Introduction

As companies vie for the top spot in the market, any strategy that saves time and effort becomes a boon. Marketing Automation is one of the most popular strategies. It is replacing manual marketing tasks with technologically sophisticated tools. However, marketing automation comes at a cost, like any other technology.

Dottely provides the best marketing software collection for you to make an informed decision on choosing your preferred option after assessing each software’s features, costs and success factors. Let us discuss a few criteria to consider when setting aside a budget for marketing automation.

Consider Current Spend On Marketing Automation

There is a definite chance that your marketing department is already spending some budget on marketing automation. The first step to deciding the budget for your marketing automation, thus, will be to review your annual reports and budgets. It will help you to determine how much you have been spending on it in the past.

If enough information is unavailable in your company’s records, you may want to do some benchmarking and understand the budgets other companies spend on marketing automation. These numbers will give you a base to decide whether you will increase or decrease your budget.

Consider All Associated Expenses

Marketing automation has associated expenses such as staff training, add-on features, system integrations, IT support, startup fees, monthly fees, etc. When choosing from various marketing automation solutions, ensure you have clarity on all associated and unforeseen expenses. With the complete picture of the costs associated with your automation tools, you can set aside a realistic budget.

Consider It An Investment

The resulting benefits of marketing automation on a company’s business outweigh the incurring costs to a considerable degree. Marketing automation increases revenue and profits by targeting promising leads and creating a wider clientele. However, it does not imply that you can ignore the financial implications, but consider it also as a way to earn profits, enhance customer experience, and boost employee morale.

Tips to Accommodate All Your Automation Needs in Your Marketing Budget

Here are a few bonus tips to increase your marketing automation budget and have a hassle-free, efficient digital marketing campaign for your business.

1 – Determine Your Needs

Marketing automation software and tools offer different features, resulting in a reasonably wide range of costs for what seem like similar products. You can save a lot of expenses by prioritising your automation needs. Accordingly, you can consider spending only on features aligned with your goals and objectives and discard the rest.

You can review your current marketing processes diligently and list the most time-consuming stages. You can then understand the features of various automation tools and choose the one that best suits your needs.

2 – Clarify Goals and Objectives

Your budget allocation will be more effective if you know your goals. Do you want to increase your email list? Do you want to leverage social media channels to market your brand? Are you aiming for brand recognition?
List down all your goals and objectives for marketing automation, and you can easily choose the right tools.

3 – Cut Down Costs

Before investing in a marketing automation tool, reviewing your existing marketing tools and their effectiveness will be a good idea. Take into account all nominal costs that you would typically oversee. You may be spending on a regular marketing conference, but did you assess whether it is helping you achieve your goals? What about the flight tickets and accommodation you have to book for your business development meetings? Can such meetings be held virtually?
Once you prepare a list of expenses, you can decide where to cut costs and allocate the saved amount to a marketing automation tool.

Conclusion

As you work out your marketing strategy, consider the benefits of marketing automation. The main statistics impacting your marketing budget are cost per lead and rate of customer conversion. Further, consider the pros and cons of introducing or enhancing marketing automation for your business, which will help you set aside an ideal budget.

The following Steven John, from 2023 provides their research perspective HERE.