You’re not a marketer if things aren’t hectic and your organization isn’t busy. In fact, it’s likely that you’ll encounter some resistance when you’re making a business case for marketing automation, whether stakeholders push back directly or simply get distracted. But don’t let the delay go on too long. Once you’ve determined you’ll benefit from the investment, you stand to suffer the cost of lost opportunity.
Here are some common reasons why people may delay investing in marketing automation, and how you can overcome them.
| Objection | Response |
| “We have too many important campaigns and events coming up.” | All the more reason to automate your marketing, since it can increase the ROI of every other program you run. You need to be prepared to effectively nurture all the new names and leads about to enter your system. The longer you wait, the lower your chances are of converting these early-stage names into buyers. |
| “We have to do something else first—like finish our website, implement CRM, fix our data, etc.” | Once these projects are done, there will always be more projects, and more after that. In fact, the nature of marketing is such that you’re always doing something new. The good news is that marketing automation platforms are built to adapt as you evolve. The sooner you invest, the sooner you’ll learn how to incorporate its value into all of your programs – so you get more results from everything you do. |
| “We lack the staff to run the programs.” | It’s true that marketing automation doesn’t run itself. The more you put in, the more you get out. That said, you can hire consultants or agencies to help you get up and running. From there, many companies find they only need to spend a few hours a week—to run some reports and tweak your campaigns and workflows—to get decent ROI.
Of course, at this level of usage you won’t get the same ROI as highly-sophisticated users, but you can certainly do better than you would without marketing automation. And if you pick the right system, you can do more sophisticated work and get even more from the system as your staff grows in size and skill. |
| “We don’t have enough content in place.” | Most companies don’t start with tons of content. What’s needed is a plan to create that content. For example, say you want to send out content every 3 weeks, and you have 4 pieces at the moment. You have 12 weeks to create something new. Simply commit to building a new piece of content every month. Re-use old blog posts. Divide newsletters into bite-sized chunks. With this approach, you’ll grow your content library over time. |
In short, there’s never a perfect time to roll out new software or start a new project. You’ll always be busy. But the longer you wait to implement marketing automation, the longer you’ll wait to see your revenue move up and to the right.
