How To Run Your Business On Autopilot This Holiday

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The holidays are here with us and we are all thinking about how we are going to spend more time relaxing, enjoying ourselves, and spending more time with our families and loved ones.

While this is what most people think about when the holidays are around the corner, most businesses also have to think about keeping the business up and running and holiday sales.

Work does not cease just because the holidays are here. Right? Well, at least not for everyone. In fact, for most businesses, the holidays usually mean a boost in sales because everyone is holiday shopping for one reason or another.

Some people are buying presents, others are treating themselves after working hard the whole year. Others want to show their loved ones their affection through a holiday spree.

For this reason, a lot of businesses usually position themselves accordingly in order to get the maximum amount of sales in this period.

So a dilemma most entrepreneurs, companies, and business entities usually face is whether to be more aggressive during this season or whether to close shop and enjoy the holidays.

What if I informed you that you could do both? I know that the first query that comes to your mind is, but how? While what I’m about to talk about may not apply to every business entity out there, (physical retail stores may still need to put in some work and effort), the ways I talk about can be applied to most businesses.

They can also ensure that you set up your business on autopilot even when you are not physically putting in the effort. These ways can be used throughout the year as well and not just the holidays. They just come in more handy during the holiday times.

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Set up an email automation system

While email marketing is not a novel process to many blogs, a lot of businesses miss out on this because they have not yet learned out how it works.

The vantage point of email marketing cannot be overlooked in the process of running your business on autopilot. A lot of blogs use email marketing to reach out to their audience or community by using newsletters and promotional emails.

This is vital to grow your email subscriber list and also ensure that any new information or product you may have is easily marketed to your audience.

This not only widens your email subscriber list but also grows your community and reach. Your community will ideally be people who can vouch for you and trust in you and your products.

They are important because as they grow, they can save you tons of money that you would have allocated for marketing. Setting up an automatic email responder is also vital in this process because you can auto-respond to any emails sent directly to you and manage customers with ease on autopilot.

One of the best email automation systems out there in the market is Aweber. They have recently added a completely free plan to its pricing. Now you can get started with AWeber and use it in your business for free.

No credit card. No time limitation. Sign up for a free account today so you can try it out and watch your business grow while you do almost nothing.

Set up a Shopify account

If you are a business retailer or an e-commerce business store, using Shopify can come in very handy. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that will enable you to carry out your business on autopilot.

You can run a dropshipping store or a print-on-demand store with great success on Shopify. The biggest advantage that Shopify has is that you can integrate so many apps into your store that will assist you to run your business on autopilot.

Most of these integrations are free to use and easy to install. Some of these apps include Printful or Printify for print-on-demand stores.

Printful will honor your order and take care of everything from stocking, billing, packaging, and shipping to your own customer. There are various integrations so you can browse through the apps and see which may be helpful to you.

Schedule your posts

In business today, it is almost common knowledge that you need to be having a social media account. If you do not have at least one social media account, you are missing out on a lucrative number of traffic sources for your business or brand.

Most retail businesses or stores get a lot of traffic and conversions from Instagram or Facebook while most companies benefit from Twitter and Linked in.

It is best to do thorough research on where your target audience can be found so that you can maximize your presence on that platform.

A great way to maximize your presence on social media without actually putting in too much effort is by scheduling your social media posts.

There are many social media schedulers out there each with its pros and cons. I would recommend using Canva or Later. With Canva you can design all your posts on the platform with their premade templates and schedule them out using their scheduler.

To use their scheduler, you need to have their pro version which you can try for free for 30 days here. The best thing about Canva is their designing feature which gives you an extensive array of templates for business use and not just social media posts.

You can also utilize Later which has a free forever plan. This platform however limits you to 30 posts per month for only one account and one social media platform.

If you would like to have unlimited posts per month or more accounts and social media platforms, you will need to upgrade to their paid plan and choose one that will suit your business needs.

It’s Holiday Time!!

And with those easy steps, you can say goodbye to the manual side of your business. Well. Not forever. While these may ease the burden of your work, ensure you keep track of your business whenever possible.

There are still a number of factors that need some TLC such as customer service. While you may automate some processes in customer service, ensure that you are not completely out of touch with your customers or audience.

This is the one aspect of your business that you should be hands-on. Your customers or audience are also sort of an autopilot system because they will promote your business even when you are not actively selling.

Hope you get to enjoy the Holidays with these simple steps. Let me know if you have implemented any and if they have been of any help. Comment down below.