Most small businesses lose leads not because they don't get enough traffic, but because follow-up is slow or nonexistent. Before you spend £1,500+/month on a virtual assistant, here are 3 automations that fix 80% of that problem — and you can set them up in a weekend:

1. Instant lead response

Any time someone fills out your contact form, they should get a reply within 60 seconds — even if it's automated. Tools like Zapier or n8n can watch your form submissions and fire an instant email/SMS. Response speed is the single biggest driver of lead-to-call conversion.

2. Missed-call text-back

If you run a trade or local service business, every missed call is a missed job. A simple automation that texts the caller back within a minute ("Sorry we missed you — what can we help with?") recovers a huge chunk of that lost revenue.

3. Review request sequence

After a job/service is marked complete, an automated sequence should ask for a Google review 2-3 days later. Businesses that automate this consistently outrank competitors who rely on manually remembering to ask.

None of these need a full CRM overhaul — they can run on Zapier/Make/n8n connected to whatever you already use. If you want a system like this built out (or want it wired into a full CRM + AI chatbot setup), that's exactly what we do at Aegis — feel free to check out what's on offer here, no pressure either way.

Happy to answer questions on any of these in the comments if you're trying to DIY it.