5 Marketing Automation Strategies that Will Accelerate Your Entire Funnel
Introduction
In the life of marketers working at B2B companies, frustration with their lead generation efforts and marketing ROI is constant. They are often unable to look for ways to further embrace marketing automation to improve marketing ROI.
Little do they know that their marketing department and its moving parts will work like a well-oiled machine if it automated much of its operations. With integrated marketing tools, they can construct workflows, sequence activities, and have the software automatically perform digitized tasks like scheduling and computations. It is said that marketing automation enhances operational efficiency, improves conversions, and eventually raises returns. So, how does one get these benefits in his business?
Here are the top 5 marketing automation best practices for lead generation and funnel acceleration that you can apply. The strategies cover automation solutions for ad sequencing, lead management, lead qualification and retargeting, and email and social media campaigns. After reading this, you should have an idea of how to effectively leverage your marketing automation software. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Here are the top 5 marketing automation best practices for lead generation and funnel acceleration that you can apply.
1. Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is one of the best means of quantifying and prioritizing quality leads for your Sales teams. Possible leads are considered, analyzed, and ranked according to a scale of perceived value and revenue potential. Marketing automation platforms have robust functionalities that help you gather and decipher information imperative to lead scoring so you don’t have to spend time on leads that aren’t going anywhere. Instead, invest your time and efforts in promising leads that foster mutually beneficial relationships.
2. Lead Nurturing
As an inbound marketer, you are supposed to feed the sales funnel of your company with quality leads. But for that, you need an effective lead nurture program for your business in order to build a quality-driven opportunity pipeline. Since the B2B buying process has changed forever, prospects are spending more time on the web doing research about your company’s products and services and getting information from their peers and third parties. That’s why to lead nurturing is now more important than ever and using automation you have to synchronize your marketing throughout the buying process and give prospects the information they seek, and just when it’s most helpful to them.
Automation helps marketing teams move a lead down the funnel and pass it on to the sales team once it’s ready. The data captured by the marketing automation software can then be leveraged by the sales team for getting insights regarding a contact. So it’s essentially a one-stop-shop solution that unifies your lead nurturing processes throughout the funnel.
3. Landing Pages with Lead Magnets
Landing pages offer a way to collect new data about customer experiences and preferences. They are especially relevant for B2B organizations to find more conversions and follow new and promising leads. Landing pages are popular in digital marketing because of their effectiveness when it comes to gathering customer information and moving your campaign forward.
If your brand doesn’t use landing pages, consider adding them to your marketing toolbox to create genuine leads and help website visitors enter the conversion funnel.
Someone who gives you their name and email address is called a lead, a sales lead. A lead magnet is simply an incentive that you give website visitors so that they give you their name and email address. It could be a free eBook, access to a hidden article, printable worksheets, or even an entry in a prize draw. The lead magnet is the thing that attracts leads and persuades them to give you their name and email address.
Here they offer access to exclusive content in exchange for your contact details through landing pages. People who come to this website will be enticed by the lead magnet. They enter their name and email in a form, and receive the lead magnet in return. Once the leads type in their names and emails, they enter into the sales funnel.
Landing pages convert higher than any opt-in forms and they’re particularly well suited for driving traffic from ads, social media, YouTube videos, guest posts, etc. You can create landing pages tailored to specific audience personas and optimize your messaging in a way that gives you a significant lift in conversions.
4. Segmentation and Personalization
There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into marketing automation. One important aspect is segmentation, or the process of breaking down your target audience by age, career, demographics, engagement history, or any other useful information. In the process of segmentation, you can refine your target audience to make it as specific as possible. This in turn provides better marketing results.
Acquiring the right segmentation tools and using data and analytics allows you to create a more powerful and personalized marketing campaign as you approach your audience and seek new customers and greater growth in competitive markets. This also helps you determine the right scale for your campaign and adjust audience preferences as necessary.
5. Remarketing
Remarketing helps keep your brand in front of your potential customers’ eyes even after they navigate away from your website — persuading them to revisit your offer when they need it.
Surely, there’s a huge chunk of website visitors that you’re essentially losing out on since they aren’t converting. Remarketing campaigns allow you to target these visitors with specific ads with the specific goal of convincing them to convert for your offer. With remarketing campaigns, you’re reminding and convincing visitors that weren’t initially ready to convert yet.
Remarketing campaigns have the power to improve brand recognition among potential visitors, recall them back to your post-click landing page, and convince them to perform the desired action.
Final Thoughts
The truth is that marketing automation carries endless possibilities for marketers. Initially, you might face challenges implementing it, but once you have done it correctly, it will make your life easier. It can save you time, energy, and money. It can also deliver major results and multiply your sales.
The benefits you can gain from marketing automation totally depend on the marketing automation strategies you have implemented. So, implement these 5 marketing automation strategies to patch your sales funnel and watch your conversion rates increase dramatically.
Do you know of any other effective marketing automation strategies? Let us know in the comments below
