Analyze Your Needs
Get a clear understanding of your current marketing needs and what your requirements will be over the next 3 to 5 years. Some of the items to review in your analysis can include:
- What takes the most time? Take a look at all of the processes that your team performs and identify the one that consumes the most time. Is it entering new leads? Social media posts? Email processing? Make sure that your marketing automation platform can help reduce the time on this process.
- Which tasks provide the most benefit? Can you determine if a particular task yields good ROI, and if automated could be even better? Make sure this item is also addressed in your marketing automation software.
- What are your marketing goals? Do you wish to increase web site visitors? Generate more leads? Improve conversion rates? Stay focused on your key strategic goals and make sure your choice can help you to achieve those goals.
Functional Capabilities for Now and the Future
The best marketing automation software platform will not just have good core functionality but will also have the ability to integrate and provide best practices to boost your results. Some of the capabilities should include:
- Lead Generation – several key tools should help to generate leads for your business. These tools should include strong SEO analysis as well as gathering as much information about visitors as possible. For example, partial data such as an email address and geographic area can help you to get more insight into a visitor so that you can entice them to make a purchase.