Sound ridiculous? Think about it for a moment… are you saying these things to yourself or those around you? Is it time you stopped to think beyond today’s burning issues, and on to what benefits lie on the other side of investment into increasing profits or reducing labour-intensive processes and tasks within your business?

I used to be the same. I would be very aware that investing in some digital automation could save vital hours / days, or that taking some time out from working IN the business to work ON it could allow me to identify new ways of working that would benefit me in the long-term. BUT… did I do it? No, because I was “too busy”, or “couldn’t afford it”.

Let’s break down those two excuses….

I’m too busy to save time

Running a business is tough. Everyday you start with a pile of projects that you’re already late delivering, then a new avalanche of problems, fires, and challenges arrive in your inbox. Most of which are “urgent”. I get it. Trust me, I really do. I’ve been self employed for almost 20 years and I am still grappling with it now.

However, if you are going to grow your business, achieve your goals, and ultimately sell it or hand it down, then you have to GET OVER IT, and look past all the noise of “today”. Switch off your phone, close down your Email App, close your Social Media tabs, and take a full dedicated day to work on your business. The mid to long-term benefits of doing this will pay you back 1oo-fold. There will *always* be noise and “urgent” stuff, and if you take out just one day and ignore it all, the World will not end. Nobody will die (unless you are actually a medical professional, in which case please don’t read my blogs and get back to work!).

If you are too busy to save time in the future, then you are holding yourself back and you’ll never move on. So open your calendar right now, pick a day next month and block it out to work on your business.

Use your day to:

• Identify tasks that could be delegated to other team members or outsourced to a 3rd party
• Identify processes in your business that could be streamlined or automated
• Look at where your time is spent on a typical day / week / month and consider whether it’s the best use of your valuable time. Come up with a figure of what one of your days is worth, and apply a real cost to the things you are spending (or wasting) your time on. EG – If you consider your day to be worth £2,000 and you go for a “random coffee” with a new connection in another town, then that’s just cost you £1,000 and you need to be confident you’ll see a return.
• Look at your customer processes – are they consistent, could they be fully or partly automated, are they efficient? Could they be re-worked to create an awesome customer experience?

I can’t afford to save money

This one is hilarious. When you think about it. Very often, you will absolutely *know* that with a bit of an investment, you could get to a place where you can elevate your business in terms of revenue, profit, or reduced costs. But you look at what’s in the bank, and you panic and do nothing. So you stand still, and struggle on.

Cash is king. Of course it is. And you can only run out of it once, as my very wise Dad once told me (Thanks, Dad!). However, cash is also relatively easy to come by when you are in business, and as long as you are investing it in something that will bring a return, it’s a no-brainer, right?

Maybe you can free up some cash by following the advice in section 1, above, maybe you can temporarily increase your overdraft, maybe you could raise your fees to increase your profits, maybe you could take some funding or investment. The important thing is, when you *know* (or are at least 85% certain) that you can achieve a new level in your business on the other side of an investment, then you have to go for it.

There is one thing that you can be fairly certain on getting an ROI from:

Automation – In every situation that I have delivered an Automation solution (either for myself or for clients), there has been a very clear return on that investment. Whether it’s by saving cost on out-sourced services, saving your own valuable time, or by increasing profits by streamlining processes, there is nearly always a return to be made from investing in Automation in your business. One of my clients grew their business by 500% in the 12 months after I’d automated 80% of their processes with digital / web technology. That is significant growth in 1 year!
Here are a couple of “low hanging fruits” that you can pick on when looking for things to automate in your business:

• Your customer on-boarding process. When you win a new customer, there are certain admin and communications tasks to be done. Set them up on your accounts system, check their credit references, add them (or update their status) to your CRM system, advise them on information they need, or actions they need to take etc to get the ball rolling. ALL or most of these things can be automated using web technology, and you may be surprised at just how cost-effective it is to create such a system.
• Your internal project setup/management process. Every time you start a new project or service for a client, there are tasks and processes that you are repeating each time. Of course, some bits of those will be tailored, but a large majority can be automated, and perhaps even automatically triggered by the on-boarding process we looked at above.

Automation doesn’t have to mean building an all-singing, all-dancing “system” to run your business (although this is entirely achievable and sometimes dramatically changes the fortunes of some businesses). Often automating a process such as the ones highlighted above can be achieved for under £5k, and can deliver way above that in terms of returned time and money.

So STOP. THINK. Is it time you invested your time and money into the future health and growth of your business and yourself?

100s of thousands of Small Businesses right now are grappling with how to use Digital Marketing to grow their business.
Every day I work with clients that own or manage Small Businesses. And every time I meet a new one, I see the same common mistakes when it comes to dealing with all things Digital for that business.

Firstly, let’s get one thing clear. Digital is not something you can “do”, it is something you naturally “become”. It’s not a task on a to-do list, or a project. It’s not even really a campaign. It’s a way of running a business, a new way to think, feel and act. So don’t get caught in the trap of trying to “tick” digital off of your list, and instead start by conducting a “Digital Audit”. Truly understand where you are on your Digital Journey, and how the digital landscape looks in your particular niche.

Step 1 – Ask the basic questions.

Start by auditing your own digital activity for your business. Ask yourself all of these questions:

How many enquiries, on average, do you receive through your website, per week?
How many unique visitors, on average, does your website receive, per month?
Does your website have a mobile or tablet version?
Does your website have a Blog?
Do you collect user’s details for marketing purposes through your website?
Does your website have Social Media functionality? (e.g. Share, Like, Pin, Tweet, etc)
Does your website get found for important terms on Google?
Do you have a strategy for capturing leads through your website?
Do you have a system in place for tracking leads and enquiries from your website?
Do you have the ability to control your website via a CMS (Content Management System)?
Does your website clearly and concisely explain what your business does / provides?
Do you have a maintenance & security plan to protect your website from hacking?
Does your business have an active presence on LinkedIn?
Do your key staff have active presence on LinkedIn?
Does your business have an active presence on Twitter?
Does your business have an active presence on Facebook?
Do you use any other Social Media platforms to promote your business?
Is someone continually working on your website’s Search Engine Optimisation?
Do you regularly analyse your website and Social Media traffic?
Do you have an Email Marketing strategy in place?
How often do you post blogs or articles on your website and Social Media platforms?
When did you last review your website and online marketing strategy?
Approximately what % of your revenue is re-invested in online marketing?

Step 2 – Map out the elements of your business that will be affected by going Digital

Digital doesn’t just affect Marketing. It can, and should, impact every aspect of the business. From Operational (digitising admin tasks, and delivery tasks), to Finance (moving to online payments, electronic invoicing etc), Sales (moving to digital tools for Sales and CRM etc). So, once you’ve understood where you may lack from the questions above, take that a step further and think about how digital / web tech could be making your life easier across Ops, Finance and Sales too.

Here are some examples of business processes you should be auditing:

• Your customer on-boarding process. When you win a new customer, there are certain admin and communications tasks to be done. Set them up on your accounts system, check their credit references, add them (or update their status) to your CRM system, advise them on information they need, or actions they need to take etc to get the ball rolling. ALL or most of these things can be automated using web technology, and you may be surprised at just how cost-effective it is to create such a system.
• Your internal project setup/management process. Every time you start a new project or service for a client, there are tasks and processes that you are repeating each time. Of course, some bits of those will be tailored, but a large majority can be automated, and perhaps even automatically triggered by the on-boarding process we looked at above.
• How you collect money. From how you deliver invoices, to automated credit control, to collecting credit card or direct debit payments online, digital offers the opportunity to streamline these functions and find untapped bottom line profits in the process

Step 3 – Start to build a plan based on Steps 1 and 2

Now that you’ve studied Marketing, Ops, Finance and Sales from a digital perspective and seen:

• What you’ve got
• What’s missing
• Where the opportunities lie

You can now start to capture the exact actions and projects required to pull all of that together and make it a reality.

Your Digital Plan should be split into the 4 categories of Marketing, Ops, Finance and Sales, and clearly show exactly what needs to be built / grown / optimised / solved, who is the right person to do it, an approximate budget for achieving it, and a reasonable timeline for doing so.

Please allow yourself at least a couple of dedicated days to get a solid draft of this plan going. Feel free to fire me questions as you go along, and let me know how you get on! Or, if you value your time then you could always outsource the task!

Running an aesthetics business is hard enough without becoming a marketing specialist, too. With automation, marketing and patient onboarding can be more effective and take up less time, too.

Aesthetics practitioners already have to spend hours on CPD to stay on top of clinical developments. Working on the business is an extra burden, and marketing and software can be particularly challenging. Today, there are over 9000 pieces of marketing software[1]: even professional marketers don’t have time to understand the whole landscape. And yet, it’s a crucial discipline for building a healthy flow of customers. That’s why the marketing buzzword of 2022 is automation: ways to get those big marketing jobs done, in less time and even keeping the business moving while you’re asleep. In this article, we’ll look at the software and strategies even the smallest practice can put in place to unlock more sales with less effort.

Automation is a catch-all term for a raft of technologies that are united by the fact that they reduce the need for human intervention in getting everyday jobs done.

Once upon a time, automation meant robots in factories. That is, unsurprisingly, expensive – and not particularly useful for aestheticians. In future, it will mean technologies right at the cutting edge, like Artificial Intelligence. Right now, that, too, is expensive and complicated (although it won’t be forever).

Today, though, there is an easier middle-ground. We are in a perfect moment where technology has advanced enough to make a range of essential activities simpler at an exceptionally low cost – the sorts of activities which aesthetics professionals need to do on a regular basis: finding customers and marketing to them, categorising your relationships with customers, taking bookings and payments etc.

There are no less than eight (fairly interrelated) good reasons for automation and the value it can bring to your business:

• It saves time. And that’s the one commodity that aesthetics practitioners constantly tell us they don’t have.
• It cuts errors. Everyone makes mistakes, and we all know what it’s like to take a double booking, for example. Automated systems reduce errors like this.
• It means you can do more of the things you’re good at. Aesthetic Practitioners are trained professionals. You became an Aesthetic Practitioners to practice your expertise, not to be an accountant, marketer or customer service agent (although most of us enjoy some of these aspects of the job, too). Automations buy you back time to do the parts of the job which most appeals to you.
• It improves the patient experience. Today, we all expect to be able to make bookings and understand the services on offer online from our phones, for example. If you can’t offer that, then you’re not looking after your patients – and probably losing business too.
• It promotes consistency. A brand (which is what you’ve created in launching your clinic, and your personal profile) is all about providing a consistent service. The first growth attempted by an aesthetics practice is usually to employ a front-of-house employee. Even the best employee isn’t going to be as committed as an owner, so automated processes enforce a greater degree of consistency to your patient-facing offer, bringing up standards in every customer interaction.
• It cuts repetition. The most soul-destroying tasks are the repetitive manual ones which eat up time. They’re also the most error-prone. Automations minimise these tasks – freeing you up for more high-value activities which will move the needle on your profitability. In the words of business consultants PwC[2], “By automating mundane and repetitive tasks, workers can focus on higher value-add work and increase their overall work capacity.”
• It extends your skills. Following on from the previous point, given that time is what we all lack, buying it back with automation means you can get round to some of the jobs that would otherwise simply always drop off the end of your to-do list.
• It works when you’re asleep. You can’t send out marketing emails or appointment confirmations by hand at 2am (and if you do, you’re headed for burnout…). Automated systems can.

Discovering automation opportunities

All of this then begs the question: what should I aim to automate?

Automation isn’t always a good thing. Last time you visited your doctor’s surgery, for example, you might have been pointed to a terminal in order to register your arrival. This is useful for the GP practice – it allows them to manage scarce resources around appointments. But the personal service and warm welcome at the reception desk is a crucial part of the customer experience in aesthetics. Digital tools are powerful – but not always the answer.

Following on from the above list, take a little time to audit your typical activities across a day (e.g. appointments), week (e.g. marketing) and month (e.g. accounting reconciliations) and look for activities which are repetitive, error-prone, wasteful, boring, or which deliver a patient experience which is below that which you would like to offer. As the Automation Academy points out[3], “Humans are good at working with analogue and unstructured data, whereas computers need digital and structured data. Humans are less capable in consistent execution of the same processes. Repetition of routine tasks hinders concentration, resulting in errors. Computers, on the other hand, excel here. Also, tasks performed by computers can scale massively, which is not easily achieved with human workers. These differences define the factors to be considered when selecting the right process for automation.”

The automation services that will solve these challenges are almost all:

• Digital: managed and delivered online.
• Pay-as-you-go: available for a reasonable monthly fee, so that you can budget predictably and assess the value to your business when compared to the cost of your time.
• Automate marketing: for more leads and more profits

Marketing is a particularly fertile ground for automation. Here are just some of the options on offer, broadly in the order of the sales process

You have many other options, including pieces of software for every conceivable marketing need, and whilst getting to grips with software might not be your top priority, it’s one of the few remaining low-cost ways to genuinely buy back time without employing more people.

Marketing is also essential. Aesthetics is a competitive business, and with most customers making a purchase decision on their perception of your online brand and local convenience as well as the services you offer, finding and nurturing those relationships is crucial. Automation will help you manage this essential function and power up your business: 80%[4] of automation users see their leads increase, directly improving profitability.

Rick O’Neill, FRSA, is a Digital Consultant to the Medical Aesthetics industry, working with brands such as Merz Aesthetics, Lumenis, Crown and many more. Rick is also Co-Founder of The Aesthetic Entrepreneurs (a community and business support platform for Medical Aesthetic Practitioners), and Founder and Owner of LTF Digital, an award winning Digital Agency focused on supporting Medical Aesthetics brands and clinics in the UK and Internationally.