According to ReportLinker, the global marketing automation market will grow from $5.2 billion in 2022 to $9.5 billion in 2027. That means it will reach a whopping $12.2 billion by 2030.
What does that mean for your business?
Your competitors are increasingly automating their marketing campaigns, driving the market’s growth. They have the upper hand if you still haven’t jumped on the bandwagon to get your piece of the pie.
Automating your B2B marketing is no longer an option – it’s a necessity. You can’t expect to keep up with the competition if you waste precious time on repetitive processes ripe for automation.
Before exploring the top benefits of marketing automation, let’s see what this process is and how it works.
What Is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation means utilizing technology to automate repetitive tasks. Those can include sending emails, sharing content on social media, and replying to FAQs.
You can also automate marketing workflows to streamline the efforts of your marketers, sales reps, and customer success teams. They’ll manage every campaign on one centralized platform, staying on the same page when attracting, engaging, nurturing, and converting leads.
Here’s an example of how marketing automation works.
You set up a lead generation and nurturing campaign in HubSpot. You create a workflow with automated triggers to streamline that campaign.
That can include welcoming new leads, following up, and notifying relevant users when someone inquires about your services.
One triggering event can be a potential customer filling out a contact form on your website. For instance, they’ve read your blog and want to request a quote.
Filling out the form enables your marketing automation system to capture that lead’s contact details.
The platform can send a welcome email with the requested information or notify a teammate to reach out. It sends another automated email after a set period if that lead doesn’t respond after receiving your quote.
That’s an opportunity to nurture and convert them. You can offer further assistance and share helpful content like a case study to nudge them in the right direction.
Once your lead takes the desired action, your automation platform can notify relevant users. They can send additional content or schedule a call to seal the deal.
Why Is Marketing Automation Important for B2B Businesses?
Automating digital marketing processes allows B2B companies to streamline entire marketing campaigns. It helps marketers develop personalized customer journeys with consistent experiences, delivering relevant, high-converting content when leads need it the most.
B2B marketing automation is the key to nurturing and converting qualified leads. It guides you to higher sales and ROI vital for future marketing initiatives.
It brings your efforts full circle and drives long-term business growth.
Email isn’t the only marketing process B2B companies can automate to nurture leads and increase conversion rates. You can put content management, social media sharing, SMS marketing, ad campaigns, and other activities on autopilot.
Although you’ll see the best results by automating all of these processes, even several will benefit your business. Here’s how.
Benefits of B2B Marketing Automation
High-performing marketers embrace automation solutions to improve lead quality, customer engagement, and experience. Those are crucial factors for higher conversions, sales, and ROI.
Here are the top marketing automation benefits you can expect after implementing technology into your campaigns.
Saving time
Automation software lets marketers automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks, saving hours weekly and doing more in less time.
You don’t have to ask for contact information over the phone. Copying and pasting welcome emails whenever someone signs up for your newsletter will become a thing of the past. You don’t have to spend hours on keyword research, manage paid ads manually, or reply to FAQs in live chat.
Automation software can do it for you.
Saving time on managing your campaigns opens the door to more revenue opportunities. Your team can focus on what matters – engaging and nurturing leads to turn them into paying customers.
Reducing marketing expenses
According to the latest marketing automation statistics, putting your marketing campaigns on autopilot can help you reduce expenses by 12.2%.
That’s excellent news for small businesses that may struggle to keep up with the big guns.
The math is pretty straightforward. Your marketers won’t spend a third or half of their time on routine processes.
They’ll be more productive and efficient, having more time to focus on increasing revenue.
They can allocate more resources to developing solutions, improving content, and enhancing every marketing strategy and campaign.
Generating quality leads
Marketing automation software can help B2B companies generate more quality leads. It can give a detailed look into consumer behavior, providing crucial information for turning website visitors into prospects and customers.
Marketers can discover where every lead is in the customer lifecycle according to their behavior and interests. They can identify top prospects, automatically add them to appropriate segmentation lists, and set workflows for nurturing.
Seamless lead nurturing
Not all qualified leads are ready to purchase; most require careful nurturing to become prospects and customers.
What if a fraction of your leads need nurturing? You still can’t expect your marketers to keep tabs on all of them. That takes a lot of time and drains resources.
Automated lead nurturing is another story. Besides saving you time and resources, it lets you convert leads into sales opportunities without much effort.
For instance, you can create and automate drip marketing campaigns to maintain interest, build personalized relationships, boost engagement, and increase conversions.
Your automation software can regularly send informative, helpful content to engage leads. Don’t forget to customize messages for different segments because not everyone shares needs and interests.
Improving lead scoring
Lead scoring means ranking your leads according to the value they might bring to your company. It helps you prioritize them and focus on those most likely to convert.
Scoring leads is crucial for keeping marketing and sales teams on the same page. You can set a scale in your marketing automation system and assign values to every potential customer.
The software lets you set automated triggers to update the scores. As the scores update, your marketers can leverage automated workflows to reach out at the right time.
For instance, a triggering event can be a lead getting a score of 100 or 400. That makes them ready to convert. Once that happens, the platform can notify your sales reps to schedule a call.
Aligning marketing and sales teams
We don’t need to tell you that marketing and sales teams must work closely together to yield the best results. That’s nearly impossible when using disparate tools.
Marketing automation software is ideal for aligning these teams. It allows them to work on the same platform, having valuable insights into leads, prospects, and customers.
It helps your marketing team improve strategies for better lead generation, nurturing, and customer experiences. They can convert leads faster, providing sales colleagues with actionable insights for informed conversations and conversions.
They can stay on the same page, work toward shared goals, and enjoy streamlined, consistent workflows that save time and effort.
Personalizing customer experiences
Marketing automation software lets you personalize experiences throughout the B2B customer journey. It enables you to target them across channels, providing content relevant to different personas and segments at all funnel stages.
Despite automating emails, social sharing, SMS marketing campaigns, and other processes, you can personalize customer experiences to forge meaningful relationships. Personalization is the key to increasing engagement and satisfaction, building trust, and inspiring long-term loyalty.
For instance, you can send a personalized email to someone who has downloaded your ebook or guide. You can follow up after a week with a relevant offer or content.
The same goes for every website visitor who joins your opt-in marketing campaign. Their behavior and browsing habits will uncover interests, preferences, and pain points. You can then provide what they need at every buyer’s journey stage.
Making data-driven decisions
B2B marketing automation platforms provide automated, in-depth analytics and reports on your leads, including their engagement and behavior. They can help you gain valuable intelligence for data-driven decisions, enabling you to improve current and future campaigns.
Besides creating a complete customer profile, you can identify roadblocks and leaks in your conversion funnel and forecast consumer behavior trends. You can A/B test your assets to determine which marketing methods and strategies bring the most conversions.
Tracking B2B marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) is another benefit. You can measure every campaign’s effectiveness to improve efforts and boost conversions and revenue.
Real-time reports can also uncover every marketing channel’s performance. For instance, you may find that most of your converted leads came to your website from LinkedIn. That insight can help you allocate your marketing budget more wisely and acquire more customers.
Supercharging conversions and sales
More conversions and sales follow when you improve lead generation, scoring, and nurturing, unite marketing and sales teams, and personalize experiences. The same goes for increasing efficiency and gaining actionable insights from accurate, real-time reports.
Analyzing your marketing campaigns and strategies will help uncover how and why leads convert. You can also learn what makes them leave your brand and choose the competition.
Tracking your leads across channels using marketing automation software is also ideal for retargeting website visitors. For instance, you can re-engage anyone who doesn’t visit for a while.
Gaining a holistic view of the customer journey
Marketing automation solutions for B2B companies integrate with many third-party tools to streamline workflows and campaigns. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is the best software to pair with your chosen automation platform. It will help you gain a holistic view of the customer journey.
A 360° view of customers enables seamless communication for better relationships. Besides contact information, a CRM system stores your leads’ and customers’ interests, preferences, pain points, and other behavioral insights. Their preferred content and products can enable your marketers and salespeople to tailor strategies and experiences to their needs.
Integrating it with your marketing automation platform will help both teams target qualified leads, improve lead scoring, and better understand customers. Your automation software will send all campaign data to your CRM system to complete customer profiles. That will provide your teammates with up-to-date information necessary for conversion.
Conclusion
B2B companies across industries have embraced marketing automation to streamline and optimize campaigns and build sustainable business growth. It’s time to follow in their footsteps and enjoy the top benefits of marketing automation you’ve seen above.
Read our previous blog to dive into the best B2B marketing practices and make the most of your campaigns.
Do you need help growing your business? OneIMS is your go-to B2B digital marketing partner for attaining consistent sales and revenue growth. We can help you connect with your target audience and capture ideal buyers through lead nurturing and sales enablement.
Our clients see 800% ROI in under two years. Check out our insightful case studies to read their success stories and see how we helped transform their businesses.
Contact us anytime if you need help automating your marketing. Head to our solutions page to see how we can help propel your business to soaring heights.
