What is Marketing Automation, and How Does it Benefit B2B Marketers?

Posted by David Terry on December 16, 2020

In its simplest definition, marketing automation is the use of software to automate and simplify repetitive marketing activities such as sending email campaigns, scheduling social media posts, tracking marketing interactions and much more.

By automating these tasks, marketers will not only become more efficient in their roles, but they will also be able to provide more personalized experiences that send the right message, to the right customer at the right time.

The benefits are clear. Marketing automation on average drives up to 14.5 percent increase in sales productivity and a 12.2 percent reduction in marketing overhead. Not only that, but 80 percent of marketing automation users saw an increase in the number of leads by using marketing automation software, and 77 percent had an increase in conversions.

How does marketing automation work?

Marketing automation is a series of tools designed to streamline and simplify the most repetitive and time-consuming responsibilities of the B2B marketer. While these tasks aren’t inherently difficult to perform manually, they take your attention away from more meaningful jobs.

By using marketing automation software you can completely automate those manual processes, allowing them to run in the background while you focus on projects that drive growth within your company.

While most people think of email when they think of marketing automation, B2B marketers can automate marketing across any channel. Lead nurturing, social media posts, website chatbots, referral marketing, customer behaviour analysis and lead qualification are just some examples of marketing processes that you can automate. 

How does marketing automation support Inbound Marketing?

The main objective of B2B Inbound Marketing is to attract visitors to your brand through relevant, timely and engaging content marketing strategies. 

By answering your prospects questions at each stage of their buyer’s journey, you will position your brand as a leading authority on your specific topic - meaning potential customers will trust your business as a resource and will become far more likely to purchase your products or services.

Marketing automation is the technology that allows you to nurture and convert the traffic that you are attracting to your website, as well as helping you to deliver the right content, to the right customer at the right time.

Marketing automation supports Inbound Marketing through:

  • Lead generation
  • Nurturing leads to convert
  • Target conversion
  • Analyses and metrics that show Inbound Marketing ROI

Why marketing automation is important for B2B marketers

When you successfully integrate marketing automation into your B2B Inbound Marketing program, your organization will realize a wide number of benefits. We have listed just a few of those benefits here.

Personalized communication: Marketing automation allows you to create more personalized and targeted content for your customers. You can create follow-up email campaigns that are specifically based around your customer’s individual geolocations or which stage they are in the buyer’s journey.

Better lead generation: Marketing automation gives you a better understanding of your prospect's behaviour. By tracking how visitors interact with your website, you can understand how to improve lead generation techniques - whether through paid advertising, landing pages or email campaigns. 

Improved lead nurturing: All visitors to your website do not necessarily want to purchase your products or services. Most visitors do not want to talk to a salesperson until they’re ready, and jumping the gun could lead to a lost sale. Marketing automation helps you to understand what individual visitors do and don’t engage with, helping you to better nurture leads through relevant content that solves their problem. Demonstrating expertise at the right time of the buyer’s journey will eventually lead to sales.


Want to learn more about marketing automation, and how it can drive revenue growth at your business? Contact The Brit Agency today. Our team of Inbound Marketing experts would love to talk to you about how we use marketing automation to improve marketing results.

Topics: Marketing Automation, B2B