Reducing the sales cycle time and generating quality leads has always been a priority in the B2B ecosystem. New technologies emerged, buyer-seller exchanges transformed and trends surfaced and passed, yet these interdependent perplexities remained a point of contention in the global commercial space.
The advent of Marketing Automation promised a swift resolution to these long-standing issues and other trade-related problems like leaky sales funnel and ambiguous leads. Granted, Marketing Automation was adopted exclusively by monolith corporations in the past, but contemporary software systems have since scaled to match the needs of SMBs as well.
With real-time analytics and data mining at its core, Marketing Automation refines the sales funnel, accelerates and improves campaign outcomes, and automates the lead-nurturing process, enabling marketers to deliver pipeline momentum by shifting their focus to other critical tasks.
The stats speak for themselves:
– Global Marketing Automation Spending Will Reach $25 Billion By 2023 – Forrester
– Fifty-eight percent of demand and account-based marketers are leveraging conversation automation technologies, with 43% planning to increase or significantly increase budget for online chat as a conversational delivery mechanism. – Forrester
Automation and the B2B Marketer
B2B marketers understand that simply engaging with a brand or business, either through SM, official websites or other mediums isn’t a sure-shot indicator of a potential customer’s intent to buy. It takes a lot more footwork, insight, and a lengthy waiting period before the potential prospect can be converted.
Driving engagement with a streamlined, customer-first buyer journey helps move accounts through the pipeline more quickly. Automation moves things along, with a detailed analysis of a customer’s digital footprint with regard to the brand, providing the sales team with a clear picture of the potential customer’s online behavior.
Automation also provides solutions across channels, verticals, and industries by segmenting and re-programming business processes to provide optimal, customized results. The list of services includes utilities like task automation and workflow customizations. And when you add the need for hyperpersonalization to the growing list of challenges that businesses face, automation provides an easy out for marketers to ensure that their brand stays ahead of the competition.
To illustrate, consider the role marketing automation plays when it comes to tracking user engagement.
Marketing Automation software like Hubspot dispenses an in-depth real-time cross-section of a buyer’s online activity by cataloging website visits, downloads, and SM activity, and facilitating automatic scoring, qualifying, and prioritizing of leads. Marketers can then analyze this data to drive engagement through campaigns that include personalized and periodic emails to maintain interest and keyword-based marketing messages.
Automation redefines the sales process journey by helping the marketing and sales team better understand the prospects and buyers. Through optimal and actionable insights, teams can personalize each buyer’s journey, from the first engagement to the sale and beyond, creating a sustainable framework where interested parties turn into repeat customers, maybe even long-term accounts.
