The alignment of technology and marketing offers a new way to show prospective clients the value of your B2B Brand’s service offering and product lineup. In addition, B2B marketing automation allows your marketing team to increase productivity while simultaneously nurturing more qualified leads.
However, successful B2B marketing automation requires planning and forethought. Once up and running, B2B marketing automation can do the heavy lifting for your marketing team. So how should we use B2B marketing automation?
What are the most effective B2B marketing automation techniques and tactics for nurturing qualified leads? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Whether trying automation for the first time or ramping up an existing strategy, you’ll learn:
- What B2B Marketing Automation Is
- Why B2B Marketing Automation Matters
- How To Implement B2B Marketing Automation (With Examples)
- 5 Tips for B2B Marketing Automation Success
Forrester found that B2B Marketers implementing marketing automation saw a 10% increase in their sales pipeline. Want to see the same results? Continue reading to learn how;
What is B2B Marketing Automation?
B2B marketing automation refers to the automated processes, practices, and systems a B2B Brand utilizes to execute various marketing activities and to improve marketing efficiency across several channels.
B2B marketing automation helps B2B Brands generate, manage, and close qualified leads that enter our pipeline as they go through the B2B Buyers’ Journey. In addition, B2B marketing automation optimizes your marketing team’s time by simplifying repetitive tasks like social media marketing, email marketing, and other marketing activities.
As a result, B2B marketing automation helps your team stay productive and efficient while nurturing qualified leads. The right B2B marketing automation solutions help us identify buyer personas, design targeted content, and automatically trigger actions based on schedules and lead behavior.
An automated marketing strategy can save us time and resources and drive revenue. Once our campaign rolls out, we can focus on other tasks, then analyze and tweak our marketing plan as results come in.
Investing in B2B marketing automation can significantly impact your B2B Brand, changing how you do business overnight. Many systems available today can efficiently incorporate your B2B Brand’s existing marketing tech stack.
Why Does B2B Marketing Automation Matter?
Since the dawn of time, B2B Brands have been looking for more efficient and effective ways to do business and get clients. Yet, some B2B Marketers spend countless hours manually sending follow-up emails and sorting through data.
B2B marketing automation can help simplify and automate these repetitive marketing activities. In recent years, we’ve seen a significant increase in the use of marketing automation among B2B Brands. A survey by GetResponse found that 92% of agencies invest more time, resources, and budget into marketing automation integration than ever before, and 23% automate their content delivery.
The number of businesses using some form of marketing automation is growing too. According to HubSpot, about 67% of marketing leaders use a marketing automation platform. By streamlining repetitive tasks, B2B marketing automation allows B2B Marketers to shift their focus to more creative, strategic projects.
Here are five key reasons why your B2B Brand should incorporate B2B marketing automation into your digital marketing strategy:
1. Elevate & Automate Your Existing B2B Marketing Automation
Do you want to improve your marketing team’s productivity? Does your marketing team want to minimize human errors and improve accuracy? B2B marketing automation leverages technology to automate manual sales and marketing activities using rule-based logic.
Some of the best-automated processes are repetitive and tedious tasks, such as email follow-ups, social media posts, and data management. We can trigger these workflows by various actions, including content downloads or event registration.
Automating workflows can help you:
- Save time on repetitive tasks,
- Create streamlined communication with prospective clients,
- Minimize human errors and potential risks of inaccuracy,
- Increase staff productivity, and
- Take your existing manual workflows to a new level.
2. Develop An Omnichannel Marketing Strategy
One significant benefit of B2B marketing automation is that it allows your B2B Brand to develop and execute an omnichannel strategy without the hassle and time of doing so manually.
Omnichannel is a lead nurturing and user engagement approach in which B2B Brands give access to their services, products, and support to clients or prospects on all channels, platforms, and devices.
With technology and client demands constantly evolving, there’s the expectation that B2B Brands are available 25/8 on various platforms or channels. We want to be available when and where it’s convenient for our clients.
Unfortunately, without a marketing automation tool, this could be a very costly and time-consuming goal to achieve.However, today’s B2B marketing automation platforms integrate multiple channels and devices to build comprehensive buyer personas and simplify omnichannel or multichannel marketing.
We should ensure that information reaches B2B Decision Makers wherever they are, increasing touchpoints and sales engagement.
3. Discover Scalability That Allows for Long-Term Growth
We hear from sales and marketing teams all the time about how they struggle to maintain timely and personalized responses and give qualified leads the one-on-one attention they deserve as their lead count, business size, and team grows.
The scalability of B2B marketing automation maximizes your marketing strategy to drive long-term growth for your B2B Brand. As B2B Brands grow, it’s easier and faster to scale your B2B marketing automation systems than your headcount.
So, investing in B2B marketing automation offers a cost-effective way to take your B2B Brand to the next level.
4. Automate Your Lead Generation Process
B2B marketing automation software scores your B2B Brand’s leads and contacts according to their sales readiness. Plus, it allows for better visibility, higher quality leads, and automatic follow-ups. These are just some ways marketing automation can boost your lead generation strategy.
Once your B2B Brand generates a steady flow of qualified leads, your B2B marketing automation software can consistently update your lead scoring. It can also continue to nurture qualified leads by sending out content based on their location in your B2B Buyers’ Journey, resulting in higher conversion rates.
5. Generate Measurable ROIs for Your B2B Marketing Strategy
Executives want proof that your B2B Brand’s marketing strategy is worth the financial investment. This proof requires access to measurable and objective data that supports the budget. Unfortunately, for many B2B Marketers, investing countless hours each month pulling data is a nightmare.
Luckily, we can utilize B2B marketing automation to streamline this process and, in turn, drive revenue.
B2B marketing automation systems track data and analyze ROI to make data analysis more simplified and efficient. As a result, B2B marketing automation software allows your B2B Brand to maximize its marketing efforts and boost sales.
How to Implement B2B Marketing Automation [Examples]
So how do you implement B2B Marketing Automation for your B2B Brand? The proper marketing automation setup depends on factors such as the size of your B2B Brand and your Buyers’ Journey. The first step to implementing B2B Marketing Automation for your B2B Brand is having a solid CRM or customer relationship management software.
A simple online search will reveal options on the market, but two stand out: Salesforce and HubSpot. We recommend HubSpot but have nothing bad to say about Salesforce. Both are great options and will take time to fully master.
Once you have a CRM setup, you’re ready to add other solutions to your Marketing Tech Stack. The other solutions or features you add should cover SWEEP, or what we consider to be the 5 necessary marketing channels for all B2B Brands. SWEEP stands for
- Social Media Marketing
- Website/SEO Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Event Marketing
- Paid Marketing
Pro Tip: Less is more! It may cost you more in the short term to go with fewer but more all-in-one solutions than individual solutions, but it will save you enough time and money in the long term to be worth the investment.
Below we’ll outline a few examples that you can implement for your B2B Brand covering all the marketing channels in SWEEP:
Social Media Marketing
Social media automation, specifically social media post scheduling, is the most common use of B2B marketing automation because it was one of the first marketing automation strategies to be mass adopted.
While we will always want a human being behind some of our conversations on social media, a large percentage of social media tasks can be automated. Some examples of things that we can easily automate to grow your B2B Brand’s following over time are:
- Scheduling content
- Messaging new followers
- Reposting user-generated content
Website/SEO Marketing
There are a lot of opportunities when it comes to using B2B marketing automation with your B2B Brand’s website and SEO strategy, but one we love and will share here is chatbots. Many B2B Decision Makers expect live chat.
A Forrester research piece found that 30% of prospective clients expect live chat today. Therefore, a live website chatbot can be a great way to capture qualified leads that we would otherwise lose. However, your already busy client success team can have difficulty keeping up your live chat and continuing their day-to-day responsibilities.
Solutions available today allow us to reap the benefits of a live chat without having to take time away from your current client success reps. B2B marketing automation can enable prospective clients to interact with your B2B Brand, connect with client success reps, and learn more about your B2B Brand and your service offering or product lineup.
Email Marketing
96% of visitors who visit your B2B Brand’s website aren’t ready to buy. So, when a new lead enters your pipeline, what steps do you take to ensure they become a client? For B2B Brands that handle this process by hand, this can usually mean a lot of email correspondence and multiple phone calls.
However, we can manage this process primarily through automated email correspondence and other tactics. This automation helps us only hand sales-qualified leads off to your B2B Brand’s sales team when they are ready.
B2B marketing automation uses email sequences to inform and educate your qualified leads, nurturing them by building rapport with them while delivering value through content. As you develop your relationship with them, you begin to sprinkle in more sales-focused materials, walking them toward investing in your B2B Brand’s service or product.
Most importantly, we can automate this entire process!
Event Marketing
Producing an excellent B2B event often involves detailed checklists and to-dos. However, marketing automation can scale many repetitive and time-intensive tasks, so B2B Marketers who conduct events can focus on driving ROI.
Here are a few ways to utilize b2b marketing automation for an upcoming event:
- Create targeted invites: A single invitation is not the best option for events that target multiple buyer personas. B2B marketing automation allows us to create specific invitation workflows for the different groups we invite.
- Send reminders and pre-event content: Event reminders are an excellent tool for preventing a significant drop off between invitees and attendees. Send frequent reminders to keep your event top of mind and generate excitement around the big day.
- Keep the conversation going: Your event doesn’t end with the last guest leaving. It is up to you to keep the conversation going and attendees connected with your B2B Brand long after your event is over.
Paid Marketing
A lot goes into creating and optimizing paid media these days. B2B paid marketing automation tools are great ways to scale paid media efforts and includes building ad creative across different channels and optimizing bidding strategies.
5 Best Practices for B2B Marketing Automation
Here are five quick tips to keep you on track for the best results:
- Keep your B2B Buyer Personas and Buyers’ Journey front and center when creating any automation workflow. Our goal should be to create a cohesive and seamless experience for our clients.
- Make sure your messaging and branding is always consistent everywhere. Don’t make any automation live that doesn’t fit well with your B2B Brand.
- Establish the metrics important to your B2B Brand to track and monitor them regularly.
- Always look for ways to optimize your automations for improved performance and engagement.
- If at first you don’t succeed, try again. B2B marketing automation isn’t a one size fits all solution. What works for one may not work for another and what once worked may not work later so don’t give up on your B2B marketing automation.
Closing
B2B marketing automation has the power to
- save your marketing team time,
- increase their productivity, and
- help them reach and resonate with more qualified leads.
So, find the right tool for your marketing team and begin using B2B marketing automation. Hopefully, we’ve inspired you with some ideas to take your B2B marketing automation strategy to the next level. Implemented right, these tactics can go a long way.
Got any other tried-and-true strategies for B2B automation? Tell us below. We’d love to hear from you!
