How to find customers by automating your marketing
B2B marketing presents unique challenges from marketing to consumers because of the different way businesses research and purchase.
Business decisions are less emotional and more data-driven, requiring a labor-intensive research phase involving customer testimonials, ROI analysis, product demonstrations, web searches, and rounds of emails and phone calls.
Businesses are constantly jumping between offline and online resources to gather this information and the result is a longer, more complex sales cycle. B2B marketers struggle to accurately monitor this sales cycle, often losing track of who just started browsing, who is in serious research mode, and who has the green light to purchase.
In a perfect world, a business can monitor a prospect’s interaction across different marketing channels and knows exactly when to send in the sales team to provide closer attention. The real world is a bit murkier, unfortunately, causing many salespeople to jump in too early (wasting their time on a still-cool lead), or reach out too late (and losing a lead to a competitor).
Enter the concept of marketing automation (MA). A relatively recent trend in marketing, it’s an effective method of integrating multiple marketing efforts into a single software application. The software performs most of the common and repetitive marketing tasks, such as sending email, tracking website visitation, creating lead capture forms and landing pages, tracking downloads and scheduling communications.
The software places a strong focus on inbound marketing (versus outbound calls or email blasts) by helping users create and promote useful content such as white papers, blogs, case studies and webinars – exactly what information-hungry businesspeople crave. With MA, the quality of a lead is more prized than the quantity of leads captured.
