Marketing Automation is a popular buzzword these days. HubSpot, a popular marketing automation platform, defines marketing automation as “software and tactics that allow companies to buy and sell like Amazon – that is, to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers.” Sounds nice, right? But is it right for you? To help with the answer, below are five key factors that a business owner should consider before making the proverbial marketing automation plunge.
1. Budget
Marketing automation platforms are not free. While these platforms often help convert prospects to customers and strengthen the relationships with those customers, these benefits come at a cost. They can range anywhere from $100 for platforms such as ExactTarget to $3,000 per month for more advanced platforms such as Pardot. Do you have the budget required to purchase such a platform? If not, more standard email marketing platforms may be sufficient substitutes.
2. Internal Team
Learning how to use a marketing automation platform to its greatest capacity takes resources and time. Do you and/or your team have the time and resources available to research all of the options, setup the platform of choice, and learn how to use the full feature set offered? In addition to time and resources, you should also consider your team’s reaction to putting in place an automation platform. Will your employees embrace the technology and the benefits that it will bring or will it be difficult for your employees to adapt? Oftentimes we see the most ambitious of rollouts fizzle in as short as a few weeks if the team on the front lines is not fully on board and engaged. Hard work, engaged users, and dogged consistency are key ingredients behind every successful marketing automation rollout.
3. Number of Pre-existing Tools
How many marketing tools are you are currently using? These tools can include; email, social media, webinars, events, google analytics, and others. The greater the number of marketing tools that you use, the greater the benefit that you will likely get out of using a marketing automation platform. Credible automation platforms have the ability to combine most marketing tools and are used to streamline and better coordinate your efforts between tools. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t rule out implementing an automation platform if you aren’t already leveraging multiple tools, but a rule of thumb is the more tools in use, the more benefit automation can provide – thus providing more bang for the buck.
4. Customer Journey
An important consideration when contemplating marketing automation for your business is the process that your customers go through in engaging with your business – this is called the customer journey. How long is your customer journey? If it is a short, simple path from prospect discovery to becoming a customer, marketing automation may not provide your business with much value. On the other hand, if the customer journey is a long, complex path that requires multiple touch points from pre-sale to sale to post-sale, marketing automation can provide great value and help automate those touch points, thus making your company look much more professional to the consumer with a fraction of the effort needed over the long term on your end.
5. Lead Flow Process
How many leads and contacts does your business reach out to regularly? Do you have a CRM that you use to manage your leads and contacts? Do you have a sales team ready to follow up with your leads and contacts? If your answer is “no”, marketing automation will likely provide more services than you will likely use. Marketing automation is most useful for businesses with thousands of leads and contacts, a CRM that houses their information, and a developed sales team ready to take prospects the final step to convert them to customers.
And remember, if you decide that marketing automation is a good fit for your business, the work does not end there – It is essential that you create a strategy around the initiative. Remember to set goals, use reporting metrics, key performance indicators, and measure results. That way, you can ensure that you are getting the most out of your marketing automation platform.