Most businesses today purchase a marketing automation tool without asking themselves if they really need it. Marketing automation, a buzzword these days, may seem like an obvious step toward expanding your marketing efforts, but you first need to have a real marketing effort.
Adding marketing automation platforms before you're ready is worse than not having them in the first place.
In our experience, companies aren’t ready for marketing automation until they meet at least three of these conditions:
1) You have a marketing team consisting burundi lists of at least one person who only does marketing.
A marketing automation solution can streamline and scale your efforts, but it’s no substitute for real marketing know-how. If you’re a founder or early employee with a ton of activities to do, including marketing, and you think an automation tool is going to save you time, it’s not the tool that’s going to solve your problem.
2) You have found at least one marketing channel that works for you.
Marketing automation solutions help you grow your marketing, but you don’t want to build something that doesn’t work yet. If you think marketing automation platforms will help you find a channel that works, it’s more than likely not going to be the case.
3) All your marketing efforts stem from a defined strategy.
For the same reason as above, you don't need an automation tool to throw more spaghetti at the wall in the hopes that something will stick.
4) Your marketing team has more money than time.
Marketing automation solutions help your team do more in less time, but you need to be comfortable with the financial handoff that saves you time.
5) You have launched a growth marketing strategy
Growth marketing tactics are important to plan for each stage of the funnel. You don’t want to sign up for a new tool without a plan for how it will move your business forward.
Once all of these scenarios apply to your business, you can start considering marketing automation platforms.
But you don’t have to jump right in. Many businesses overinvest in an all-in-one solution when all they need is email automation, for example.
Take the time to think about your needs and use case, then find the marketing automation platform that will best meet them.
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All-in-one marketing automation tools
Typically, businesses that truly need an all-in-one marketing automation platform have already found a handful of marketing channels that work for them, regardless of what those channels are. This means that:
You've had success on more than one or two channels.
You are already investing financially in developing your marketing activities.
Your team needs to expand the channels that work and/or experiment with other avenues.