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How to Build a Business Case for Marketing Automation
By Tim Holt 3 min read
The vast majority of Sales and Marketing professionals readily understand and appreciate the benefits of Marketing Automation and the value it can bring to their departments and the business as a whole, including:
- Reduced Costs
- Increased Revenue
- Improved Client Engagement
- Sales & Marketing Alignment
- More & Better Quality Leads
- Ease of Reporting & Improving on Campaigns.
Demonstrating these benefits to your management team in a convincing manner to secure sign-off is often the next challenge that our clients tell us they face. Here we explore how to inform and prepare a solid business case to make your automation visions become a reality.
Tie the Benefits to the Challenges you and the business face
Simply telling executives or management about the benefits of a product or service is all well and good, but a stronger and more effective argument is to relate these benefits to the pain points they experience, and how the product or service would improve the situation for them, such as…
Pain Point |
Benefit |
| High Cost of Marketing | Reduced Costs – A Marketing Automation solution keeps the cost of ongoing campaigns low by reducing the time needed to execute them (design, data management, distribution, etc.) This also frees up time for more strategic projects. |
| Sales Targets need to be met | Increased Revenue – By communicating with your target audience with the right message/offer at the right time, through the right channel, Marketing Automation supports an increase in revenue fed by improved lead generation. |
| An Unresponsive Audience | Improved Client Engagement – Using Marketing Automation allows you to communicate with your clients as individuals. Highly-targeted and personalised campaigns will leave your audience feeling valued and therefore more likely to convert. |
| Lack of Sales & Marketing Collaboration | Sales & Marketing Alignment – Automation provides the tools to create, develop and distribute more leads to the sales team. It also enables improved collaboration between the teams in defining and testing lead generation strategy. |
| Need for more and Better Quality Leads | More & Better Quality Leads – With the improved communication that Marketing Automation enables, you can expect to see better-qualified leads due to improved targeting. |
| Insufficient knowledge about the effectiveness of Campaigns, or how to improve them. | Ease of Reporting & Improving on Campaigns – the best Automation systems will provide a clear view of delivery rates, responses and performance metrics. This information informs future planning by identifying the most or least effective campaigns. |
Case Studies to support your Business Case
Find examples of other companies (ideally within your sector) that have used Marketing Automation successfully. Having identified your own company’s pain points, try to find a case study which shows one or more of these areas being improved, and the positive effects that has on ROI and the business as a whole.
Predict Lead Generation and Revenue improvements
When making your proposals to your management team, make sure you are prepared with figures and supporting information on current:
- Lead Generation Numbers
- Lead Quality
- Lead Sources
- Number of Leads that Convert to Sales
- Average Sales Value
- What Stage/s do Leads Most Often Get Converted or Lost
- Customer Lifetime Value.
Armed with this information you can highlight how improving these factors through Marketing Automation will increase your bottom line. At the end of the day, improved revenue is likely to be high on the list of priorities for the management team. Therefore, highlighting the opportunity for sales growth is always going to be a good conclusion for your business case.
- Have you seen other benefits from your Marketing Automation?
- What other areas have or would you use as part of your business case?
- Are you currently developing a Marketing Automation business case?
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