How To Start an AI Automation Agency (AAA) The Ultimate Guide

I feel like everybody is talking about how to start an AI automation agency. We’ve all heard it. We’ve all seen it. AI is here to revolutionize business. But the big question is, how can you capitalize upon this emerging market?

But I don’t barely see people who actually show how to implement AI-powered systems that really help you to optimize your workflows.

Today, I’ll show you how you can create your own AI automation agency. I’ll cover why you should even start one in the first place, then also what services you can provide to your clients, and lastly, how to niche and create this grand stem offer nobody can say no to.

What is AI Automation Agency (AAA)?

AAA stands for AI Automation Agency. It refers to a business that specializes in using AI technology to automate and optimize processes for clients. These agencies develop chatbots, implement AI-driven automations, and provide tailored solutions to streamline operations and enhance customer experiences. Essentially, it’s really finding ways you can implement AI in certain business workflows.

AI Automation Agency Services

Let’s talk about service delivery and what services you can actually provide to your clients.

1. Custom AI Chatbots

I would say we start with the most obvious one, which is AI chatbots. You can build them very easily without knowing how to code using platforms like:

• Stack AI
• CustomGPT.ai 
• Botpress
• Stammer.ai

I’ll just give you a short guide to Stack AI. With this tool, you can build ChatGPT chatbots very easily and fast using its visual builder.

So you can understand it in that way that Stack AI is just like Wix for websites. It enables you to build chatbots without knowing how to code, just using visual workflows.

The cool thing about Stack AI is that besides chatbots, you can also build internal tools powered by AI, which is another great AAA service to offer.

2. AI Automation

The second service you can deliver to your clients is AI systems or automation systems in general. For this, you can use the platforms like:

• Zapier
• Make.com
• GoHighLevel

Essentially, what they do is they connect your clients’ apps to OpenAI.

So that you have a better understanding of what I’m talking about, in Make.com, for example, you can connect thousands of apps with each other, including OpenAI, which makes this tool so powerful in that sense that you can automate, for example, your Gmail account using OpenAI.

You can connect these tools with each other to communicate internally so that many repetitive tasks can be obsolete.

3. AI Marketing Automation Services

But the best part is their white-label program. Basically, as an agency, you can brand and resell GoHighLevel as your own automation service. You can charge ongoing fees for automation services powered by GoHighLevel. This creates predictable, recurring revenue.

GoHighlevel is the best solution if you already run an SMMA and want to integrate AI into your agency to differentiate yourself from your competition.

💡 Pro Tip

If you’re not using this platform and want to give it a try, since we use it in our agency, GoHighlevel offers our audience a 30 day extended trial.

4. Custom AI Apps

The third service you can provide to your clients is actually building out custom AI apps using AI no-code tools like:

• Bubble
• Softr

To be honest, this service delivery can be quite difficult, and it definitely requires technical knowledge.

In some cases, some coding experience is required to deliver high-quality work at the end of the day and to please your clients. But you can actually build AI tools within a week using Bubble. You can start with this on your own and get the expertise. If you really like it, you can start to build out a team that can develop it for your clients in a high quality.

5. AI Consulting

The last AAA service is AI consultation and workshops. In order to make this work, you will actually require some personal brand, which you can build on LinkedIn or YouTube.

I really recommend taking some time out to create content that is meaningful for your target audience. For example, you could target businesses and you create content around how AI can be incorporated into businesses to make them grow.

So now that you have an understanding of AI automation agency services you can provide to your clients, it’s very important now to start to niche down because I know a lot of people think it makes more sense to target everybody and to be a generalist, but if you try to serve everybody, you will serve no one in the end.

So, to be successful, you need to find a niche in the industry and try to solve their biggest pain points. Once you have a system, you can replicate this multiple times and multiple times, and this will allow you to scale on a big basis.

Choosing AI Automation Agency Niche & Best Niches

Now, I’ll give you 3 actionable tips on how to choose your niche, and then I’ll go over some of the best AI automation agency niches.

1. Consider the Market You Already Know

There are a few benefits of serving a niche you’ve already worked in. For example, if you’ve worked in real estate, it’s a great way to break into the industry because you already know the processes and the pain points they face. So you can automate things much easier and or maybe you already have a network.

2. Target Emerging Markets

The second thing you should consider is that it’s an emerging market because it’s always risky to enter a market which is declining and will probably die in the future. So, you want to target an emerging market where the capital is flowing into the market.

3. Consider Optimization Potential with AI

Another thing that you should consider is that you should check out the market or choose a market that can be highly optimized by AI. Usually, these markets are online businesses because they have a lot of processes using software, which you can, at the end, also integrate with Zapier or you can use chatbots they can use to speed up their workflows. In comparison, for example, to a brick-layering company, which is a very physical business.

Best AI Automation Agency Niches

Now, I’m going to walk through a couple of specific examples of AI automation agency niches.

1. eCommerce

If you decide to work with e-commerce businesses, you can go beyond just automating their customer service with chatbots. You can also help with predictive analytics. They can use AI to track customer data, pick up on trends, and track behavior to predict what products customers might be interested in purchasing in the future.

Inventory management can also be improved by both AI and automation, for example when a product is getting low or out of stock, you can have AI recognize that and an automation automatically reorder more of it.

2. Lawyers

AI can help in legal research as well by processing and analyzing tons of pages of documents, case law, and litigation files, which makes it way easier for lawyers to find critical information. For litigation, an AI could assist in real time transcriptions of court proceedings and answer relevant questions in a chatbot interface.

AI and automation can also help in a ton of different ways like email scheduling, billing, invoicing, and setting meetings.

3. Real Estate Agents

For real estate, AI can analyze data from a variety of different sources and match their clients with their dream homes. An AI-enhanced CRM system can also help automate follow-ups and customer inquiries.

AI automations can provide real-time property information as well as schedule showings with clients.

4. Personal Brands

AI can also help automate content creation and distribution for all of the content creators and influencers out there. For example, AI automations can create relevant, customized blog posts and social media posts on any topic you’d like. Then, a custom-trained GPT model can help you ensure that the content you’re creating matches the voice of the brand you’re working with.

5. Service Based Businesses

For businesses like electricians, plumbers, and landscapers, AI can help them in a ton of ways. They can completely automate their customer service, their appointment scheduling, job tracking, and a lot more.

For example, you can create A custom quote calculator that gives prospective customers a quote, which would reduce the time spent on manual estimation. An automated CRM system would also help manage customer relationships effectively.

And these are just a few examples. The possibilities of niches here are truly endless, and almost every business in the world can benefit from these services.

It’s all about finding your niche where you can provide valuable, relevant AI services for your clients.

Technical Setup: Essential Tools for Your AI Automation Agency

Let’s begin with the technical aspects. Here are some of the tools you need to get in order to run your AI automation business.

1. Professional Website

First, you’ll need either a website or a funnel. If you’re seeking a free option, I recommend Systeme.io. They provide a decent free plan where you can link your own custom domain, build up to 3 funnels, manage contacts of up to 2,000 people, and send email campaigns—all without any cost. Not bad.

However, if want a one-stop shop for all of your sales and marketing needs, then consider opting for GoHighLevel,

GoHighLevel is basically a CRM platform specifically tailored for agencies that you can use not only to manage your business but also to provide AI marketing services to your clients, as I’ll show you later.

GoHighLevel website builder is easy to use, and they have tons of templates for literally every industry, including agencies.

Either of these options will work. You can really get started within a day. But really, I think it’s mandatory to have a website because it shows professionalism at the end of the day.

2. Business Email

The next thing you need to do is get a professional email because you’ll need it later for cold outreach. I don’t want to see people sending emails with @gmail.com. That is not professional. That looks spammy.

I receive emails from other companies from accounts @gmails.com. How can I think that is a good company if they don’t want to spend $10 to $15 a month for an email address?

Get a domain and connect an email to that domain. To do that, you can get something that is called G Suite, and with that you have everything: docs, storage, and other business tools.

3. OpenAI Account

This is only a requirement if you want to sell AI automation with Zapier or Make.com.

And for this, you need to get the OpenAI pro version because you need to connect OpenAI to these tools. All you need is your API keys and your organization number.  The pro version is $20 a month.

These are the technological aspects of the business.

4. Business Phone Number

If you want to do cold calling, you need, of course, a phone number. I’m sure you have one. But if you want to use your personal, you can do that. But for this is much better to use a business phone number and I recommend you to do it.

I don’t know which country you live in, but depending on the country, that could be from 20 to $100 a month. For example, here in the UK, it’s super expensive. I pay around £70 a month for just a super simple plan. But that is something I need if I want to have a phone number for customers if they need to call me, if I need to call calls as well, that is something that I need to have.

Finding AI Automation Agency Clients: Automated Method

So now that you have your niche and your service figured out, it’s time to find leads, which you can do on platforms like Apollo or Leadfuze.

Now I’m here in Apollo, and I’ll just show you very quickly what this search could look like.

Let’s say we are searching for marketing agencies, and then we can filter companies in the size of, for example, 10 to 20 people.

Then let’s say we just want to target agencies in the United States, and we want to narrow it down to, for example, just marketing and advertising agencies.

And as you can see, we have over 300k leads.

It’s also important to narrow this search even more down because we really can’t target all of them.

Let’s say we want to also just target the CEOs, founders, co-founders, etc. Now, I’ve got a total list of 4.4K, which is a lot of leads you can reach out to.

And then, you can just save this lead list and, at the end, export this.

It’s important to know that you need to export this as a CSV because you’ll need it for an email outreach.

And for your

Quick side note: if you don’t want to pay anything for software, for example, because I know Apollo can be quite expensive, you can also go with freelancers on Fiverr who make the lead generation for you for a few bucks.

Cold Outreach: AI-Powered Strategies for Lead Generation

So now we’re finally at the part where we can do outreach. This can be quite painful. I know outreach takes a lot of time, but luckily, we have AI, which can help us automate a lot of processes.

So, in this part, I’ll show you how you can scale and automate your outreach systems using AI.

But before we get into the outreach part, you will have to do a few things before we get started.

First, you get a business email with your domain because it’s very unprofessional if you just use a Gmail account.

Another thing that I highly recommend is having a professional website. Like I said at the beginning, I recommend going with either Systeme.io if you just getting started or GoHighLevel if you want a complete sales and marketing automation solution.

Now, let’s go over the first cold outreach method.

1. Email Outreach

Let’s start with the automated email outreach. The first thing you should do is actually add the ChatGPT add-ons for Google Sheets. For this, you will need to go to Google Sheets and just type in “ChatGPT for Sheets and Docs,” and then you can find this add-on and just install it.

We’re now in Google Sheets, where we’ve installed the ChatGPT add-on.

Here, we can see some basic lead lists that you can get either from Apollo or a freelancer, for example.

Now you can just prompt ChatGPT using equals GPT, and then you can tell ChatGPT which field it should take, meaning E2.

And then we tell it: “Visit this website and write me a personalized first liner for my email code outreach where you compliment something you saw on their website.”

In the next step, you just drag down this point for all the leads, and it will automatically generate a personalized outreach or a personalized first-liner for all the leads you’ve imported.

This really solves the problem of making outreach personalized because everybody knows these marketing emails, which are high first name and then their offer, and you will never respond to them because they’re just some spammy email.

But when you are able to personalize them to the business and maybe give them a compliment, they are more likely to actually read your offer, and, in that sense, also more likely to respond and maybe hop on a call with you.

In the last step, you actually download this file as a CSV again, and you can import this to your favorite email automation software and start your outreach.

Here you have a few options like:

• Instantly.ai
• Hunter.io
• Reply.io
• Woodpecker

I personally use Instantly.ai because it’s super easy to use compared to other email outreach tools.

All you do is import the lead list that you generated in the previous step.

And then there is the copy you can put in with the variable, which you’ve imported from the lead list, like for the first name.

Then you can put in the variable first liner, which we generated earlier. When your offer comes into play with the risk reversal and then maybe a Calendly link, this could somehow be the structure of your email outreach.

This first liner will be filled out with the thing which we’ve generated in the Google Sheets and that’s really the power of this software because when you’ve saved this campaign, you can really schedule it and tell it that it just sends out these emails over the weekday automatically without you doing anything.

So, this is an overview of how to set up an email cold outreach campaign.

Now, let’s move on to the next lead generation method, LinkedIn outreach.

2. Linkedin Outreach

Another great way you can reach out to business owners is through LinkedIn. This is really the place and the social network for professionals. And because of this, it’s probably the best place to do B2B sales and outreach in general.

For those who don’t know what LinkedIn automation tools do, they essentially send out connection requests. Once they accept it, you can send them a message automatically within a few hours, and you can really customize all these variables.

There are many out there, a lot of good ones, but also a few bad ones. Here are two which I found quite good, which is first of all, DuxSoup and the other one MeetAlfred.

And I just give you a short introduction to DuxSoup because it’s easier to use. And the great thing about DuxSoup is that it’s quite affordable in comparison to other LinkedIn automation tools. You can get started for free. But later on, if you really want to scale it, I recommend TurboDocs because of the features you will have.

In the DuxSoup dashboard, you can see one of the campaigns where you just send out a connection request. You can also put in a message, but I feel like this is quite pushy and too salesy.

So just wait for them to accept your connection request and then write them a message after maybe five hours.

And if they don’t respond, you can also send follow-ups, which is a great thing.

So now we’re here in the Funnel Flow, where you can see how these campaigns have performed in the past.

And Dux-Soup is a very powerful tool, which you can also integrate into your CRM to automate many of your outreach processes and essentially get your clients on autopilot.

3. Instagram Outreach

Another way you can reach out to business owners is through Instagram. Of course, there aren’t as many people on Instagram in comparison to LinkedIn, where you can sell your service, but you can definitely target a huge market there, too.

The only thing that I really recommend is to hyper-personalize your message.

For this, I recommend BHuman. They let you send out video outreach, but personalized using AI, meaning you only will need to record one video where you put in your script, and then you connect your data just the way you did it with the platform instantly.

So, in the data, there will be the first name, and then they will clone your voice and put in the first name, but personalized for every recipient, and they will automatically send it out.

So you can now personalize your video outreach without doing it hundreds of times, but just doing it once and the AI will generate the personalization for you.

Pro Tip: Clean Social Media Profiles

Something that many people don’t really consider is having a clean social media profile. Business owners who want to work with you will google you, and they will maybe find your Instagram or LinkedIn account, which could maybe look shady, and because of this, they wouldn’t want to work with you. I really recommend having a very clean LinkedIn profile because this is where most B2B sales are done.

So go ahead and optimize your LinkedIn profile because later on, we will also cover how you can do automated LinkedIn outreach

And the great thing is you can really send it out on LinkedIn or directly via email, and you can also connect this platform to Zapier.

Appointment Setting

Ideally, daily, you want to go through the responses from prospects multiple times a day – morning, evening, and night – is even better to ensure you respond to DMs. You aim to get these people on calls. If they’re not already on calls, you need to follow up with them. For instance, after your initial outreach message, send them a follow-up every two days.

When they respond, have a process or script ready, and ask them about their current situation to qualify them as a prospect. If you’re charging $3,000 a month for your service, someone making only $2,000 a month isn’t going to be a qualified lead for you.

That’s why we create appointment-setting scripts. In them, we delve into detail, qualify the prospect, and, if they’re a fit, try to schedule a call.

Perhaps offer them some free value in the form of a guide. Once you actually get them on a call, you can learn more about their business.

Now, I’ll show you how to generate leads from your website. This is also a service you can provide to your clients because it involves an automated booking setting.

Basically, inside the website, we will have a chatbot to collect information from the visitors of the website because we need something that chats with people who visit our website. Basically a lead generation chatbot.

The bot does two different things. The first one sets up appointments with customers, and the other one gives the customers information and generate information about AI and about our services.

You can create an automation like this with GoHighLevel and its new conversation AI chatbot.

If a customer visits my website, gets an appointment, chats with the bot, or starts interacting with the bot, the bot will ask for information from the user.

So you can send this data directly to ChatGPT and tell ChatGPT to write you a personalized email and essentially book an appointment or get them on a call.

Sales Call: Effective Sales Strategies for Your AI Automation Agency

Sales are incredibly crucial for literally any business. You’re not getting around doing sales calls, and you’re not going to hire someone straight out of the gate to do your sales calls for you. You’re going to have to do them yourself, which is just something you’ll have to get used to.

Now, for sales at our agency, we generally do what’s called a two-call close. This means the first call is just an initial consultation call in which we gather more information about their business. We ask them some questions and qualify them as a prospect. We ensure that:

1. They’re someone we want to work with — and you can usually gauge this from the vibes during the call.
2. They’re genuinely qualified to pay us for our service and are the clients we can deliver results for.

While we’re still on that call, before we end it, we’re going to book them for a follow-up call. We’ll send them a calendar invite while we’re still talking and say, “Alright, cool, let’s get you booked in for a follow-up call.” Just a few days later, we’ll prepare any necessary materials and reconvene. During this follow-up call, we’ll review everything we’ve discussed, present potential solutions, answer any questions or address objections, and if they’re satisfied, we can move forward.

A video on sales is also coming soon. I have many successful sales calls that I’m eager to share with you all. I just need to ensure I have the appropriate permissions to show them.

Now, before we discuss landing the client and proceeding from there, it’s essential to address a critical topic, which is automation and AI delivery.

Service Delivery: Custom Chatbots and Automation

Congrats on signing your first client. Now it’s actually time to deliver the service. And for this, you have a lot of different solutions. But the most common ones in AAAs are custom ChatGPT chatbots with Botpress or Stammer and automation with Zapier or Make.

And these are all great no-code or low-code solutions you can use to create automations. And the lovely thing about it is that you have a very short learning curve, so you can really learn these tools within a few weeks and become proficient there.

I really advise you also to take time to learn them so you can also come up with your own creative ideas, how you can integrate AI, or how you can help business automate their processes.

In today’s course, I will give you a short introduction to Stammer because I personally use it in my agency.

The great thing about Stammer.ai is that it’s built specifically for agencies, and they have a white-label option.

Step 1. Create a new AI chatbot and customize it to your business.

Step 2. Enter any website URL to collect all of the information from select web pages.

Step 3. Select the different web pages you want to be added to the Knowledge Base. Now have a custom AI chatbot that knows everything about that website.

Step 4. Embed the AI chatbot on any website.

Step 5. Add your agency’s name and logo to fully white-label your agency’s dashboard.

Step 6. Add your custom domain name to rebrand the entire platform as your own. Everything, all the links throughout the dashboard, are rebranded for your agency.

Step. 7. Connect your Stripe account to resell AI chatbots and message credits directly to your customers.

Step 8. Set up your own AI subscription products for however much you want.

You control exactly how many chatbots and message credits your clients get. And the best part, customers pay you directly. So that way, when you get paid, a new client, sub-account and new user account are automatically generated for you.

Step 9. Create powerful automations with your white-label API to have AI chatbots respond to messages on Instagram, Facebook, Slack, Discord, and more.

Step 10. Create custom Zapier/Make.com workflows to connect your AI bots to over 5,000 different apps.

Step 11. Simplify your GoHighLevel automations to make everything easier for you and your clients.

So this is how to deliver a custom AI chatbot for your clients. It’s literally that simple with Stammer.ai.

Service Delivery: The Benefits of Specializing in a Single Niche

When you first deliver your service, you want to stick with one thing. A lot of people, when they first start an agency, they immediately change niches.

When you actually start getting your clients in the same niche, don’t start changing niches. Keep doing the same thing because it’s super important. Operating chatbots and AI apps in different niches is just so much hassle, and there’s so much maintenance involved. It’ll make it super hard for you to scale.

There’s a reason you want to only scale in one niche. It’s super simple. You just copy and paste your chatbot as many times as you want.

The Benefits of Keeping Consistent Systems

Secondly, you keep the same systems for each client. So if you keep the same systems for each client, you keep the same systems for your business. Imagine having different ways of fulfilling your service for different clients.

It just gets so messy. But if you’re just fulfilling it one way for all clients, then you can take on 100 clients with ease.

Overdelivering: Not Just About Results but Premium Experience

Quick pro tip here. Within the first 24 hours of signing a client after they’ve agreed to work with you is the most important time for your client and your relationship.

You want to make sure that you overdeliver in the first 24 hours, make sure that you give them a really premium experience and also make sure that they’re happy and there are no questions left unanswered.

Giving a premium experience doesn’t just mean giving premium results. It means communicating effectively and making sure that they have no objections on their end to work with you.