12 Strategy Questions for Picking a Marketing Platform

Picking a marketing platform is no small undertaking. The first inclination of many business teams is to dive right into all of the options available for each platform, but there are several strategic questions you need to consider before reviewing features for your investment. If you don’t answer these questions, you’ll quickly get lost reviewing the nearly 2,000 companies out there offering some form of marketing automation.

1. Why do you need a marketing platform?

Do you need to make an investment, or can you simply accomplish the same strategy with enough time and people? It’s far too easy to become busy with marketing efforts without actually accomplishing anything that drives your business forward.

2. How do your customers communicate?

Take a look at your customers. Are they the type of people to spend all day on social media? Are their inboxes always open?

Don’t start spending until you know the answers.

Recommended for YouWebcast: Zero to Millions: The Secrets Behind Building a Business and Growing a Digital Audience

3. What is your budget?

No, budget isn’t the first consideration, but it is still incredibly important.

While you may want Salesforce or Marketo, your business might have to stick to much smaller solutions for the time being. Evaluate what your business can handle at the moment, but also consider how important this marketing effort is to your business. You’ll want to make sure that the solution you pick will scale with you.

Additionally, if you are selecting an interim solution, make sure that you will be able to easily export your data once you are ready to move to the next stage of your business evolution.

4. What, exactly, do you need your marketing software to do?

Ten minutes of reviewing marketing options will reveal how similar marketing platforms are to one another on the surface. It’s not until you start really digging that you see the differences: available integrations, template quality, etc.

To make a good decision, you need to write down every requirement that you can think of. Keep this in a running list because you’ll be able to better define your target as you look through what the market has to offer.

5. How many users will you need?

Will multiple people need to access your account? Just you? Decide upfront, because pricing structures differ accordingly.

6. How many contacts do you need?

Your pricing also depends on how many clients you need to track. For small businesses, this component will not be as critical, but large client lists can certainly affect the necessary budget for a marketing solution.

7. Are you ready to import your contacts / leads?

At some point, you’ll have to do the hard work of collecting enough information to make your CRM or email marketing system worthwhile. The more that you can collect before involving other software, the better off you’ll be.

One of the real benefits of these types of marketing systems is the ability to segment your audience to customize your offers and your messaging. If you don’t have information about your customers, then your segmentation abilities will be near useless.

8. How much will the testing process cost you?

Lots of time goes into trying out each system, so you’ll want to ensure that your requirements are as clear as possible. Still, it takes time to determine which system best meets your needs. The cost of testing will certainly be less than the cost of making a poor decision, but you will need to budget time towards the exploration process.

9. How long will it take you to be operational in the new tool you select?

Think through what steps will be required to adopt a new marketing platform into your workflow. How difficult is it to import your clients’ contact information? How long will it take to set up the necessary templates for your email marketing, your deal types in your CRM, and whatever other templates your business requires?

10. What are the reviews for your proposed marketing platform?

Most marketing platforms look good when you read their materials about the available options. Find some outside opinions like customer reviews to get a sense of where limitations may lie. You may find out about a crucial limitation that you had not even thought to test yet.

11. What limitations are you willing to accept in the software of your choice?

There will always be limitations. Always. Some feature won’t perform exactly the way you’d like, and you’ll need to decide if the software is worth the cost without having that particular feature.

One area where you may be able to work around this limitation is in the platform’s ability to integrate with other services. Test out your integrations during your trial period to see if you can get the results you need.

12. Does it make sense to try to develop / cobble together something on your own?

Some platforms like Mailchimp natively offer integrations with a variety of other systems. If your software doesn’t integrate, then you might be able to quickly tie together available API integrations via services like IFTTT and Zapier. If you can get what you need out of this framework, then by all means go for it. Keep your costs down as long as possible.

Making the Decision

Take the time upfront to answer the questions of “why” and “how” before you start the marketing platform review process. You’ll likely have to convince others in your company that the new solution is worth displacing whatever processes you have now. Think through the possible objections to help make the best decision you can, and bring in your teammates whenever you can.

12 Strategy Questions for Picking a Marketing Platform