Signs you might be ready for marketing automation software

Marketing automation software has been around for well over 5 years, but I personally believe that the movement is just getting started. A sure sign of this: rather than having to educate more businesses on what marketing automation is, they come to us for help on selecting and implementing it. However, a full blown automation system is not right for everyone. The need depends on industry, customer habits, timing, budget, current marketing efforts and more. So how do you know if your organization is ready to make the leap?

Before we dive in, let's review some of the benefits and features that a marketing automation system provides (similar across HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, ActOn, Eloqua and more)

• Automated email campaigns and workflows
• Social media scheduling 
• Lead scoring
• Cross channel reporting 
• Landing page creation 
• and much more!

The overarching idea is that by automating much of your typical marketing efforts, you will be more efficient, nurture leads over time and be able to track performance holistically. So what are the signs you might be ready? 

5 signs you are ready for marketing automation software

1. You have a ton of content on your website

If you have a lot of blog posts, video content, infographics and ebooks already created, you are likely a good candidate for marketing automation.

In order to keep your site visitors coming back, you need an efficient system that helps you capture your visitors through downloads or subscriptions and automatically market to them. Otherwise, you run the risk of content getting lost in the depths of your site and not being actively marketed. In the end, without automation, you are wasting the time and money you spent producing that content as well as the potential sales those leads could bring in. 

Good news is, if you do have content, you're already ahead of the game. In fact, I'd argue volume of content is the most important step to making the leap to automation.

If you want to be more strategic with your content production, learn how to write content for each stage of the buying cycle. 

2. You are getting too many leads and don't know what to focus on

What a nice problem to have! However, if your team has a lot of leads coming in then they are probably having to waste time on lower quality leads. Implementing marketing automation not only allows you to score leads based on demographic and activity but also gives your sales team more context before tracking down each lead.

We created a lead scoring guide based on how we score our leads. See it here »

3. You want to see how your marketing efforts are performing across channels

Tracking performance across online marketing channels can be extremely difficult. For instance, if you are using MailChimp for email, AdWords for paid campaigns, Hootsuite for social scheduling and a CRM for leads, it is very difficult and time consuming to connect the dots. Using one system to manage much of this can provide a more holistic view of specific campaign performance across channels.

4. You are considering hiring another marketer 

We have been using HubSpot as our marketing automation platform for over two years and I can honestly say it does the work of 2 employees, but costs less than the price of one.

Rather than having to follow up manually to prospects or tap developers to build landing pages, much of the efforts are automated or take significantly less time. So before investing in another marketer, consider marketing automation and potentially hiring an agency to help run the system if needed. 

5. Your team is 100% on board

Marketing automation can be a beautiful thing, but sadly the automation part does not actually happen automatically. It requires a significant investment (thousands of dollars), extensive training, implementation, expertise, strategy, content and buy-in from leadership. The return can be tenfold if done right, but just be sure you have everyone's thumbs up so that the work gets done.

Still think you are ready to try marketing automation software? We'd love to help strategize, implement, integrate or advise on software decisions. Contact us today.