Overview
B2B marketing automation is in the midst of a revolution. In the past few years alone, marketing automation has grown from a $3.2 billion industry in 2010 to over $5.5 billion by the end of this decade. The growth of the industry involves the confluence of a few factors, primarily an understanding by companies around the world of how to use inbound lead generation, as well as rapidly improving technologies.
Furthermore, as marketing becomes more complicated it is essential to have the resources to ensure your marketing machine continues 24/7 to produce quality leads your business needs to succeed. That is why automation is such an important component of your marketing mix.
It provides the fuel you need whether you are a small business or a large enterprise.
Below we will discuss how inbound lead generation can improve your marketing automation strategy.
Understanding Marketing Automation
Marketing automation helps marketers with several different marketing functions that can be laborious and time-consuming to complete. These quality marketing innovations also provide a central marketing database where you can coordinate your marketing and sales efforts.
When you use the right technology, you can then analyze your strategies to improve your ability to market your services to your customers.
The great thing is that marketing automation is not limited to large enterprises. One of the largest segments of the marketing automation market is Small and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs) who want to leverage the tools of larger companies to increase their revenue.
For example, at Shout we use marketing automation to find targeted customers. Our philosophy as an automation agency has always been that we need to educate prospective customers so they can see the benefits of a quality marketing automation campaign.
This all starts with articles such as this that explain how customers can use the various marketing strategies we propose. For those who want to go more in-depth, we offer them free E-books like the one shown below.
Those who sign up get access to our continuing stream of content to help them make the best marketing decisions possible for their goals.
Three B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
To help you utilize marketing automation for your business, we want to discuss three different premier platforms that you can use to improve your marketing efforts.
- Marketo: A top marketing automation software that allows you to coordinate marketing campaigns across channels, with email marketing, mobile campaigns, social media, digital ads, website analytics, and predictive content to help you build relationships with your customers.
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- HubSpot: In the world of inbound marketing, HubSpot is one of the leaders. They have a complete software system to help improve targeted content, marketing, sales, and customer relationship management.
They specialize in driving highly targeted traffic through content marketing, SEO, and social media to convert prospects into leads and customers.
From HubSpot, you can review the complete sales activity as well as the detailed contact records of all your leads.
Another thing you can do is segment your leads via specific property contact settings and business personas. This allows you to target specific segments of your list to ensure you can optimize your marketing efforts.
- Infusionsoft: This email marketing automation software provides some of the most powerful targeted email campaigns for businesses.
Additionally, Infusionsoft offers a campaign builder that marketers can use to improve their entire campaign with a drag-and-drop interface that allows business to repeatedly reach their customers.
This includes:
- Automatically send personalized communications
- Trigger emails and calls based on contact behaviors
- Unlimited landing pages and emails
Unlike HubSpot and Marketo, Infusionsoft has CRM integration with other services to ensure that marketers can track leads across the entire funnel.
Final Thoughts
As you can see from this article, marketing automation has the power to drive the leads you want for your business. However, you need the best technology to ensure you can get the job done. That is where software like HubSpot, Marketing, and InfusionSoft can help. It allows you to be able to market your business when you are not able to do it all on your own.
However, this all starts with the right plan. Otherwise, the best software in the world will not help. That is why we are offering you the chance to create a B2B marketing automation strategy that works for your needs. Contact us for a free initial consultation to improve your automation strategy today.
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