"It's too expensive for what we'd use."
Which parts would you use on day one, and which are nice to have later?
Do not discount before you know the anchor. Do not sell features they will not use.
The objections, discovery questions and competitor answers that come up when you sell marketing automation. Read them free. Or load them into Ghost and have the right one on your screen the moment the buyer says it.
What Ghost shows on your screen during a marketing automation call. The buyer never sees it.
The objections marketing automation buyers raise most, what to say in the next ten seconds, and what not to promise.
"It's too expensive for what we'd use."
Which parts would you use on day one, and which are nice to have later?
Do not discount before you know the anchor. Do not sell features they will not use.
"Moving all our campaigns would take forever."
How many of your current campaigns are still active and still working?
Do not say migration is quick or painless.
"Our engineers can build this with the warehouse and an email API."
That can work well. Who would own the journeys and testing day to day: marketing or engineering?
Do not belittle their engineering team.
"We're not ready to change right now."
Understood. What would need to happen for this to make sense, and when?
Do not invent urgency.
"Legal is worried about privacy and consent."
What does legal need to see, and which regions and rules apply to your customers?
Do not give legal advice. Do not claim certifications or compliance you have not confirmed.
"We already use HubSpot and it does most of this."
That makes sense. Where does it work great for you, and where does your team work around it?
Do not claim to replace everything the incumbent does.
Every one of these is a deal that slips a quarter if you fumble it. Ghost puts the answer on your screen while the buyer is still talking.
Give them credit, then ask whether that vendor's strength matters to this buyer.
HubSpot is known for being easy to start with and having CRM built in. Is one shared system for marketing and sales your top goal?
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a common pick for large brands already on Salesforce. How tightly does marketing need to tie into your Salesforce data?
Marketo is a long-standing choice for B2B marketing ops. How deep does your lead scoring and nurture logic go?
Eloqua is used by many large B2B companies with complex programs. Is enterprise governance across many teams a big need for you?
Braze is known for real-time messaging tied to product behavior. How much of your marketing is triggered by what users do in your app?
Klaviyo is a favorite for ecommerce brands. How much of your marketing runs off store and order data?
Iterable is known for flexible cross-channel journeys. Does your team want marketers building journeys without help from engineering?
Mailchimp is the email tool many teams start with. Are you outgrowing it, or does it still cover what you need?
ActiveCampaign is known for strong automation at a friendly price point for growing teams. How complex are your workflows?
Customer.io is popular with product-led and SaaS teams. Do you want messaging driven by product events and your own data?
Ask these on the first call. Then dig into the pain when they say it out loud.
Marketing automation software sends the right message to the right person at the right time without someone pressing send each time. It covers email and cross-channel campaigns, forms and landing pages, lead scoring and routing, customer journeys, and reporting. The wider martech stack adds customer data platforms, personalization, analytics and attribution tools around it.
The most common are: "It's too expensive for what we'd use", "Moving all our campaigns would take forever", "Our engineers can build this with the warehouse and an email API", "We're not ready to change right now", "Legal is worried about privacy and consent" and "We already use HubSpot and it does most of this". Each one above has a line to say back and what to avoid.
Start with: Walk me through a campaign you ran recently. Which tools did it touch from the first list pull to the last report? If one thing about running campaigns got easier tomorrow, what would make the biggest difference? If nothing changes this year, what does that mean for the number you are on the hook for? Is there a date driving this, like a renewal, a launch, or a big season?
Buyers most often compare HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Marketo Engage, Oracle Eloqua, Braze, Klaviyo, Iterable, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and Customer.io.
Economic buyer: the CMO or VP of Marketing. In B2B, RevOps or the CRO may share the decision because the tool feeds sales.
Pick the marketing automation market pack in Ghost's setup and every card on this page loads into Ghost. When a buyer raises one of these objections or names one of these competitors on a live call, Ghost shows you what to say on your screen, hidden from screen shares and recordings.
Free to start. Pick marketing automation in setup and Ghost loads every card on this page.