Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

5 Marketing Tasks to Automate (to Keep You Sane)

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5 Marketing Tasks to Automate (to Keep You Sane)Automation is a pretty great tool that companies of all shapes and sizes take advantage of. Are you? It can seem overwhelming to get it setup but once you’ve made the time to automate your systems, you’ll have more time to take your pup to the dog park (or read a book, or watch TV, or get your job done…) Here’s 5 Marketing Tasks you can (and should) automate!

  1. Your Contact Form – If someone reaches out to you on your contact form, you’ll most likely get back to them within a day or two (or a week if you’re not awesome at follow up and have an inbox that stresses me out to think about.) Setup your contact form to send a quick thank you note. “Thank you for contacting Yellow Dog Consulting, we’ll get back to you within one business day.” You can (and should) also invite them to check out a couple of things on your site – a link to your services page, a free download, or a link to your most recent newsletter are great ideas…
  2. Free Downloads – Do you have a snazzy free giveaway on your website that folks give you their email and then magically a PDF appears? I thought so! Make sure this system is automated so that it can happen while you sleep. You should also include a drip campaign with this so they hear from you more than once and really get an idea of how awesome you are so they hire you faster.
  3. Bookkeeping – Sure it’s not a marketing task, but automating my bookkeeping is one thing that keeps me incredibly sane each month.
  4. Social Media – I never thought I’d say this but I finally am. Each week I have a blog post. And I don’t trust that you’re going to check out my website each week looking for it – so I share it on social media. A few times. I talk often about my system but a few simple clicks save me hours of time and increases my site traffic…
  5. Reviews – Yes, you should automate your review process. Figure out the appropriate variable to reach out to new clients and ask for a review, then set that system in place. Maybe it’s monthly when you add your new clients to your newsletter list. Or at the completion of a project. Reviews are such an important part of helping your business grow, make sure you get this system in place!

There are a lot of other marketing (and small business) tasks you can automate, these are just a few that I tend to help clients with and that have helped me stay sane. What other marketing tasks do you automate?

How Often Do Service Providers Waste Your Time?

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How Often Do Service Providers Waste Your Time?As a service provider my job is to make my clients happy and to not stress them out or overwhelm them. As a business owner, my biggest pet peeve are service providers who waste my time and make unnecessary busy work for me.

Today’s a good example. I had a call with a service provider. It was a video call scheduled for a half hour. I was on the link sent to me on time. About 8 minutes later I received a phone call from the person I was scheduled to talk to. And I mentioned I only had the 30 minutes so now only had 20, so we need to be efficient with our time. And then we spoke for about 15 minutes and it was to tell me 3 things that very easily could have been in an email (I need a credit card on file, pick a template you like from this link, anything specific we should focus on?) Needless to say I left the call annoyed and wishing they were more respectful of my time.

What processes should you have in place that could make your clients time more efficient?

I have a few checklists that I use for clients, including my Newsletter Setup Checklist where I ask my clients for everything I need to get their newsletter setup. Once I have it, I can get started. After about a week I check in and let them know what I’m missing. And, sometimes if they seem to not want to do it or are dragging their feet I will offer to setup a call to walk them through it. I don’t mind spending a half hour or hour on the phone to walk through my checklist if it’s easier for them. But my job is to make their life easier not stress them out or annoy them with unnecessary meetings.

The next time you schedule a meeting or call, make sure that everyone has what they need up front and that the meeting is necessary. YES you should have face time with your clients and talk to them regularly. But don’t annoy them before the ink dries!

6 Things I Look for on My Google Analytics

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6 Things I Look for on My Google AnalyticsAt the beginning of each month I take a few minutes to review my website traffic from the previous month. I look to see how many visitors I had, what days were more popular (new blog post days usually) and where all my traffic comes from. I also look to see what pages people land on.

Reviewing your website’s analytics is an important part of having a website. You spent a lot of money and time on creating this thing, shouldn’t you know how people are using it? This week I wanted to share with you 6 Things I look for on my Google Analytics:

  1. How Many Visitors –  First things first, how many people really come to my website? The number at first glance is GREAT – but the real number comes once you dig into “All Traffic by Source.” This is where you see every traffic source that sent people to your site. If you had a guest blog post or did a Facebook Live you may see more traffic come in from a specific source. This is the most important analytics piece for what I’m looking for.
  2. Goals! – Yes, setup goals on your website. Every time someone reaches out through my contact page there’s a thank you landing page they end up on so I can track that traffic. AND I can track where it came from (thanks Facebook!)
  3. Page Views by Page – This is all about what pages people are landing on. Do people want to know more about my services or do they go to the About page to learn about Norm and me?
  4. Landing Pages – This is different from page views – this is the first page that people come to on your site. For me it’s often a recent blog post that brings them to my site – and then hopefully they look around for a while. And it’s good to see what old blog posts are bringing folks to my site.
  5. Devices  – I setup a “sessions by device” when not all websites were mobile friendly. Since most websites are mobile friendly this isn’t as important to track, BUT still worthwhile. If you realize 50% of your site traffic is coming from a phone – you should take a look at your website and make sure that it’s easy to read and get what they want (your phone number, your address so they can drive there, etc.)
  6. Traffic Type – I like to see where all the traffic to my site comes from. Direct traffic, social media, referral sites, email and organic (search). It’s important to see WHERE your traffic is coming from. If you start to get a lot of traffic from one referral site you may need to figure out what’s going on. Maybe you wrote a guest blog post, or maybe it’s a new company that added you as a referral source. Either way, make sure you know who’s sending traffic to your site.

It’s important to know what’s going on with your website and where your site traffic is coming from. It’s OK if you don’t use Google Analytics, but make sure you’re tracking traffic somehow. If you want to get Google Analytics setup on your website, talk with your web developer to get the coding properly setup so you can get started. THEN, feel free to download my Dashboard. This is not the end all be all, and every marketer and SEO person will tell you I’m missing a lot of things – but I think this is a good place to start for your business.

If you use Google Analytics – what other widgets and tools do you include? Please share them in the comments!