How to Automate Daily Tasks in Your Agency, Step by Step

Which agency tasks should you automate first?

Most people have a long list of things they would like to automate. The chance of finishing all of them is low. A better approach is to pick a short list of three to ten tasks that are easy to automate and give you the most return on your effort.

Look for three qualities. A task is a good candidate if it is repetitive, meaning the actions barely change each time. It should also be frequent or follow a regular pattern, such as something that happens every Monday, once a month, or whenever a client is onboarded. And it should take a long time to complete.

A task does not need all three, but the ones that meet all three give you the most leverage.

How do you find your highest value tasks?

Your own idea of what to automate is often not the real constraint, so use a tracker. For seven days at minimum, set a 30 minute timer and write down what you were doing each time it goes off. The longer you run it, the more tasks you will spot. Many people notice something they are doing manually from day one.

If you have employees, ask them to join in. Frame it as making their lives easier so that everyone can do more in less time, not as micromanagement. A good relationship with your team makes this easier.

When the sheet is complete, score each task by highlighting it.

• Orange: one point, the task meets one of the three criteria.
• Yellow: two points, for example repetitive and time consuming.
• Green: three points, the task is repetitive, frequent and slow.
• Start with the green tasks, then move on to yellow and orange.

Why break tasks down before you automate them?

It is tempting to start building straight away. For complicated tasks, that leads to silly mistakes. Planning first lets you spot errors and, more importantly, improve the process.

Creating an automation sets a process in stone, because you are repeating it every time. If the process is not already efficient, you will repeat the inefficiency on a regular basis. Automation applied to an efficient operation magnifies the efficiency. Applied to an inefficient one, it magnifies the inefficiency. Tools like Make.com and Zapier make automations easy to change later, but planning first still saves time.

Spending 10 to 15 minutes mapping a task also saves you from spending an hour, months later, working out why an automation does not work.

How do you map and optimise a task?

There are two steps. First, break down what you do now. Pick one green task and write out every step, like a detective watching from the outside. A whiteboard or an online whiteboard such as Figma works. Go into as much detail as you can, as if you were writing an SOP for a complete beginner.

The tea example shows the level of detail: rather than boil water, add tea, drink, you write get the kettle, open it, fill it with water, put it back on its base, switch it on, get a mug, get a tea bag, add the boiling water and wait for it to cool.

Second, optimise. Go through the steps and ask why you do each one, whether it is needed and whether there is a better way. Often you already know the answers, but you had never mapped the process before. Even a partial improvement is better than none. At the end you should have a current breakdown and an optimised breakdown for each green task.

How do you build a simple automation in Make.com?

Make.com and Zapier are the two main no code tools. Both have free plans, so try them and use whichever suits you. What matters is the structure, and everything here can be done in either tool.

Our example is a simple daily automation: when someone fills in a form, create a shared Google Drive folder and email the link. The first part of any automation is the trigger, because without a working trigger nothing runs.

1. Create a new scenario in Make.com and name it.
2. Trigger: Google Forms, watch responses. Choose how often it checks for new responses, such as every 30 minutes, and set a limit for how many responses to process at once. Increase the limit if you expect more responses in that window.
3. Connect the form. You can search by document title if copying the form ID does not work. We hit this error in the build, and fixing it is part of the work.
4. Google Drive, create a folder: choose the parent folder, such as client folders, then map the folder name from the form answer for what the video is called.
5. Share the folder as a reader with the email address from the form.
6. Gmail, send an email: send it to the same address with a subject such as new video ready, a short message, and the folder's web view link from the Drive step.

What tips help when you build your own automations?

• Play around with it. You will hit errors, and solving them is part of the process. Work backwards from the problem until it runs.
• Do not automate what you need to systemise. In an agency, the people side is a big part of the service. If a task shapes the client experience, write an SOP for your team instead of automating it.
• Check the API documentation. If your tool has no ready made module for what you need, look at the API docs for the platform and connect with a webhook. This is more advanced, and ChatGPT can help.
• Use tutorials, because someone has likely solved your exact problem. But do not get distracted. Only build the automations you identified in the tracker, starting with green, then yellow, then orange.
• Do not spend hours on an impressive complex automation that you will rarely use.

How can you improve a simple automation later?

A form to folder to email build is a basic example. As you gain confidence, you can add steps, use AI and connect more tools. The video above walks through the full build, and a more advanced onboarding automation is a natural next step once you are comfortable with the basics.