B2B Marketing Automation

If you've ever heard of lead automation or email automation, you might think that the title of this article doesn't tell you anything new. But you thought wrong! Because marketing automation in the B2B sector is much more than just the totality of the functions of lead automation and email automation together.

B2B Marketing Automation does more than just send automated emails or generate leads. B2B marketing automation creates targeted and individual communication with your customers. With B2B marketing automation, you digitize your sales and align your communication precisely with the buyer personas of your potential customers. Now you're probably wondering why you don't have B2B Marketing Automation yet, if it seems to take so much work off your hands and increase your success. Do B2B companies even need marketing automation?

Our answer to this question is a clear and unequivocal "Yes!". Classic sales and conventional marketing structures are increasingly changing. They are moving more and more towards modern communication via the Internet. This applies not only to the B2C sector, but above all to B2B communication. The digital space has gained enormous relevance in the last 2 years. And rightly so!

Digitalized marketing creates massive advantages in lead generation and many other areas that are indispensable for a B2B company. However, these new structures naturally also give rise to new challenges. Because the more a B2B company is visible to the buyer personas in the digital journey, the more leads are automatically recorded.

At this point, problems can arise because not every lead is directly sales-ready and manual lead processing is no longer feasible due to the masses of leads generated by new marketing structures. We have taken on this problem and developed a B2B marketing automation that takes the hurdles of online B2B marketing off your shoulders and achieves measurably greater success.

What advantages marketing automation brings you

Basically, marketing automation is a software-based system that takes marketing and sales processes off your hands and digitizes them in the same step. That's all well and good, you might think, but what good is it really?

By automating your marketing activities and marketing processes with the help of software solutions, you intensify and optimize your market cultivation all by yourself. Through marketing automation, you set the course for greater sales success. The use of B2B marketing automation ultimately brings you more sales for your company.

Your success is influenced by several factors that should be included in a good B2B marketing automation. An essential component is automated workflows, such as the automation of your email communication, the targeted lead flow in your data or targeted marketing campaigns. In order for your B2B marketing automation to work effectively for you and for you to be able to target your time and the time of your team, your B2B marketing automation needs some technical features. These include a database, interfaces with your systems (e.g. CRM system or ERP system), a uniform data structure and comprehensive, web-based controlling. Everything is controlled centrally via marketing automation software, so you don't have to worry about the requirements of the operating systems you use.

Once you've found the right B2B marketing automation for you, here's how you'll benefit from B2B marketing automation:

• Lead Automation
• Email marketing and newsletter automation
• Landing page management and maintenance
• Tracking, reporting and controlling
• Data collection, maintenance and dissemination
• Web2Print
• Digital Services and Online Marketing
• Integration of CRM, ERP, PIM, MAM and sales tools

With B2B marketing automation, you create automated workflows for your team, which forwards the campaigns to the buyer personas. The campaigns can then be managed and evaluated in a central system. This way, you have everything in one place and no longer have to switch back and forth between different applications.

Another advantage of B2B marketing automation is the personalized and individual approach to your target group. Marketing automation creates systematic segmentation of your leads, continuous nurturing of leads and targeted lead scoring, which means fewer leads are lost and you optimize your customer approach.

In summary, this means that you actively manage the customer journey of your leads and thus create a much better buying experience. This increases your sales and thus your success.

What B2B Marketing Automation looks like in practice

Once you have decided on a functional B2B marketing automation, the first step is to define the buyer persona. Here, you should ask yourself what your customers need from you, which industries they belong to and what the conventional key data are. On the basis of your buyer persona, you can now create a so-called user flow that precisely adapts to your customer journey. Your marketing department can be a useful help here. You define in advance which steps the potential customer will go through in the marketing campaign and who the traditional customers are.

In practice, this can look like this: A prospect comes across your website or a blog post about your product or service via organic Google search, Google Ads or other advertising. As part of your GDPR-compliant lead management, you may have already integrated a contact form on your website, which the prospect can use to request more information. He then "pays" with his data by entering first name, last name, company, position and email address. At this point, B2B marketing automation kicks in and initiates various processes.

Customized content for your leads with B2B marketing automation

Now that you have your prospect's basic data stored in the system, you can offer them what they need from you. Thanks to the contact form, you know which subject area the lead is interested in and take him or her by the hand with B2B marketing automation without having to do any work yourself.

Leads usually ask for more information. You provide them with this information in an automated welcome email that matches their position. For example, the welcome mail can contain a link to your page where the lead can download or view various additional content, such as:

• A demo version
• A haptic product sample
• A success story or case study appropriate to the industry
• An illustrative application video
• A comprehensive white paper on his interests
• An information package on product data sheets

The content can be diverse, there are no limits to your creativity. The only important thing is that the content fits your target group exactly. Within B2B Marketing Automation, you can easily adapt your content models to your lead management. You should only make sure that you use the content to convert the Marketing Qualified Lead into a Sales Qualified Lead and thus move it further down the lead funnel.

Qualify and categorize leads with automated processes

One thing should always be clear to you during the entire lead generation process: A lead is far from being a paying customer. For this reason, the lead requires special attention and cannot yet be directly transferred to the sales process.

To prepare your leads for the sales process, you should first categorize them. A free scheduler online of your B2B marketing automation can help you here, with which you divide your leads into three categories:

• Information Qualified Lead
• Marketing Qualified Lead
• Sales Qualified Lead

If you have converted the marketing qualified lead into a sales qualified lead, the lead will willingly provide you with more information or data. You must define for yourself at what level of information the lead is suitable for the further sales process. The criteria for this vary depending on the industry and company. The following examples can help you to qualify your leads:

• You have all the important contact details of the lead
• You know the time requirements of the lead
• You know about the project details
• You have important information about buying interests
• You know possible stakeholders or buyers

Automated transfer of your leads into the sales process

Once your leads have reached a certain scoring value, they are transferred to your further sales process. You define the scoring value yourself, but the transfer to the sales process happens automatically with B2B marketing automation. All enriched data is transferred with the lead:

• Origin of the lead (website, social media, campaign, webinar, etc.)
• Content played out to the lead
• Scoring of the lead
• Complete contact details incl. DOI
• Activity profile of the lead
• Assignment of the lead

If you work with B2B marketing automation software, the data is automatically forwarded to your CRM. If you have automated this step, you save yourself and your sales team considerable time and effort. Your sales team can get back to the tasks they do best: Signing sales!

Your B2B Marketing Automation from meetergo

Now that you know about the benefits of B2B Marketing Automation, you're probably wondering where you can get this magic bullet. We at meetergo have the answer for you!

We have developed a software with which you can lead generation automate your lead generation, optimize your lead response time, transfer your data to the CRM and increase your conversions 4-fold. And all this without having to do a single step manually. Our B2B Marketing Automation helps your team turn inbound leads into new customers faster and more efficiently. Everything is automated, which significantly optimizes your processes and has a positive impact on your success.

As DSGVO-compliant software, we know what the highest level of data protection is all about and how it can productively support you in your lead generation. By using B2B Marketing Automation from meetergo, you can steer your internal processes in a targeted, successful direction. The numerous functions and integrations of our software support you in this.

Are you curious? Find out how meetergo can improve your B2B sales and increase revenue. Support your sales team and increase your sales 4-fold with B2B Marketing Automation from meetergo.

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