Before you automate your marketing, read this!

Let me begin by saying that automated marketing is a remarkable thing. As a marketer and a consultant myself, the ability to step away from a computer and watch leads generate themselves is undoubtedly priceless. Unfortunately, there isn’t a turnkey solution. Often times, the desire to automate certain initiatives outweighs the practicality of the application, leaving the marketer frustrated and confused. In order to avoid these situations, Redpath has put together a list of eight major things to consider before flipping the switch on automation.

Answer Why

So you are considering implementing a marketing automation tool. Great! So what pain are you trying to solve? Marketing automation is a big step to building a marketing team that minimizes effort to get the most amount of return. To qualify yourself for marketing automation, you should be saying yes to these questions:

• Are you trying to punch above your weight?
• Do you have too many leads that fall through the cracks?
• Do you have many leads that need long term nurturing?
• Do you need to market using other tools through integrations?
• Do sales reps need tools to market themselves?
• Is sales complaining of poor quality leads?
• Do leads go stale too quickly?
• Are leads not getting tracked correctly?

Know Your Process

When it comes to automation, people make the false assumption that the computer is going to run the show for them. Well, I hate to be the one to break the news, but that is simply not the case. Behind every automated task there is a crafted process that took time and energy to construct with the help of all stakeholders (Sales and Marketing). With practice, these processes become easier to implement, just don’t expect to be an expert on day one.

One Automation at a Time

From experience as a consultant AND a user, I know that wanting to do conquer my “need to haves and wants” at once is an unrealistic and most importantly, inefficient process. I had to learn this the hard way myself and then fine tune this process with my clients. I found that asking myself, “What are the essentials I need for this first phase?” helped to ground myself in a pragmatic approach. One trick I learned along the way is re-purposing my editorial calendar so I can schedule my automation projects ahead of time.

With my consulting hat on now, I take a similar approach for clients with identifying requirements, prioritizing them, and phasing them out. We often use a formal roadmap guide to answer the question, “What does done look like?” This gives you a light at the end of the tunnel to focus on.

Be Prepared to Build Content

Marketing automation is a content hungry beast and it is paramount to keep it fed, be it emails, webinars, downloads, etc. For some of you, this may mean re-delegating work or wearing more hats. For others, it may mean hiring an agency. Regardless of your position, content production needs to be a consistent focus if you want to avoid constantly jumping in and out of the program to make updates.

Sales and Marketing are On Board

Salesforce can be the perfect bridge between sales and marketing, allowing the effortless conversion from leads to customers. The difficulty with this task of course is ensuring sales and marketing are on the same page. This means having stakeholder buy-in from both sides. Conveying the benefits of marketing automation needs to be contextual. Some organizations use marketing automation for saving hours of times with scheduling content. Others use it to punch above their weight without needing extra staff.  Additionally, marketing should drive this process and use sales for feedback.

Establish a Baseline for Metrics        

This one should go without saying, but I will say it anyway. If you are looking to bolster your marketing efforts through automation, it is critical that you first establish a baseline for metrics. This will be an invaluable constant as you look to evaluate process effectiveness in the future. Some basic ones to make note of:

• Created Lead to Conversion time in days
• # of Created Leads per Month/Quarter
• # of Converted Leads per Month/Quarter
• Closed Won revenue per Month/Quarter

Make Sure IT Has Your Back  

Marketing automation has some sophisticated tools to help you track your prospects, anonymous and known. This requires deploying tracking code and sometimes building some custom code to work with your existing CMS system. Also, setting up email authentication can be pretty tricky (and dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing!). If you want to avoid the headache of dealing with those future hiccups, make sure IT is capable of supporting your initiatives before letting them run free. However, once the initial implementation, reliance on IT will be minimal.

Automation is not for Everyone

Our final tip for you is probably the hardest one to hear, but the truest of them all. At the end of the day, not every organization is capable or ready for an automated system. The time may come in the future, but if now is not the time, DON’T FORCE IT. Jumping on board because “everyone else is doing it” is a guaranteed path to achieving disappointing results. It is okay if it isn’t for you. We would be doing you a disservice if we did not ensure that marketing automation is right for you. There are other tools that we consult on to give you much of the functionality you may be looking for without having to make a large investment in marketing automation.

Want to learn more about marketing automation? I moderate the Twin Cities Marketing Automation group – A place for newbs and veterans to talk about marketing automation in a platform agnostic setting.