One solution that promises to improve results, scale easily, and streamline operations is marketing automation. It is, however, only as useful as the techniques that underpin it, just like any other instrument.

However, improving data is necessary to create better tactics, and here is where many marketers stumble. In our State of Marketing Automation research, which we produced in collaboration with London Research, 49% of marketers identify the inability to monitor return on investment as a major obstacle, while 36% mention a deficiency in internal expertise as another difficulty.

It is difficult to determine whether your plans have fundamental flaws without this intelligence. For this reason, we’ve compiled our top B2B marketing automation techniques to put you on the right track.

B2B marketing automation: Put personalization first

Consumers’ attention is divided more than ever, and they are impatient. It’s far too simple to miss the mark in the brief time you have to grab their attention. Personalization is your hidden weapon because of this.

Prospects are more likely to interact with your material and proceed through the buyer’s journey if it is more tailored to them.

Fortunately, marketing automation eliminates a significant portion of the labor by enabling marketers to establish rules that specify which actions and traits enroll contacts automatically in a particular group.

However, it is your responsibility to collaborate with your team to identify the most effective audience segmentation strategies (industry, product interests, stage in the sales funnel, pain points, size, etc.) as well as the content and engagement strategies that are necessary to reach them. When developing your marketing automation plan, you should first determine which target segments to target, then create focused nurturing campaigns to keep those groups going through the customer journey and map your content accordingly. Naturally, you should quantify those outcomes (which we’ll cover in a moment).

B2B marketing automation: lead scoring and account-based management

Have you developed your buyer personas yet? Both B2C and B2B businesses frequently use personas to more successfully target different demographics and grab their attention. However, the personas you develop are very different from B2C personas because you are a B2B marketer. How?

The purchasing procedures used by B2B organizations are complicated (long sales cycles!). A single decision frequently involves several buyer personas, which isn’t nearly as prevalent with B2C businesses.

It is challenging to support different stakeholders inside a company without the proper tools, and it is even more challenging to gauge the group’s consensus when reaching a conclusion. This difficulty may result in lost opportunities and have a detrimental effect on the return on investment for your company.

Fortunately, your marketing and sales teams can be ready to act quickly by including an account-based management and lead scoring system into your B2B marketing automation plan. With this strategy, you may have a comprehensive understanding of how a company’s stakeholders engage with your marketing materials and rate each step to ascertain if the prospect is prepared to speak with sales.

Aligning sales and marketing through marketing automation methods

Aligning sales and marketing has received a lot of attention, right? And with good reason—aligned businesses grow their revenue at a rate of 19% faster and make 15% more money than their non-aligned rivals.

Engage with your sales team and think about posing the following queries as you seek to become aligned.

• What sorts of insights are necessary for your salespeople to have better-focused conversations that result in deals being closed?
• How are you going to get leads? What qualifies a lead to speak with sales, then?
• How can B2B marketing automation be used by your sales team? What tools are available to assist them in enhancing their outreach initiatives?
• Which procedure works best for transferring leads to sales? After that is finished, what comes next?

Your outcomes and customer experiences will improve as sales and marketing become more in sync. Additionally, marketing automation is a crucial instrument for fostering this connection.

Hitachi High-Tech Analytical Science, for instance, aimed to improve sales and marketing alignment and automate lead generation. Kerry West, global manager of digital marketing communications, says, “We wanted to drive closer alignment with our sales, marketing, and service teams to provide a smoother, richer customer experience.” “To more accurately target and nurture customers at every stage of the buying journey and increase our return on investment, we wanted a deeper integration.”

They generated tremendous advantages in marketing and sales by using marketing automation, automating 40% of all new marketing leads and drastically reducing human processes.

Decide on a success metric for your B2B marketing

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure,” is a statement you’ve heard a million times. Yes, the majority of marketers are aware that performance must be measured. But against what standards are you evaluating those outcomes?

KPIs that specify success should be incorporated into a B2B marketing automation strategy. You can simply demonstrate results to your key stakeholders if you have those KPIs in hand and a technology that assists you in pulling pertinent data. For instance, after improving its Act-On deployment, Avery Dennison increased email open rates and cut software expenses by 37%. Setting goals, establishing KPIs, assessing them, and iterating to duplicate and enhance achievement are the first steps in achieving comparable outcomes.

Look for B2B partners in marketing automation that can help with strategy and implementation

Although B2B marketing automation can increase your marketing success, it involves more than just using the right technologies. To what extent is the marketing automation technology user-friendly? Is it easy for your group to use? Does it possess the necessary tools to scale performance and measure results? What’s even more crucial is this: will your partner help with implementation and strategy?

When you work with the proper partner, their knowledge and experience will help you succeed and provide you with a competitive edge. To further increase outcomes, you can proceed to more sophisticated techniques when you’re ready to level up your marketing automation approach.