Automation is incredibly beneficial to business owners: it can make your day-to-day work life so much easier, all while improving your profit margins and reaching more clients. But automation is really underused in most small businesses: only 31% of companies have fully automated at least one function of their business – which is crazy to us! 

Automating your processes can help your coaching business streamline its operations so you can reach more of your target clients and give them the attention they need, when they need it. 

If you want to transform your business into a more productive, efficient, and most importantly, more profitable company, then follow these five simple steps to automate your coaching business. 

Decide what processes you want to automate first

You can’t start automating anything unless you know what you want to automate. Choosing the right tasks to automate is crucial for your automation strategy’s success because without a solid plan, you won’t get very far. 

You must understand how automation works and what automated processes will work for you. 

You can automate many things in your business, but not all of them will benefit your company. For example, there are many tools for automating content creation and web design, but usually, these tools don’t quite hit the mark. They end up producing poor content or designs that just have to be re-done anyway – this only creates more work!

So, try to think of automated tasks that will actually benefit your company. 

What kind of tasks or processes should you automate for your coaching business?

The best tasks to automate are tasks that are time-consuming, tedious, repetitive, and easy for algorithms to manage for you without needing your input.

This includes tasks like:

  • Sending invoices
  • Publishing social posts
  • Automating email responses
  • Reaching out to previous clients 
  • Creating analytics reports

Let’s take a closer look at a few of these automated processes.

Email marketing

When you think of automation, email marketing is probably one of the first things that comes to mind. 

It’s the most popular form of automation, and it’s the easiest to integrate into your coaching business. 

Email marketing automation can include:

  • Emails triggered based on actions 
  • Weekly newsletter 
  • Delivering content or downloads 
  • A/B testing 
  • Audience segmentation 

The best way to set up email marketing automation is to check out your email marketing platform’s automation tools. Think of ways you can use them to execute the perfect automation strategy for your coaching business. 

With email automation on your side, your coaching business will be able to get in touch with every single client simultaneously to ensure they’re happy and content with your services. 

Marketing

Email marketing isn’t the only type of marketing you can automate for your coaching business. 

You can also automate:

  • SMS messages
  • Social media messages
  • Course content 
  • Lead scoring 
  • Publishing content to your website 
  • Developing new marketing campaigns 

Sales

Automating your sales is all about managing your pipelines carefully and reducing friction. This will help enhance your conversion rates and encourage more people to work with your coaching business. 

Sales automation will help you:

  • Stay on top of your busy workload
  • Manage your calendar better
  • Stay focused on the leads that matter
  • Onboard new customers
  • Avoid spending time on bad fit clients

We’d recommend looking into any built-in automation plugins or functionalities your CRM offers to get started with sales automation. From here, you can look into adding more advanced apps that improve your sales automation further. 

Find the right automation tools

As soon as you’ve decided what processes you want to automate, it’s time to choose the perfect tool for the job. 

There are thousands of automation platforms out there! But, to make it easier for you, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most common business automation tools and the tasks they automate. 

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a tool you can use to simultaneously streamline your marketing and sales. 

ActiveCampaign allows you to combine your marketing and sales by cutting out repetitive and time-consuming tasks. 

It can lead your customers through the stages of the buying process without putting too much strain on your marketing and sales team.  

Leadformly

Leadformly removes any website-browsing friction and enhances your conversion rate so you can start getting more paying clients through the door. It allows you to score leads through multistep forms that provide your potential customers with automated follow-up messages. 

This tool has allowed companies everywhere to create fully automated marketing strategies that generate leads without the need for second-hand input. 

With Leadformly, you can automate your lead generation from webinars, email campaigns, and even online forms on your website. 

Buffer

Social media is definitely something you should automate. Social media takes so much time and effort but automation tools can make it easier! 

With Buffer, you’ll find an affordable way to keep track of your performance, create detailed social media campaigns, respond to comments quickly, and engage with your customers online without the need for constant one-on-one interactions. 

Set SMART goals for your automation

It’s all good fun and games spending money on fantastic automation tools, but if you don’t have clear SMART goals laid out, you won’t know if your automated tasks are working for your business. 

So before you start putting these new automated processes to the test, lay out some goals for your company. 

A SMART goal is a goal that is:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time-sensitive

By setting a SMART goal for your coaching business, you’ll be able to see how your new automated processes are benefiting you and your team. 

Your goal could be that you want your automated processes to match your team’s current performance in a month. 

This goal is achievable and realistic, you can measure it by comparing it to older analytics, and it’s specific and time-sensitive. 

Track your results and optimize your processes

You’ve already set yourself goals for your automated processes, so now it’s time to track those results carefully to see how your strategy is doing. 

By keeping a close eye on how your automated processes are doing, you’ll be able to notice when things aren’t working or when something goes wrong. This way, you can optimize your operations even further so they’re working perfectly for your coaching business. 

This will allow you and your team to get the most out of your automated solutions, meaning you can put more time into the things that matter. With automation that works, you can put more time into your business, your work, and even squeeze in a bit of relaxation now and then.

Work on including more automation in your work-life

Once you understand automation, you’ll see that it can be introduced in many ways. You’ll start looking at everything and wondering, can you automate it? You’ll begin observing your current automated processes more closely to figure out ways you can improve it and make it better. 

All of this automation will help make your work easier and more efficient. You’ll maximize your results and allow your team to spend more time on the tasks that matter. 

It’s good to get your team involved too. 

Encourage them to recognize what tasks they’re repeating over and over again. Let them figure out what tasks could be automated so more time can be freed up for those that can’t. 

We hope you’ve got plenty of helpful tips to start adding automation to your company. If you have any questions about automation tools or automated processes for your coaching business, we’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch with our team today to talk about how you can start improving your business processes by bringing automation to your coaching company. 

Want some guidance on what automated tools are right for your business?

Get in touch today – we’d be happy to help!

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