Most B2B marketers today are missing huge opportunities in delivering better results through Marketing Automation. Research conducted by Smart Insights in collaboration with Spotler UK found that only 9% of B2B marketers are high adopters, many of whom are missing out on the benefits of marketing automation.
Marketing Automation is well documented to have many great benefits for B2B businesses. From being able to deploy more campaigns in less time to delivering more personalised lifecycle communications. B2B marketers that adopt more of the features in their marketing automation technology deliver better results. In fact, according to Spotler 44% see improved ROI within 6 months and are able to deliver a 451% increase in qualified leads.
In its “State of Marketing Automation in 2022” report with Smart Insights, Spotler discovered that less than 1 in 10 B2B companies were not implementing any marketing automation and a further 53% were using very few features within their technology, despite understanding the benefits and having access to the features.
The benefits are clear
The research asked respondents what they thought the benefits of marketing automation were. 65% understood that improved user experience and communications relevance is an advantage of automation. Together with the ability to generate more and identify better quality leads, marketers said that they saw improved conversion rates with 37% stating reduced marketing costs was a benefit of automation.
So what are the barriers? It certainly isn’t the technology, with over 70% believing their marketing automation technology has the right capabilities needed. What the research found was a mix of strategic and practical issues.
Data and internal skills are the biggest barriers
The biggest barrier to adopting marketing automation functionality is integrating data from different sources and systems, which was experienced by over half of businesses (57%). With limited internal skills for setting up rules, lead scoring and sequences and a lack of resources following closely behind. 42% said that they lacked the ability to define a Marketing Automation strategy.
What’s also interesting to see is that 32% of teams were unable to either make a strong business case for investment or get buy in internally.
But there is progress
Despite the barriers however, we’ve seen progress in adoption. Spotler have conducted this annual report since 2015 and it’s clear to see that a greater amount of B2B marketers are gaining competency in their use of marketing automation.
The proportion of businesses not using marketing automation technology has fallen over the last 7 years from almost a quarter (24%) in 2015 to 10% in this year’s results.
A call to arms for business leaders
As an industry, there’s much work to be done. The benefits for improving marketing automation maturity are clear.
Business leaders must therefore focus on upskilling B2B marketers on areas including data, strategy and lifecycle marketing. As well as focussing internally, successful marketing teams must learn to lean on their technology providers or agencies to help them make the most out of the technology they are investing in.
Further Reading
Managing B2B Marketing Automation in 2017