Marketing director, consultant or sales manager in the BtoB: This guide has been designed to help you increase your sales thanks to marketing automation.
Your prospects receive an average of 6,000 information per day . In this context, capturing their attention requires more and more efforts from your marketing and commercial teams.
Marketing Automation is the solution to generate more qualified prospects by reducing your time spent prospecting. Used intelligently, it allows you to refine your targeting, improve your campaigns and (above all!) To better control their king .
But how to make marketing automation, concretely? What are the essential principles to master? How to go about BtoB? Explanations.
What is marketing automation?
Definition of Marketing Automation
To simply describe it, marketing automation consists in using technology to automate the management of your marketing campaigns such as targeting, sending emails, reminders or even lead nurturing. The settings can be made by you or based on predefined models.
The main advantage of marketing automation is to accumulate knowledge of your prospects to personalize your campaigns . So much so that today it is very difficult to do effective leading without automation.
Marketing Automation in BtoB and BtoC
Marketing Automation is used both in BTOC and BtoB. Indeed, companies are all faced with this same issue: send the right message, to the right interlocutor, at the right time .
The common objectives are therefore as follows:
- Take care of your brand image, sending impactful messages to subscribers;
- Obtain data to measure the effectiveness of marketing actions;
- Master the king of the campaigns made;
- Increase business income.
Nevertheless, there are certain peculiarities in the BtoB:
- The purchase cycles are generally longer. Decisions are less impulsive. This means that lead nurturing is very important to reassure and trigger the purchasing decision.
- The customer generally decides during an interview with your sales team. This means that marketing actions are more intended to generate qualified prospects than to trigger conversions.
Why do Marketing Automation solutions generate more sales?
Your marketing and commercial teams save time
Your business marketing and sales managers are multi-tape. Thanks to an automation solution, these managers can limit their time dedicated to repetitive and tedious tasks .
In terms of prospecting, marketing automation allows you to collect behavior data on your prospects and give them a score . You therefore know with more precision which prospects require the attention of your salespeople.
Marketing automation software is not just used to manage customers and prospects. They also act as databases for your team . Therefore, no matter where your staff is, each member has access to the same data that is up to date.
You improve your relationship with your prospects and customers
Marketing automation software allows you to know the place of each prospect in the sales tunnel . You can then adapt your actions according to its maturity. Personalizing your approach according to its centers of interest makes it more inclined to take an interest in your offers.
Concretely, the software can be configured to carry out certain actions according to information on your customers. In particular, it will be possible to target the content according to the content which really interests them.
An asset for your dirty teams
With marketing automation, your salespeople no longer have to fight for hours to determine whether a person is a lead or not . It is the tool which, thanks to your customer data, determines the interest in devoting to a prospect or not.
What are the Marketing Automation tools?
Marketing Solution Automation and CRM: what difference?
Customer relations management software (CRM) and marketing automation software have different objectives . A CRM is mainly used by sales teams to interact with customers . A marketing automation platform is used above all for marketing .
CRM software follows the actions of potential or effective customers on your social networks, your emails or your website. He collects information and guides each contact , throughout the purchasing process.
A marketing automation tool offers features to optimize the sending of marketing campaigns to your prospects.
Tools to automate your emails
These solutions are used to send automated emails to your subscribers . You usually have your emails formatting features. They offer the creation of “Customer Journey” (or customer journey) to script your interactions .
Why is this kind of tool interesting? It allows you to send the right message to the right people , without having to act manually.
Specialized solutions for social networks
It is also possible to apply marketing automation on social networks . You have for example the possibility of programming publications, republishing popular articles or sending automated private messages. The management of social networks being very time -consuming, this type of tool saves considerable time .
SMS Automation tools
SMS Automation is to automatically send text messages according to conditions defined in advance. These conditions can be simple or complex, depending on your goals. "yes or no" type questions or niche scenarios, they are relatively easy to set up . Obviously, you can always make adjustments if necessary.
Omnical automation marketing solutions
There are all-in-one solutions , such as that offered by Magileads . Indeed, during a marketing campaign, you will sometimes have to take advantage of all digital channels. It therefore seems interesting to have a platform which centralizes several of the features announced above. On Magileads, you have the possibility of having access to an almost complete French database. But above all, once your campaigns have been launched, you can monitor your statistics to see if your actions are effective.
What are the features of a marketing automation solution?
tracking and lead scoring
You must understand how your audience reacts to your marketing campaigns. The objective? See if your interactions create more opportunities and sales. By automating your lead monitoring and rating models, you can send your salespeople to better qualified leads.
Concretely, you must rely on concrete data . For example, some members of your target just open your email, without any particular reaction. But there are others that take the trouble to click on your links and even download your PDF documents in PJ. On your social media accounts, the reactions of your target are also different.
Creation and personalization of marketing campaigns
The automation of marketing processes saves considerable time. However, it is possible to easily fall into a current trap . By dint of automating too much, the content can sometimes lack personalization.
Of course, it is not a question either of creating 100 % personalized content for each customer. The idea is to have content with a common base and insert variables as a function of the targeted segment . The segmentation criteria can be diverse: age, profession, geographic location, place in the purchasing process, etc.
The content to be personalized generally concerns e-mailing campaigns . In addition to the content written proper, it is important to add an URL leading to a personalized landing page for your target.
Creation of marketing scenarios
The marketing scenario consists in planning a series of interactions with your prospect according to his behavior. This series of actions is scheduled in order to achieve a certain marketing objective. It may be a purchase on your site, an appointment reservation or the download of an e-book for example.
As part of Marketing Automation, you must therefore set up a workflow (or workflow). In simple terms, it is a process that details automated actions taking place at each stage.
For example, if someone subscribes to your newsletter, your marketing automation software adds it to your mail contact list . Following this, he automatically sends her a welcome email the same day, then a second email 7 days later.
Automation of activity on social networks
Automation at this level does not only concern publications. Indeed, on networks, such as LinkedIn , you can also program the sending of invitations . In this way, you will be a relevant network of contacts.
You can also program automatic responses for your private messages. This is interesting if you are generally not able to follow up on the request immediately. In this way, your interlocutors will not feel ignored.
Performance analysis (King, KPI)
Your marketing automation software memorizes the performance of your campaigns and the reactions of your prospects. You have access to a complete dashboard with all KPIs to control your performance: sales volume, response rate, opening rate, etc.
The KPIs, coupled with the king's calculation (return on investment), let you know if your objectives are really achieved. If there are differences, it is possible to study their reasons. So you adopt the proper corrective measures.
Marketing Automation: How to get started?
Data collection and targeting
The first step is to have a contact base . If you use a marketing automation solution such as the Magileads solution , you can import your database in a few clicks or synchronize your different applications with the tool (CRM, ERP).
Note that the Magileads platform provides its users with a basis of more than 20 million BtoB contacts update daily. This feature is ideal for companies whose database is still underdeveloped.
Once you have formed your base, your solution can offer you a targeting functionality to send your campaigns . You can for example target a sector, a precise function and/or a location.
Programming of marketing actions
Before programming your shipments, you must of course create the content . To do this, choose the type of information to distribute. Indeed, depending on your objectives (sell or inform), the tone and the format to be adopted are not the same.
You can customize your content with variables (name, first name, company position, etc.) . This simple feature makes it possible to considerably increase the commitment of your readers. Your recipients have the impression of reading a message that is personally sent to them. You can also add visual elements (photos and videos) and documents (guide, e-book) that bring added value.
Once this is done, you just have to program publications or send messages , as well as reminders . Without forgetting to create scenarios, because each of your interlocutors could react in a different way.
Performance and adjustment assessment
As mentioned above, you can rely on the statistics issued by your Marketing Automation solution. Here it is not only a question of the volume of your sales ! You can follow relevant indicators to register in a continuous improvement process: opening rate of your campaigns, clicks and number of downloads , etc.
