By Karin Pindle
Everyone wants to save money. I get that; I do too. But sometimes, it comes with a long-term cost which defeats the initial purpose. As a marketing automation consultant for over 12 years, I often listen to and guide people at companies buying marketing automation for the first time or migrating to a different marketing automation platform. I am seeing a trend in people who believe they know enough to implement the platform with no help from third-party partners like us at Sojourn Solutions. I’m also seeing a trend in them hiring us after they realize they shouldn’t have tried to self-implement and it costing them more time and money than if they’d hired someone to help them upfront. I write this post hoping it’ll give you helpful insights and so you avoid making the same costly mistake.
Here are the top 4 pitfalls of self-implementing your marketing automation platform:
- Lack of Knowledge and Experience:
You don’t know what you don’t know about implementing a marketing automation platform simply due to lack of experience. We do but only after leading and supporting hundreds of implementations since 2005. You don’t gain this knowledge from a handful of implementations. That’s just the reality. I was an award-winning marketer and Eloqua power user before I started consulting and learned very quickly how much I didn’t know about how to implement Eloqua. - Untimely Issues During Implementation:
You almost always come to partners like us for help during the implementation and are in a bind to get quick help. This is a stressful situation for everyone as you typically have deadlines to hit and now are at serious risk of missing them…most actually do miss them. - Costly Issues After Implementation:
You run into issues soon after implementation because of something not setup properly or at all during implementation such as your dedicated email IP address, bounceback email address, integrations and workflows, etc. These issues can be difficult and frustrating to try to resolve after the fact and costly, not to mention the lost faith in Marketing from other teams like Sales, IT, and senior leaders. - Missed Opportunities = Missed Revenue:
You miss out on discussing and implementing important strategies for improving your overall marketing efforts. This includes implementing new processes and revising old processes that will lead to improved marketing performance and, thus, increased revenue.
So yes, we are recommending that companies NOT self-implement their marketing automation platform. Even if you have people on your team that have done it 3, 4, or 5 times before, this doesn’t come close to the critical knowledge gained from leading hundreds of marketing automation implementations.
Also, having a third-party team of experts’ input and knowledge can help you all learn and grow as individual contributors. We moderate your (often heated) discussions and decision-making. Then, we guide you on making the right decisions based on seeing things implemented successfully at hundreds of other companies, not just a gut feeling.
Feel free to reach out to me or contact us to chat about this important topic.
The post 4 Pitfalls of Self-Implementing a Marketing Automation Platform appeared first on Sojourn Solutions.
