Posts

5 Reasons NOT to Implement Marketing Automation to Generate Leads on Your Website

/in /by

You’ve heard about how marketing automation can save you time and improve the efficiency of your sales team and process. But you still aren’t convinced enough to invest the money it will cost to implement it successfully. You don’t want to waste money on something that isn’t going help you achieve your revenue generation objectives.

Let me help you. Here are 5 reasons NOT to invest in marketing automation:

1. You have more leads than you can handle already
While this is a great problem to have, is there really ever enough revenue? But if you are one of the few who really is happy with his lot and doesn’t want the temptation that more revenue might expose you to, then you should probably pass and stick with whatever you’re currently doing.

2. You love cold calling and prospecting
Who doesn’t, right? NOT. There isn’t anything wrong with some tradition phone play, but for most businesses it just isn’t the most effective way of making a buck. Calling someone who has already engaged with your content in some form isn’t really a cold call anymore, which is why it is exponentially more effective. But if you get most of your business from referrals and face to face networking and you don’t feel like expanding your reach, then marketing automation is probably not for you.

3. You can’t create the necessary content
Marketing automation is powered by content. You need well written web pages, blog posts, social media posts, ebooks, whitepapers, emails and landing pages to attract, nurture and convert. That’s a heck of a lot of content, and it needs to be high quality stuff. You don’t have the skill or time to create content, and you don’t have the resources to hire in-house resources to do it. Luckily, there are agencies (like Onrush) who can do it all for you for the right price. But if you can’t find the budget for it, then you should wait until you do. Creating crappy content is the road to failure.

4. If they’re interested they’ll contact you
If a prospect visits your website and is interested, they’ll just pick up the phone and call you or fill out your contact form and hit submit…right? Well, your phone number or contact link might be enough, but most prospects who visit your site will probably be doing their research trying to determine whether they need your product or service. They won’t be ready to talk to you. Research says that up to 90% of the B2B buyer’s decision is made before the buyer ever speaks with a salesperson. Your prospect will probably continue his research on a competitors site and might never return to dial your digits. That’s why it’s important to get their info while you’ve got them by offering them something of value. But if you’re willing to give up those prospects, then marketing automation isn’t for you.

5. You don’t have the budget for it
This is a legitimate point. Signing on with Hubspot, Infusionsoft or one of the other popular marketing automation software tools will require a significant upfront investment. For example, Hubspot will run you around $12,000 (paid upfront) just for the tools. Then you need to actually produce the content and drive traffic. And your website has to be up to par too.

If you aren’t able to make that kind of investment, or you want to give marketing automation a try to see if it works for you, there is hope! At Onrush we can implement a marketing automation system on your WordPress site for a fraction of the cost the big players charge, and we’ll run it for you so you can focus on running your business. We’ll also build your website, create your content and drive traffic to it.

Contact us directly to set up a free consultation to find out how we can help you generate more leads and turn them into sales.

Why Marketing Automation Fails for Many Businesses, and How It Can Work For You

/in /by

Speak to any company or business owner about marketing automation and they’ll get all excited. Marketing automation usually refers to software that automates marketing tasks, like lead nurturing and email followup.

The benefits of marketing automation are clear (here are just 2 of them):

– it saves your marketing and sales team time they can then use to find and close new business

– it helps nurture leads through their buyer’s journey until they are ready to purchase, providing the sales team with more qualified leads to close.

For most business people the word “automation” equals salvation from tedious and repetitive tasks and routines. It means that they can focus on closing deals instead of a million preparatory tasks.

There are great (and pretty pricey) tools such as Hubspot, Infusionsoft and Marketo that provide companies everything they’ll need to integrate marketing automation into their businesses.

So why do so many business fail at marketing automation?

The main reason is that they think that the marketing automation tool will actually do their marketing for them. They’ll invest in one of the major tools and spend the time setting it up and integrating it with their website and current system. And then they’ll wait for the magic to happen…and wait…until they get fed up and throw in the towel saying that marketing automation just can’t work for them.

Here’s their mistake. Think of the marketing automation tool as an engine. It can be the best engine in the world, but it won’t do a thing without fuel.

Marketing automation tools make it easy for you to blog, but they don’t write the actual content for you. The tools will make it easy for you to search engine optimize your content, but they can’t create the right titles or use the right keywords for you. They’ll make it easy for you to setup an automated email workflow, but they won’t write the emails.

Content is the fuel that powers the marketing automation engine. Marketing automation software doesn’t create that content for you. Only you can do that (or pay to have it done).

Companies invest a lot of money in building the marketing automation engine, but then either leave it empty or fill it with low grade fuel that makes it sputter instead of roar. You can use the most sophisticated marketing automation software, but if your blog posts suck, no one will want to read them, give you their contact info or view you as an expert in your field. If your social media posts are lame, you won’t get traffic from social media. If your followup emails are badly written, you’ll lose leads instead of nurturing them.

Should businesses invest in marketing automation?

I think most B2B businesses and B2C business with longer sales cycles should definitely invest in marketing automation. But before they invest in a specific marketing automation tool they should budget for content, without which the tool will be useless.

At Onrush we don’t require our clients to purchase one of the pricey marketing automation tools mentioned above. Our plans include building the marketing automation engine and providing the fuel (content). That doesn’t mean that the large marketing automation software providers don’t provide value. But companies that aren’t able or willing to make a large upfront investment in marketing automation software shouldn’t have to. They can still automate their marketing and get the content they need to make it successful at a reasonable price that won’t break their bank.