When you finally get a few hours to work on marketing, how much of that time goes toward getting ready to do the actual marketing?
Maybe you’re pulling numbers from different platforms, checking whether last week’s posts went out, reformatting a report, or looking for a lead that still needs a follow-up.
All useful work. But it can leave surprisingly little time for the decisions that actually move things forward.
Brandon Tuttle, Blip’s Director of Business Operations and Automation, has seen this firsthand. He’s built systems that support Blip’s customer service, internal reporting, and campaign data flow.
His approach is refreshingly simple:
Automate the setup before you automate the decision.
A useful automation doesn’t need to replace your judgment. It can simply clear away some of the repetitive work so you have more time to use that judgment well.
Here’s how to do it in four practical steps.
Key Takeaways
- Look first for repeatable tasks that take time away from higher-value marketing decisions.
- Build automations in stages so it’s easier to see what’s working and make adjustments.
- Keep a human review step anywhere context, judgment, customer experience, or budget matters.
- Document the basics so your automation stays useful as your business and processes change.
The goal isn’t to automate everything. It’s to make the work around your decisions easier.
Give Yourself More Time for Actual Marketing
Say you have five hours this week to focus on marketing.
You could spend most of that time pulling reports, checking tools, and organizing information. Or you could have more of those five hours available to decide which campaign to launch, which audience to reach, which offer to test, or where your next marketing dollar could work hardest.
That’s where automation can help.
Before Brandon’s team improved Blip’s customer support process, reps had to open multiple screens to get the context they needed for a single customer issue. Campaign data lived in one place. Account history lived somewhere else. Billing and support information added a few more stops.
Instead of starting by automating the customer response, Brandon’s team focused on bringing the right information together.
The result? Less time gathering context and more time actually helping the customer.
That same thinking works for small-business marketing.
Before automating what goes out, look at all the work that happens before it. There may be an easier win hiding there.
Start With the Setup, Not the Final Decision
The most visible parts of marketing naturally get our attention:
- The post that gets published
- The email that gets sent
- The ad that goes live
- The report that gets shared
But there’s usually plenty of work happening before any of those things are ready.
You’re pulling information, organizing files, checking performance, finding missing details, and getting everything in place so you can make a good decision.
As Brandon puts it, “You can automate the setup without automating the outcome.”
That distinction gives you a useful place to start.
Say a new lead comes in. Automation could collect the contact details, campaign source, business information, and relevant history in one place. You still decide how to respond, but you don’t have to spend as much time gathering the information you need first.
The automation handles the prep. You handle the decision.
That’s a helpful balance: more efficiency without giving up control.
How to Automate Your Marketing in Four Steps
1. Look for the Repeatable Work
Before choosing an automation tool, spend a little time looking at how the task works today.
- Where does it start?
- What information do you need?
- Where does that information come from?
- Who reviews it?
- Which steps involve copying, pasting, formatting, or repeating something you’ve already done before?
You’re looking for patterns. Good candidates include:
- Pulling weekly marketing numbers into a report.
- Scheduling a week of social posts.
- Organizing follow-up information when a lead comes in.
- Collecting campaign notes after a meeting.
- Gathering creative assets before a campaign launch.
These tasks tend to work well because the inputs and next steps are fairly consistent.
When you reach a step where the answer is usually “it depends,” that’s a good signal to keep a person involved.
For many small businesses, something as simple as social scheduling can be a useful first automation. Instead of stopping every day to publish a post, you might schedule the week at once and use the time you save elsewhere.
You don’t need to automate everything. Start with the repeatable work that would give you the most useful time back.
2. Build It in Manageable Stages
A good automation should be easy to follow.
You should be able to understand what happens at each step, what a successful result looks like, and where you might want to check the output before moving forward.
Brandon recommends thinking about automation in stages. At each stage, ask: Did this step produce what the next step needs?
For a customer support workflow, that might mean checking:
- Did we match the customer to the right account?
- Did we pull the correct account details?
- Did the campaign information come through?
- Is everything ready for someone to review?
These checkpoints make the system easier to understand and easier to adjust.
The same idea applies to marketing. If a link changes, a data source stops updating, or information comes through incorrectly, a checkpoint gives you a chance to spot it before that information travels farther through the workflow.
Think of it less like building one big automation and more like connecting a few dependable steps. That makes the whole process easier to manage.
3. Keep People Involved Where Judgment Matters
Automation is great at repeatable work. People are great at context.
That’s why the most useful systems often combine both.
An automation might work exactly as designed while still producing something that needs a second look. Maybe the tone isn’t quite right. Maybe the timing could be better. Maybe a customer situation deserves a more thoughtful response.
At Blip, Brandon’s team uses this approach in customer support. Automation and AI can help gather information and prepare a response, while a person reviews it, makes any necessary edits, and decides what happens next.
Brandon describes the model this way: the automation handles 90% of the work, and the person handles the last 10%.
That final 10% can be especially valuable because it’s where experience and context come in.
The same principle can work for creative. AI can help you brainstorm billboard copy or design directions. Give it your audience, business type, goal, and offer, and it can help you get past the blank page faster.
Then bring your own knowledge back into the process.
- You know how your business sounds.
- You know what your customers care about.
- You know whether an idea feels clear, useful, and true.
And once a campaign is running, keep checking in. Review your dashboard, look at what went out, and make sure the setup still supports the goal you started with.
Automation can make the work easier. Your judgment keeps it relevant.
4. Write Down How It Works
Once an automation is running smoothly, documentation may not feel like the most exciting next step. It is, however, one of the more useful ones.
Processes change. Tools get updated. Someone else may eventually need to understand how everything works. A few notes now can save a lot of detective work later.
And your documentation doesn’t need to be elaborate. One page may be plenty.
Capture:
- What the automation does
- What information it needs
- What a successful result looks like
- Where someone reviews the work
- What to check if something doesn’t look right
That gives you a simple reference point when you want to troubleshoot, hand off the process, or improve it later.
It also makes your automation easier to build on. Once you can see the whole process clearly, the next opportunity to save time tends to become clearer, too.
What You Gain When the Setup Gets Easier
The value of automation isn’t just the number of minutes it saves. It’s what you get to do with those minutes.
When less of your attention goes toward pulling reports, checking tools, copying information, or rebuilding the same process, you have more room to think about questions like:
- Which campaign deserves more budget?
- Which message is getting the strongest response?
- Which leads need a follow-up?
- Which offer should we try next?
- Which marketing effort is worth repeating?
That’s where automation becomes especially useful.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to replace your team. And it doesn’t have to make your marketing decisions for you.
It can simply make the path to those decisions shorter.
The best automation leaves you with more time, more clarity, and more control over what happens next.
That’s a philosophy we believe in at Blip, too.
With Blip, you can manage your digital billboard campaign from one place. Choose the budget, timing, locations, and creative that make sense for your business, then adjust as you learn.
No long contracts. No minimums. Adjust anytime.
Because high-impact marketing doesn’t need to mean high effort.
Ready to make your next campaign easier to manage?
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know which marketing task to automate first?
Look for a repeatable task that regularly takes time away from a more valuable marketing decision. That could be gathering data from multiple places, scheduling posts, organizing campaign notes, or preparing follow-up information.
A helpful rule: automate the repeatable part and keep a person involved when context or judgment matters.
What should I do when an automation stops working as expected?
Start with your checkpoints. If the automation was built in stages, look at each step and find where the output stopped matching what the next step needed.
That lets you focus on one part of the process rather than untangling the whole thing at once.
How do I keep my brand voice when using AI for copy?
Give AI enough context to create a useful starting point: your audience, goal, offer, business type, and a few examples of how you want to sound.
Then review what it gives you.
AI can help you move past the blank page faster. Your knowledge of your business and customers is what turns that starting point into something that sounds like you.
Do I need technical skills to get started?
Not necessarily.
Simple workflows like social scheduling, recurring reporting, basic email follow-ups, and lead organization can be approachable even if automation isn’t your specialty.
Choose one repeatable task you’d like to make easier. Build a simple version, see how it works, and improve from there.
