Whether small businesses, self-employed or large corporations - marketing & sales are the backbone of every single company. Especially since the beginning of digitalisation, marketing is becoming increasingly complex and multi-layered.
Marketing activities carried out manually require a considerable amount of extra time and workload that should not be underestimated. The more individual and personalised the measures, the greater the effort required.
And this is precisely where B2B marketing automation comes into play. As the name suggests, it is possible to automate parts of marketing thanks to intelligent tools—for example, the automatic sending of emails.
Tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce Pardot make the life of your marketing department easier by freeing it from tasks and, simultaneously, are the basis for a contemporary and target group-oriented approach.
Thanks to more efficient processes and optimised campaigns, your marketing will reach a whole new level. More sales, more satisfied customers, and time savings are just some of the many benefits.
Compared to the B2C environment, marketing activities in B2B are much more long-term. Decision-making processes also usually take much longer. The more decision-makers involved in the process, the longer it drags on.
These factors must be considered, as well as legal and technical requirements. Sensitive customer data must be protected and kept from misuse. IT and programming skills are also required.
For inexperienced companies, working with qualified experts from a Marketing Automation Agency is highly recommended. If processes are set up incorrectly, or legal requirements are (unknowingly) disregarded, the subsequent costs are usually much higher than placing the project directly in expert hands.
Before we go into detail, we should first explain a few basics for a better understanding.
The term Marketing Automation covers the automation of formerly analogue, recurring marketing activities. Thanks to modern tools, numerous marketing channels, activities and functions can be digitalised and automated.
Automating your marketing brings numerous benefits. You can cover the entire customer journey and follow prospects from the first contact to the desired closing goal and subsequent follow-up.
This makes for happier customers and will skyrocket your sales figures. You will reach both prospects who are already close to making a purchase decision and those who are still researching.
B2B marketing automation enables an optimal and up-to-date customer approach, reduces workload, saves costs in the long term, and increases your return on investment.
David Meerman Scott (author of several well-known marketing books)
Roughly defined, the following three areas are covered:
Marketing automation tools also offer the following functions across all areas:
If you want to dive deeper into the basics of marketing automation and are looking for tools and tips, be sure to read our article "Marketing Automation 2023: Definition, Tools, and Tips"
Let's start with the most obvious difference between the two areas. While B2C marketing automation activities are geared towards private customers, B2B marketing automation measures aim to reach business customers. From this simple fact, some of the key differences already emerge.
While the customer journey in the B2C segment is usually rather short, the process in the B2B segment can stretch over several weeks, months or even years. Basically, the more decision-makers involved in the process, the longer it takes. These circumstances must be taken into account accordingly in marketing and sales communication.
On the other hand, the following aspects play a stronger role in the B2C environment than in the counterpart:
If we think of well-known online shops, another difference comes to mind. In online shopping, fully automated purchase processes have been commonplace for decades. With a few exceptions, such as customer service and complaints management, interpersonal interactions between customers and suppliers are a rarity.
The usual business process in the B2B sector is different. Although large parts of the customer journey are now also completely digitalised and automated, the final contract is usually still concluded in a personal meeting.
Brian Halligan (Founder & CEO of HubSpot)
Enough about theory. In this section, we will look at practical application examples of B2B Marketing Automation. The following ten examples will show you the incredible potential that lies in its application.
The regular, automated and plannable generation of leads is an essential prerequisite for scaling business processes. However, many companies still do not have clear processes and tend to rely on random leads rather than constant enquiries.
Thanks to modern marketing automation tools, you can create converting landing pages & lead magnets in no time. This means you can turn website visitors into leads in no time at all and then hand them over to your sales team. Away from nerve-racking cold calls to motivated and business-ready prospects.
Not all leads are the same. Just because a prospect has signed up for your newsletter or your lead magnet, they are far from ready to buy. Contacting them in person too quickly could scare them away and make them unresponsive to further action.
Once the leads are generated, they can be further qualified directly by means of automated email sequences. The richer the information in a lead, the more valuable it is. Every additional piece of information means increased interest from the contact. Within the scope of our activities as an Email Marketing Agency, we cover the construction of such sequences from A to Z.
Marketing automation relieves your sales team and takes away the initial contact with the prospect. Thus, your sales team can concentrate on the most promising contacts and convert them into paying customers.
Do you actually know who your most valuable customers are, how high the sales volume is and how much potential still lies in the business contact? Do your employees also know this, and is this information available transparently? Most of the time, these circumstances are not given.
Smart tools are able to evaluate these and many other aspects thanks to numerous data. Leads can be evaluated by means of a fixed point system. For example, according to the density of information available or the reaction to previous marketing measures.
In this way, you can identify the most promising leads in no time at all and pay special attention to them.
Are you tired of monitoring each social media channel individually? Would you like to save time, costs and nerves in your daily work and, at the same time, advance your marketing?
Then marketing automation will make your working life much easier. You can upload posts automatically and across platforms and expand statistics in a clear and centralised dashboard.
This also applies to other marketing channels, such as email marketing, SEO and content marketing. Thus, different campaigns can be directly compared, evaluated and optimised.
Only a fraction of all visitors will contact you directly, sign up for your newsletter or convert in any other way. The majority of your website visitors, on the other hand, will disappear again without having taken any action. This means you miss out on a lot of sales potential.
Thanks to modern retargeting possibilities, interested parties can be addressed again. And this can be done almost anywhere on the internet. This means that your company remains omnipresent and can draw attention to itself again. In most cases, only one more impulse or one more contact is needed to achieve the desired goal.
Classic marketing measures such as newspaper advertisements or billboards are nice to look at, but they cannot really be addressed in a target group-oriented and accurate manner. Rather, they aim in the dark and generate wastage and avoidable costs.
B2B Marketing Automation makes it particularly easy to analyse your target group thanks to numerous data. B2B contacts can be easily segmented based on characteristics such as region, number of employees, industry or sales volume.
This enables a high degree of accuracy and reduces wastage to a minimum. The results of your campaigns will also improve significantly due to precise targeting.
Professional marketing takes time, patience and some manpower. Especially if the human and time resources in the company are lacking, it can be difficult to implement the necessary processes to achieve the business goals.
As already explained with a few examples, B2B Marketing Automation will relieve both you and your employees of numerous tasks and complete them automatically. This way, you can relieve your employees and use capacities for essential business processes.
Think of the marketing tool as a new colleague that supports the existing team wherever possible. Get rid of nerve-racking and repetitive tasks and enjoy the additional free time.
Is your business model highly seasonal or is your turnover particularly high in a certain season? Then you certainly know how much effort and strain this time of year usually entails. Everything is meticulously prepared for months and in the end a small thing is forgotten that throws the entire campaign over the edge.
B2B Marketing Automation will make your working life much easier. Thanks to the intelligent tools, you can plan and prepare campaigns & projects well in advance. With the start of the season, you can carry out large parts of your project fully automatically and thus save yourself huge amounts of working time and effort.
Furthermore, recurring events such as birthdays, holidays and anniversaries can serve as triggers for automated messages. For example, you can automatically send your customers birth wishes combined with a discount code.
Are you dissatisfied with the average shopping basket value of your visitors? Your customers only ever buy enough to reach the minimum order value? Do you have many one-off purchases but have difficulty triggering further orders?
The completion of the purchase is the optimal starting point for upselling or cross-selling. After all, the customer is already in a buying mood and, therefore, particularly receptive to attractive offers. Automation tools offer numerous opportunities to increase your sales during the buying process. Typical examples of upselling and cross-selling are:
- Higher-value service / higher-priced product of the same type
- Larger quantity combined with a discount
- Combination packages
- Similar goods matching the desired item
- Upgrade to the next quality or performance level
Numbers, data and facts are the basis for efficient decisions in modern marketing. However, very few companies succeed in collecting reliable data and evaluating it accurately. Rather, important decisions are made on the basis of uncertain foundations and thus result in false conclusions.
Versatile platforms such as HubSpot or Salesforce Pardot are able to seamlessly analyse and evaluate the entire marketing process.
They can present the customer journey in detail and provide exciting insights behind the surface. This allows you to see exactly where success can already be achieved and where there is still a need for action.
Important decisions and measures can be taken based on actual data and facts. Campaigns can be optimised and improved step by step.
Marketing automation in the B2B environment is complex and expensive. You should allow at least six months for the change to pay off. As already described, the benefits are enormous and automation will take both your marketing and your sales to the next level. However, it should also be mentioned here that the conversion is not profitable for every company.
Then feel free to contact us. We will share our assessment with you and advise you in detail on the topic of marketing automation.
Basically, the more customers and prospects you reach or would like to reach in the future, the more rewarding the automation process will be for you.
Before you go head over heels, you should definitely take the following ten tips to heart. They will save you a lot of time and stress and help you achieve your marketing goals faster.
You certainly know your own sales & marketing process inside out. But this will not be true for every employee in your company. In particular, the IT department and external forces will first have to get to grips with your company's structure in detail.
In order for automation to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible, you should define your current status quo as explicitly as possible.
Think of your sales and marketing funnel from the bottom up. So start with your maximum online target (lead or direct sale) and then work your way up the funnel step by step to the first contact.
As the well-known saying goes, "a good plan is half of the work done." Therefore, set clear goals and milestones to be achieved right from the start. Define a timed roadmap and set out the responsibilities, accountabilities and tasks that will arise for the project.
This will reduce uncertainties and delays later on. Take your time with the planning, it will pay off many times over the course of the project.
Having the right tool at hand is essential for a successful project. The numerous tools in the area of B2B marketing automation offer many overlaps, but also some serious differences.
Accordingly, you should proceed carefully when selecting the tool. Check carefully which software is most suitable for your company. Important factors are:
If you need support in the selection process, we will be happy to assist you. We know numerous providers from daily practice and together we will find the right tool for your company.
Only what can be measured can be optimised. Therefore, define right at the beginning which marketing and sales key figures are relevant for your company. This way, later campaigns and measures can be evaluated and optimised in a targeted manner. Important key figures are:
One of the most important rules in modern marketing is:
"Think of your target group first."
Put yourself in your customers' shoes and think carefully about the people you want to target, what moves and excites them and how they think. The better you know your target group, the more precisely you can tailor your marketing to them.
Create content along the customer journey and meet the needs in the different phases. Accompany potential customers from the first interest to the conclusion of the purchase and offer maximum added value during each individual step.
Digitisation and data are inseparable. B2B marketing automation generates a lot of sensitive customer and company data. This data must be protected from unauthorised access and misuse.
It is therefore essential to take into account the provisions of the GDPR and ensure a legally compliant system. Particular care must be taken with legally compliant data tracking and email marketing. In both cases, the explicit consent of the customer is an absolute requirement.
Data protection violations can be very costly on the one hand and mean a loss of trust in the customer relationship on the other. Good expert advice is therefore a sensible investment here.
Whether during the initial implementation or during ongoing operation - in order for you to be able to work with your system correctly and properly, it requires a cleansed and structured database. Therefore, cleanse your system of duplicates, outdated data and incorrect information in good time. Clean data is the basis for meaningful reporting.
Most marketing automation tools offer great possibilities for extensive and detailed measurements of activities.
Evaluate your defined key figures regularly and you will get a comprehensive overview of which processes are successful, which still have optimisation potential and which are simply ineffective.
In this way, you can optimise your marketing step by step and noticeably improve your results.
B2B Marketing Automation projects are constantly changing and need to be continuously adapted to legal, technical and operational changes. In order to enjoy your system for a long time, you should regularly update it, maintain data and strive for constant improvements in daily use.
If you've read this far, you should have realised that B2B Marketing Automation is no walk in the park. From our years of practical experience with numerous clients, we would definitely advise you to get a team of experts on board right at the beginning.
This way, typical beginner's mistakes can be avoided and optimal results can be achieved. Correcting implementation mistakes yourself afterwards is usually much more expensive than handing the project directly over to experts.
Marketing automation systems are very effective and powerful. Marketing automation in the B2B environment offers numerous advantages. Customers can be addressed in a more targeted manner and provided with suitable content along the customer journey.
Employees are relieved of nerve- and time-consuming activities, allowing them to devote themselves to essential and profitable business processes. All marketing activities and campaigns can be designed much more efficiently and optimised in terms of results.
Modern tools are able to generate, qualify and evaluate leads. B2B marketing automation, therefore, does extensive preparatory work. Thus, your sales team receives the most promising leads directly on a silver platter.
In short: your marketing will reach a completely new level. Both turnover and productivity will increase noticeably. Once the implementation costs are recouped, they will pay for themselves many times over.
Despite numerous overlaps, there are also some differences between marketing automation in the B2C environment and in B2B. In particular, the customer journey in B2B is usually much longer and involves several decision-makers. The needs of end customers and business customers also differ and must be taken into account accordingly.
B2B marketing automation is undoubtedly only worthwhile above a certain customer and sales volume. Where exactly this limit lies, however, is difficult to determine and very individual. It should also be noted that implementation requires thorough preparation, and numerous individual factors need to be taken into account.
Especially in the area of data protection, numerous legal pitfalls lurk. Furthermore, the changeover does not happen overnight and requires an amount of work that should not be underestimated.
If your company lacks the necessary time and personnel resources or if there are uncertainties regarding legal and technical requirements, it is advisable to call in external support.
We are experts in B2B marketing automation and have already successfully implemented numerous projects. Together we will also take your marketing to the next level.
Email Katharina Krug: kkrug@kkvision.de
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