Marketing automation is not a miracle machine, but the benefits are worth reaping

Lead generation assisted by marketing automation cuts across the entire customer journey. This is why it is often difficult to divide and split responsibility for marketing automation within an organisation. I have frequent discussions with my clients about what belongs on the desk of marketing, communications, business management, or sales. Tiina Kilpelänaho, a guest on the Myycast, matter-of-factly challenged me with her question: should we be talking more about business automation?

To begin with, it is good to understand that marketing automation is not a marketing “project”, but a common system for the whole business. It is therefore important that its procurement and deployment involves a cross-section of the entire staff involved in the business of the organisation.

Take time to choose your system

As a consultant for a marketing agency, I often find myself in a situation where our client has already selected, purchased, and perhaps integrated a marketing automation system into their operation. When we start to work together at this point to figure out what kind of system we have in our hands, we’ve already fallen a step behind. If only the technology department had involved marketing, sales, and business management early enough!

Fortunately, the situation today is not hopeless, as systems are quite scalable and new features can be added quite easily afterwards. Ideally, however, a comprehensive specification should be made before choosing a system, including at least the following:

1. What are our objectives for the system – how do we expect it to develop and promote our business?
2. What other systems do we already have in place, and which systems can be integrated with each other? How do we get data to move between the different systems? Are there overlapping systems?
3. What resources are used to run marketing automation on a day-to-day basis? How much internal manpower or how many external partners are available?

Oops, who makes the content?

You could add to the list above that it doesn’t hurt to have a content strategy in place when you choose your system. Then we already have in our hands, for example, buyer personas, customer paths, relevant content heads and formats, and a working model for content production. The worst situation is, that a technology department has made a big investment in automation system, but the marketing unit does not have a sufficient budget for utilization.

So let’s add money to the list. Marketing automation will not produce content on its own. Humans – together with artificial intelligence, of course – play the biggest role here. After all, marketing automation is a complete waste of investment if we don’t target in a timely manner smartly personalised, engaging content that the target audience wants to receive. Without content there is no way the customer’s journey can proceed.

Choose a system that’s right for you

There is not always a technology department and its budget available to help out. Your needs may also be smaller than Marketo, Pardot, and Eloqua, for example. It is possible to practice automation in a lighter way as well. Many email marketing tools offer nice opportunities to build automation pipelines.

One more key tip: before you get excited about a system, get excited about learning the logic of automation and grasping the big picture about how it can best help your business. After that – jump boldly onboard the marketing automation bandwagon.

Finally, a checklist to get started:

• Understand what marketing automation could offer your organisation.
• Determine what you want from automation: for example, dealing with tedious tasks, or leads?
• Calculate a budget – not just for the system, but also for its use.
• Plan the process and the resources needed: what will you do yourself, what will you buy from outside?
• Systematically compare different systems. For example, draw up a spreadsheet in which you list your main requirements.
• Discuss as widely as possible within your organisation and involve others in the procurement process. This will also bear fruit when responsibilities for maintaining the system are shared.

Interested in marketing automation? We are a technology-independent player helping our customers make smart use of marketing automation to promote business. Contact us, let’s talk more.