Trends in B2B Marketing Automation

Throughout the past couple of years in my consulting practice, I’ve seen the market for marketing automation appear, develop, and completely change the face of marketing agencies. According to the Aberdeen Group, back in 2014 nearly 70% of businesses were using a marketing automation platform or are currently implementing one. That percentage has only grown in the last three years.

Marketing automation for small to mid-market companies has morphed from its simple beginnings a couple of years ago into a varied and diverse marketing platform. Marketers using automation software have been shown to generate two times the number of leads than those using blast email software. They are also perceived by their peers to be two times as effective at communicating (Autopilot, 2015). With this increase in automated marketing software being implemented, marketing companies have discovered new and innovative strategies to make the most out of marketing automation in 2017.

Hot trends in B2B marketing automation:

Account-based marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a dynamic and highly personalized form of inbound marketing. ABM is a marketing technique designed to enhance communication with one client account or an important potential client.

Marketing automation has allowed ABM developers to create personalized marketing campaigns based on user data, delivering streamlined content and a consistent experience for these important clients.

Dynamic management and intuitive changes

Marketing campaigns are the backbone of a modern marketing practice. With the addition of marketing automation software in most B2B marketing agencies, managing these campaigns has become an increasingly straightforward process.

Marketing automation provides marketers with clear data reporting what is working in any specific campaign, and what isn’t. The magic in these data sets is that marketers can now compare campaigns side by side and decipher exactly where a campaign lost its footing. By targeting mistakes and miscalculations through automated analysis, marketers can make big changes in real-time to marketing campaigns that have already been started.

Content marketing aligned with marketing automation

Content marketing—also referred to as inbound marketing—is a marketing strategy of organically gaining the attention of potential leads and readers through informative and effective content. This content could be anything from email newsletters to social media posts.

The arrival of marketing automation has increased the already successful results of a fantastic content marketing campaign. Marketing automation records results of past campaigns and can measure the data of a specific demographic to outline where and when content should be shared with a target audience.

2017 is shaping up to be an incredibly exciting year. Take this to the next level by testing and implementing some of the hottest trends in B2B marketing automation.