Based on a recent study by Regalix, the top three goals for B2B marketing automation are improving lead quality, improving lead nurturing and increasing lead generation. In the end, it revolves around enhancing the customer experience by utilizing the channels customers interact with the most. Yet, most marketers understand how difficult it can be to generate leads. This is especially true for qualified leads.
Normally, the modus operandi is to work with the few leads you have in order to squeeze out as much as you can. That is often an ineffective strategy. Many customers come and go. Putting all of your eggs in one basket creates a tremendous amount of risk. Another tactic might be to purchase outdated lists that you try to work for several weeks without a lead in sight. You soon start to wonder if you have any marketing skills at all. Well, there is a solution to your trials and tribulations. It comes in the form of marketing automation. Instead of manually performing repetitive processes, you can automate them. Not only do you improve your efficiency, but you qualify leads much faster as well.
Improve collaboration through marketing and sales
If you have separate sales and marketing teams, you might find they often butt heads. The sales team is in the thick, scraping for leads. The marketing teams seem to sit in ivory towers typing up campaigns and advertising. Often the marketing department will say the sales team isn’t closing the leads they’re sending them. In contrast, the sales team will say the leads weren’t truly qualified. Marketing automation can put an end to the bickering.
To illustrate, lead scoring is used to display purchase intent. With marketing automation, prospects can be assigned a lead score. That prospect can then be flagged for the sales team to execute a follow up. In a similar fashion, if the sales team comes across a lead that is not yet at the purchasing stage, but may be ready within the year—the sales team can tag the lead as needing nurturing and pass it to marketing.
Collect data
In order to generate leads, you must have data. Automation software can instantly document all the information received from a lead such as advertisements, email click-throughs and your website. The information then gets compiled through the software, and can even get an automatic lead score. Now, you will know which leads are ready for contact and which ones you should leave alone at the moment. The last thing you want to do is scare your leads away. Marketing automation can help save you from making that drastic mistake.
Landing pages
This is the page a visitor sees when they first arrive at your site or respond to an online ad. It helps to have landing pages that address your target customer’s issues. It also needs to correspond directly to the ad. In addition, a landing page helps with conversions. This is because your website can often be too generic to resonate with a Customers for Life Many marketing automation tools let you create and publish landing pages that are highly targeted. They can then capture the contact details of the leads in the CRM.
Email drip campaigns
Email marketing is more effective at prompting purchases than social media. That is why it is a critical part of your marketing strategy. An email drip campaign is often used for lead nurturing. The objective is to guide the leads further into the sales process. There are varying forms of campaigns, but it would be difficult to do this manually. Here are some of the campaign types:
- Event registration
- Invitations
- Promoting an affiliate program
- Free offers
- Birthday reminders
- Re-engagement
- Follow up
All businesses need to nurture leads. Otherwise, you could leave up to 80% of money on the table.
Build contact lists
One way to generate qualified leads is through building your contact list. This is where a marketing automation tool can help expedite that process by retrieving contacts from emails, PPC ads, social media, contact forms and more. Moreover, there are some marketing automation tools that will help you identify anonymous visitors. Instead of purchasing expensive contact lists that waste your time and money, you can create your own efficient list.
A/B Test
This form of testing lets you determine which version of the same page converts the most leads. Through A/B testing, you can continually improve your processes, layouts and messaging. Many marketing automation software tools offer various methods of performing A/B testing on site pages and emails.
Personalization
According to Econsultancy, 96% of B2B marketers state that segmentation is one of the most useful means of improving conversion rates. Furthermore, 74% say that customer engagement goes up through personalization. It just makes sense to send targeted and tailored messages. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
You know you will immediately delete a generic message. In fact, generic email blasts may cause more unsubscribe hits than you ever imagined. As a result, customers are becoming more demanding and savvy. They often perform their own research before making any purchases. They also tend to abandon purchases if the business does not address their pain points.
Who doesn’t want to hear their name mentioned? The good news is marketing automation can help you create an unlimited number of custom fields. You can then fill the fields with any type of personalized data. After that, you can segment your list. For example, you might send a special offer for Veterans and perhaps another for college students.
If you want more leads, you need to employ marketing automation. There is just no other method for sending out mass emails, creating effective landing pages and gleaning enough data to design useful marketing lists. If you want the best conversion rates, you can’t market through manual means. Sending one email at a time just doesn’t make sense. Nor does it seem logical to purchase contact lists that weren’t qualified by your company. So, have you learned from this article? What forms of marketing automation are you planning to use?
