How does your business contend with obstacles when considering implementing digital marketing automation? And, whether or not you are ready to admit it, there will be obstacles.

This article will take a look at a few of them and then perhaps find ways to make the transition doable, if not smoother.

The first obstacle to overcome – financing

Typically, when you consider any new way of doing things, even those things which will make life easier on everyone involved, you meet with resistance and that could be your biggest obstacle to overcome.

However, when employing a new technology, even before you get down to the logistics of how you will accomplish it, you need to calculate how much the transition will cost and whether or not you have the funds available to make it happen.

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Even before approaching your staff or listing obstacles you may encounter, you might want to take a look at your company’s financial state. If you don’t have much in the way of available finance, you’ll need to arrange a business loan. Remember, if you don’t have the money, there is no sense even thinking about how you will automate your digital marketing!

Do you have a strategy in mind?

So then, your marketing team has you convinced that the way forward in the 21st Century is digital marketing automation. They have you sold. But, do they actually have a strategy in mind?

That is one of the leading obstacles to overcome, lack of a viable strategy for the transition.

Inadequate quality of contact data

When it comes to marketing, everyone knows how important big data is. Unfortunately, that data can be tainted if it isn’t accurate. It’s like trying to build a house without all the necessary tools you’ll need to assemble it.

The first thing you will want to do is check out the reliability and consistency of the sources where you obtain data. These are your tools and if one is broken or missing, a part of the process won’t get done.

This would constitute a major obstacle, wouldn’t you say? How can you market to a targeted audience if the channel for collecting data on that audience is narrow? Data is imperative in marketing, automated or not, so make sure your methods of collection are sufficient.

Who knows how to do this?

Never back yourself into a corner where the blind lead the blind. If you are going to institute a hi-tech automated marketing strategy, you had better hope your IT team is up to the challenge. If not, you might want them to get the proper training first.

Automated digital marketing sounds great and can save your company tons of time and money, but only if you can get it to work. Train key people and this obstacle is overcome.

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Finally, when everything else is in place, it’s time to look at automated marketing from the vantage point of the consumer.

Not all consumers are ready to buy at all times and others may not be amenable to the type of content you are utilising. Now you’ve come full circle. You’ve found the money to institute the changes you’ll need to automate your marketing and you’ve trained your key people on techniques they’ll need to make the transition.

Don’t forget that the type of marketing you’ve been using will probably not change because your market is still the same. You will be using the same strategies, only the delivery will be different.