Needs, doubts and expectations of today's customers necessarily require increasingly advanced marketing strategies. With this in mind, Marketing Automation is certainly one of the systems that has made the most progress in recent years, generating significant results both in the B2C market and in B2B. In this article we will focus on the importance and usefulness of Marketing Automation in B2B.
As a company's business grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage customer relationships in a "personal" way, which is why more and more companies rely on automation software to overcome this problem.
Is this a solution reserved only for companies with a large budget? Absolutely not. To date, the costs and the techniques of use make the Marketing Automation programs accessible also to small and medium-sized enterprises, the so-called SMEs.
WHY IT IS USEFUL TO INVEST IN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION
Since the web has become an integral part of our lives, the dynamics in the sales sector have changed. Only those who have adapted and ridden the wave of change have benefited from it, and in many cases have blown up their earnings. Do you want to be one of these? All you have to do is harness the power of the network, using the marketing programs and strategies necessary to attract (and not chase) potential customers.
If yours is an online business whose customers are other companies, B2B Marketing Automation is certainly a winning weapon to optimize acquisition campaigns and increase turnover. In the business to business market, automated processes can make the difference starting from obtaining valuable contacts, i.e. data relating to users really interested in the service / product offered.
The advantages that the Marketing Automation system offers in the B2B sector are manifold:
- achieving results in the shortest possible time
- creation and maintenance of relationships with target companies through personalized communications
- smaller and more targeted investments in the management of qualified contacts
- building relationships of trust with potential customers through automated information communications(Lead Nurturing))
- study of the behavior of potential customers and their segmentation (Lead Segmentation)
- balance management in the transition from Lead to paying customers
LEAD GENERATION
The importance of Marketing Automation for companies is today beyond doubt, so much so that it has now been considered an indispensable resource. However, its effectiveness starts from a good Inbound Marketing activity aimed at acquiring quality contacts: these strategic actions are called Lead Generation.
Through this practice, a list of people interested (also defined as prospects) is created for the product / service offered which, with the right steps, will be converted into customers. But how to build this profiled database of potential customers? The means are different: SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing and E-mail Marketing are some of the tools used, but the most widely used is certainly the Lead Magnet. The word itself says it: we use a magnet, represented by a valuable content (it can be an e-book, a mini-guide or a tutorial), which the user downloads only after entering some of his data.
At the basis of these procedures, in order that the available budget is not dispersed, there must be a meticulous study of the Buyer Personas and their Customer Journey. What does it mean? It is necessary to identify the characteristics of the typical customer and the related online behavior.
If inserted in a marketing strategy and used correctly, Lead Generation offers a valuable assist to continue with successful automations.
LEAD NURTURING
Once quality leads are obtained, B2B Marketing Automation software is very useful in building relationships of trust and empathy with potential customers. How do they do it? Through the Lead Nurturing activity.
Among the means to carry out this practice, email marketing seems to be the most effective and with the lowest costs. The automations in this field are a godsend when it comes to managing full-bodied databases, as the secret is to personalize communication with contacts. The software knows the habits and the propensity to purchase the acquired leads, and uses one-to-one communication to approach the conversion process in the most natural way possible.
On the practical side, Lead Nurturing is an "educational" activity towards potential customers through informational emails. The objectives of this strategy are mainly:
- Brand Awareness (to make the company and the product / service offered known to the user, informing him on how the latter can satisfy his need)
- Consideration (the user is offered interesting content while the automation software studies its engagement to start the segmentation activity)
LEAD SEGMENTATION
In this phase, the key is to make sure that the potential customer knows the company and starts to trust, it is not yet a contact ready to buy. Following the interaction of contacts with information content, the B2B Marketing Automation software has already started to profile potential customers and segment them through the process called Lead Segmentation.
How does it work? The leads are divided into specific groups (segments), each of which is assigned a value (Lead Score) that corresponds to how close that contact is to the purchase (conversion). Automation provides personalized content and messages based on the contact score, to finally achieve these objectives:
- Conversion (you start offering targeted sales offers based on the audiences created)
- Post-purchase (once the sale has been made, the customer becomes loyal, using discounts, up-sells, cross-sells, etc.)
There are Marketing Automation software such as SALESmanago which, starting from the acquisition of the contact, manage personalized communication for the duration of the entire customer life cycle.
CONCLUSIONS
As we have seen so far, B2B Marketing Automation is fundamental in the management of acquired and potential customers, and in the business to business sector it gives its best. Lower costs and improved performance such as higher conversion rates and open rates are just some of the important advantages that these automatisms can bring to your business.
