Building up a client base for B2B businesses is a combined effort of marketing and sales teams. However, friction between the two is not unheard of and is pretty common in most companies. The cause behind this is oftentimes misalignment.
Conventionally speaking, marketing teams are required to bring in leads and pass them on to the sales teams, who then track the lifecycle stages of these leads and take actions to convert them into clients eventually.
But problems may arise due to the quality of the lead or untimely action, which could lead to loss of significant business opportunities. While it’s easy to shift blame to either side, it’s more important to seek a solution. Enter marketing automation!
Marketing automation, also known as lead generation software, can play a significant role in getting marketing and sales teams on the same page.
This solution helps marketing teams move a lead down the funnel and pass it on to the sales team once it’s ready. The data captured by the marketing automation software can then be leveraged by the sales team for getting insights regarding a contact.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation involves using software to automate many of the marketing and lead gen tasks that you currently manage yourself.
The most common form of marketing automation is email marketing automation. Using software like Drip, ConvertKit or Infusionsoft, you can automate your entire email marketing process, from the initial opt-in and follow-up sequence to behavioral email.
This means that when a potential customer opts in to receive your emails, you can send them a sequence of messages designed to increase their interest in your product or service, then adjust your emails automatically based on their behavior.
Each campaign you run is controlled by an automation workflow — a series of rules you create to control what content the recipient receives and the actions they need to take to receive it.
If a customer makes a small purchase, your marketing automation software can automatically add them to a “buyer” list and send them content that’s designed to encourage them to make a larger purchase, sign a service agreement or complete any other objective.
If a customer visits a specific page on your website, you can add them to a specific list and send content related to the subject in which they’re interested.
In a sense, marketing automation lets you respond to customer behavior the way a real person would, letting you automate your marketing efforts while keeping your marketing as relevant as possible for every prospect.
You can even use marketing automation to identify your top prospects and include them in sales reports.
The end result is a more effective marketing process that produces leads on its own, giving your team more time focus on big picture tasks like converting leads into customers and growing your business.
Managing Evolving Marketing Channels
The way digital content is perceived these days is completely different from say 5 years ago. It can further be argued that the elements involved change radically at times due to some phenomenon or another.
Consider the pandemic for example- it led to a sudden surge in digital content consumption.
People started relying on online channels for entertainment, seeking information, shopping, and several other purposes. This rise in content browsing gave marketers a chance to target an increased number of people.
Similar trends can be witnessed during occurrences of different events such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
The point is marketing channels by extension, is in a state of constant evolution, which marketers should thoroughly consider when they think of building lead generation strategies.
Today, the need is to make effective use of social media, email marketing, content marketing, campaigns for lead generation, SEO best practices, and landing pages to target and nurture audiences for eventually converting them into clients.
Now, the problem with multiple channels is that their management requires different software, thereby leading to a scattered approach altogether. Hence, in order to generate quality leads, this is the foremost issue that marketers need to deal with.
The lead generation process can be simplified extensively by combining the efforts of all marketing channels and having multiple data points in a centralized software. This is where marketing automation comes in.
How Marketing Automation Binds Lead Generation Processes
Marketing automation is essentially a one-stop-shop solution that unifies your lead generation processes.
If you look at any marketing automation software, you’ll notice that it is an amalgamation of different tools that allow you to take care of all the processes involved in lead generation.
For example, you take into account the people who visit your website to build the right audience base. Some of them will exhibit the accurate intent for you to take the conversation forward.
You’ll know this when you start nurturing these leads through different email campaigns and by the way they engage with said campaigns. Those who show further interest in your offerings will turn into sales-qualified leads and can be handed over to the sales team.
Hence, you see, the process is multi-staged and it’s only natural that you’ll require different tools for every stage. What marketing automation does is provide you with all those tools in a single platform for a hassle-free experience.
Automation for Enhancing Efficiency
‘Automation’ is undoubtedly the major aspect when we talk about marketing automation. While fundamentals of lead generation remain the same, which mostly includes email campaigns, it is improved scalability that marketers are after these days.
We are looking at trends such as personalization and hyper-personalization in the digital industry. On top of this, user intent cannot be taken for granted. If you are not approaching a prospect in the right manner and with the right service/product/offerings, someone else is bound to.
Therefore, in order to remain ahead in the game, it is imperative to leverage automated workflows.
Such an arrangement will help you personalize the content to effectively target prospects, let you know which prospects to prioritize, and allow you to have detailed insights about the journey of each and every one of your leads.
Nurturing leads is where marketing automation actually plays the most vital role during the entire lead generation process. In fact, automated processes come into effect at this stage when your visitors have turned into leads.
What you need to do next is to keep them engaged through your content, educate them about your niche, and eventually loop them in conversations about your products. All this is achieved through sending informational content to leads after determining their lifecycle stage.
Now that we are done with the basics of lead generation marketing automation, let’s take a look at the elements that are involved in lead generation automation.
Marketing Automation Lead Generation Elements
Landing pages
The lead generation process basically starts with landing pages and the conversion forms that you insert on those pages.
A visitor with the right intent will convert into a lead when they fill a form on your website (a subtle hint about how important landing pages and conversion forms are for your business).
If you have done a good job with the form, the visitor will likely share their information which then will go into the repository of your CRM. Now, you have certain details about your new lead depending upon the information you asked for in the form.
This information about leads is crucial, as it is what allows you to run further campaigns and personalize the content. Therefore, you need to ask for all the important information on the forms while making sure that they don’t get overwhelmed with the number of fields.
Autoresponders and triggered email sequences
If a visitor fills up a form to download a guide from your website, you ideally need to keep them engaged through further conversations. One way to do this is through autoresponders or triggered email nurture sequences.
For example, once they submit a form, they would receive a ‘thank you’ mail and you could also provide a pdf version of the guide or eBook in the mail itself. This can be set up with the help of marketing automation tools.
Triggered email sequences are also essential in the sense that they ensure the delivery of content that is personalized for each contact and based on their engagement. The automatic lead generation process is heavily dependent on such tools.
Funnel stages
Automated lead management relies on sales funnel stages. With the help of marketing automation tools, you can strategically move the leads down the funnel until they are ready to get on a demo call.
Sales funnel stages are:
- Subscriber
- Lead
- Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
- Sales qualified lead (SQL)
- Customer
Funnel stages are also important because they tell you the kind of content a particular lead will potentially engage with.
For instance, consider an MQL- the content you target these leads with should range between industry-related information and information about service/tools that could be useful for them.
On the contrary, an SQL would have moved down from the above stages and would already be knowledgeable about the industry. Now, you would need to educate them about your own services/products and tell them why they should choose you instead of any other competitor.
However, you can only be this precise with all your leads if you are aware of their funnel stages, which is exactly the knowledge marketing automation provides you with.
How to use marketing automation software
As a beginner, the most effective way to use marketing automation for lead generation is with a simple content-to-email workflow that warms up readers and uses a specific piece of content to qualify them as prospects.
Below, we’ve created a sample marketing automation workflow, broken down into steps:
Encourage readers to opt-in to your email list
If you already have a website that receives traffic from search or social media, the best way to build your marketing automation list is to capture email addresses from your readers by giving away content.
There are several ways you can do this. The first is to offer a lead magnet, like a free report or eBook. ConversionXL does this by offering a free guide to conversion optimization for readers that opt in to receive email content:
Another option is to repurpose your existing content as a reason to opt in. ConvertKit does this by offering all of its blog posts as downloadable PDF files:
Deliver on your opt in promise
Once a user opts in to receive your emails, it’s time to start a conversation. The best way to do this is to deliver on your promise and send the content you offered as part of your opt in form.
Here’s the email ConvertKit sends after a reader opts in to download a post in PDF format:
Offer extra content to identify highly motivated subscribers
One of the simplest ways to make your sales efforts more efficient is to spend less time on low-interest subscribers and more time on highly motivated, interested prospects.
To do this, you need to identify the subscribers that have the strongest interest in your product or service. An easy way to do this is to offer a second helping of content and use it to separate warm leads from people that just aren’t ready to become customers.
When a subscriber downloads the extra content, you can use an automation workflow to move them to a new list. For example, software like Drip lets you automatically segment subscribers into separate lists using simple yes/no automation rules:
Give warm leads to your sales team
With your warmest leads identified and segmented automatically, all that your sales team needs to do is follow up with the subscribers download your extra content.
Most marketing automation software will even notify your sales staff of new leads, letting you follow up quickly and easily.
Warm up cold leads and re-engage
The final step in this process is to gradually warm up the rest of your subscribers.
Unless you have a highly motivated audience, most of your subscribers won’t choose to receive your extra content right away. However, you can warm them up over time by sending interesting, helpful email content before re-engaging weeks or months in the future.
The best marketing automation software for beginners
The marketing automation software marketplace has grown at a tremendous pace over the last five years, making it easy to find great quality tools designed with your needs in mind.
Below, we’ve listed several of the best marketing automation tools for beginners, most of which are available either as a free trial or with an inexpensive monthly usage fee.
For small businesses
- Drip is a simple but powerful marketing automation toolkit designed specifically for solo entrepreneurs and small, growing businesses.
- ConvertKit is designed for bloggers and content marketers, with one of the best user interfaces of any marketing automation platform.
- Vero is an event-driven email marketing automation platform that’s perfect for software companies.
- MailChimp is a freemium email marketing automation platform that includes a range of pre-built automation workflows.
For mid-sized businesses
- Infusionsoft is one of the most powerful SME marketing automation tools available, but it has a steep learning curve and requires the purchase of a training package.
- ActiveCampaign is another powerful marketing automation platform designed for SMEs and startups.
