Recently, more and more companies are getting involved in marketing automation. However, many companies are quickly realizing that investing in a new tool does not immediately solve all of their marketing problems. Choosing the right platform, a well-thought-out strategy, and measuring the effectiveness of campaigns are essential to B2B marketing automation success. It is essential to choose the right platform, develop a detailed strategy, and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
According to the “State of Marketing Automation” report, conducted in conjunction with London Research, 49% of marketers say they are unable to measure ROI, and 36% feel that lack of internal knowledge is also a challenge. These percentages indicate that not all marketers are in control of their investments or have a plan to measure their effectiveness, which is likely hindering the full use and benefit of marketing automation.
By planning before embarking on marketing automation, marketers will be able to get the most out of their new solution and will have the tools they need to consistently improve their efforts over time. Of course, it can be difficult to know where to start, especially if you've never used this technology before. That's why we've put together a list of tips to help you develop an effective B2B marketing automation strategy that will help you beat the competition and increase your company's revenue.
Focus on personalization
Creating a personalized experience for each and every customer may seem like a tedious task, especially if you're used to the time-consuming process of manually exporting, segmenting, and importing lists from your customer relationship management (CRM) system to your email service provider (ESP). Fortunately, marketing automation can help. Fortunately, marketing automation can alleviate much of this work by allowing marketers to set up rules to automatically include contacts with any behaviour or characteristic in a given group.
However, it's up to you and your team to determine how to segment your target groups (by industry, product interest, sales funnel stage, pain point, size, etc.), as well as the content and tactics needed to address them. When developing your marketing automation strategy, you need to identify your target segments, create content tailored to those groups, and create targeted nurturing campaigns to walk them through the customer journey.
Develop and implement an account-based lead scoring and management system
Unlike B2C marketers, B2B marketers often need to deal with multiple personas within the company in order to close deals and pass them on to the sales team. Not only is it difficult to address and cultivate the different constituencies within a company, but without the right tools, it becomes nearly impossible to keep track of the entire group when making final decisions. These challenges can lead to missed opportunities and negatively impact a company's return on investment.
By developing an account-based lead management and scoring system as part of your B2B marketing automation strategy, you can prepare your marketing and sales teams to strike while the iron is hot. With this approach, you can understand how stakeholders in your company engage with your marketing content and score each of their actions to determine if they are ready to talk to sales.
Take steps to ensure collaboration between marketing and sales.
Improving collaboration and alignment between marketing and sales teams requires more than just CRM integration. In order to get the most out of a marketing automation platform, both marketing and sales need to agree on how to use the platform.
Therefore, before you start sending emails and passing leads to salespeople, you need to discuss the following with your sales team
- What information does the salesperson need to have a more targeted conversation to close the deal?
- How do we evaluate leads? And what makes a lead appropriate to talk to sales?
- How can your sales team leverage marketing automation? What features are available to them to improve their outreach efforts?
- What is the best process for handing off leads to sales? What are the next steps once that's done?
Incorporating the above considerations into your marketing strategy will ensure seamless collaboration between marketing and sales, allowing you to focus on the best opportunities and maximize ROI.
Determine how you will measure success
A powerful marketing automation tool should provide you with insights that you can use to further improve your marketing strategy. All the information you collect is valuable in one way or another, but certain data points will be more important to members of your management team than others, and some will be more useful to you in analyzing and reviewing your efforts. In your marketing automation strategy, determine which KPIs you want to keep a close eye on to further improve your efforts and keep your organization's key stakeholders informed of progress toward your goals.
Find a vendor that provides strategic support and execution
Marketing automation helps companies move from one-off emails and random marketing campaigns to more targeted and personalized marketing. However, as we mentioned earlier, a lack of expertise and resources remain barriers that prevent marketers from making the most of their marketing automation software and seizing opportunities for the best possible ROI.
Companies looking to get up to speed quickly and equip themselves with the knowledge and resources they need for effective marketing automation should consider vendors that offer strong strategic and implementation support. These offerings help marketers ensure they have everything they need to leverage their marketing automation platform and achieve their goals – and include guidance and support from experts throughout the process.
