B2B Marketing Automation: How to Build a Marketing Automation Strategy

Did you know that companies using automation earn 53% more conversions overall? Business to business (B2B) marketing automation helps your business increase leads, sales, and revenue.

But if you aren’t familiar with B2B marketing automation, you may feel overwhelmed trying to sink your teeth into it. That’s why we’ve created this guide to marketing automation for B2B to help you get started.

We’ll answer questions like:

• What is B2B marketing automation?
• What’s the difference between B2B and B2C marketing automation?
• Why should I use B2B marketing automation?
• How can I use B2B marketing automation?
• How do I find the right B2B marketing automation software?

Keep reading to find out more! P.S. Want to get helpful hints for marketing your business online? Join 200,000+ savvy marketers by subscribing to Revenue Weekly for marketing tips and tricks!

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What is B2B marketing automation?

B2B marketing automation involves automating tasks to improve your marketing workflow.

You use software to trigger specific tasks and actions to occur based on your audiences’ behavior, so you reach people at the right time.

B2B vs. B2C marketing automation: What’s the difference?

When you’re looking at marketing automation for B2B, you may wonder how it’s different from business-to-consumer (B2c) marketing automation. While the two are very similar, the biggest difference lies in how these types of companies use marketing automation.

For B2C marketing automation, much of the automated tasks focuses on delivering personalized marketing materials. B2C companies want to deliver an experience focused on individual leads and what they want, so they convert.

For B2B businesses, the focus is on delivering educational content.

While the content they deliver can be tailored to certain businesses, generally the focus is on delivering content that educates them about the industry, product, or service.

Why should I use B2B marketing automation?

Now that you know the difference between B2B vs. B2C marketing automation, lets dive into why you should us B2B automation.

If you’re unsure that marketing automation for B2Bs is right for you, consider these two big reasons to start building a B2B marketing automation strategy:

1. B2B marketing automation frees up your time

One of the most significant benefits of marketing automation is that it frees up your time.

Many marketing tasks are repetitive or tedious but critical to your business’s success, nonetheless. When you spend your time doing these tasks, though, it takes away a substantial amount of time from other marketing projects.

With marketing automation for B2B, you can take these repetitive tasks off your plate. Marketing automation enables you to automate processes like sending emails or recording client data, so your team can spend more time on other marketing tasks.

2. B2B marketing automation saves you money

Another great benefit of using B2B marketing automation software is that you save money.

Without marketing automation, your marketing team handles sending welcome emails or launching an email nurturing campaign. Your sales team, likewise, must spend time logging data for leads.  

As a result, you must hire more people to help handle other aspects of your sales and marketing.

With marketing automation, you can save money with your campaigns.

You can automate simple tasks, which means you need fewer people to handle your sales and marketing. Additionally, automation can help you retain clients better and keep them engaged.

Considering it costs 10 times as much to earn a new customer than to retain an existing one, automation is key to helping you spend less money trying to obtain new leads.

WebFX specializes in B2B client success.

Wheeler Machinery Co., saw 82% higher average time on site after partnering with WebFX for SEO, CRO, web design and development, and website content services.

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4 ways to use B2B marketing automation

So, how can you use B2B marketing automation software to help you market to your leads more efficiently? Here are the top four ways to use B2B marketing automation:

1. Customer profiling

One of the best uses for B2B marketing automation is customer profiling.

When you get new leads, you want to know everything about them to market to them more effectively. Since you’re marketing to businesses, you must understand the culture and values of the company, as well as the characteristics of the company’s decision-makers.

You also want to track how your audience interacts with your business, whether through content, ads, or your website.

It’s a lot of information to retain and takes your sales team a lot of time to log that data.

Instead of having your team manually log it, you can use marketing automation for B2B to cut down on your logging time.

You can use customer relationship management (CRM) software, like Nutshell, to automatically log the information for you. A tool like Nutshell can integrate into the forms on your website, collect the data, and get it to your sales team faster.

Your sales team won’t need to waste time logging information anymore!

On top of that, marketing automation gives your team the power to segment leads.

When you segment your leads, your sales and marketing team can market to them more effectively and deliver them the information that matters most. In addition, marketing automation tools like Nutshell help you track how these leads interact with your business.

You can see their website session history, their visit duration, and more. All this data is automatically collected and logged, so your team has it right at their fingertips.

With these complete and detailed customer profiles, your sales team can focus on nurturing these leads towards conversion rather than logging data.

2. Lead scoring

Another way to use marketing automation for B2B is lead scoring.

When you have many leads, it can be challenging for your sales team to know who to focus on first. Some people will be closer to conversion than others, so you don’t want to miss the opportunity to convert those leads at the right time.

Lead scoring allows you to automatically give leads scores based on how they interact with your business.

Certain actions award more points than others, which can help you focus on high-scoring leads that are ready to convert. For example, let’s say you have the following point system:

• Reads a piece of content: 1 point
• Fills out a form: 5 points
• Downloads a guide: 3 points
• Opens an email: 2 points

Then you have three leads who complete the following actions:

• Marquis: Read two pieces of content (2 points), opened an email (2 points)
• Melissa: Filled out a form (5 points)
• Dominique: Read a piece of content (1 point), Downloaded a guide (3 points), Filled out a form (5 points)

Based on these actions and your scoring model, your sales team would immediately focus on Dominique, as she has the highest lead score and, therefore, is closest to conversion.

Lead scoring is critical for helping your sales team focus on the right leads at the right time to help you earn more clients.

3. Lead nurturing

After you identify your high-scoring leads, your B2B marketing automation strategy can help you nurture those leads towards conversion.

Another excellent use for B2B marketing automation software is lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing is critical for taking companies from leads to clients. Since you need to engage these prospects continually, you can rely on marketing automation to help you do it by executing your lead nurturing process.

With a tool like MarketingCloudFX, you can nurture leads through strategies like email. Email marketing is an excellent way for you to continually send helpful information to prospects that nudges them closer to conversion.

You can send these emails based on their recent behavior and interactions with your business or based on their position within your sales cycle.

With B2B marketing automation, you can set up anything from welcome emails to if/then sequences.

Using B2B automation can continuously nurture more leads towards conversion and help your business earn new clients.

4. Client retention

Once you obtain new clients, your work isn’t done. You need to continue engaging them so they stay with your company. Marketing automation for B2B can help you keep clients.

With features like email automation, you can continually send promotions and information to your clients.

For example, if you sell software, you may send your clients helpful information about how to maximize your software or new improvements you’ve made to it.

It costs 10 times more to obtain new clients than to retain existing ones, as we stated earlier. B2B marketing automation can help you keep your clients and save you money in the process.

4 quick tips for choosing the right B2B marketing automation software

Need help finding the right B2B marketing automation software? Here are four quick tips to help you find the right one:

1. Set a budget: To find the right B2B marketing automation software, first set a budget. Determine how much you’re willing to spend on automation software before you start shopping around.
2. Look for lead management: A big part of your B2B automation strategy involves obtaining, nurturing, and converting leads. Make sure your automation software has features that allow you to record lead data and create campaigns to engage leads.
3. Look for email integration: Since email is a critical component of nurturing and retaining clients, you want to look for B2B marketing automation software that includes an email marketing function. Having email marketing in your software allows you to automatically schedule emails without getting a separate program.
4. Check for reporting and analytics features: When you’re investing time and money into marketing to interested prospects, you want to ensure your strategies work. Look for marketing automation software that tracks your campaign performance so you can see where you need to improve.

Need help finding the right B2B marketing automation software for your business?

Investing in marketing automation for B2B is critical if you want to move your business forward. WebFX offers B2B marketing automation software that makes it easy to manage your marketing and sales.

With our proprietary marketing software, MarketingCloudFX, you can launch email marketing campaigns, track campaign performance, and find valuable insights for improving your strategy.

We also offer Nutshell, which enables you to collect valuable data on leads and use it to market to them more effectively. Best of all, Nutshell integrates into MarketingCloudFX, giving you a one-two power punch for your sales and marketing team.

Want to learn more about our software backed by a team of over 500+ marketing experts with over 28 years of experience?

Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist!