Marketing automation for B2B companies is sometimes more complicated to implement than for B2C companies. We show you how it works and which exemplary use cases there are!
What is Marketing Automation? (Webinar with examples)
1) Technical and organizational requirements
Before we show you how to run automated marketing, we first clarify the prerequisites. These are urgently needed to achieve true automation.
Use of a CRM system
The use of a CRM system is urgently necessary. Because all data from marketing and sales converge there. For an analysis (e.g. of the ROI) this system is very important. CRM modules are usually integrated in marketing automation solutions.
Clear responsibilities in sales
There should be a clear distribution of tasks in sales. Nothing is worse than a lead that has to wait 5 days before it is assigned to the right person in the company.
Good website or webshop
Your website, your store or your landing pages are the basic framework on which marketing automation is built. A suitable structure, a responsive design and good structuring are particularly important.
2) Practical examples in the B2B area
After clarifying the prerequisites, we would like to show you some examples of how Marketing Automation can be implemented.
Segment your website visitors
By classifying visitors in a meaningful way, you can deliver appropriate call-to-actions. Here, it makes a big difference which persona you want to address. At the beginning there should always be the consideration: Which personas are we actually addressing? We shed light on working with buyer personas in this article closer.
Should you show the CEO of a company the same CTAs as a marketing professional? Probably not!
Through meaningful segmentation of your users, you have already collected very important information about the visitor in the first step. This information is technically stored in the user's browser via a cookie. Thus, the software recognizes the user at any time. Even without a cookie, this identification is possible based on several factors. However, segmentation via an active action of the user is not always mandatory and often not desired.
There is also another solution here:
Through your own SEA ads or very specific content for your personas, you can already classify the user. Here, extensive conditions are set in the marketing automation tool.
Valuable content marketing
Design valuable and interesting content. Think carefully about what content might be interesting for your users. This should offer real added value. Especially in the B2B area, you have to think very carefully about what can really be useful for other companies.
By entering its Name and the E-mail address in this example, the user receives a free digital copy of a magazine. This means the user has already proactively connected with you, and we've unlocked a new channel: Email marketing.
Case Studies
Especially in the B2B area, practical examples and successfully completed projects are enormously important.
Free consultations
Offer your customers free consultations or on-site appointments, for example. Without obligations.
Webinars
Webinars allow you to provide exceptional industry information to businesses.
Design a meaningful user journey along the sales funnel:
This step is one of the most important. You need to think about: With which Contents I reach which Users, to which Time on which Channel and with which Action?
This logic, through the corresponding workflows, is stored once in your marketing automation software and continuously optimized. As soon as a new lead enters, all workflows run automatically. Tasks that used to run manually (e.g. sending informative content in the form of newsletters) run automatically here.
This saves costs, time and is also more individual and therefore more efficient!
Integrate your IT systems
The more integrations there are, the more data you can use, the more can be automated and the better actions can be executed. Through the comprehensive integration of e.g. CRM, email, content management system, online store, Google Ads and Facebook Ads, an all-encompassing marketing automation can be achieved.
3) Special features in the B2B area
Whether B2B or B2C, marketing automation promises success in both areas. Nevertheless, there are some special features in the B2B area. We have summarized them once again.
Marketing Automation for Business to Business:
- Focus: Lead generation
- Tactics: Valuable Content, Lead Nurturing
- Long sales cycles
4) The systems
The big "giants" like salesforce, Marketo and HubSpot usually offer very expensive solutions. But there are also cheaper and often more effective solutions like SALESmanago. Try the marketing automation software now for free.
