In this age of digitalization, it's not enough to be an online retailer anymore. Companies need to develop a tailor-made strategy for B2B marketing automation to stay relevant and stand out from the crowd.
Before Learning more about B2B marketing automation, let's learn some basics.
Marketing automation is software that companies can use to automatically generate marketing campaigns based on the behaviour of their customers.
However, your users are not robots and do not share identical customer journeys or consumption patterns as you may expect them to.
Therefore, what works for one person, does not necessarily work for another person with similar interests, background and behaviour.
Many companies have found success with B2B marketing automation. This is a tool to help automate sales and marketing teams tasks on-demand and in real-time.
These tools provide insights on sales behaviour, customer needs, geographical location and more, along with the ability to send automated email messages or schedule appointment reminders.
These automated tools can even consider your customer's profile to identify best practices and action items that they want or don't want. This allows you to teach them how better deliver certain content, offers, forms or calls in the future.
An example of a B2B marketing can be found in Slack. The messaging app is used by 80% of companies either as their primary means or secondary communication option. That equates to over 22 million people who use Slack every day, only a 4% decrease compared to 2017 statistics.
In April this year, there was an email list acquisition event where all employees were asked if they would like to receive its company-wide newsletter. If so, you receive up-to-date information about events and promotions from your company.
In this case, the newsletter was sent via a Slack channel which is an essential part of how B2B marketing can work for you and your company's prospects, customers and partners following their acquisition journey.
Everything about your customer and their journey is easily discoverable when you automate processes.
This makes it easier for everyone involved in purchasing anything from product improvement upgrades or new features to replacement parts - because they can be located quickly, even if that means initiating an entire conversation with them!
Of all the marketing technologies, B2B is perhaps one of the most important for business growth. However, before you can start using marketing automation in your B2B processes, you must understand how it works and how to set up your channel correctly.
Marketing automation increases your ability to reach prospects with pre-built content that attracts new leads - more so than a simple email blast can do.
When appropriately applied, this technology allows users to create campaigns across messaging channels like Facebook or Twitter without manually writing a single piece of text or clicking through multiple landing pages (previously, you'd have to do both!).
No longer is it necessary for marketing teams or their freelancers to spend hours sifting through activity data and managing multiple social media profiles.
Now they can focus on writing compelling copy that compels those landing page visitors interested in the product(s) of your choosing - whether B2B products like a new digital camera or add-on lighting accessories, style guides and merchandising plans, or business services like information technology - to take action.
As with choosing any software, it's essential to understand what you're getting for your money.
Unless you're entirely new to B2B marketing or sales automation, many tools are similar — so how exactly can you decide which is best? Here are a few questions that will help:
This is the most straightforward question and should dictate the solution you choose. For example, suppose your firm needs to track high-value leads in an existing CRM without investing in a complete data warehouse integration. In that case, you're in the best position to evaluate software instead of an online service that allows you more flexibility.
Remember: If your automated marketing campaigns rank low on Google, what are they ranking for? Specifically - why aren't Conversions and Keyword Rankings Better than before? Why is Customer Satisfaction down or off starting months ago even though we bumped up SEO efforts by hiring someone creative etc?
If you are looking for an exact figure, you should know that the price varies according to your company's requirements.
The main factors you'll need to consider when selecting B2B marketing software include:
Platform and integrations: Does the solution integrate with your existing tools? Which ones? Make sure you have all your information to be accessed by other media.
Plugins potential: What additional features do the options include that are not in their core application? Is there a list of them on their website, or can they point out specific non-core features? If it's only a few, such as Google Analytics Webinar (partner extension), among others, then more than likely, these features will need to be integrated.
Billing capabilities: Does the solution offer different pricing plans? Some are free, and others are month-to-month depending on use or projects needing completion and implementation.
It all starts with a marketing automation application or B2B apps such as Pardot, Marketo, etc. These allow you to manage your marketing campaigns by adding contacts and streamlining the data collection process.
When people interact with your brand, they are automatically identified and screened against a set of criteria that define how they fit into your buyer's journey in terms of stage, industry sector or even role (like sales executive).
You can also use user-defined segments, which make it easier to automate different digital processes for them on autopilot.
Every user can have a different digital journey (responsive web design) with suitable call-to-action options such as newsletter signup, gift enrollment and more.
B2B marketing software will handle the entire process, so you don't need to lift a finger once your gatekeeper starts getting in touch with prospects on their own or even prefer if they are using B2C vs B2B website tracking optimizing visitor's interactions path while recording valid data for follow-ups.
B2B marketing automation software is a great way to increase the efficiency of your marketing efforts. Many businesses have been able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars by using these tools.
There are several different types of marketing automation software available, and it's important that you pick the right one for your company.
This blog post has outlined some factors to consider when selecting a b2b marketing solution, including where you should be spending your money and what type of data can be collected through the use of such a tool.
That's all for now! See you later with another topic!
