A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed.
– Ramsay Leimenstoll
Marketing teams in B2B firms function to achieve one ultimate goal, to increase profits or revenue margins. Given the competitive space, B2B businesses operate in any sector; time is money, and every minute counts. Effective strategies must be in place that allows B2B companies to allocate efforts to nudge their venture toward success. Tools to work efficiently, collaborate more, and engage with customers better is what businesses need to sustain, survive and succeed. Marketing automation empowers enterprises to accomplish this precisely!
Marketing Automation: A Tool That Unleashes a Business’s Full Potential
Marketing automation is software that streamlines the marketing processes, including campaign management, audience segmentation, behavioral analysis, website monitoring, and lead scoring. It enables businesses to automate repetitive marketing tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaigns to amplify lead generation, lead conversions, and sales.
An Overview of Marketing Automation Statistics
Marketing automation is the most effective digital marketing technique, next to content marketing. Digitalization of businesses, high demand for targeted advertising, and several enterprises opting for informed advertising strategies necessitate marketing automation. According to GlobeNewswire report, the global marketing automation industry is valued at USD 5.2 billion and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.5% to reach USD 9.5 billion by 2027.
Marketing Automation Adoption
The marketing sector has embraced automation extensively compared to other industries owing to its benefits. 79% of businesses use marketing automation for their functionality as compared to sales and finance departments.
Marketing Automation Benefits
As per marketing automation stats, businesses have seen significant impact on their venture after choosing to use this software.
Lead generation and conversions 80% of businesses employ marketing automation as it improves lead generation.
Marketing automation snags the lead and, via customization, converts them. Furthermore, businesses can focus on engaged leads and craft hyper-personalized strategies to address their needs and capture conversion.
- Creating Valuable Associations
34% of businesses report marketing automation paves the way for valuable associations between users and the business.
Marketing automation helps businesses accelerate communication with leads and focus on creating high-value associations with the most vital prospects that will benefit them.
- For Effective Collaboration
35% of businesses believe marketing automation effectively streamlines marketing and sales efforts.
Marketing automation facilitates lead nurturing and qualification, allowing marketing teams to deliver quality leads to the sales fleet to pursue. Both teams can collaborate on lead scoring and ensure the closing of the deals faster.
- Better Lead Scoring
39% of businesses utilize marketing automation lead scoring to prioritize leads.
Marketing automation helps businesses overcome the challenge of manual lead scoring. It dynamically qualifies a lead using predefined criteria and assigns points. It enables B2B firms to take the required actions based on a significant lead score.
- To Bolster Sales
Businesses have witnessed a 14.5% increase in sales productivity after opting for marketing automation.
When marketing automation is integrated with CRMs, it keeps track of the status of the customer journey, helping the businesses to seal the sale deal at the right time.
- Improve ROI
Marketing automation provides businesses with an ROI of $5.44 per dollar spent.
Besides helping B2B companies save costs, marketing automation positively impacts sales production, campaign management, and prospect engagement, helping gain better ROI. Through marketing automation, businesses have witnessed an upsurge of 34% in their revenues.
Essential Marketing Automation Features For Businesses
Enterprises across the globe are embracing market automation to strengthen their marketing and sales efforts. Certainly, every B2B company worldwide might be using a specific marketing automation feature to optimize its venture’s functioning. There are some key features that businesses expect marketing automation to have.
- Effective Lead Management
52% of businesses prefer marketing automation for lead management.
Marketing automation software should be well-equipped to handle lead information and support lead scoring. It should enable sales and marketing teams to work in unison to increase lead flow, nurture leads, and enhance lead conversion ratios.
- Efficient Email Marketing
40% of businesses prefer marketing automation software that can support email marketing.
Marketing automation should have end-to-end email campaign functionality, as communication between customers and businesses usually occurs through emails. Marketing automation that supports the scheduling of email campaigns for centralized and continuous communication improves customer interaction.
- Successful Campaign Management
39% of businesses prefer marketing automation for hassle-free campaign management.
Marketing automation should help businesses to overcome the challenges associated with campaign creation and management. Facilitating a planned campaign flow allows B2B firms to increase productivity and optimize processes vital for profitability.
- Significant Data Segmentation
28% of businesses need marketing automation to support data segmentation.
By managing, maintaining, and filtering customer information based on specific criteria, like, location and type of business, marketing automation facilitates hyper-personalized targeting for better results.
- Hassle-Free Integration
37% of businesses prefer marketing automation with good integration capabilities.
Marketing automation should be easy to integrate with existing tools or third-party applications so businesses can use it easily.
- Better Analytics And Reporting
51% of businesses prefer marketing automation with good analytics and reporting.
Marketing automation should analyze comprehensive information, mine through insights obtained from data, create customized reports and help businesses to make informed decisions.
Marketing Automation Future Trends
There has been a considerable adoption of marketing automation owing to the massive benefits businesses are reaping by putting specific marketing processes on autopilot. By automating several processes, enterprises save on marketing budgets and utilize the same for essential business operations.
Also, as B2B firms expand and diversify their business, marketing automation provides a full scope of scaling marketing endeavors. Some of the future trends in marketing automation include:
- Incorporating AI in Marketing Automation
54.5% of B2B businesses have reported that AI will positively impact their marketing endeavors.
AI in marketing automation has been used for conversational chatbots, personalizing messaging for email subject lines, pushing notifications, and analyzing behavioral patterns. Further, it can scout influencers to predict a campaign’s success, PPC advertising, and create a personalized website experience by assessing how users interact with it.
- Leveraging marketing automation for omnichannel marketing
Businesses have reported that the Omnichannel marketing approach increases user retention by 89%.
One of the critical marketing automation trends is omnichannel marketing. It will enable businesses to unify data and automate crucial processes to optimize sales from a wide range of channels and provide a good user experience from e-commerce to in-store.
- Implementing A/B testing through marketing automation
60% of businesses have reported A/B testing has amplified campaign conversion rates.
A/B testing is one more significant future trend of marketing automation. It will help B2B companies upgrade the quality of their tests, improve data accuracy and insights derived from trials, and leverage them for marketing endeavors.
- Mobile marketing automation
Businesses have witnessed a 17% increase in revenue after rolling out mobile marketing automation.
With the rampant use of mobiles, businesses can leverage marketing automation for mobile marketing. They can initiate SMS, mobile in-app notifications and create mobile engagement strategies for brands for better ROI.
Top 5 Players in The Marketing Automation Market
Marketing automation is a constantly evolving space, and several competitors are vying to take a slice of the market. Some of the top players in the marketing automation market include:
Hubspot is an all-in-one platform for marketing, automation, sales, and customer support and holds a significant market share of 29.51%
Adobe Experience Cloud holds a market share of 12.11%. It is a marketing automation tool that provides content management solutions to build websites and applications.
Oracle Marketing Cloud holds a market share of 8.63%. As a marketing automation tool, it focuses on the enterprise markets and helps integrate with other prominent players in the marketing field.
Active Campaign has a market share of 8.01%. It is geared toward small and medium-sized businesses offering an easy-to-use interface.
Salesforce Pardot has a 4.89% share in the marketing automation market. With the most advanced marketing automation features, it offers different types of plans for other users.
Marketing Automation Challenges
Though marketing automation has been in use since the 1990s, it is only in recent times that its usage has gained maximum momentum. However, specific barriers are certainly deterring businesses from opting for marketing automation. They include:
- Unable to utilize automation
- Unable to manage marketing automation
- Complicate processes involved in setting up marketing automation
- Budget constraints involved in opting for marketing automation
Summing Up
Despite some of the hindrances mentioned above, when utilized correctly, marketing automation tools can immensely benefit B2B companies. It enables businesses to automate a significant portion of their work, streamline strategies, and enhance revenue, allowing them to work smarter and not harder!