856: Smarter Marketing, Less Work: 11 Automation Tips You Need to Try

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2:01This isn't just about collecting emails. Chat funnels create opportunities to connect with your audience in a way that feels personal and intentional, even at scale. You can send reminders, provide additional resources, or answer questions, all while freeing up time for the things that you love the most. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven-figure online business that feels even better than it looks, all from my house in small town Minnesota with my family.

2:38Here, we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work, and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality, and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain. Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered.

3:18This is the Gold Digger Podcast. What if you could reclaim hours of your life every single week? Like imagine focusing on what truly lights you up while repetitive time-consuming tasks practically handle themselves. Sounds incredible, right? Automation isn't just a buzzword. It's a proven strategy for boosting efficiency and growth. In fact, businesses leveraging automation have seen up to an 80 % increase in leads and a 77 % boost in conversions. This episode is a re-air of one of my most powerful conversations about the power of automation. It is packed with strategies to help you streamline your work, delegate effectively, and reclaim your time.

4:00And because this topic is so valuable, I'm also adding a new automation strategy we've started using since I first recorded this episode, one that has been a total game changer for my business when it comes to social media. So whether you're hearing this for the first time or revisiting it, you'll walk away with actionable ways to simplify your life and focus on what matters most. Are you ready? Let's dive on in. So when I was in Arizona and on my maternity leave, I actually dug into an online course called Time Genius by my friend Marie Forleo. Now I love learning and both times that I've had babies, I've ended up buying and taking an online course towards the end of my maternity leave, which starts helping my brain fire again.

4:41But it also gives me a chance to learn new skills that I can take back into my business. I've kind of realized that when I'm super busy or when my schedule is super full, taking and implementing a course just doesn't really happen for me. And so it's this beautiful balance of starting to work my brain again, while also learning something new that I can take moving forward. And Marie's course was definitely not about automating, but it was about time. And it really got me thinking about all the tasks that we do and all of the many ways that we're stretched and switching tasks a million times a day and how we can just simply feel so overwhelmed with a lot of the little things that we never really get to the big things.

5:22As business owners, we naturally wear a lot of hats, right? And those hats can make our heads spin when we're trying to do all of the things all of the time. You know that saying, it goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We've all heard that, right? Well, what if we applied that to our businesses? Have you ever found yourself sending the same type of client follow-up email over and over and over again, or even logging in to pay your invoices or subscription fees month after month? Or maybe you're trying to create unique experiences for every single client.

5:57And in doing that, it's adding more work and more stress to your plate. Don't even get me started about the humans who wait until the very last minute to do all of their annual accounting before taxes are due. Hello, I know you're out there. But here's the thing. All of those things I just talked about are kind of like repeatable tasks. And repeatable tasks clog up our time and can be simplified a lot of times through automation. And those aren't the only things that can be automated. There's more, like way more. Now here's a real shocker. As the girl who takes courses on time management, I love automation.

6:35So let's dig into the things that you absolutely can and should simplify or automate in your own marketing strategy. We're going to talk about the different ways that we can really refine your creation process, but also ways that we can lean on tools that allow us to automate or set and forget pieces of our business that will free up more brain space to again, do more things like enjoy life. So up first, let's talk about automating your email marketing. So you know that my email list is the number one way I drive profits in my business, right? It's where I serve. It's where I connect and also where I share about my new programs or offers.

7:15Like my email list is my priority and it's also the place where I want to be showing up thoughtfully and intentionally and consistently. So let me tell you, there's something super rewarding about planning out your content ahead of time, especially your email content and batch working it so that you can schedule it to send automatically. Now, not only is it absolutely awesome to have things go out to your email list without you having to manually hit send, but when you can batch a few emails ahead of time, you can be way more focused on serving and strategies so that every single email that you send out has a purpose.

7:54So rather than realizing, oh my gosh, it's been a few weeks or maybe even months since you've last emailed your list and feeling that frantic feeling that you need to send out an email last minute in real time, you can work ahead and look at your calendar to see what events or launches or business activities might be coming up or happening soon. And you can plan your email topics to align with whatever you've got going on. Basically, you can ultimately create it and then set it and forget it, which also frees you up to have the time to respond to all of your email subscribers when they hit reply and tell you how much they loved your email, which I know they will because I know you follow my rules for serving.

8:36Now, the truth is not only does this method of creation save you time, it also helps you to leverage your email list more thoughtfully. Like when you're sitting there and sending one-off emails, it's super hard to remember what you last sent. And it takes a while to acclimate yourself with how the email can impact your audience. So you can save time, batch a few emails all at once, and then schedule them to serve. So I tend to do an entire month at once and we send about two emails a week. So that's about eight emails. And then we schedule them out all at once. So we load them in, test them, make sure everything's working and then schedule them.

9:15And it really helps for me to look at this all at a glance. So I want to see what I'm sending, when I'm sending it, and I want to take into account any launches or promotions and be freed up to respond when those go out. So basically you can set it and forget it and serve and engage on autopilot. And that way you're freed up and less rushed to create your emails strategically. Trust me when I say this, this process can absolutely transform the way you use your email marketing, but it can also transform the way that your audience experiences your email marketing. So number two is this, Did you know that you can automate your long form content plan?

9:55Okay. So if you're currently putting all of your eggs into the social media world, well, listen up. Long form content is something that you should prioritize. I've done episodes about this, but I just want to reiterate. Long form content is content that will live on. It's going to serve long after a post gets lost in a feed or dies from the algorithm. And you should be aiming to show up with some sort of long form content in some way or another that will help for you to serve your audience and build intentional content that will outlast anything on social. I could go on and on about this, but again, another episode, another day, but long form content should be something you're working towards.

10:34I basically look at our long form content, which is this podcast or the blog as this resource library that people can visit long after I hit publish. So whether you show up on a blog or a podcast, or you have a YouTube channel, however it is that you want to or plan to, or that you create long form content, you should again, be able to batch record or write, and then schedule the content to release on a consistent schedule. Like today, when I'm recording this episode, I'm actually recording four episodes that I prepped, got ready, researched, got the outlines all set. And then I just have to set up once, record the episodes, and I am set for all of my solo shows for a month.

11:16So again, look at how intentional time blocking can help you get into a zone, get focused, and then it can help you set things up and just schedule them. All of these strategies together are going to save you tons of time, but they're also going to help for you to be more thoughtful and strategic in your creation process. So again, we do this for both the blog and this year podcast, and it's been just a way of the way that we work. It's a part of our culture. It's a huge time saver for everyone that's involved. And plus it allows us to see the big picture. Like I can look at content themes and map out our plan for bigger promotions.

11:56And again, we can just set it up, strategize around it, and then schedule the content to release way ahead of time. So we use this tool if you're wondering, well, how do you organize all this? Or what does it look like if you're batch working and doing all these things in advance? We use this tool called monday.com. I've talked about monday.com on the podcast before. And basically it houses our content calendars for all of our long form content, which for us again, is mainly the blog and the podcast. And so inside of Monday, we can look at a month and all of the topics that are going to go live and make sure that we're releasing content that hits on all of our main brand pillars and that supports the bigger brand's mission.

12:36It basically kind of gives us this bird's eye view that helps us to release relevant content and to stick to a plan. And we're often at least a month or even two ahead when it comes to our long form content, like blog posts and podcast episodes, so that we can keep our content plan strategic and well-balanced. And so that we are never working under stress. I always say stress work is not our best work and our business operates on this notion that nothing is urgent. So for us, it really does help us and it allows us to not work from that place of stress or urgency. And instead it allows us to create with intention to serve and provide helpful resources on a consistent basis.

13:18And it also allows us to figure out how we're going to promote any of our long form content and plan that out in advance too. So just wanted to say, if you want to try monday.com, which our entire team uses, that's our project management software, you can go to Jenna loves monday.com. You can check it out, see how we use it and why we love it and give it a try. Okay. Moving on to number three, automating payments, subscriptions, and invoices. So I want to start this one off with a little story. So I recently had a new contractor join our team and I had been logging in once or twice a week during maternity leave to check in and pay invoices and get a pulse on things in the business.

13:57And that new contractor had sent me an invoice. And the way that she sent it, I had to manually go into PayPal, fill in her email to pay her, hop back to the invoice, triple check the amount, type that in, hit send. And it really wasn't a big deal at all. But my ADHD and my million tabs open literally made me nearly forget what I was doing more than once. And it took me a lot longer than if she had just simply sent the invoice through PayPal. So I emailed her asking her, Hey, would you be willing to just do that next time? Could you send your invoice through PayPal? I could hit the button and boom, it's taken care of.

14:31And again, this is such a silly story. It's really not a big deal, but that simple ask could save me over an hour by the end of the year, just because I was brave enough to say, Hey, this could actually streamline the process for both of us. Would you be cool if we do invoicing this way? And so if you are someone who sends invoices or pays invoices, you know how important it can be to have that ability to automate that process. Like that can save you a ton of time. So whether you're working with your contractors to create an invoicing system that's easier for you, or you're the one sending out the invoices, you want to make sure that you're looking at, well, how can we simplify this process?

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16:46This is hands down the best bedding I've slept on and I'm so genuinely excited for you to try it. Start building your sanctuary of comfort this fall with Bowl & Branch. For a limited time get 20 % off your first set of sheets plus free shipping at bolandbranch.com slash gold digger. That's bolandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch.com slash gold digger to save 20 % and unlock free shipping. Exclusions apply. One thing that we ended up doing last year is that we had a lot of our consistent contractors actually move to retainer packages since our hours are super consistent. And it basically makes our monthly expenses more fixed, which was actually helpful when it came to accounting.

17:27and in doing that, it allowed us to automate payments since they're consistent. They're the same on a monthly basis. So I was able to set up like the direct withdrawal and know exactly how much was going to be exiting my account each month and that actually streamlined a lot of things for us. So when you think about it, any way that you can automate making payments for things like subscriptions or even requesting consistent ongoing retainer payments that you can set up for auto withdrawals that can save everybody involved time. And it can help you make sure that you stay on track with your budgeting and make sure that you are timely in how you pay your invoices.

18:04So if you're wondering, okay, well, how can I simplify this? I've got to give another quick plug to a tool that we use. It is our favorite invoicing software. You've heard me talk about it before. It's called HoneyBook. So I have been using HoneyBook since 2015, 2015, which makes me pause. That is literally seven years ago, which is crazy. But what's amazing about HoneyBook is that the way that I use it has evolved. So when I joined HoneyBook, I was a wedding photographer. Now I'm a podcaster and an author and an influencer. And the cool thing is, is that while my business has transitioned and I've pivoted a time or two, HoneyBook has been this constant in my business with every single one.

18:43So what we use HoneyBook for is for all of our contracts and invoicing. We're sending out contracts every single week for our podcast guests. We're sending out invoices for different sponsorships or partnered posts. And so if you're an entrepreneur who hates tracking down payments from clients or who is still collecting payments via the postal service, it might be time for you to streamline and get everything into one place. I can't tell you how valuable that is. HoneyBook can automate payments and payment plans so that you can basically set them up and then they can do all of the emailing and payment reminders for your clients.

19:18It's also super nice to have all of that built into your invoicing process so that you're not the one manually checking in and making sure all of your payments are received every single month. Now, if you want to learn more about HoneyBook and save 50 % on your annual subscription, just head to jennacutcher.com slash HoneyBook. And again, you can see how I use it and why I love it there. That's jennacutcher.com slash honeybook. Anyways, any time that you can automate or streamline invoicing and making payments, I encourage you, I urge you do it. It will save you so much time. And a really quick caveat here, but it is important to acknowledge while it is super nice to automate your payments.

20:00I also recommend checking in at least once or twice a year to make sure that all of the subscriptions and tools and softwares that you're paying for, and even team members that you're utilizing are worth the money that you're paying and that they're being utilized to the full extent. If you notice that you're on autopay for a certain tool or expense that you no longer use, jump in, cancel that subscription, allocate those funds somewhere else. So just make sure you're auditing once or twice a year because it is so easy to sign up for trials and then automatically pay for things that you're not even using.

20:32And so we love to just do an audit of all the tools that we're using in business and in life and make sure that we're still using those. And I just got an Instagram ad, but they actually have apps that help you audit any subscriptions or payment plans that you're on. And so leverage any tools that you need just to make sure that you are being a good steward with your money and that your money is being well spent and invested. Okay. My fourth automation tip is your client onboarding process. Now this can look different across the board based on what industry you're in or how you work or communicate with your clients.

21:07But across the board, this is something that you likely do. And especially, especially if you're in the service industry, this is something that probably takes up a lot of your time. So if you've never sat down to map out the journey, a new client goes on with you or created templates that help you to make sure that you have everything you need to serve a new client, this tip could be life-changing for you. Whether it's getting an intake form, signing a contract, collecting a retainer, learning more about your client's needs. There are so many things that can be thoughtfully created once and then set up to be delivered and collected without you having to manually communicate every single step of the way.

21:48Now I know, I know you're probably like, Jenna, here you go again. This theme of creating a workflow or information that can be set on autopilot so that you're not in the weeds of things like correspondence all day, every day. Look, I know that you know it takes a lot of time to send thoughtful replies to client inquiries and to get them onboarded smoothly, but that doesn't mean that you have to draft every single email from scratch. And here's the thing, you shouldn't be doing that anyways. Let me tell you a story. When I first started as a wedding photographer, I told myself I was giving every client this boutique unique experience.

22:26and therefore they needed and deserve unique emails. But here's what happened. In reality, I was juggling my corporate job, trying to get to emails in the late hours of the night after my shifts when I was so drained and I could barely form a sentence, let alone write a well-crafted email that would give them the experience I wanted to offer. And so templates and workflow literally changed my life and it allowed me to sit down once, draft up heartfelt and intentional responses, and then copy and paste them with confidence. Now, when I started, there were way fewer tools for automating this process, but now there are actually a ton.

23:04You can use things like HoneyBook to send out scheduled information, to request questionnaires, even to remind them of the workflow or the process. Like basically anything that can help give your client an easier, well thought out experience can be turned into a workflow or a template. And the best thing is, is that you can be super thoughtful in creating all of this one time and then create a workflow that can run on automation for you, allowing you to serve your clients on autopilot while you work on more needle moving tasks. All right. Number five, automating your social media tools and your sharing capabilities.

23:45Let's talk about this one. So the jury is still out on this in terms of if it's okay to use a third party tool to push out your social media posts. Specifically, I'm talking Facebook and Instagram. Now, if I were to personally place a bet, I would bet that they don't want people just automating and scheduling posts because they want active users who are engaging with their followers. If you think about how Instagram and Facebook measures their success, they want people on the app. And if you're posting and ghosting, it doesn't look like you're an active users. So again, this is just my guess, but I think it's an educated one.

24:23So when you think about automating social media, it can feel super tempting, right? Because it would be a great time saver, but I personally err on the side of what will bring about genuine connection and engagement, which is what social media is for. We got to be social on social media guys. So we actually skip those scheduling tools for the most part, but we utilize them in different ways. And honestly, the thing is, is I've tried a few different ones and I haven't fallen in love with anything truthfully. Now hear this though, just because you might not want to automate the actual posting process, it doesn't mean that you can't automate other parts of social media.

24:59So here's how we do this. So we plan out our social plan in advance for things like the gold digger Instagram page and posts for my Facebook groups and business pages and posts for LinkedIn and new pins for Pinterest. We plan all of this out in advance, which shouldn't be a shock after hearing some of the other things we do. And then basically we set automated reminders to post or use the tools inside of Facebook and Pinterest to schedule the post natively right on the platform. And while this is a huge time saver, I'd argue here to use automated postings sparingly and not exclusively. A big reason that I don't love the automated posting is that I think it's important to be online if you can in order to engage when you post.