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How do I succeed with Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation has recently become part of B2B companies' marketing strategies. The reasons are many, such as it helps companies generate MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) that facilitate the sales department. Nowadays, there are several affordable so-called marketing automation systems and they work very well in combination with all kinds of digital marketing strategies. However, this does not mean that it is easy to implement; it is important to understand your company's customer generation flow. Here we'll go through three elements to consider: attraction - journey - follow-up.

What is Marketing Automation?

Justlike many other words in marketing and communication, Marketing Automation can mean different things depending on who you talk to.Marketing Automation in this context is about the flow that the company has created for processing a person/potential customer's online behavior. This is often carried out by reviewing the customer journey from lead to customer and personas that describe what the contact persons of the customer look like. If this is something you have not worked with before, you can find our template for personas here.

Flow, workflow, automation.

Most people who work online have at some point filled in a form in exchange for a downloadable material. Usually with an agreement to be contacted in some way. As a result, you will receive a number of emails ranging from the requested material to other updates from the sender. This is what we call flow. However, there are both pitfalls and opportunities that need to be addressed when creating the flow and often issues like this come up:

  • How many emails should we send?
  • How often should we send?
  • What shall we say?
  • What does the flow look like?
  • What do we do with the contacts?

To answer these questions, we'll start with step 1 - Attraction.

Attract - The value of content in terms of relevance and accessibility.

As mentioned above, Marketing Automation and flows are about an exchange of information. In order for a visitor to be willing to give up information, the person must first have developed an interest in the topic being discussed. This can be done by analysing the target audience and then creating downloadable material that is interesting and relevant to that specific target audience. There are many materials that can be of interest and examples of this could be:

  • Trends
  • Guides
  • Price lists
  • Tools

Each sector has different areas of interest and, as I said, it is important to cater for the interests of the target group.

Relevance - Have multiple downloadable materials

Review the customer journey to see if you are addressing the different situations our target group may be in. Some may just want to know price and others may want to know more exactly what you do. Having different materials for different situations and audiences will help you process and interpret the leads that come in.

Start by reviewing the most general situations a potential customer might be in and create materials for those situations and then build out with more specific questions/situations. Accessibility - Digital marketing strategies.

Answering the question of where your potential customers are digitally usually helps to set up the right strategies to get as many as possible into your market flow. Do you have a lot of users on your company blog? Don't have a company blog? Are many people searching for it on search engines? Is there a relevant community on any social platforms?

Make the material accessible and sustainable

If you write blog posts, it is a good idea to create Call-To-Actions for relevant posts where you can download the relevant content. Also optimise for the right keywords. This not only increases the possibility of getting your content seen but also creates opportunities to generate leads for a long time to come.

Share content on the right social media.

Is there content on other digital platforms linked to the material? Then please link the blog post to this material and preferably with a relevant Call-To-Action. Please also share the material separately. Remember to analyse the target audience and see which channels the target audience uses and if your material is suitable to be shared there. A whitepaper of about 5000 words may not be optimal for Instagram but can work well on LinkedIn...

Paid advertising

Long-termand organic growth for sure, but if you want to see fast growth, paid advertising can work well. Create landing pages/ads for the right target audience and have the right keywords. The keywords should be relevant to the material. Here's what to consider when optimizing your website for paid advertising.

The customer journey - Create a flow that everyone in the organisation understands.

Depending on knowledge and resources, it is possible to create different types and complex flows. From tree-shaped flows where it depends on where you click to determine what the next step in the flow will be, to everyone who has downloaded your material ending up in more general flows. The question here is what suits you and your material?Creating opportunities to be contacted through CTAs is of course an important part of the flow, but usually you can work the customer further along the flow anyway. A simple flow can look like the picture below and the flow can be extended depending on the results:

What is marketing automation?

This brings us to the last part - the follow-up. 

Follow-up - Where do our MQLs and contacts go?

Being able to visualise the flow helps us understand how to process the person who has received our material in exchange for contact details. How long has the contact been "processed" in the form of emails. Let the contact complete our flow and review how the person has acted on the material we have given out.A contact who has not opened our emails or moved on with the material sent out may not be ready to be called. However, if the contact has shown a keen interest in the material, it may be a good idea to create a slightly more personal piece of material and contact the person.

Who should contact whom?

A flow should facilitate the seller but not take over the seller's job. Let the salesperson become comfortable with the tool you have chosen to use in your Marketing Automation strategy. This will help the salesperson create new touch points, reducing "cold calls" and creating the opportunity for more warm calls.Clarify who will retrieve lists of these leads and how they will be taken out. Should the contact lists be integrated with your CRM system. Based on this, you can then make a plan for what to do and who will do what.

Summary - Marketing Automation and Digital Marketing

Marketing automation and workflow is a great way for the marketing department and marketing work to get closer to the sales department. It's a two-way exchange of information between sales and marketing, and to be most successful, both departments need to be involved.Start from the perspective of the potential customer and visualise the flow so you can see exactly what's happening and when it's happening. This helps everyone involved to understand the next steps. Hopefully, you will then be able to increase your sales and create an organization where the sales and marketing departments work closer together and with common goals.If you want to learn more about this exciting topic, download our webinar on Content Marketing and Marketing Automation here:Download the webinar on Content Marketing & Marketing Automation!

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