In B2B, marketing automation makes processes simpler and more effective, which raises productivity and gets better results.
Let's look at the benefits of marketing automation for a B2B company, the essential tools to adopt and which areas to focus on to get measurable results.
What marketing automation is and what it is for
Marketing automation covers every process in which automations handle repetitive tasks.
Automation can be applied to many parts of digital marketing, from sending emails and publishing on social media to managing ad campaigns.
In practice, any workflow where tasks follow a specific event can be automated with the many tools available today. We will cover some of these tools further on, but first let's answer a question you are probably asking yourself right now:
What is marketing automation actually for?
There is more than one reason to build automation into your B2B marketing strategy.
- Saving time and reducing errors. Every repetitive task takes time and attention. We can cut that time down to a point, but never remove it altogether. If, however, there is a way to build a working system and automate it, the process becomes simpler and a lot of time is saved. As well as raising productivity, automations reduce errors because they apply a standard process in response to an event. Sending an automatic email, for example, is better than risking forgetting to send it by hand.
- Improving the customer experience. One of the key steps in any automation is building audience segments. Segmenting our audience by interests or demographics then lets us create targeted content that answers specific needs. A more personalised experience brings more engagement than a generic message would.
- Having more control over data. Automation tools also collect data that lets us measure how well our marketing is working. That data is what we need to improve campaign performance.
Differences and similarities between B2B and B2C
Given all this, marketing automation is now worth using for both B2B and B2C companies. There are, however, some important differences between the two.
Compared with B2C, B2B has a more complex sales cycle, so automation matters even more, but you need to work out which stages to automate and why.
In B2B, the processes worth automating are mainly those that qualify leads correctly and engage them with lead nurturing campaigns. Remember that buying decisions here involve several people and rest on relationships of trust.
In B2C, on the other hand, the buying journey is shorter and driven by emotion, so automations can push customers towards immediate action. They can be used, for example, for promotional campaigns and upsells.
How to put marketing automation into practice
Every marketing automation rests on one simple idea: an event, which we can call a trigger, starts a flow of actions.
Here are some of the tasks that can be automated and the tools we can use to do it.
Bring all leads and customers into one CRM
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) lets us stay in touch with leads and customers. CRMs are essential for building a database of all our contacts, but they do more than that. Over time these tools have evolved to keep a history of interactions with prospective leads, track specific actions and manage campaigns.
A good example is HubSpot, which leads the marketing automation software market with a 28.94% market share (data from Datanyze). It works as a central platform built around the CRM, which can be extended with other marketing and customer service tools.
Create and manage funnels and sales flows
To design sales funnels and identify the touchpoints with prospective leads, there are dedicated tools that help us structure our automations afterwards.
For this you can use tools such as ClickUp which offers Whiteboards and ready-made templates.
Another useful tool for building funnels is Funnelytics, which has an entire library of ready-made templates to take ideas from.
Capture leads through your website
Capturing leads through your own website is easier today thanks to tools that are simple to use.
For example, using WordPress as the CMS for the site together with Elementor, one of the most widely used page builders, lets us manage the site without advanced technical knowledge.
Visual builders such as Elementor let us build landing pages and forms visually with drag & drop (building pages by dragging elements to where you want them).
WordPress also suits this purpose because it integrates readily with tracking systems (such as Google Analytics) that let us measure the conversion rates of our landing pages.
Run email marketing
Email marketing is one of the areas where automation can be used to the full. More and more tools now let us send email campaigns in response to a given trigger, as well as lead nurturing campaigns.
Email is in fact the area where automation is used most (58%), followed by social media management (49%) and content management (33%). (Data from the report "The State of Marketing Automation 2024" by Ascend2.)
One of the most used tools is ActiveCampaign, because it allows advanced segmentation of the audience and goes beyond email: it can also reach customers through other channels such as SMS and ads.
Filter leads with lead intelligence
We can monitor the online behaviour of the people who visit our site and get useful data from it.
This works through monitoring systems that identify site visitors reliably, so we can contact them at the right moment with targeted campaigns.
Leadinfo is a tool that lets us identify the most qualified leads, gather information about companies and launch multichannel campaigns that can include email and LinkedIn.
Build automations by integrating tools
Automation goes hand in hand with integration. Integrations between tools, that is getting one tool to "talk" to another, are the basis of an effective strategy.
So far we have covered several tools that help us capture leads and follow them up. We can only get the most out of them, though, if they communicate with each other. Some tools are built to integrate: Google Analytics, for example, which tracks user behaviour, can be added to a WordPress site by installing its tracking code.
In other cases we need extra help. Zapier is one of the tools that lets tools communicate when they otherwise could not.
For example, we can have leads from a form built with Elementor loaded into our CRM.
Or we can connect Google Ads to our CRM so that every new lead generated is collected in the CRM. The one below is the HubSpot integration, but integrations with other CRMs are also available. Zapier offers ready-made integrations, and also lets us build custom integrations to fit our needs.
Key aspects of marketing automation for B2B
When choosing automation tools for B2B, focus on a few key functions. As mentioned earlier, B2B has different needs from B2C selling, so some aspects deserve particular attention.
These aspects reflect the differences between marketing strategies for a B2B company and a B2C one.
In B2B, automations are especially useful for:
- Lead acquisition: through landing pages and contact forms built with the tools covered above.
- Lead collection: the leads you acquire need to be gathered in one central system, your CRM.
- Segmentation: the lead database has to be segmented properly by interests and demographics.
- Lead scoring: a system that gives leads a score helps qualify them further. For example, it can help identify the most engaged leads by tracking the requests and contacts they have had with your company.
- Personalised communication: segmentation and scoring let you build personalised campaigns.
- Lead nurturing: email campaigns can be sent in response to triggers, that is user actions, but nurturing should also take into account which stage the lead is at.
- Tracking: user behaviour should be tracked at each stage, measuring both site interactions (such as a form submission) and engagement with email campaigns.
As you can see, there are several aspects to consider, and an effective automation strategy needs an overall view of all of them.
At the preliminary stage you should already have a sound lead acquisition strategy, together with a way to store those leads and segment them so they can be contacted at the right time. Alongside this, you need a lead nurturing campaign for existing leads and a way to track how well your efforts are working.
Automation therefore cannot happen without strategic planning upstream. This is where agencies like Visilay can help.
Visilay's B2B marketing automation strategy
At Visilay we know that knowing which tools to use is not enough to get the most out of them. In any marketing strategy, automation included, a clear plan is what prevents mistakes at scale.
To help our clients build their automations, we develop strategies tailored to their specific market.
The process includes these steps:
- Identifying digital traffic sources: lead generation channels can include organic traffic (SEO), paid traffic (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads) and outbound through LinkedIn.
- Validation and lead intelligence: leads need to be qualified correctly, with thorough research that gathers all the useful data, such as company type and turnover.
- Segmentation, lead scoring and grading: segmenting and scoring leads is how you qualify them correctly. Forms and calls can be used for this.
- Tracking and personalised contact: by integrating the system with a CRM and using tracking on the site, you can measure user behaviour and engagement. This helps build communication tailored to real needs, and therefore more effective.
