The Benefits of Marketing Automation

Most marketing teams are reaping the benefits of marketing automation. Sometimes, though, it breaks. Let’s talk about how to use a marketing operations team to fix broken tech and keep your marketing automation running.

Listen Season 3: Episode 21

When Technology Fails Marketing

Using the technology marketing toolkit can be phenomenal—when it works. But what happens when it breaks?

Typically, the person affected will scramble to Google a fix. Sometimes that works; other times that’s 45 minutes down a rabbit hole that just results in no fix and more frustration. Next, the tech equivalent of duct tape and baling twine might be applied, if someone can get that to work. But often, what happens is that when a piece of the marketing automation system breaks, and there’s not someone to fix it, it just gets circumvented, rerouting around it like a river that got stopped up. The reroute is not very efficient or effective but necessary to keep going.

Over time, these patches and reroutes can really add up. A system that was once reaping the benefits of marketing automation is now maybe not even much better than doing it all manually.

The Purpose of Marketing Automation

The whole point of having B2B marketing automation is so the team can focus their creative energies on places where it matters and have the robots do the heavy lifting in the places where robots are just honestly better. The tech also creates systems to put information in places so that it can be shared, or actions taken on it. Marketing automation is how technology enables smaller businesses to serve clients and grow revenues like enterprise businesses.

When Marketing Technology Breaks

What can you do when stuff breaks? Well, Googling is certainly an option. But a better option is to have a marketing operations team at the ready to fix the problem. We found with our clients that usually the tech is implemented by a team member or external resource that is no longer with the company. Most do not leave much in the way of documentation or instructions on how the system works and where maybe the weak points are, or how to fix it when it breaks.

In these cases, we come in and assess what is broken, define a short-term or immediate fix, and get things back operational. This is a great opportunity to either document how the system works so that those using the system can easily troubleshoot in the future, or if this is a fragile point of the system, we may define a better way of putting it together so that it’s more robust. If an upgrade is needed, we’ll then also document that so that anyone who comes along later can interface with the system and continue to make upgrades as needed.

The Benefits of Marketing Automation

Knowing what you have and how to fix it means that you continue to reap the benefits of marketing automation already in place. This frees you up to spend your time, effort, and energy on strategic or creative pursuits instead of working around systems that are no longer functioning as they once were. Also, when a marketing operations agency comes in and properly documents systems, future fixes are easier, and the team can experience less downtime

Get Ongoing Marketing Operations Expertise

In the next episode, we’ll talk about using the marketing operations team beyond just keeping your marketing tech toolkit working. We’ll discuss how you can use them to expand the capabilities of your marketing automation.

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