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How to Automate Your Business Completely
By Darren Roberts, Marketing Consultant with Topliving Consultancy
This is very very powerful...
There are businesses emerging online everyday to the tune of many thousands. Some survive, some don't. Sure, some are just experimenting, some are just having a laugh. But what about those such as you and I who are really looking to make the Internet our income and wish to stay in for the long haul?
Of these new businesses, many are one man bands. I know of a few businesses that are partnerships as well as a handful of others who have formed a company with the view to operating 100% online. By and large most are indeed one man bands. I, for example am one of these one man bands. everything from the administrative secretarial work to web designing and marketing I do myself. Many of you are the same in this regard. Internet marketing gives you the opportunity to become your own boss with limited overheads coupled with virtually unlimited potential. The part which makes or breaks us I'm sure you will agree is the marketing. Without proper and adequate exposure connected with great follow-up marketing procedures your business is quite possibly doomed for the dustbin. Since this is the most important part of your online business it is very important to be able to keep the administrative tasks to a minimum.
The terms such as Person Friday, Secretary, Extra Help and probably many other possible expressions are all indeed familiar to us. Without sounding arrogant they are the tasks that would ordinarily be done by such employees. Online, we need to automate these duties in order to concentrate on the marketing. The first thing necessary here would be to write down a list of those things that would ordinarily be carried out by the above-mentioned job titles. Those of you who have been requesting "AAvenues 2 Your Success" since the beginning will know that I advocate writing virtually everything down when trying to solve a problem. After all, we all need a starting point:
1.Sending out requested information 2.Protecting yourself from needless unwanted mail "Spam" 3.Answering simple questions 4.Personalising everything you send 5.Following-up on clients and potential clients 6.Grooming mail lists to avoid embarrassment 7.Email your subscribers your publication 8.Answering applications 9.Finding your target audience 10.Subscribing/Unsubscribing enrolees to your publication 11.Automating all of the above
There's a quick list of some simple administrative tasks that you would be well served to either let somebody else handle or automate them using the powers of modern Internet technology and programming. Let's look at the above examples briefly in turn:
1) SENDING OUT REQUESTED INFORMATION
Sending out requested information. Commonly known as the auto-responder. It's a marvellous invention; simply by sending an email to an address, it need have no subject nor information in the body. it will simply send the information directly to the calling address as soon as the resident server can do so. I'm lost without them. I have commonly requested information as well as my main assistance (support) email address equipped with an auto-responder (check it out at: assist@topliving.com) not does it only portray a more professional image, it gives information immediately to those that request it. This is a must and definitely one of the first steps for anyone looking to reduce their admin duties. Can you imagine it? You advertise a special, 250 people request the information; presto it's all sent automatically. It certainly wins hands down against the alternative.
2) PROTECT YOURSELF FROM UNWANTED MAIL, "SPAM"
It's such a drag having to delete all the crap email messages that first of all you never requested; and secondly that are so ridiculously untargeted that the sender obviously has absolutely no idea what he's doing. To these people it's quantity not quality that's important. I choose not to grin and bear it. I don't see the point in getting it illegalised either. Grass is illegal but people still smoke it. One of great additions to the modern day respectable email programme is that of filters. Instead of sifting through unwanted emails that have been bulk emailed to you, you may choose to have your email programme trash everything that comes to your email box without your email address in the "to" field. Anyone spamming me with an inferior programme that doesn't have "@topliving.com" in the "to" field gets sent directly to the rubbish bin. I never see who, what or where it was.
Each morning upon downloading mail from the evening before I get only "Dear Darren" letters (granted some of it is personalised spam but it is reduced incredibly). This saves tons of time, bandwidth and will probably reduce your stress as well. Before the clients purchase anything from you they will probably ask a few questions regarding a couple of concerns they have about your product(s) and/or service(s).
3) ANSWERING SIMPLE QUESTION (FAQ'S ETC) During the first few weeks of business you will experience similar questions constantly resurfacing. You would be fairly well advised to put this regularly asked for information (FAQ) into an auto-responder to reduce your admin workload. Your interested parties will be happy to get the answers to their questions answered immediately; and you didn't even need to lift a finger.
As well as using auto-responders to answer frequently asked questions you could also use your email programme such as Eudora or Pegasus to create an extra mailbox with the answers to other commonly asked questions which you can simply copy, paste and personalise with the push of a few buttons. I have organised a separate mailbox for each of my products with sales letters, examples of follow-up and other supporting letters to make my job a little easier. It's so simple and will save you stacks of time.
PART TWO Continuing on from last weeks article regarding the above-mentioned topic; completely automating your business. The significance of this is ever increasing in my business. For example during the last week many new subscribers have come onboard. Firstly; a big welcome to you all. Secondly, I have set up a programme on my computer that will automatically send out confirmation to their subscription as well as the most recently published edition. It will also save their email address into a data base file as well as deleting the message so it never needs to be downloaded.
This keeps everything hands free and saves me sending everything out manually or employing expensive server software to do this for me. The time we can potentially waste with tedious admin is astronomical. Make sure you set everything up from the beginning to run as hands free as possible. If your business is primarily Net based then using the technological clout of different Internet software will make your life a whole lot more easier.
4) PERSONALISING EVERYTHING YOU SEND Which one would you be more inclined to read? 1.Dear Fellow Opportunity Seeker 2.Hello Friend 3.Greetings Once Again Herbert Chances are you would choose the last of these alternatives (if your name was Herbert). It's personal! It's polite! And it's also very unassuming.
If you were following-up on prospects who have shown an interest in your product you will want to keep them interested. One of the first step here is to personalise all your contact with them. Email has made this economically viable for us all to do. It is vitally important to organise your mailing lists so that you at least have their name and email address. This way with a competent email merge programme you will be able to personalise the whole thing and make it appear as if you have written the letter simply for this one person. It really helps. Make sure when following up on clients that you don't send a generic letter with 2000 names in the BCC field. It's too impersonal and becoming less effective. All you need to do is use a reputable email programme that will do this for you with the push of a couple of buttons. The alternative of manually cutting and pasting means more and more admin. You are here to enjoy life. Make computers work for you. Not vice-versa.
5) GROOMING MAIL LISTS TO AVOID EMBARRASSMENT Professionalism means as much today as it ever did. As recently as six weeks ago I was getting the same follow up letter from the same company as much as seven times. Seven times. Wow! What a waste. The guy sending out these letters had a great product. I was ready there and then to part with my cash for his product. Then came what can only be described as a "please do not buy my product" email barrage. I politely emailed the gentleman letting him know. He wrote back advising simply "I have seven lists". He had not bothered to check for duplications, as a result, although his product was super I left it where it was and found joy elsewhere. The task of removing duplicating entries by hand doesn't thrill me in the slightest. It is a function that can only be done electronically. It is too tedious to pass on to another person to do. It's quite likely that many will be missed (especially if the lists are long; which, if you are marketing well hopefully will be). It saves embarrassment, increases professionalism; and in the long run will assist you in becoming more successful.
Are there any tasks that you believe should or at least, could be automated that I haven't, as yet, mentioned? If so, then I want to hear about it. What sort of office functions do you undertake that really, with a bit of organising could in fact be done by your computer for you? To read up on the programme that does everything I have said on this topic during the last two weeks please point your browser here:
Automate Your Business Now With Mailloop!!!
The positives about putting your online business on autopilot should be paramount to you. Sure, it's necessary to get leads and business running, but it makes good business sense to organise your business so that computers can do all your admin for you so when you do get busy then the "dreaded" paperwork won't get in your way. The bigger the organisation the more admin is required. All that needs to be done is to take a look at the biggest and most inefficient bureaucracies of the world such as government. Look at all the red tape they put them- selves (and its constituents) through. So much is redundant wastage. However, even the masters of bureaucracy are waking up to concept of automation and are slowly but surely making their systems more efficient. This is what automating your business is really about; efficiency! It makes you more professional, gives you more time to do the things that really make you money as opposed to fiddling about with admin creating your own bureaucratic inefficiency. It's no surprise that those who can only undertake basic clerical duties don't become financially wealthy. So why would anyone who is self-employed wish to spend time doing this all to save a couple of Pounds, Dollars or Deutsche Marks? Internet technology will do all of these ever so easily.
If you haven't or would like to see how this fabulous system will benefit your business then you may do so here: Aweber Automation.
6) FINDING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE Without going into too much detail three excellent ways to instantly locate your target audience are:
1.Networking With Your Competition 2.Using Spider Software 3.Purchasing Pre-Qualified "Opt-In" Lists
I have included networking here as an automated procedure as the work has been done for you. All you need to do is team up with your competition with links in one another's Web Sites, Ezine and product recommendations swaps as well as placing free ads in one anothers literature.
Spider software is not a method I would recommend. I have tried this method (for all of two weeks before I ditched it). It entails purchasing software that will search the Web for Business Sites co-inciding with the keywords in the meta tags you selected. Sure, you may have a targeted list but everyone you mail your message to will not have requested your literature. So you'd be spamming!
The third of the above methods relates to buying pre-qualified lists. This will probably be more targeted than the second option but still you have no way of knowing how qualified they are. There is no straight forward and easy way to put this function onto auto-pilot. It is in essence your marketing which will determine your success here. But you can still do everything within your power to make this easier for yourself.
7) SUBSCRIBING ENROLEES TO YOUR PUBLICATION The sound of logging into your server and pressing a couple of buttons, putting the jug on, having a cup of coffee, and then coming back to find that: New subscribers have been added to your list Unsubscribers have been removed from your mail list All requests automatically deleted from the server when completed. The Above Done Totally Hands Free Sounds really good doesn't it? I don't use a Majordomo, Listserver or anything! I use a simple admin automation program for this as well as every other function that I have written about over the last three weeks. In addition to everything discussed until now; here's the best part:
8) AUTOMATING ALL OF THE ABOVE FUNCTIONS The ultimate in automation is when all your automated functions can be pre-programmed to be carried out at regular intervals with an in-built scheduler. I can go on holidays for a week and have everything carried out for me in my absence as if I was sitting at my terminal for the duration. Take this a step further yourself now: To cover the whole topic of online business automation point your browser to this web page that I have made available specifically for you.
Automate Your Business Here! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Written by Darren Roberts, Marketing Consultant with Topliving Consultancy. Copyright © 1998 With Compliments, Topliving Consultancy
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Find out about a unique home-based business that I have been building since 2002 here |
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