

The benefit of automation is that aside from the initial set-up time, and periodic check-ins, the systems you create likely won’t require your attention on a daily basis. 

In ways that improve the client experience for your people. 

Automation isn’t just for your benefit! There are a lot of ways in which automation can be supportive for your clients or audience as well when it’s done properly.

For example, if you have a free download available on your website, it’s imperative for user experience and trust building that your freebie is delivered to the interested party’s inbox as soon as they enter their email or phone number. If a potential client has to wait a few hours or days to receive the download because you’re trying to send these messages manually, you’ve likely already lost their attention and business.  

Tasks that are subject to human error.

Nobody’s perfect, and especially if you don’t enjoy a task or find it mundane, chances of human error can increase drastically. 

Automating tasks like data entry or email / SMS responses can help avoid errors such as typos or duplication, which can be easy mistakes to make when you’re trying to do everything on your own. 

An added bonus is that by automating crucial communications, you can reduce the chances of an omission if you’re trying to remember everything you need to say without a template.

Tasks that are unlikely to change regularly. 

If you’ve got your workflows nailed down and don’t see them changing, automating parts of the process, or the entire system, is likely a great investment of your time.  

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the time that’s required for automating tasks, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the possibilities of automation or the tools to use to make them happen. The important thing to remember is the time you’ll save over the long term. 

DON'T automate:

When the result is going to be annoying or irrelevant. 

I’ve written before about some terrible examples of automation tactics that I’m guessing frustrate more people than just me, as well as a frustrating experience I had with an automated company email system. 

The bottom line of both of these posts is that the entire automation process should be well thought-out. 

What are the benefits? What might go wrong? What purpose does this automation really serve?

Keep your customer’s needs in mind by anticipating the different issues that may come up, and know that because you can’t possibly identify all potential issues, it’s important to give customers an exit from the automation where it makes sense. 

Workflows that aren’t finalized or tasks that don’t have SOPs. 

While you can always go through and make tweaks or further optimize your workflows later, you don’t want to be continuously rebuilding automations from start to finish because your processes keep changing. 

Focus on finding ways to improve the efficiency of your current processes as they are, before you bring in additional tools and systems to try and automate them. 

A good starting place is always to have some documentation of your standard operating procedures for these tasks to make it easier to get started with the automation.

Unless you’re sure the automation has been tested by you and is working as planned. 

Please, please, please, test your automations. There is nothing worse as a consumer than an automation that’s broken, or not working as expected. 

Test your automations yourself to identify areas that need attention, ask others to give you feedback, and remain open to constructive criticism from users so you can continuously improve the automations you have in place. 

Remember, bad customer experiences are also bad marketing.

Just because you can. 

Automation should be focused, specific, trustworthy, repeatable, tested, and valuable – for you and any potential clients or customers who come into contact with it. 

Automating something just for the heck of it is likely going to cause more problems than it solves. 

So, before you go through the effort of optimizing and streamlining everything in your business with automation, run the tasks through this checklist first to ensure it makes sense. 

Final thoughts 

While the concept of “set-it-and-forget-it” is great in theory, in reality automation simply isn’t like that. 

Automation can provide a great way to save time and energy in your business, but it needs to be done with intention, and with your customer or user in mind. 

Choose thoughtfully when selecting what to automate in your business, revisit processes regularly to ensure they still work and make sense, stay open to customer feedback, test regularly, and make sure that you have well-documented systems so that if you ever need to do things manually in the future, it’s easy to revert back.