Marketing automation: Get more out of B2B
Marketing automation adoption is growing vastly, within the B2B marketers. The necessity to simplify and streamline everything you do helps in attaining full potential. B2B marketers are always on the look out for new updates and tools to automate their existing systems.
Researchers suggest “Three out of four organizations do not use their marketing automation systems to their full potential.” That being said, it creates inefficiency and less productivity because as they grow, automation becomes a necessity for digital marketing, and to procure services like multi channel campaign management, budget tracking, marketing analytics, social media management, forecasting, etc.
Research analysis
- In 2012, Sirius Decisions predicted, marketing automation would reach at least 50% by 2015. By 2014, it was reported that 11 times more B2B organizations were using marketing automation than in 2011.
- 78% of successful marketers crediting their marketing automation for being the biggest contribution to their improved revenue contribution.
- 85% of B2B marketers who have implemented a marketing automation platform into their marketing system report that they do not feel they are using it to its full potential.
Its established well that most of the firms are going for a sales and marketing automation platform. According to a survey from Salesfusion, “Of the 62% of companies under $100 million in revenue that have adopted a marketing automation platform, 85% are happy with their solution. 15% are complaining about their tech’s inefficiencies and 38% haven’t invested. To those who want to get insights on how to prioritise marketing automation and find success, keep reading. It has been around for a while making news that more than half of the companies that use marketing automation are not using it perfectly, to its full potential.
Correlate your business goals with what you want to attain from marketing automation as well
Considering your overall business goals, it is pivotal to align your marketing automation strategy to the goals you want to achieve. Whether it is to improve lead quality, improve visibility, increase conversion rates, etc. It is important to first set forth your B2B marketing plan clearly, note down what you want to achieve, how you want to go forward with it and how much do you want to achieve.
The goals have to coincide in all the aspects, whether content fits well with the marketing campaigns and scheduled strategies are placed well for all the quarters. You want to derive maximum impact at the right time from the data gathered by the marketing automation system.
Quality leads alone are your sales’ kingpin
It is essential to assess which lead is ready to buy, wasting time on sending all the existing leads to sales. Leads that come from downloading a bit of content or simply opening an email aren’t likely to buy for sure.
The huge volumes of leads might not excite the sales team, it will take away their focus from attending to the customers who are likely to buy. Automation helps with load-scoring models and helps you assign and remove leads depending upon demographics and engagements. If all the thresholds are met, the leads can be scrutinised and be sent to sales.
This doesn’t mean you waste the leads that aren’t sent to sales. Just lead nurture and ensure ongoing communication until they are ready to buy.
Create social media havoc
Within B2B, social media is becoming an important component. Hone your marketing automation strategy by interacting and tracking customer sentiments, be more insightful.
Help yourself to better communicate with the customers and expand your presence through great customer outreach strategy.
Always integrate your marketing automation strategy with your social media strategy to save time and simplify marketing workflow.
A little extra tools are always better
Integrate your marketing automation strategy with additional tools like customer relationship management (CRM), sales force automation (SFA) or any other customer databases to optimise results.
You can also integrate it with your back-end financial systems, content management system (CMS), social media management, etc. With additional integration and adoption, you can make a good start by also aligning your people, processes and tools.
Head to bluer waters
If your existing system is not meeting with your organisation’s needs, there is no reason to hold on. Analyse if you can derive any value from your existing marketing automation solution. Always be open to change and adopt to newer technologies or updates, don’t settle with under performing solutions.
Continuous training, testing, analysing and updation leads to a successful marketing automation experience and provides a lot of room for improvement. Always look to create a better strategy, whether you are redesigning a campaign or evaluating a lead score. Always evaluate and adjust accordingly, use the data from your system and improve efficiency.