Marketing automation — where to start, and what to skip

Automation has an image problem: it sounds like something for companies with a marketing department. In a firm of eight people, the useful version is far smaller and far more boring — and it pays for itself faster.

Start where the same thing happens every week

Not where it is most annoying. Where it is most repetitive. Those are different, and the second one is where the money is.

The usual candidates, roughly in order of return:

1. Every enquiry in one place. Phone, e-mail, form, social media — one register. Not because it is elegant, but because you cannot follow up what you cannot see.
2. A follow-up that happens by itself. Most quotes are never chased. One reminder after three days recovers more revenue than any campaign of the same cost.
3. Quotes from your own numbers. If your prices live in a spreadsheet, that spreadsheet can do the quoting. What takes twenty minutes by hand takes two when the rates are already in the system.

What to skip, at least at first

Lead scoring. It needs volume you do not have. With forty enquiries a month you can read all of them.

Elaborate e-mail sequences. Five automated messages to somebody who asked one question is not nurture, it is noise. Send one good message.

A chatbot. If the answer is on your site, a visitor will find it. If it is not, a bot will not invent it — it will just delay the moment they give up.

The order matters more than the tools

Measure first, then change one thing, then measure again. Firms that buy three tools in one month cannot tell which one helped, and usually conclude that none of them did.

How to know it worked

Not by how modern it feels. By one number: how many enquiries turned into customers this quarter compared with last. If that has not moved, the automation tidied your process without changing the outcome — which is worth something, but it is not what you paid for.