In marketing, time is a valuable commodity.
Whether you’re setting marketing targets, podcasting, or using content marketing to guide your prospects down the marketing funnel, every second counts.
Inbound marketing automation is used by 76% of global companies to execute key processes precisely, with HubSpot leading the way with a 37.5% market share.
Such is the level of adoption, the global marketing automation market is expected to hit $13.71 billion by 2030.
This article, explores the essentials, focusing on:
- What inbound marketing automation is
- Its benefits
- Examples of where it’s used at Axon Garside
So, let’s get the show on the road and start with the simple stuff…
What is inbound marketing automation?
Inbound marketing automation relates to the use of software and technology to streamline, manage, and optimise the inbound marketing processes.
This includes the automation of repetitive tasks and workflows, paving the way for businesses to attract, engage, and delight their customers efficiently and effectively.
OK, now you know what inbound marketing automation is, why is it worthy of your attention?
Why inbound marketing automation is crucial
Inbound marketing automation can bring immediate benefits to your company:
1. Increased efficiency
Automates repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and lead nurturing, freeing up time for you to focus on improving your strategic activities.
2. Enhanced personalisation
Uses data to tailor marketing messages to individual preferences, improving engagement and conversion rates.
3. Improved lead management
Automates lead scoring and nurturing, ensuring your sales team can focus on the most qualified prospects.
4. Higher conversion rates
Delivers timely and relevant content to prospects, guiding them through the sales funnel more effectively.
5. Better ROI
Reduces your marketing costs by improving the efficiency of campaigns and increasing the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Some businesses fall foul of the misconception that automation is merely a tool to bombard prospects and customers with bulk emails and unnecessary information.
If you happen to fall into this category, nip it in the bud. Fast. Because you’re well wide of the mark.
Let’s remind ourselves of the rationale behind inbound marketing: its goal is to deliver the right information, to the right people, at the right time.
As we mentioned in the B2B Marketing Paradigm, people don’t want to be interrupted. They don’t want to be disrupted.
They don’t want to be pestered with information they don’t need.
Rather, they want information they can use to find solutions at a time that suits them.
Inbound marketing automation allows you to send timely, personalised messages by leveraging the data stored in your CRM.
This ensures that your communications address your audience’s specific challenges and pain points, making your interactions more relevant and effective.
And with 90% of leading marketers saying personalisation plays a crucial role in business profitability, why wouldn’t you give the people what they really want to see?
Examples of how we use inbound marketing automation here
We wouldn’t recommend using inbound marketing automation unless we have first-hand experience of its benefits.
And we can honestly say it’s passed the AG test with flying colours.
We’ve seen inbound marketing automation in all its glory, supporting a quintet of activities, including:
- Lead nurturing sequences
- Lead scoring
- Chatbots
- Customer feedback and surveys
- Content curation and distribution
Let’s put some meat on the bone and explore each further:
Lead nurturing sequences
You don’t need us to tell you that every single one of your leads will interact with your content differently.
So, how can you deliver an experience that differs from one person to another?
Inbound marketing automation.
Using automated email sequences, you can nurture leads based on their behaviour and interactions with your content and send tailored messages to address their needs and interests – all with a simple form submission on HubSpot or a resource download.
The aim? To nurture your prospects ‘down the funnel’ and drive conversions.
Here’s an example below:
When someone downloads any eBook or asset on our site, a Hubspot workflow filters the download based on which of our services they’re interested in, whether it’s website, tech or marketing.
This allows us to send bespoke emails, using personalisation tokens to provide them with a case study relevant to their ‘interest area’.
For example, if they download a HubSpot implementation guide, they’ll receive an email with a relevant case study, and so on.
We then send a follow-up email (when the time’s right), asking how they found the eBook and if they would like to chat it through with us.
A perfect example is made possible by HubSpot’s workflow feature.
And that’s just the first of many examples of inbound marketing automation – let’s check out how it can make the lives of your sales team much easier…
Lead scoring
Ask anyone earning their corn in sales, and they’ll all tell you the same thing:
“There’s nothing worse than trying to engage with a lead that has no chance of converting.”
Inbound marketing automation can be used to manage lead-scoring systems for your sales team, automatically ranking leads based on their interactions with your content, and helping your sales representatives focus on the most qualified prospects.
It’s an approach we use all the time here at Axon Garside.
We target a lot of companies, so it helps us separate the cold leads from the warm ones, and target those we’re most likely to convert.
Time is money, so why not give your sales team the information they need to pluck the low-hanging fruit?
Here’s how you can do this at your company:
Head to your property settings on HubSpot
Find the ‘HubSpot score’ property and set up your editing criteria
This can be used in reports to highlight which companies are engaging with the assets you’re tracking in specific calculation properties.
We’re also using lead scoring in our ABM (Account-Based Marketing) strategy to track precise accounts and how they’re engaging with us.
Using the Contact Priority property we monitor, prioritise, and manage accounts based on their level of engagement.
Chatbots
We’ve no doubt you live and breathe customer service – but you can’t be everywhere simultaneously.
Using inbound marketing automation, you can deploy chatbots on your website to engage visitors in real-time, answer common queries, and guide them through the sales funnel.
Granted, this isn’t the same as speaking with a living, breathing person.
However, chatbots have come a long way, allowing for a constant touchpoint with your prospects when they’re on your website – at all hours of the day.
With a Hubspot chatbot, you can provide your customers with a knowledge base on command, while the HubSpot AI functionality gives you the option of using AI-generated answers, based on your knowledge base, for any query a viewer may have.
Chatbots can also be tailored to certain pages of your website, ensuring the information provided for the user specifically meets their requirements.
However, we always recommend using humans if the AI functionality doesn’t work as humans prefer interaction with humans. However, AI can be used to great effect to answer bespoke questions.
Customer feedback and surveys
Did you know, 97% of B2B customers consider a vendor’s CX reputation when making a purchase decision?
Let that sink in for a second.
Ninety. Seven. Per cent.
Maintaining your CX reputation is key to attracting and retaining customers, and gathering customer feedback has a key role to play.
Using the HubSpot service hub, you can automatically send surveys and feedback requests after interactions or purchases to gather valuable insights and improve your offerings using HubSpot’s service hub.
Requests can be sent to customers/prospects on a date cadence or it can be set once they reach a specific lifecycle stage.
This is important as it means that your customer service team can focus on onboarding and pleasing customers and mitigate the need for someone to send these manually.
From this information, you gain a deeper understanding of customer satisfaction, drivers to market, reasons for non-conversion, and why they picked a competitor.
It makes gathering customer success data a piece of cake, driving tangible improvements and changes in your strategy.
Content curation and distribution
Cast your mind back to what we said earlier: inbound marketing hinges on delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time. In doing so, you’ll improve your engagement and your reach.
Inbound marketing automation tools can curate relevant content and distribute it across your channels, ensuring your audience receives valuable information when they need it.
Automation can also send prompt customer communications across multiple channels and meet the requirements of modern B2B buyers who don’t necessarily always have to land on your website to get the information they need.
But don’t panic: repurposing your content will help you share content that spans multiple platforms, meaning you won’t be depending on your target audience engaging with on-site content to move down the buyer funnel.
Plus, with Content Remix from HubSpot, you can repurpose your content across various channels, including blogs, social copy, and marketing emails.
Because why work harder, when you can work smarter?
Inbound marketing automation – tried and tested…
Sure, you may think we’re slightly biased, but hand on heart, automating your marketing is a necessity in today’s digital landscape.
Streamlining your marketing processes, improving lead nurturing, and providing customers with the content they crave allows you to focus on converting more leads.
Using inbound marketing automation will help you get ahead of the curve, and meet and exceed your audience’s expectations.
