Is your website doing its part to step up and add more sales and marketing value to your brand?
Are you seeing the conversions you want while retaining your loyal customers?
Marketing automation can make the difference, leveraging analytics and customer behavior to up your marketing and sales game.
Marketing automation lets you personalize your communications with your customers and leads. That means more than addressing them by "Hi, [first name]" in an email.
With marketing automation, you can address barriers to purchase on a specific, personalized basis. You can provide targeted information or offers to those clients who are most likely to respond. You can even pinpoint the best leads for in-person follow-up by your sales team.
Marketing Automation in the B2B World
Do you hear "marketing automation" and think it only applies to B2C companies? Actually, marketing automation provides a huge boost for B2B eCommerce as well.
Marketing automation has been moving into the B2B world in a serious way since 2011. Today there are over 11 times more B2B companies using automation software and strategies over the last 6 years.
The early B2B adopters of marketing automation tended to be Fortune 1000 companies with revenues of $500m and up. But now, marketing automation is being used by B2B eCommerce businesses of almost every size.
Using marketing automation strategies in the B2B world more typically focuses on information-oriented messages, education, spreading the news about events, and nurturing leads through their longer sales funnels. By choosing the right eCommerce and marketing tools (which aren't necessarily the same ones as B2C companies), you can meet your marketing goals in every channel, including social media, email and your landing pages.
Marketing automation can become a real powerhouse for B2B companies with longer sales cycles and higher average sales values. it can help you generate and nurture leads as well as keeping subscribers engaged and focusing your content delivery to build your domain authority. Check out a few examples of B2B automation strategies here.
B2B eCommerce sales are expected to surpass B2C eCommerce by 2020. Leading companies are investing in B2B platforms now that use data strategically to increase sales. Companies that don't will find themselves at a big disadvantage in just a few years.
Marketing automation can access buyer needs and design a customer journey that's specifically tailored to lead them to the services and products they need.
And when that occurs through carefully designed marketing automation and website personalization, customer loyalty increases, along with lifetime customer value. That's literally a win-win.