Marketing automation isn’t just for large corporations anymore. Many small businesses and professional service firms are adopting automation tools to help systematize their marketing efforts. In addition to helping marketers do more with less, these tools can also be a boon to the sales department (or the sales role for those of us who wear many hats). Of course, we should remember the b2b automation workflow here, as b2b marketing involves the techniques and best practices used by companies to sell their products and services to other businesses. Here are 5 ways that small business owners and salespeople can use marketing automation to close more sales.
Lead Capture
Marketing automation tools can help you identify who is visiting your website in a couple of different ways. Most marketing automation tools will help you identify the company that is visiting your website based on the IP address of the visitor’s computer. This technique requires that the company has registered its IP address (vs. the IP address being registered to its internet service provider, i.e., AT&T). Some marketing automation tools integrate with other databases like Data.com or LinkedIn to provide additional demographic information about the business – number of employees, industry, revenue size, etc.
Company information is interesting, but many small business owners and salespeople become frustrated because they don’t know who from that company visited their site, so they don’t know whom to follow up with. This is where lead capture forms come into play. Once a visitor fills out a form, the marketing automation tools can match the visitor data it previously collected as anonymous visitor tracking data to the name provided in the lead capture form.
Lead Qualification
Another key feature of marketing automation tools is the ability to track visitors’ behavior on your site. Pages visited, visit duration, number of visits, registration form submission, and file downloads are some of the behaviors marketing automation software can track.
Lead scoring lets you assign a point value to each behavior, so you can give higher scores to people who attended your webinar and lower scores to those who only viewed your careers page. This helps small business salespeople identify which prospects are ready for a sales call and which still need to be nurtured.
Personalized Email Automation
Many marketing automation tools also provide the ability to track individual sales rep emails. Sales-driven nurturing programs are also a great feature of marketing automation tools. These programs allow you to continue nurturing leads, but the email messages come from the sales rep. More importantly, the replies and notifications go directly to sales.
Lead Intelligence
In addition to the ability to look up company demographic information and the tracking and scoring features listed above, many marketing automation tools will integrate with CRM systems. Having this information centrally located in the CRM allows salespeople to frame their conversation based on the leads past behavior and experience with your company.
Automated Lead Alerts
Last, but not least, marketing automation systems will alert you to items that need attention from sales. Rather than relying on running and reviewing reports, many tools let you define your criteria and then alert you by email, text message, etc. whenever those rules are triggered, giving you a better chance of connecting with a prospect when they are ready to buy.
Are you using marketing automation in your small business? Tell me what you like or don’t like about them in the comments below.
