If you’re entering the enterprise-customer space at a mid-tier organization — either incrementally or rapidly — you’ve probably realized that you’re going to need as many automated workflows as possible.
You can even check out automated sales tools like Zendesk 45% Away from the tedious tasks of humans.
Performance Search Engine Optimization or pay per click Might be challenging enough for a few smaller clients, especially if you perform many of their tasks manually.
However, with enterprise-level clients, you can’t handle things manually anymore. You need to automate your workflow.
This article is aimed at beginners, not an exhaustive article on the best digital marketing automation workflow tools.
I’ll help you get started.
My goal is to get you thinking about the best way to automate your workflow when you start approaching enterprise clients.
There are many areas in digital marketing to automate processes and free up time for other things.
Think Workflow Automation: Your Goals
Like many processes in agency life, the best place to start with workflow automation is to understand what you’re trying to achieve: your goals.
The point of automating anything is to save time and money to a large extent.
Everyone wants to save time and money, and automating a process will make that process more efficient.
However, the goals of enterprise-level workflow automation will still vary in the specifics of each organization.
For example, maybe your agency focuses more on link building than any on-site SEO task.
In this case, you need more infrastructure to monitor and check your customers’ backlinks and domain authority than anything else.
If backlinks are your meat and potatoes, and you need to make the process as efficient as possible, then maybe consider using a useful backlink tool like Majestic, Semrush, or Ahrefs to boost (or first get) you s plan.
Sure, you’ll almost always pay more for enhanced automation features like monitoring, but what do you save in employee time and company resources?
Let’s say your agency is breaking into the corporate space and thinks it’s weak in reporting. You just don’t like infrastructure and feel like your enterprise customers deserve more.
You have to ask yourself, “Do I feel like an automated tool like Google Data Studio can help me?”
From experience, Data Studio is one of my go-to reporting dashboards, but don’t take my word for it.
There are other reporting dashboard products for this, such as Databox or Geckoboard.
No matter what you’re doing, my overall advice to people just starting out with enterprise workflow automation is to start by defining your goals.
Whether it is a more efficient on-site monitoring process, keyword clusteringor content reporting, you need to know what you’re after.
These goals should guide you in the right direction, choosing the tools that provide what you need.
What do these things usually include?
- Accurate representation of data.
- Tasks (with assignee and reset abilities).
- Team member communication.
- ability to expand.
- Customizable features.
Trust me, once you have these automations in your workflow, you won’t want to live without them.
Play with caution: Introduce automation internally
If your agency has been working hard over the past few years, doing things mostly manually, I can tell you that changes to wholesale processes can be difficult for some teams to accept.
You are taking a valid process and making cell-level changes to it.
The argument is that because you are in the corporate world now, a change is necessary.
More data, more complex workflows and higher requirements.
But here are a few points to consider:
- Of all the options, the automation tool you ultimately choose should be the one that works best for your agency; don’t compromise here.
- The entire team has to learn a new tool or process, which takes time and introduces errors.
- You may encounter actual resistance from some team members who prefer the old way.
First, it’s always good to make such changes gradually.
Watch product demos, get free trials, and compare all the automation workflow tools you’re considering.
On the other two points – related to team mistakes and personal resistance – you can almost expect these obstacles to arise.
solution?
Don’t make these massive changes all at once.
Find a way to engage with your current processes and automate them with new software. Test something in a low-risk environment, maybe even on your own institution’s website.
What better place for your team to learn the basics and make all the mistakes?
Once your team clears new roadblocks by solving problems and increasing efficiency, introduce this automated process more broadly across your organization.
This process may be slower than you like, but your business clients should optimize programs around their SEO, paid media, or whatever other large-scale services they get from you.
Also, it’s best to think of this introductory time as an investment rather than anything else.
You are investing time and money now to acquire this workflow automation tool and train your team to use it.
The result will be an agency using automated tools to offer a more streamlined product to its enterprise customers.
I can’t imagine what more you want!
Ongoing Self-Monitoring: Track Your Savings
Ideally, you’ll start earning savings from whatever automated workflow tool you get.
Not only are these savings something you can offer your enterprise-level customers, but you’ll keep them happier.
The savings also lie in how you benefit as an agency.
Having seen multiple agencies transition from mid-level to enterprise-level, I can tell you that introducing automated workflow tools doesn’t guarantee you’ll save resources.
You must be savvy about this and review every expense associated with the output of your work. Compare the data before and after the tool.
It may not always be as simple as you think.
For example, you might assume that introducing automated processes into your workflow will allow you to maintain fewer employees to oversee these parts of work.
In many or most cases, you may be right.
But what if the corporate clients getting jobs are so large and complex that they need more employees?
What if those employees end up costing more than you can save by automating your workflow?
Of course, you can still get enterprise-level hires, so maybe things will work out eventually.
Consider these issues when preparing and ultimately implementing automated workflows for enterprise clients.
There are also some problems you will run into that no one can predict.
For example, if you implement a Backlink Tracking Automation Tool For a client with 60,000 backlinks, maybe it works fine for a while, but then you find that you can make monitoring more efficient.
You will have these opportunities and choices in the future.
learn on the go
Because my purpose in writing this post is to help those who are just getting started with workflow automation in the enterprise space, I want to cover every possible scenario you might encounter.
However, when you go down this road, you will run into problems. Enterprise customers have high demands on you.
You can’t plan for it all.
However, I think the little by little approach should do wonders for you.
Try something before zooming.
For me, this is usually the path to success, and it may be the same for you.
More resources:
Featured Image: Den Rise/Shutterstock
