5 Reasons Why B2B Companies Need Marketing Automation

Today’s prospective customers are inundated with messages on a growing number of platforms as marketers turn up the volume trying to reach them. But in today’s media landscape, it is the prospect who controls when and where he or she will learn about brands and products. Typically, that process begins with a search for an answer to a problem or question. If you have used the right strategy to get your information in front of them at this point, you are well-positioned to be one of the options they consider as they move closer to a purchase decision. But you need to continue carrying that strategy through from end to end of the marketing journey. What makes this possible is a marketing automation platform, along with the expertise to populate, administer and manage it.

For those who are not familiar with it yet, marketing automation is a software platform that enables the efficient and intelligent automation of certain marketing tasks including email, social media and other web-based tactics. It is one of the biggest trends of the past few years and will only continue to grow as marketers are tasked with making their budgets leaner and more efficient. When you combine a sophisticated marketing automation tool with an expert user, you can expect great results.

Here are just some of many reasons why B2B companies need to adopt marketing automation today.

It’s almost a certainty that you’ve wondered just how effective each of your marketing strategies is, and how they compare against one another for attracting prospects, building a relationship, generating a lead or driving a sale. Marketing automation measures each individual tactic and creates a wealth of useful, actionable data that helps the marketing team make adjustments that continually improve results.

When a prospect becomes a sale, that is the ultimate ROI of your marketing program. Marketing automation tracks every step of the buyer’s journey, bringing leads to the sales team when they are ready to speak to someone. All of the leading marketing automation platforms integrate seamlessly with sales software such as Salesforce, giving your teams the tools to drive business and profit.

Digital marketing offers the capability to fine-tune targeting in ways never before achievable, and marketing automation is the tool that makes this possible. When selling to any industry, you need to speak to a variety of different titles and industries. Using marketing automation, you can create different messaging for each so you speak directly to their specific aspirations and pain points.

It goes without saying that cost reduction is an ongoing objective for most businesses today. With a resource available that enables your business to shrink your budget while expanding your results, there is literally no reason not to take full advantage of the benefits.

Because you can track the journey of each individual as they engage with your content, marketing automation makes it easier for you to learn about what interests different segments of your audience. Creating personas – characters who represent different customer types – helps with this segmentation and gives you a stronger basis for creating content with high value to each segment.

With the crowding of the media landscape and the growing business emphasis on delivering measurable results, marketing automation offers B2B marketers a proven strategy to meet both marketing and business objectives.