Why Marketing Automation is Vital for Coaches, Consultants, and other Service Professionals

Why Marketing Automation is Vital for Coaches, Consultants, and other Service Professionals

9 Reasons Coaches, Consultants, and Other Service Providers Need Marketing Automation Today

As a coach, consultant, lawyer, medical / holistic practitioner, or other service professional, you got into business to serve others. But if you’re like most business owners, the busier you get, the less time you spend doing what you love.

It’s a catch 22. You need more clients to grow your business. But as you grow, your administrative and marketing tasks increase, so you have less time to serve clients.

These administrative, marketing, and selling activities can lead to burn out, and cause many heart-centered entrepreneurs like you to give up, and get out of the business.

Fortunately, marketing automation rescues you from those repetitive tasks, and gives you an opportunity to regain control over your business, and spend more time servicing the clients you love.

Here are the top reasons you need automation in your business today:

Streamlined Communication

Most businesses send the same mails many times. These include intake mails, marketing mails, announcements, welcome mails, and many more. In fact, if you’re not sending the same mails you’re lacking efficiency and tracking what works.

With an automation system, you can personalize your follow up to your client’s information, and even customize the track based on their behavior. But you can still follow the same proven system in all of your communication and make sure that important communication happens the way it should.

Reduces Missed Steps, Missed Appointments, and More

You’re a busy business owner. You have bills to pay, things to do, marketing and sales, and clients to serve. Your primary business is serving clients but often, due to these conflicting work items, appointments are missed, rushed, or inadequately prepared for.

An automated system works as your personal assistant. It keeps you up to date and ensures only free spots in your calendar are scheduled. It’ll also warn you with plenty of warning when you have an upcoming appointment so you can be fully present for your clients.

Allows Process Improvements

Regardless of your business model, the key to success and growth is systems. But a failing system is worse than no system, so you need to measure success and failure.

An automated system keeps track of marketing, sales, and follow-up processes and gives you measurement on your return on investment (ROI). You’ll know what activities produce a positive ROI, and where sinking holes need removal or refinement.

Enforces Accountability

Are your sales reps following up everywhere necessary? Are prospects called back at once? Studies show that every minute in delay between requests and follow up result in fewer sales.

And prospects need multiple touches and follow-ups before they’ll buy.

Your automation system makes sure tasks that need human interaction are followed up when needed and sends and your team accountability reports to ensure the processes and systems are followed.

Marketing Automation Eliminates Repetitive Tasks

Much of the work you perform daily is repetitive and unchanging. By doing these tasks repeatedly, you are not adding any value to the process.

The same is true for employees. If they send the same email, make the same task list, send the same fulfillment list, or any other task that changes very little, it can be automated. And will save precious time and expensive work items.

Improves Customer Service

What if you automatically sent out a thank you card every time you finished an initial session? Or a birthday card on your clients’ birthdays?

What if a client could schedule himself or herself into a meeting or consultation? And then sent them (and you) email messages and / or text messages with reminders to the event.

There are so many little things you can do to improve your customer service level, and with marketing automation they take no time away from you serving your clients.

Nurtures Prospects

When a prospect first encounters you or your company, whether it be through your website, and advertisement, or even a speaking or networking event, they don’t know like and trust you enough to work with you.

For starters, using marketing automation through an auto responder sequence of email allows you to gradually nurture your prospect down the buying path towards choosing to buy from you. Or even choose to buy from you again.

You can even customize that sequence based on the actions your ideal prospects, or even existing clients, take in response to your mails, phone calls, direct mail, and other outreach.

New Insights in Your Business

Just the act of identifying what processes in your business can be automated will force you to think through your current work processes, which will help you improve them.

You’ll be able to track and measure the effectiveness of different follow up, advertising, and customer service options to fine-tune your business to suit your ideal client.

Frees Up Your Time

This article scratched the surface of the different aspects of your marketing and business processes that can be automated.

Freeing up your time is the granddaddy reason to automate your practice. As you know from reading this list, marketing and business processes take time.

Automation accomplishes many of these processes, completely freeing your time to serve clients or enjoy your life. With more time, you’ll be better equipped to grow your business to the next level. Or care you into the lifestyle of your dreams.

Do You Have Tasks Taking You Away from Growing Your Business?

Most service providers haven’t even thought through the tasks they do every day or turn them into processes, never mind automated systems.

According to the 80 / 20 rule. 80% of your income comes from 20% of your activities. Marketing Automation allows you to spend more of your time in those 20% of tasks that grow your business.

It takes care repetitive tasks automatically and measures the results to make improvement. More importantly, it allows you to work on your business instead of in your business.

I talk to several coaches and consultants who believe they aren’t yet busy enough to implement automation. But they often fail to notice how much business they’ve already lost, or how much more difficult it will be to automate later if they don’t start today. Especially if they don’t already have marketing systems in place.

If you’ve never thought about marketing automation before, or have, but haven’t yet implemented a successful system, check out this free “Create More Time and Revenue” coaching session. In it we look at your existing business and where you want to be and then outline a road map to get you there faster than you imagine.

Marketing automation is critical for coaches, consultants, and other service providers, but only if they care about their clients and their business.

Make sure you are putting your best self forward, instead of wasting time on tasks that could be done just as well or better on autopilot.