3 Ways Marketing Automation Can Help Your B2B Marketing Evolve

Posted by Maria Pergolino on June 20, 2011

0 comments | 957 reads

Today’s B2B marketplace calls for a quick, yet individualized response to the huge consumer appetite for information. But buyers need more than data; they are looking for relationships, too. Hence, the rise of marketing automation. It has now become a must-have tool that B2B marketers shouldn’t do without.

This emerging technology lets companies cater to prospects in a highly personalized fashion and on a grand scale. It takes the art of individual attention and combines it with the benefit of extended reach and efficiency.

However, many B2B marketers haven’t grasped the solid benefits of marketing automation. They are either stuck in traditional tracks or they don’t understand exactly how this cutting-edge tool can revolutionize the entire sales funnel.

If you’ve yet to embrace this corporate-game changer, take a look at 3 benefits marketing automation can bring to your B2B marketing:

1. Go Beyond Lists – Give Life To Your Database
Prospect lists have been the lifeblood of companies for decades but lists don’t represent the living, thinking, tire-kicking folks who make up your prospect pool. It isn’t enough to house a collection of names. You’ve got to get a sense of the personalities of those names.Marketing automation allows marketers to jump quickly into the process of starting relationships when potential leads signal their interest.

Now, when a prospect gives you their email information, you don’t have to distribute just a single whitepaper, cross your fingers and hope it motivates them to buy. Marketing automation allows you to begin an on-going conversation based on prospect needs, interests and behavior.

2. Incubate Your Prospects
Here’s where marketing automation moves prospects effectively through the funnel. Through a series of time-sensitive, behavior-based touch points you can nudge prospects along the lead nurturing path via increased levels of engagement.

Truly targeted email campaigns can nurture each prospect subtly – or more aggressively – and keep them feeling connected to you along the way. You can accelerate or decelerate the frequency of contact based on how your prospects behave. You can adjust the information they receive based on what they really want to know.

Not only does this flexible dialog show prospects you care about how they make their buying decisions, it also provides the added benefit of using lead behavior as a platform for tweaking ongoing lead scoring practices.

3. Develop The Ideal Sales Lead
The better understanding you have of your buyer’s behaviors, the more you’ll be able to integrate your B2B marketing across the Internet landscape.

When you do this, you can leverage the magic of marketing automation to knowingly deploy tactics across channels in ways that best align with what your buyers are researching – now.

In the end, with the right amount of contact and the most apropos content, you’ll see prospects emerge from their sheltered cocoons into evolved leads, ready to convert to sale.

It’s only when you’ve grafted marketing automation into your lead generation process that you give yourself the best chance to maneuver through the thicket of competitors.

The result of your ability to evolve a caterpillar wandering the net into a prospect with wings will result in a sales funnel filled with butterflies that ultimately lift your marketing ROI.

Download The ROI of Marketing Automation from Marketo and start your journey toward evolved marketing.

Republished with author's permission from original post by Maria Pergolino.

Maria Pergolino

Maria specializes in Inbound Marketing for Marketo, leading efforts in adoption of social media channels for brand awareness and demand generation. She has worked in marketing for over ten years, and specifically in online marketing including social media, search marketing, and lead generation and nurturing for the past six.

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