Author: Solomon Thimothy
Succeeding as a marketing agency takes work—economic uncertainty, client acquisition and retention, and scaling are some of the biggest challenges you must overcome if you want to stick around. The good news is that these are not totally new challenges in the agency world. Having run agencies for two decades, I can tell you that it’s still very much possible to run a successful one.
However, to survive and remain profitable over the long term, your agency must be agile and adaptable. This means embracing innovation and getting on the automation bandwagon.
No, it’s not a buzzword or just another trend with a limited shelf life. Automation and AI could be the life support you need to make headway in the coming months and years. Let’s take a look at how automation can help pick up the slack so you can focus on impactful, strategic decision making.
Table of contents:
Agency automation: What it is and why it’s worthwhile
Agency automation is when you use technology to streamline and optimize processes within your agency. It may include tasks like client communication, project management, reporting, data analysis, sales prospecting, and so on. The end goal is to increase efficiency, reduce manual labor, and improve overall productivity, allowing agencies to focus more on client success while maintaining or improving revenue.
Automation is critical for smaller agencies as it allows you to get more done with fewer resources. It can also dramatically reduce or eliminate laborious but unchallenging tasks from your to-do list. For example, at my agency, as the business grew, tasks began to pile up on my plate. I found myself wasting time on menial tasks, like updating our leads list and client records. Reporting too, can be a time sucker—the time spent creating reports and explaining them could be better spent executing a new strategy.
By delegating and automating these repetitive tasks, I avoided getting pulled away from crucial decision-making and other high-priority responsibilities.
Automation not only helps eliminate human error, but also saves significant time and resources. It allows agency owners and team members to focus on tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and strategic planning—areas where human input is irreplaceable.
The impact of automation on agency growth, success, and profitability
Every agency owner’s dream is to run a growing, successful, and profitable agency. But what exactly does that look like? And, how exactly does automation get you closer to that dream?
Let’s examine the top agency performance criteria as well as how automation can bring about the highly desired trifecta of growth, success, and profitability.
Enhanced productivity and scalability — You can deploy solutions to automate some of your daily operations, like updating client data in your CRM. By automating these processes, you free up staff to focus on tasks that require higher levels of problem-solving or creativity. Think about updating a CRM contact record versus coming up with your newest product’s sales pitch—what’s likely going to make you (and the client) happier in the long run?
Automation also helps to eliminate human error, which is another way it promotes productivity. After all, this is why banks have bill and coin-counting machines.
The other clear benefit of agency automation is that it facilitates scalability. Regardless of what type of agency you run, if you’re growing, payroll is one of your biggest expenses. Automation allows you to do more with a smaller team, even if your client base expands.
Streamlined processes, resources, and workflow optimization — Repeatable processes are key to servicing clients, maintaining quality standards, and scaling your agency. Automation can accelerate just about any of your processes with little to no errors. Take client onboarding, for example. Need to notify accounting? Need to send that welcome email? How about creating a login for the client? These are just a few examples of typical tasks that you can automate to expedite your overall time to execute and deliver a seamless client experience.
Improved client communication and relationship management — With support automation, you can be there for your clients even beyond your operating hours. You can implement automation at every stage of the customer journey: simplify client onboarding, expedite query resolution, and provide satisfactory service to every client, even at scale.
A great example is deploying chatbots that are trained to address frequently asked questions and common customer problems. Your support team can also save time by focusing on truly significant client issues, instead of being consumed by the same daily requests.
Overhead cost reduction, increased profit margins, and efficiency — Strategic automation saves time, human resources, and budget. These factors affect your bottom line, ensure you work at optimal capacity, and make tangible financial gains.
In fact, research shows marketing automation alone can reduce overhead costs by 12.2%. Not significant enough? Process automation as a whole can save agencies 25–40% in business process costs, according to research from Deloitte.
How to implement automation for your marketing agency
You can implement automation across all your agency’s departments: sales, marketing, customer service, support—you name it. Every department has tedious tasks that don’t amount to much when it comes to overall impact. However, they’re still critical and someone has to do them. When you add up all these tasks, you’ll be surprised what you can do with that time, talent, and energy.
If you need help finding a place to start, follow this simple roadmap:
Identify automation opportunities
Analyze your workflows to pinpoint repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
Prioritize processes that, if automated, would significantly impact efficiency and client satisfaction
Assess your current systems
Evaluate existing tools and workflows for automation compatibility.
Determine if upgrades or changes are needed to support automation.
Define your automation strategy
Identify stakeholders responsible for overseeing the process.
Establish an implementation timeline.
Set specific, measurable goals for your automation efforts.
Allocate a budget and research solutions
Determine your automation investment budget (this will be spent on tools and implementation).
Research cost-effective automation tools that meet your needs and offer scalability.
Implement your new automated workflows and train your team
Roll out automation changes gradually to minimize disruption.
Provide comprehensive training on new tools and processes.
Encourage feedback and address concerns to ensure smooth adoption.
Remember, team buy-in is essential for successful automation implementation. Whether it’s higher-ups or the actual employees doing the work, understanding the role and benefits of automation are key to a win-win situation.
On the one hand, you need to get buy-in from leadership to invest in automation tools and software. On the other hand, you need to work with the team to identify what processes or tasks are best suited to automate and what new tool or method is most effective. Involve your team in the process, highlight the benefits, and address any concerns they may have about how automation will affect their roles and their growth potential.
The top 5 marketing agency processes to automate
The best tasks or processes to automate are those that are highly repetitive, manual, and time consuming. Below are the most common processes that you can automate for your agency:
Lead generation
Client onboarding, communication, and billing
Project management and workflows
Social media management
Analytics and reporting
Lead generation
Generating new leads is always critical as every agency needs a consistent pipeline. Artificial intelligence and machine learning advancements now enable tools to significantly automate lead generation to identify, nurture, and convert prospects into paying customers. You can automate parts of the process or all of it, depending on your immediate goals.
There are plenty of options for automating lead generation, including email campaigns, social ads, lead magnets, pop-ups, forms, and more. At Clickx, we’ve been successful at scaling our prospecting efforts using lead generation tools, like Instantly, that make it easy to send prospect emails and follow-ups at scale.
However, if you have not used tools for lead generation before, here are some tips before you get started:
Start small — Begin by automating one aspect of your lead generation process, such as email campaigns or social media ads. This allows you to learn and adjust without overwhelming your team.
Utilize lead scoring — Implement an automated lead scoring system to prioritize your leads based on their likelihood to convert. This helps your sales team focus on the most promising prospects.
Test and iterate — Regularly analyze the performance of your automated lead generation efforts and make adjustments as needed. What works for one agency might not work for another, so be prepared to fine-tune your approach.
For prospecting and appointment setting, I recommend (and co-founded) Clickx, an AI-driven tool for automating lead generation and increasing sales. It can do everything from appointment scheduling to client servicing and email marketing. It’s easy to use and ideal for agencies gearing up for rapid growth and revenue generation.
Client onboarding, communication, and billing
Post-sales processes are crucial to developing long-term customer relationships. After all, the promptness of your response shows your dedication to your clients, and they will surely appreciate your commitment.
At our agency, we know that the first few days or weeks of a new client are critical for a long-term relationship. Below are some tremendously useful automation methods to ensure on-time delivery and a smooth onboarding process.
Zapier
This is a dedicated workflow automation solution for small- to medium-sized businesses. You can integrate third-party apps into a host of other SaaS solutions (as shown below). You can also choose to automate certain parts of your client onboarding workflows or the entire process, per your needs.
You can use Zapier to do things like integrate your email marketing tool with an existing system by creating a ‘zap’ to connect them. Need to send notifications when a lead comes in? Easy, create a zap that connects to your CRM or sends an email notification. It’s that simple.
Choose Zapier if you’re new to automation and want a flexible option to scale implementation in the future. There’s even a Zapier app for Wix that offers over 50 trigger events for Wix’s most popular apps.
Wix Automations
A feature of the popular website builder Wix, you can use Wix Automations for email campaigns, workflows, lead nurturing, and more.
By sending a ‘next steps’ email when a visitor submits a form or an email notification when an invoice is overdue, Wix Automations enables you to be proactive with your clients without relying on to-do lists and reminders.
Custom APIs
Rope in a developer to create custom APIs to integrate automation apps specific to your requirements. While custom APIs are expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions, they offer complete control over your automation processes.
For instance, some agencies develop custom APIs that integrate their CRM, project management tools, and billing systems. This allows for a seamless workflow where client information is automatically populated across all systems, tasks are created based on the client’s package, and invoices are generated and sent without manual intervention.
At our agency, we have used the open APIs of major tools like Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and others to simplify reporting, provide better data, and ultimately create our own multi-faceted marketing reporting app.
While working with APIs can present a significant upfront investment, it often pays off in terms of time saved and reduced errors.
Stripe
This SaaS solution centralizes and automates your billing operations. You can integrate Stripe with your existing databases for billing records, invoicing, and payment processing. It’s great for businesses operating globally and looking to scale.
As a bonus, using Stripe means you don’t have to invest in additional security tools because this payment gateway uses high-level encryption and industry-leading safety protocols to ensure your client’s safety.
Project management and workflows
Creating new tasks, task allocation, follow-ups, and submissions—project management automation tools can help you effortlessly organize, manage, and maintain even the most complex workflows. This will help you stay at the top of your game, especially if you work with multiple clients with tight deadlines.
Automating project management can be a game-changer. Some have reported reducing their project kickoff time by 50% and virtually eliminating missed deadlines. It also literally takes the project out of the black box—everyone is aware of the steps, the deliverables, and the timelines, making it easy for everyone to stay on task.
For agencies just starting with project management automation, look into popular tools like Asana or Monday.com. These platforms offer pre-built automation recipes that are easy to implement and can significantly streamline your workflows.
Social media management
Social media management is an integral offering of any marketing agency worth its salt. You can leverage these platforms for ads, leads, revenue generation, reputation management, etc. Using dedicated tools to automate scheduling, ad campaigns, sentiment analysis, and the like, ensures you work smarter, not harder.
Tools like Buffer for scheduling posts across multiple platforms and Hootsuite for social listening and sentiment analysis have allowed agencies to manage social media for more clients without proportionally increasing team size.
For agencies looking to automate their social media management, starting with a tool like Sprout Social or Later could be beneficial. These platforms offer comprehensive features that can grow with your agency’s needs.
Analytics and reporting
Automating analytics and reporting has obvious advantages—it’s always up-to-date, eliminates human error, and makes data visualization easy. While you could likely use your existing analytics platforms’ reporting features, a centralized dashboard facilitates greater and more frequent use of data because anyone can access it anytime.
Many agencies found success developing custom dashboards that pull data from various sources (Google Analytics, social media platforms, ad platforms, etc.) and present it in an easy-to-understand format. This approach can save teams countless hours and improve client communications by providing real-time updates and facilitating data-driven decisions.
For agencies looking to automate their reporting, tools like Databox or Supermetrics are popular starting points. These platforms integrate with a wide range of data sources and allow you to create customized, automated reports.
Automation: The best and only option for competitive marketing agencies
Agency automation is not simply ‘nice to have’ anymore. You need to implement it if you want to match or exceed your competitors’ efficiency and capabilities (especially on a budget).
So, whether you’re a startup or a big marketing agency with teams across geographies, find ways to use automation across every department and role. It’s the key enabler you need to continue doing what you do: providing the best possible services for your clients.
Solomon Thimothy - Co-founder at Clickx Solomon Thimothy is a digital marketing expert with 17+ years of experience helping businesses scale through SEO and growth strategies. As the founder of Clickx, he’s worked with companies to drive organic traffic and dominate search results. Learn more at Clickx.io. Linkedin