3 Essential Tasks Small Business Owners Should Automate

Anyone who has ever owned a small business knows that the adage “time is money” is 100% true. As a small business owner, odds are good, you have to wear many hats. Finding ways to save time is thus crucial to your success.

One way to achieve this goal is to automate key tasks whenever possible. The following are merely a few examples worth keeping in mind. By automating these aspects of your business, you’ll generate more time to focus on important work like attracting new clients or finding additional ways to boost customer loyalty.

What should I automate in my business? The important tasks that a business can automate include the following:

It’s important to understand that the tasks you automate will depend on the nature of your business to some degree. That said, if part of your business involves selling products or services via the Internet, you shouldn’t let yourself miss out on potential sales due to abandoned shopping carts.

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Don’t overlook the importance of this. Statistics indicate that nearly 75% of online shopping carts are abandoned before customers complete purchases. Luckily, by creating a system to automatically send emails to customers reminding them about their abandoned shopping carts, you can entice them to finish placing orders. The average conversion rate for abandoned shopping cart emails is greater than 10%, after all.

2. Responding to Requests

Again, maintaining customer loyalty is important. That’s why you need to make sure you respond to customer service requests in a timely manner.

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Of course, as a small business owner, you won’t always be able to respond to these requests the moment they arrive. Sometimes you’ll have to complete other tasks before getting around to them.

Thus, you need an automated reminder system that alerts you when a customer service request has not yet been addressed. You don’t want to make the wrong impression on a customer because you forgot about a request they made!

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3. Social Media

Social media marketing can help you spread the word about your business and maintain engagement with your audience. However, if you don’t automate your social media campaigns, you could spend an excessive amount of time posting on Facebook, Twitter, and related platforms.

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It’s better to plan your posts ahead of time, using social media automation tools to schedule them. While there will be instances when it’s a good idea to post on social media manually (for example, if a trending hashtag is relevant to your business), in general, automating your campaigns is a smart way to keep your audience engaged without spending more time than necessary on the process.

Once more, the nature of your business will determine which other tasks you should automate. These are merely a few key examples most small business owners should keep in mind. The more time you save on these tasks, the more likely you are to focus on the work that requires your complete and total attention.