Streamline Your Efforts with B2B Marketing Automation

ReportLinker recently reported that global marketing automation will increase from $5.2 billion to nearly 10 million by 2027. This means that this number will further increase by 2030.

How does it impact your business? Your competitors are busy automating their business campaigns, driving the market’s growth. They will get the upper hand and go far ahead of your business if it hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon of B2B marketing automation strategy.

Therefore, B2B marketing is no longer just a matter of choice. It is a necessity. Forget keeping up with the competitors if precious time is wasted on the same old strategies. Let us explore the B2B marketing automation strategy in this article.

1What is B2B Marketing Automation?

So, what exactly is meant by B2B marketing automation? Marketing automation refers to the utilization of technology for automating repetitive tasks. These repetitive tasks can include sharing content on social media, sending emails, and replying to frequently asked questions.

While the above-mentioned tasks are manageable, a marketing automation strategy can also be implemented on marketing workflows to streamline the efforts of your sales reps, marketers, and customer success teams. They manage each campaign on one centralized platform while staying on the same page when engaging, nurturing, attracting, and converting leads.

This is how marketing automation tends to work. First, a lead generation is set up, and a campaign is nurtured. A workflow is created with automated triggers for streamlining that campaign. This includes welcoming fresh leads, following up, and then notifying relevant users in case someone inquires regarding your business’s services.

One such triggering event can be a potential customer who fills out a contact form on your business’s website. They have read a blog on the website and now wish to get a quote. Filling out this form enables the marketing automation system to capture the contact details of the lead.

This automation system can now send a welcome email to the lead with the required information or notify an employee to reach out. After a designated period, it sends another email in case the lead hasn’t responded after receiving the quote.

2Difference between B2B and B2C Marketing Automation

Many businesses are confused when differentiating between B2B and B2C marketing automation. B2C is about the customer’s journey, where the individual is in their unique buying process. B2B marketing automation, on the other hand, is all about value-sharing and education for a large group and is focused on nurturing leads through a sales funnel.

More specifically, B2B marketing automation is a kind of marketing that targets another business as its consumer. Its approach is more complex than B2C since marketers tend to target purchasing committees. Here, multiple people are involved in the final buying decision. B2C automation requires dealing with a product for a customer’s consumption.

Here are some more points on how B2B and B2C marketing automation differ.

• The B2B sales journey can be more expensive as it requires more time and extensive execution, planning, and management.
• In B2B marketing, emotional triggers are secondary when it comes to buying. The rationale for purchasing comes first.
• B2B marketing also requires closer involvement in the sales and marketing team as it involves a business account. Personalized campaigns need to be created for them.
• B2B marketing is more formal than the B2C option. Businesses tend to prefer buying services from a provider who knows all the processes, languages, and how to solve their issues.

3How Can B2B Companies Benefit from Marketing Automation?

High-performing businesses have embraced marketing automation for different purposes. Here are some crucial benefits that can be expected to be gained from implementing marketing automation in companies.

Generation of Quality Leads

Marketing automation can allow B2B companies to generate better-quality leads. It will enable giving a detailed view into consumer behavior, giving crucial information for converting website visitors into customers and prospects. Using marketing automation, marketers can trace a lead and then identify relevant top prospects, automatically adding them to the appropriate segmentation and setting workflows for nurturing. 

Smooth Lead Nurturing

Not all qualified leads necessarily lead to purchasing. They might require nurturing before they can turn into customers and prospects. It is impossible for marketers to keep tabs on all the leads. Automated nurturing saves time and resources by converting leads into purchase opportunities without much effort. It can send helpful, customized, informative content to engage prospective leads.

Reduction in Marketing Expenses

Putting your business on auto-pilot is the best way of reducing marketing expenses. This is excellent news for small businesses that do not have as many funds as the big guns in the market. The math is simple. When the routine processes are done by the automation software, the marketers don’t have to spend any money, making them more efficient and productive.

Time-Saving

Automated marketing allows businesses to spend less time on time-consuming and repetitive tasks such as asking for contact information, sending welcome emails, doing keyword searches, replying to FAQs, and managing paid ads because automation software will do all these things.

Improved Lead Score

Lead scoring is a way of ranking the leads according to the value they might bring to the business. It helps in prioritizing them and focusing on the ones that are most likely to convert. The automation software allows for setting triggers for updating scores. As the scores are updated, marketers leverage automatic workflows to reach out at the correct time.

Personalized Customer Experiences

Marketing automation software also allows businesses to have personalized experiences through their journey with the B2B companies. It will enable them to target companies across channels, giving relevant content to different segments and personas at various stages. 

B2B experiences can be personalized for forging meaningful relationships across companies. For instance, if a company downloads a book or guide, a personalized email can be sent to them.

4B2B Marketing Automation Examples

Here is our list of some of the best B2B marketing automation platforms examples that have changed the entire game of B2B digital marketing.

1Asana – Email Marketing Automation

Email marketing automation is one of the best examples of B2B marketing. It offers an exclusive platform for connecting with the leads on a personal front. They provide a unique way of building strong relationships. Email marketing automation allows the delivery of timely and targeted emails to the leads.

Consequently, the business can achieve higher open rates. Asana has adopted marketing automation into their welcome email campaign, assisting customers in getting started by calling them towards the creation of a new task.

2Amazon – CRM Data Management

Access to accurate and reliable data is mandatory when it comes to the maintenance of effective sales operations and the launching of quality marketing campaigns. However, picking out the qualified leads and tracking sales progress with an outdated CRM database. Automating the sorting of the CRM data keeps it updated and clean, which can be done by setting the correct triggers.

One of the best examples of automated CRM data management is Amazon, which immediately captures all custom data for customization of marketing strategy based on each consumer’s online experience.

3Slush – Round the Clock Availability

Customer service chatbots save the consumer support team a lot of effort and time. Among all of these market automation examples, staying available through chatbot automation is the most used one. Slush’s Jenny chatbot is a great example. This chatbot has conversational AI abilities capable of addressing inquiries immediately, for instance: how can I get to the venue, what is the event’s schedule, and what are some hotels to stay in?

4Citrix – Content Personalization

Generic content is the worst thing that can be done to a business. Content cannot be one size that fits all. Automation of personalized content can present potential leads with content based on where they might be in their purchase journey.

Citrix has utilized machine-learning algorithms to suggest content based on the user’s interest. As a user visits their official website with a relevant whitepaper, they acquire a popup window indicating that they read this whitepaper.

5Iterable – Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is a fundamental process for building relationships with prospects. It entails compelling the consumer to take action by sending emails, SMS, push notifications, exit popups, and a lot more.

Iterable has used this feature to deliver an email to prospects who show interest in their brand but have not yet made it up. With timely targeting, the company is able to win back this sale.

5Tips to Choose the Best B2B Marketing Automation Tool

If a business isn’t already utilizing marketing automation software, what is stopping them? Sometimes, businesses may not be clear about which solution to choose. Buying marketing automation software may come across as demanding. However, it can help acquire new customers, automate tasks, nurture existing customers, and analyze metrics for optimization.

Here are five considerations to keep in mind when choosing the best B2B marketing automation tool for yourself.

Know the Software Features

Every automation software has different features and capabilities. It is important to consider what you wish to accomplish using the software’s abilities. Try out different box features that are convenient to use.

Look for Any Limitations

Along with the software’s capabilities, it is important to be aware of its limitations as well. Ensure that it has all that your business requires and is capable of meeting its needs. If it has a certain restriction, try researching if there is a workaround available for it. All the capabilities remain useless if the software doesn’t fulfill the business needs.

Check its Scalability

Is your chosen B2B marketing automation tool easily scalable? Will it be able to grow with the business? Ensure that the tool is capable of handling several automations at a time. As the company grows, the number of contacts will also increase, and the software should be able to accommodate them adequately.

Get to Know Pricing Plans

Price is important, especially if your business is small and in its introductory phase. Investigate the pricing structure thoroughly and observe the features of the pricing plan. Also, be sure to know if there is a contact limitation that exceeds.

CRM Integration

Customer relationship management is fundamental to all businesses. If you do have a CRM in place, be sure to check if it can be integrated with the chosen marketing automation tool. If it can be integrated, also remember to check how easily it can be done.

6Get Start with B2B Marketing Automation

Looking to implement marketing automation in your business? Ensure that you start with the best B2B marketing automation platforms available.

ChatInsight AI is the best choice!

With its capabilities, it easily brings marketing automation and relevant features to your business. It can adapt to the categorized and specific knowledge from different sources, ranging from simple text URLs to markdown files.

When it comes to business-to-business marketing automation, it empowers your company anytime, anywhere, being the best marketing assistant on your team. Here are a few reasons for choosing ChatInsight AI as your B2B marketing automation tool:

While ChatInsight AI may not offer the full suite of B2B marketing automation features found in dedicated platforms, it can be a valuable component of your overall marketing automation strategy, particularly in enhancing customer engagement, lead generation, and data-driven decision-making.

Conclusion

With the competition around the global industry ever increasing, it is now highly fundamental that B2B companies across different sectors embark on marketing automation as soon as possible.

It does not only optimize and streamline campaigns but is also capable of building sustainable growth for your business. It is time to embrace this amazing technology and garner the top benefits of this tool.