How Marketing 4.0 harnesses the power of digital with inbound marketing and marketing automation 10.05.2022
After product-focused marketing 1.0, customer-focused marketing 2.0 and marketing 3.0, which focused on values and people, we've come to the next stage. marketing 4.0 which combines the individual with Big Data technologies, CRM tools and marketing automation. But what is the real added value and what are the limits of inbound marketing and marketing automation?
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What is inbound marketing ?
Inbound marketing differs from traditional marketing in that it reverses the relationship with customers. The principle is to attract prospects through relevant content, for example on a blog or social network, rather than soliciting them through advertising. It is also an integral part of a marketing strategy.
Inbound marketing enables us to set up conversational elements at each stage of contact with the prospect, using appropriate content according to the prospect's level of maturity towards the proposed offer. The strategy and methodology of inbound marketing can therefore be described as follows: attract, convert, sign and retain.
What's more, inbound marketing makes it possible to anticipate and predict customer behavior thanks to data collection and personalized contacts. It thus joins the field of predictive marketing qThis makes prospects more receptive to our offers.
According to Hubspot, 63% of marketers believe that converting leads into customers is their company's top priority. And as a result, 59% of marketers have increased their inbound marketing budget in 2019 vs. 2018, to the detriment of outbound marketing, which 38% even think is overestimated.
The role of marketing automation in inbound marketing
Many levers are activated in inbound marketing, including marketing automation, which is particularly useful for companies that will benefit from considerable time savings, offering marketing teams added value in terms of productivity.
This refers to software platforms designed to replace repetitive, manual processes with automated solutions, considered to be of low added value, such as, for example: sending e-mails, qualifying prospects, creating tasks for the sales team, and so on.
Marketing automation essentially deals with five key stages of inbound marketing (reactivation of cold leads, lead qualification, lead nurturing, lead scoring and sales-marketing alignment) through scalable scenarios capable of adapting to each targeted profile for a more convincing and effective end result.
The appeal of marketing automation no longer needs to be proven: 51% of companies use marketing automation; e-mails sent from BtoB marketing automation software have a 77% higher open rate than regular e-mails; 11 times more B2B companies used marketing automation over the period 2014-2019 vs. the period 2009-2014 (sources Relaymark.com and Forceplus.com).
Marketing automation isn't automatic
However, a well thought-out inbound marketing strategy is not always enough to guarantee good conversion rates (ratio between the number of visits and the number of leads obtained) on the Web. That's why we use marketing automation to increase the number of leads and transform cold leads into warm business opportunities (lead nurturing).
As part of an inbound marketing strategy, marketing automation responds to set objectives and associated performance indicators, making it possible to capitalize on contacts' behavioral profiles across all multi-channel campaigns.
Automation tools are not themselves automated, but require human intervention and analysis in order to realize their full potential. The time saved by marketers on repetitive tasks must be put to good use in intelligently configuring their marketing automation.
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