Why Use Marketing Automation in 2021?
Table of contents
Why use marketing automation at your business?
Marketing automation has now become an essential tool in business, in B2C and B2B alike. You can understand marketing automation as a tool that tracks your individual customers' online behavior, from when they visit your homepage and what content they click on, to which emails they open, which forms they fill out, and so on. Based on the historical data of each customer, the marketing automation tool is then able automatically determine their level of interest and where they are at in the customer journey. Armed with this treasure chest of customer data, you will be able to make the exact right communication, whether that means gentle lead nurturing by sharing content or calling them directly to make a sales approach.
Moreover, it has become absolutely necessary to make more personalized approaches to your leads. Customers expect to be treated like individuals, not just another number that a sales rep has to mark down on a spreadsheet. This means you have to approach each customer differently. For example, you can make a slightly-aggressive sales approach to a lead that has visited your site 3 times in the past week and downloaded a resource from you on top of that, because they are clearly already researching and considering your business. However, if this customer hasn't engaged with your brand at all in the last few months, and you suddenly interrupt their day with a cold sales call, knowing nothing about their interests or needs, then you can only damage your relationship (and hopes of ever doing business with them in the future).
Below, we're going to go into the top four reasons that you should consider marketing automation today. Marketing automation can solve a wide range of common marketing/sales problems, as you'll see below. Whether you want to create new sales opportunities or simply cut down on work time, marketing automation could be the solution you've been looking for.
(1) To increase the number of sales opportunities
If you want to share more business opportunities with the sales department, if the current number of business opportunities created is 50 for the monthly business opportunity supply target of 100, the remaining 50 business opportunities will be created using various methods. It is necessary to take measures to generate business negotiations.
In terms of WEB marketing in general, it is also an effective means to approach using “collected access logs and leads” in parallel with measures to increase customer attraction.
"Lead utilization" and "log utilization" performed using marketing automation tools tend to be mixed with lead nurturing, but it can be considered as a short-term measure to increase the number of business negotiations.。
(2) To improve the quality of the project path
- The amount of business negotiations supplied to the sales department is well above the target
- We usually supply business negotiations to the sales department, but the closing rate is too low
- Very few resources (personnel/time) in the sales department
In the above case, how to improve the quality of the project to be supplied? Is an important measure.
When doing it manually without using marketing automation, many companies choose the method of confirming "pre-set appointment conditions" by telephone and passing only the projects that meet the conditions.
*Checking the BANT condition is one of the frequently used methods.
Most of the conventional marketing automation tools use "scoring" to judge the quality of the project, but the correct definition of the score cannot be judged, detailed settings cannot be made, and the method of success is not known, so the score is trusted. The reality is that there are many problems such as poor performance and lack of score.
How to improve your appointments without using marketing automation tools
Set appointment conditions in advance
Keeps quality constant by doing
Example ＜BANT requirement＞
- 【B】Budget：Is there a budget?
- 【A】Authority：Who has the right to make decisions?
- 【N】Needs：Do you feel the need as a company?
- 【T】Timeframe：Is the specific time of introduction fixed?
How to use traditional marketing automation tools to improve your appointment quality
Use scoring model
to approach projects that meet the conditions
◆Use scoring model
However the challenges around lead scoring are as follow
- You can not judge the correct definition
- Cannot make detailed settings
- Low confidence in score
- Score does not accumulate
Related article: "Scoring is not the only answer! ABM's way of thinking that you should know now"
(3) Create a system for lead nurturing
If the target number of negotiations is secured and the system and mechanism to improve the quality of the project path are successfully established, the number of short-term negotiations will increase because it is possible to approach the actual layer. However, since the population parameter of the actual group itself is not large, the number of monthly negotiations created tends to level off.
Therefore, by implementing "nurturing (medium- to long-term training measures)" for "unexamined" users, activities to raise the examination level and engagement (relationship) will be effective.
There is no doubt that lead nurturing in Japan has "extremely large growth potential" because most companies have not started it. Therefore, many MA tool vendors and marketing support companies recommend "start lead nurturing".
However, it is not often said that full-scale lead nurturing activities require a lot of resources and budget.
Of course, it will be a measure that also leads to (1), so it is worth implementing in earnest, but if you are a company that does not focus on digital marketing at all, it will take a very long time to be effective, and ROI (return on investment) ) Tends to be low.
Full-scale lead nurturing activities require a lot of resources and budget
Resources to support lead nurturing
Operation manager
LP creation・WEB production
Email Marketing
Measurement
Marketing Communication
Customer Relationship Management
(4) Automate tasks and save time
The business here is mainly marketing business and refers to "all activities performed to supply business negotiations to the sales department".
Conditions for companies that can "automate" with marketing automation
- Actively engaged in activities to increase the number of business negotiations
- The quality of the project path is also systematically improved
- I have been engaged in nurturing activities for many years, and I can see the winning pattern (golden route) of marketing activities.
However, how many companies (companies that can implement marketing measures that automate) have a winning pattern in the Japanese marketing field? The reality is that there isn't enough content or story to automate.
Marketing Automation Survey: Feature that make marketing automation difficult
For this reason as well, we recognize that automation is the lowest priority.
In other words, companies that are thinking of strengthening marketing from now on are recommended to start measures in order from the point of increasing the number of business negotiations in ①
Check the current status of your company
- Opportunity supply has reached (or is close to) the target
- The approach to the needs-existing layer is almost complete.
- The contract rate from the project path has achieved the target
- Content is abundantly created (or has resources that can be created)
- You can invest resources and budget in medium- to long-term strategies
- Already started nurturing activities
- You can see the results from the nurturing activities
- Selling products and services with a very long review period and high unit prices
- Have a sufficient amount of leads (tens of thousands)
If you answered "yes" to a few of the above questions...
We recommend starting trying out marketing automation with our beginner-level tool!
Marketing automation tool for beginners
If you're just getting start with marketing automation for the first time and have limited resources to operate the tool, then consider our original B2B marketing automation tool BowNow. BowNow was designed as a more user-friendly and affordable option to the major platforms on the market, and you don't even need a team of experienced marketers to implement it. Even a couple of committed salesmen can be successful with BowNow with the support of our customer success team.
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