Senin, 28 Januari 2013

The Cost of Delaying Marketing Automation

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.

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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.



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