5 Ways to Effectively Spend Your Leftover Marketing Automation Budget

“Half my advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which half.” – John Wannamaker Justifying marketing budgets is a tale as old as time, well, urban, corporate time at least. Marketers constantly struggle to show the direct ROI on their marketing and media spend. Technology oriented companies that have marketing automation on priority, have a separate budget allocated to it. If you’re in that category and if, by some miracle of fate, you have some leftover marketing automation budget, you’re in the right place. Read on to know the 5 ways to effectively spend your marketing automation budget.

1. Conduct a health audit for your marketing automation tool: Now that we’re in Q4, are you wondering if you’re getting the most out of your marketing automation platform? Are you uncertain of its stability? Either way, if you find yourself pondering over these questions, it may be time for a health audit. This health audit is a diagnostic engagement, that after dozens of implementations, covers your entire marketing automation platform, providing you with a detailed usage report and a set of absolutely specific, prioritized recommendations to optimize the results that it is capable of delivering. In addition to this, you also receive a comprehensive documentation of the platform in its ideal versus current state. The biggest benefit of this audit is that you save an enormous amount of time and money and all you’re left with is the healthiest instance.

2. Migrate to a better marketing automation platform: According to The State of Marketing, more than 50% of marketers expressed dissatisfaction towards their existing marketing automation system. These are, almost always, year-end statistics when marketers are done with cutting their marketing automation platforms all the slack that they, more often than not, don’t deserve. There could be several reasons why marketers would want to switch to another marketing automation tool, like:

• It may be too difficult to use
• Its performance may be sluggish
• It may be too expensive for their needs
• It may not match up to the level of their expertise

If you’re in any of those categories and you absolutely must migrate to a different marketing automation platform, make sure that you have a fool-proof migration checklist that helps you plan and execute your migration process seamlessly with no data loss.3. Ensure that your database is spic-and-span: Keeping your database squeaky clean plays a huge role in empowering marketers. According to the 2018 global data management benchmark report by Experian, 52% of organizations maintain high-quality data to increase efficiency and improve cost saving. You can’t keep all bad data from sliding into your database, but you sure can clean it up. You’d need to spot the duplicates, expunge the inactive contacts, eliminate email bounces, and scrutinize for consistency, to get rid of bad data. Therefore, using a little chunk of your leftover budget on database cleansing is a brilliant idea.

4. Craft a flawless inbound marketing strategy: Our customers, these days, are smarter and more informed than ever. They can sense a sales pitch from a country mile, and they absolutely despise it. The trick is to know the “what, when, and how” of the sweet spot that would make people engage with your brand, even if they don’t immediately buy. The art of “charming-engaging-bowling over” your customers through relevant content that resonates most with them is what inbound marketing is all about. This methodology creates delightful experiences, builds trust, and grows business. Layer this methodology on top of your marketing automation system and you’d witness a prospect turn into a customer and then advocate for your brand. Through this, you’d be able to define personas meticulously, create pertinent content, carry out email marketing superlatively, set-up unimpaired lead nurture programs, derive impeccable SEO, and achieve error-free analytics reporting. If you use your leftover marketing automation budget for inbound marketing, it’s a sure-fire recipe to become a happy marketer.5. Revitalize your marketing assets: Complacency makes you slack and hampers your brand reputation. There’s always scope for improvement when it comes to the design of your landing pages and email templates. With 2019 fast approaching, and with a marketing automation budget begging to be utilized, have a design agency tweak your landing page designs, email templates, and other marketing assets.

By utilizing your leftover marketing automation budget on the aforementioned, you’d be able to identify the gaps in your marketing automation platform and fix them, gain more visibility into your campaigns, streamline your marketing and sales processes, and achieve an ROI going through the roof! Now, go ahead and plan your roadmap for 2019!

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