B2B marketing automation workflows are the key to effective lead nurturing. Without predetermined workflows in place, trying to close sales is like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing which pieces stick.
In fact, “lack of effective strategy” is one of the most significant barriers to marketing automation success. But if time is spent setting up a proper marketing process that’s capable of scaling as a business grows, better leads will come and sales conversions will increase.
Source: Sendinblue
The real question is which workflows are most critical for B2B marketers? And, how do you implement them into your daily marketing activities?
Here’s a breakdown of the most relevant marketing automation workflows based on which stage of the buyer’s journey your lead is currently in:
Every time a potential customer visits your website they engage in what is called the buyer’s journey. While there are nuances for each unique business, this digital journey can essentially be broken down into three stages:
As your marketing team learns more about your buyer journeys—what works and what’s failing—you will identify core data-points and KPIs for each stage. Processes will necessarily be built. And automating as much of those processes as possible will ultimately streamline and clarify growth opportunities.
B2B content marketing is a proven way to drive brand awareness, and gated content is a great way to both create awareness and capture leads. A user would have to, for example, enter their email address, contact info, and title in order to be granted access to the content behind “the gate” (a.k.a. the form). The gated content itself can be anything you’d like—a video, white paper, eBook—as long as it provides some value to your audience.
The result here is that you have a new lead, and your lead has the content he/she wanted. Even if the lead doesn’t immediately convert, your automated B2B marketing process is doing what’s its intended to do at this stage of the buyer’s journey -- driving awareness.
Example of a landing page from KeyScouts
As its name suggests, the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey occurs after the leads are already aware of their problem or pain point. They are now considering different types of solutions to solve the problem.
There are a couple workflows that can be useful in this stage:
Lead scoring is an intelligent way to qualify your leads as part of this consideration stage. Lead scoring assigns a number or percentage to each lead based on digital actions.
For example, a lead may be given some points for accessing gated content and even more points for sharing that content on their personal social media platform. If the lead downloaded several pieces of gated content, they may receive even more points. To set up an automation workflow for the consideration stage:
While marketers dream of a world where the marketing funnel is a quick and breezy journey from awareness through to decision and conversion, sometimes it can get a little sticky in there.
If you’re finding that some of your leads aren’t moving to the next stage in the funnel, consider automating a workflow that will give them a nudge. To set up a re-engagement workflow:
Finally, the decision stage of the buyer’s journey. This is when those leads make their buying decision, and ideally convert to a sale. This occurs after leads have been qualified to move from the marketing team over to the sales team where they are to be nurtured and converted.
Here, too, there are a couple workflows that can be effective:
Congratulations! Your lead became a customer! But you’re not done, just yet. Now is the time to be sure to hang on tight to that customer. Harvard Business School reports that increasing customer retention rates by as little as 5% may increase profits as much as 25 - 95%.
1. Keep your existing customers engaged with automated sales and marketing messages.
These might include a series of onboarding emails to familiarize your customer with your product and to educate them on all of the products and services you deliver.
Here’s an example of the first two automated—and personalized—emails in an email onboarding series.
Wealthfront, an investment management robo-advisor, automates their email marketing to deliver educational information to new customers, which helps to ensure a pleasant customer experience and satisfaction.
2. Set up automated invitations to webinars or workshops. Or, send out free case studies or other information that may be useful to that customer.
B2B marketing automation workflows help businesses act as better resources for their potential and existing customers.
Yes, workflows streamline efficiencies to boost the bottom line, but by getting the information they need, when they need it, customers also win.
In this sense, setting up marketing automation workflows will both improve your business and increase customer satisfaction.
Want to learn more about including automation in your online marketing strategy? Download our free ebook “How to Implement B2B Marketing Automation: The Complete Guide” or contact us to get started.