How to Automate B2B Marketing, Optimizing Time and Increasing Sales

With B2B marketing automation, you can simplify and make processes more effective, thus increasing productivity and achieving better results.

Let’s see what the advantages of marketing automation are for a B2B company, what are the essential tools to adopt and what aspects to focus on to obtain tangible results.

What is marketing automation and what is it for?

Marketing automation includes all those processes in which automations are used for repetitive activities.

Automation can be applied to various aspects of digital marketing, from sending e-mails to posting on social media and also managing advertising campaigns.

Basically, all workflows where there are activities to be done following a specific event can be automated thanks to the many tools we have available today. We will tell you about some of these tools later, but for now, let’s answer a question you are probably asking yourself right now:

What is marketing automation really for?

There is more than one reason to adopt automation systems in your B2B marketing strategy.

1. Save time and reduce errors. All repetitive operations require time and the right attention. We can optimize these times up to a certain point, but never reduce them completely. However, if there is a way to create a functioning system and automate it, automatically the processes are simplified and there is a great saving of time. In addition to increasing productivity, automations also reduce errors because they allow you to apply a standard process in response to an event. For example, sending an automatic e-mail is better than risking forgetting to send it manually.
2. Improve the customer experience. One of the crucial steps of automations is the creation of audience segments. Segmenting our audience, based on interests or demographic data, is then useful to create targeted content capable of responding to specific needs. Being able to provide a more personalized experience allows for greater involvement than what you would get with a generic message.
3. Have greater control over data. Using automation tools we can also collect important data that allows us to measure the effectiveness of our marketing activities. Obtaining this data is essential to improve the performance of our campaigns.

Differences and similarities between B2B and B2C

Given these premises, today exploiting marketing automation is essential for both B2B and B2C companies. However, there are important differences between these two areas.

In the B2B sector compared to the B2C sector, we are faced with a more complex sales cycle, so automation is even more important, but we need to understand which phases to automate and for what purpose.

In the case of B2B, the processes to automate are above all those aimed at correctly qualifying leads and involving them with lead nurturing campaigns. In fact, it must be remembered that the purchasing process in this sector involves more people and it is based on relationships of trust.

However, in the B2C sector where the purchasing path is shorter and driven by emotions, automations can allow us to lead customers towards immediate action. For example, they can be used for promotional and upsell campaigns.

How to Put Marketing Automation into Practice

Marketing automations are all based on a simple concept: there is an event, which we could define as a trigger, in response to which a flow of actions starts.

Let’s see some of the activities that can be automated and the tools we can use to do so.

Unite all leads and customers in one CRM

Having a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) allows us to stay in touch with leads and customers. CRMs are essential for creating a database to collect all contacts, but they are not limited to this. Over time, these tools have evolved to allow us to maintain the history of interactions with potential leads, track specific actions and manage campaigns.

A great example is HubSpot, which holds the record in the marketing automation software market, thanks to a market share of 28.94% (Datanyze data). This powerful tool works as a centralized platform that has the CRM at its core, but can also be extended with other marketing and customer service tools.

Create and manage sales funnels and flows

To design sales funnels and to identify touchpoints with potential leads, you can use specific tools that help you structure your automations.

For this purpose, you can use tools like Clickup that provides Whiteboards and ready-made templates.

Another very useful tool for creating funnels is Funnelytics, which has an entire library of ready-made templates to draw inspiration from.

Acquire leads through your website

Acquiring leads through your website is now even easier thanks to easy-to-use tools.

For example, the combination of using WordPress as a CMS to create the site and Elementor, one of the most used page builders, allows us to manage the site without having to have advanced technical knowledge.

Visual builders like Elementor, in fact, allow us to create landing pages and forms visually using drag & drop (i.e. the ability to create pages by dragging the elements to the desired position).

Furthermore, WordPress is also well suited to this purpose because it is ready to be integrated with tracking systems (such as Google Analytics) that allow us to evaluate the conversion rates of our landing pages.

Do e-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is one of the areas where automation can be exploited 100%. Today, there are more and more tools that allow us to send e-mail campaigns in response to a specific trigger as well as lead nurturing campaigns.

In fact, among the areas of interest in which automation is most used are e-mails (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 is not limited to e-mails but can also be used to reach our customers through other channels such as SMS and advertising.

Filter leads with lead intelligence

We can monitor the online behavior of users who visit our site and obtain valuable data.

This process occurs thanks to monitoring systems that allow us to effectively identify site visitors and then contact them at the right time and with targeted campaigns.

Leadinfo is a tool that allows us to identify the most qualified leads, acquire information on companies and launch multi-channel campaigns that can include e-mail and Linkedin.

Create automations by integrating tools together

Automation rhymes with integrations. Integrations between tools, that is, “making one tool talk” to another, are the basis of an effective strategy.

So far we have talked about different tools that can help us intercept leads and contact them again. However, we can only make the most of all these tools if we can make them communicate with each other. Some of these tools are already set up to integrate, for example Google Analytics which allows us to track user behavior can be integrated on a WordPress site by adding the tracking code to the site.

In other cases, however, we may need additional help. Zapier is one of the tools that allows us to make tools communicate that otherwise would not be able to do so.

For example, we can make sure that the leads obtained from a form created with Elementor are uploaded to our CRM.

Or we can connect Google Ads to our CRM so that every new lead generated is collected in the CRM. This below is the integration with Hubspot, but it is also possible to take advantage of the integration with other CRMs. Zapier, in fact, provides us with default integrations, as well as allowing us to create customized integrations based on our needs.

Essential Aspects of Marketing Automation for B2B

When evaluating the choice of automation tools to use in the B2B sector, you need to focus on key functions. As we said before, in the B2B sector we have to deal with different needs compared to B2C sales, so there are specific aspects to take into account.

These aspects reflect the differences between marketing strategies for a B2B company and a B2C company.

In particular, in B2B we can use automations in these cases:

• Lead acquisition: by creating landing pages and contact forms with the tools we saw before.
• Lead collection: the acquired leads must be collected in a centralized system, our CRM.
• Segmentation: the lead database must be segmented correctly based on interests and demographic data.
• Lead scoring: a system to be able to assign a score to leads in order to further qualify them is useful. For example, it can help us identify the most involved leads by monitoring the requests and contacts they have had with our company.
• Personalization of communications: based on segmentation and scoring, personalized campaigns can be structured.
• Lead nurturing: e-mail campaigns can be focused on responding to triggers, i.e. user actions, but nurturing should also be done taking into account the phase in which the lead is.
• Tracking: it is important to track user behavior in the different phases. For example, by measuring both interactions with the site (e.g. filling out a form) and the engagement rate with e-mail campaigns.

As you can see, there are several aspects to take into consideration and, to start an effective automation strategy, you must always maintain an overall vision of all of these.

In a preliminary phase, you should have established a correct lead acquisition strategy, along with a mechanism to store these leads and segment them in order to contact them at the right time. At the same time, you must prepare a lead nurturing campaign for existing leads and be able to track the effectiveness of your efforts.

As you can well understand, therefore, automation cannot happen if there is not first a strategic planning upstream. And this is where agencies like Visilay can help you.

Visilay’s Automation Marketing Strategy for B2B

At Visilay we know that knowing the tools to use is not enough to be able to make the most of them. In any marketing strategy and also when you want to adopt automation, having a clear strategy in mind is essential to avoid making mistakes on a large scale.

To assist our clients in the development of automations, we develop strategies tailored to the specific market.

The work process includes these steps:

• Identifying digital traffic sources: lead generation channels can include organic traffic (SEO), paid traffic (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads) and outbound via LinkedIn.
• Validation and lead intelligence: it is essential to correctly qualify leads and carry out an in-depth study by collecting all useful data such as the type of company and turnover.
• Segmentation and lead scoring and grading: lead segmentation and scoring are essential to correctly qualify leads. To do this, forms and calls can be used.
• Contact tracking and personalization: by integrating the system with a CRM and using tracking systems on the site, it is possible to measure user behavior and their engagement rate. This helps us to develop personalized communication based on real needs and therefore more effective.