Work Smarter, Not Harder: Streamlining Your Marketing for a Better Customer Experience

Running a business can feel like a constant juggling act, but what if you could free up your time and improve your client experience? In this episode, we’re tackling the common trap many business owners fall into—getting so busy working in their business that they forget to work on it.

We’ll explore smart strategies and tools to help you streamline your marketing and customer interactions. From setting up automated responses to nurturing leads and delivering a seamless client journey, these practical tips will help you reclaim your time and provide a better experience for everyone involved.

Don’t wait until you’re drowning in work to make your life easier. Tune in now to discover how a little upfront effort can transform your business into a well-oiled, stress-free machine!

My favourite tool is MailerLite (affiliate link)
Also, check out my Funnel Fundamentals course for how to streamline your business. 

Connect with me

Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
Facebook: @newschoolofmarketing
Facebook group: @newschoolofmarketing
Instagram: @bianca_mckenzie

Learn from me:

🟣 FREE MASTERCLASS: Sell more of your online course with Meta Ads
https://www.biancamckenzie.com/masterclass

🔵 AIMFUL ADS ACADEMY: Tools, resources & 1:1 support to attract more ideal clients and make more sales with proven, easy to follow Facebook & Instagram ad strategies for any budget. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/aimful-ads/

🟢 FACEBOOK ADS PREP SCHOOL: Find out what you need to know and do before spending money on ads. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/prep-school/

🟡 INVISIBLE AD FUNNEL PLAYBOOK: A practical step-by-step guide to making a big impact with a tiny budget. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/playbook

🟠 FUNNEL FUNDAMENTALS: Building effective sales funnels that drive conversions and grow your business. ...

Transcript

Hey there. Welcome back to the new School of Marketing podcast.

All right, today's episode is brought to you by something I see too often during my mentoring adventures. So I'm a local marketing and business mentor here on the northwest coast of Tasmania, as well as, you know, working with amazing course creators in promoting their courses through Facebook ads.

But yeah, here's the thing I see way too often business owners drowning in their own. And I'm going to use air quotes here. Success.

If you're running a business and you're like, literally busy running your business, you're serving your clients, you're keeping things moving, you're doing all the things.

Here's the thing, when you're too busy to put systems in place, you're actually working harder and not smarter. And worse, your clients and your leads might not be getting the best experience that you can offer.

So in this episode, I want to talk about how you can actually work smarter, how you can streamline some of your marketing tasks, and how you can also improve the customer experience at the same time.

So hopefully by the end of this episode, you'll have actionable steps to make your business run smoother, which will be great for you because you can know, focus that time on other things.

Give yourself some breathing room and your leads and your clients will feel much better about working with you as well. So let's dive in.

Why really, does working smarter matter so much?

Well, here's the thing. When you're overwhelmed and when you're doing too many things and you're juggling too many balls, you're going to start dropping balls.

Things start slipping through the cracks.

So, like, emails don't get answered on time, leads don't feel like they're a priority, and your marketing becomes inconsistent. Because I know what's the first thing to drop when people get busy.

Usually it's social media.

I'm also talking about myself here. Mine tends to drop off too when I get busy.

And this not only hurts your efficiency, but it also impacts how your customers see you. And in today's world, customer experience is super, super important.

So a seamless professional experience can literally be the difference between someone choosing you or going elsewhere.

All right, so how can you make things easier for yourself while also improving your marketing?

Let's look at a few things that you can put in place.

The first one is automated responses.

And this is what I've been helping people with recently a lot. So imagine that someone fills out your inquiry form or sends you a DM and then they immediately get a professional friendly email saying, thanks for reaching out, we'll get back to you within 24 hours.

Or even the thing that they ask for. Like, for example, I'm working with a venue that gets inquiries for weddings. They do other stuff too. But like, for example, you get a wedding inquiry and the email says, thanks so much for your interest.

Please find our wedding pack enclosed. Our wedding coordinator works this, this and this day.

We'll be in touch with you then. Like that feels a lot better than sending off an inquiry and going, I hope they received it. I wonder if it actually went there.

So those small touches just reassure your leads and it kind of gives you a little bit of time to respond properly. But at least people know, they're like, okay, well they got it.

They're going to get back to me when you know, within X amount of time.

Another great tool is automated email sequences.

So this is a must for anyone in the digital space. Like literally a must. So for example, when someone downloads your freebie or joins your newsletter, you can have a series of pre written emails ready to send.

And those emails like, it's like a nurture sequence. It keeps them engaged. It nurtures that relationship without you having to actually do anything.

And a long time ago now, over 10 years ago, when I started in this space, we would like send one email and that was like the, you know, download my free thing and then you would like send your regular emails.

Right now I have a completely fully built evergreen automated funnel.

I have so much content to share that I want to share that with people no matter at what point they join me. So they join me usually by getting a freebie, whether that is, you know, my guide to get up your first ad or my webinar.

They get a number of emails from that webinar or from that guide. So that's like that sequence. And then when they finish that sequence, they go into an evergreen funnel, like into an evergreen sequence where I literally just share all of my content with them because a lot of that content is not time specific and it's still super relevant.

And like, you know, a couple of times a year I go through it and take out what's not so relevant anymore. But there's so much good content. So email automations are amazing.

Another one is like a CRM tool like HubSpot or Mailerlite. So I use Mailerlite myself, myself.

It helps you keep track of where leads and clients are in their journey. So like are they still inquiring or have they made a purchase or like, you know, where are they at?

So. And a really good CRM, especially if you work one to one with people and you really track those leads, can actually help you tailor your messaging so that you don't miss any follow up.

So it's like you can do things like okay, a lead clicked on that link, which means that you know they're interested in that and then they go into like a different section of the funnel.

Like you can get super, super technical with this kind of stuff. But to get started I would implement like some sort of automation that takes people from one step to the next.

Now let's talk about your clients and your leads because it's all about them too.

And a smoother, smarter business doesn't just make your life easier, it also delivers a better experience for the people that are inquiring with you, that are working with you.

So if you work one on one with clients, you can create like a templated onboarding process. And there's tools for this like Dubsado or Honey Honeybook and that can send like a welcome email, contract, questionnaires, all of that automatically.

I used to use Dubsado, I don't work with as many clients now, so I've literally manual, like I have a manual process but you can automate things like if you work with a lot of clients, definitely a good one to follow up with.

Also, how many times have you answered the same question from a lead? And this is like one of my favourite kind of tricks to, to use automation with.

You can have an FAQ page like you can have it on your website, but people often still ask the questions. Like a lot of people don't actually read the FAQs.

So you can put your FAQs in an automation or even putting in like a chatbot into place. It can save you hours of like having to repeat yourself and it gives your leads immediate answers and it doesn't even have to be the can you tell me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's like, hey, thanks so much for getting in touch.

Not sure exactly what you're inquiring about, but we're going to get back to you real quick. In the meantime, here's our FAQs here's a. You know, like you can still lead people to certain areas even if you don't actually know what their specific question was.

And then another one, after you've worked with people, there's that feedback area.

So you can literally automate it that, you know, like once your project is closed, it sends them a survey and it not only shows that you care, but it also gives you information on how you can improve your service.

And you know, another bonus is it's actually a great way to get testimonials. So like automation can really improve your life and your business, how it works, but really, it also really enhances that experience that your customers and your leads have with you.

So how do you actually start implementing these systems without feeling overwhelmed? Because I can hear you go, oh, how am I going to do all of this? And I totally hear you because like I said, I'm a mentor and I work with a lot of businesses and I feel like my superpower is going in and go, oh, we can automate that, we can automate that.

Let's put that on a sequence. But when you're so close to it, it's often really hard to see what you can do. So sit down, grab a piece of paper, we're going to start small, okay, start small.

We don't have to do it all. So sit down, grab a piece of paper, write down what is one task that takes up a lot of your time but could be, could be automated or streamlined.

Maybe it's responding to inquiries, maybe it's sending follow ups.

So start there. Like sit down, think about, okay, what's really taken up a lot of my time that I do over and over and over, what can I potentially streamline or automate?

The next one is pick a tool. And there are so many tools out there.

Like I use Mailerlite for my automations.

There's also Kit Convertkit is what it used to be called.

So for example, for calls or follow up calls, I use tidycal or like you can use Calendly. So there's a lot of things like you don't have to be the one to go to and fro with your clients to go, I've got these and these and these dates available for a call.

No, make it easy. You pop your availability into like a call scheduler. You send them the link to the call scheduler and then they have to pick a time that suits with you because you know, all that to and fro is too much time.

And like I said, we're keeping it small. So take it step by step. You don't have to overhaul your business overnight.

You can start with one system at a time and then test it and then move on to the next. Or, you know, if all of it sounds too hard and you want someone to sort of like wave a magic wand and like, tell you where you can make improvements, feel free to reach out.

I feel like it's like a little bit my superpower. It's like I look at it and go, oh yeah, we can automate that and systemize that. I didn't even know I had this superpower.

But, like, through my mentoring, I feel like it's come to the forefront because I have done so many automations recently. So small steps start small. So there you have it, an episode brought to you by my recent frustrations through mentoring.

No, I just wanted to share some simple but powerful ways that you can work smarter in your business. And by automating, like repetitive tasks, streamlining your marketing, you can free up your time and free up your energy and focus on what you do best.

And look, I get it because we get so busy in our business and it's, it's obviously not an exciting thing to do to sort of sit down and go, okay, what can I automate?

Because you kind of just onto the next and you're like, I'll just keep going. But then you'll never make those improvements.

So remember, the goal isn't just to make your life easier. It's also to deliver a better experience for your leads and for your clients. If you're not doing it for you, at least do it for them.

And when you do that, your businesses can't help but grow. But now you have that space to grow.

So if you don't like constantly do the busy, busy, busy, then you have more space to actually grow. But you can't grow until you have streamlined processes, automations and you free up some space and some time to take on more clients.

All right, thank you so so much as always for joining me in this episode of the new School of Marketing podcast. I hope you found it helpful. I always love, love sharing tips with you, so please feel free to reach out if you have any requests on topic.

You want me to talk about reach out as well? I would really, really love it if you could leave me a five star review because it helps other people find the podcast, which you know is always helpful for everyone.

And if you're ready to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising, head to newschoolofmarketing.com for practical free resources. And if you want to grow your business, but you don't want to spend all your time on slow and unpredictable organic social media, then the aim for Ads Academy is for you.

It's the place to learn how to be seen by your audience, attract the right people as leads, and turn them into paying customers. With my proven 4ad stack method plus as part of the program, you have one on one access to me, a marketing strategist and mentor with over 10 years of experience.

Because I don't want you to navigate ads alone. It is a jungle out there.

I'm here to help you be seen, attract leads, and get more paying customers. And make sure that you subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. Until next time, take care and market your business every day.