Marketing teams all over the world are leveraging marketing automation to boost the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and draw more customers. 75% of marketers say they presently use at least one marketing automation tool. Research suggests that marketing automation will continue to grow in 2021. Based on predictive data analysis, marketers are estimated to spend at least $32 billion on marketing automation software in 2021. Also, per Email Monday, the spending on marketing automation will continue to grow massively and hit $25.2 billion annually by 2023.
If you’re not already tapping into the potential of marketing automation, it’s time you learn more about it and begin using it to your advantage.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is using software to automate your marketing activities, such as email campaigns, SMS campaigns, social media marketing campaigns, and more.
Marketing automation can greatly increase the efficiency of your marketing efforts as well as deliver a more personalized experience to your customers. It also allows you to draw in prospects and nurture them with highly personalized, engaging content to transform them into loyal customers.
3 Pillars of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is built on 3 key pillars. These include:
Business Development
Business development focuses on moving prospects from the initial awareness stage (top of the sales funnel) to the ready-to-buy stage (bottom of the sales funnel). This is done by:
- Segmenting and nurturing prospects on interest basis
- Scoring prospects based on fit and intent
- Attempting to convert prospects to customers by looking at various attitudinal and behavioral factors
Marketing Intelligence
Marketing intelligence aims at using tracking codes to monitor the online behavior of customers. Marketers can leverage marketing intelligence to create behavior-based market segments by assessing and evaluating customers’ online behavior.
Workflow Automation
Marketing automation can help with the workflow of marketing activities, such as creating the marketing calendar, determining marketing budgets, managing digital assets, and so on.
Why You Need Marketing Automation for Your Business
Lead generation is a critical step in every business’ marketing plan. When marketing automation is in place, you and your team can focus on the overall marketing strategy and lead nurturing to convert prospects into customers, as opposed to worrying about the execution of your marketing campaigns.
Research shows that businesses that use marketing automation for lead management can see a 10% increase in revenue within 6 to 9 months.
Here’s a quick look at the benefits of marketing automation for your business:
- More qualified leads, at a lower cost per lead
- Better customer relationships and retention
- More alignment between your marketing and sales teams
- Strong marketing ROI
B2B Marketing Automation - All You Need to Know
Marketing automation is a hit in the B2B space because B2B customers and prospects form a limited, focused target market that is:
- Part of a previous relationship of repeat business
- Engaged in procurement processes with multiple stages
So, B2B is a relationship-based space where awareness building and product education are significant. It is also a space where customers typically don’t make purchases instantly. Their purchase decisions involve multiple people and are more thought-based.
Not only this but B2B buying decisions can also take days, weeks, and even months. The process demands a longer duration of lead nurturing than B2C marketing. The long marketing-to-sales conversion process makes marketing automation perfect for B2B organizations.
Top 4 B2B Marketing Automation Hacks
Here are 4 ways in which you can leverage marketing automation for your B2B organization:
Email and SMS Automation
How’s this for important data: 96% of website visitors aren’t ready to buy. That’s why when a lead enters into your system, you need to nurture them to convert them into a customer. This is where automated emails and SMS can help.
Email and SMS marketing automation can help you educate your leads, stay in touch and build a rapport with them, and deliver value.
Automated Live Chat on Your Website
Live chat on your website can help capture leads and convert them to customers. According to Forrester Research, 30% of customers expect websites to have the live chat feature.
Marketing automation tools that include live chat provide you with a great way to communicate with your customers and address their queries instantly.
Social Media Automation
Social media automation is one of the most common marketing automation techniques used by both B2B and B2C marketers.
A large number of social media tasks such as sharing content, engaging with followers, and thanking them can be automated to save the effort and time of your marketing team.
Referral Marketing Automation
For many businesses, referral marketing is a great way to generate leads. 92% of consumers trust recommendations from their family and friends. You can also automate repetitive tasks for driving your referral marketing initiatives.
Consider offering referral discounts to customers who recommend your products and services to people they know and track referrals using automation. You can also promote your referral offers via automated emails and SMS messages.
Marketing automation is well worth the investment vs. manually managing all of your marketing campaigns. To learn more about the marketing automation tools in the marketplace and how to select the right ones for your company, please contact us.
.png)