Why the Future of B2C Marketing lies in Intelligent Automation

There has been a lot of talk around AI, and how machines will one day become sentient and steal our jobs and livelihood in the process. While the thought might be worrying, it is probably light years away from becoming a reality. However, businesses are no strangers to adopting automation to increase efficiency.
If you consider the manufacturing industry, automation has proven to be highly effective. I was lucky enough to visit BMW’s production facility in Munich back in 2012. I was surprised to find out that over 90 % of the production processes were completely automated, and were carried out by robots programmed to perfection. The plant manager resonated with the company’s beliefs that automation eradicated factors like human error almost entirely and helped them maintain exceptionally high manufacturing standards.
Now, can the same case be made for the Marketing industry? It most definitely can. Marketing Automation is no longer a buzzword from 2015 but is being used widely by brands small and large to create highly intelligent and effective marketing campaigns to acquire and retain customers.
There are so many products out there, operating under the guise of a marketing automation tool. Some ESP’s would have you believe that they are the most complete and useful marketing automation tool out there. Marketing Automation is much more than that. After scouring the Internet for a good definition, I found this to be apt:
According to Scott Brinker (Editor, Martsec), “I think of marketing automation, in the broadest sense, as Gartner’s “digital marketing hub.” It’s the central switchboard for campaigns and customer data.
Defining a Marketing Automation Platform
Whether it is B2B or B2C, Marketing Automation platforms uses technology and data to automate marketing activities to run a campaign with minimal intervention. In every business, there will be several activities like:
→ Lead Generation
→ Lead Nurturing & Scoring
→ Lead Segmentation
→ User Retention/Lifecycle Marketing
→ Cross-selling & Upselling
A complete Marketing Automation platform can unify these tasks under one umbrella. Furthermore, it can help you manage and automate marketing activities for multiple campaigns across several channels.
This way, you can create an activity or behavior-based triggers and automate repetitive tasks to maximize business from new and old customers.
B2B vs. B2C: Where does the difference lie?
Both verticals tackle Marketing Automation differently because they serve very different end customers. A B2B business will capture different data and user behavior as compared to a B2C company. I will try to list down specific broad parameters based on which we can differentiate B2B from B2C MAP’s (Marketing Automation Platform):
1. Channel:
A B2C business leverages omnichannel communication compared to a B2B company. The dominant channel of engagement in a B2B business is Email, and this will mostly remain unchanged even as the customer proceeds in their lifecycle. I will expand on this by comparing the engagement mediums offered by a B2B MAP (Hubspot) with a B2C MAP (WebEngage):
2. Data:
Because of having very different end-users, B2B & B2C MAP’s capture very different data points. B2B is more about account-based marketing with users mapped by roles and access-levels with data stored within sales CRM. A B2B MAP builds its database from a company’s CRM compared to a B2C MAP that creates a database through scratch.
B2C MAP’s store microdata about users within the Marketing CRM. A B2C MAP will mostly require data that revolves around a user’s browsing behavior and lifestyle attributes. These attributes will be captured via cookies on a web browser, and via unique identifiers on a mobile device.
A B2B MAP lies on the other end of the spectrum. Marketers would have little use of data points like products browsed, color preferences, age, and education data. They would be more concerned with data like company & contract size, problem statement, industry, etc. All these data points are sourced via the company’s CRM to understand customer profiles.
3. Feature Offering:
A B2B MAP is more focused on customer lifecycle management, while a B2C MAP is looking to enhance customer retention. Compared to B2C products, B2B products are more complex and have a high number of decision-makers involved.
B2C product buying behavior is more emotional and impulse-based, while B2B products include a high level of technicality and analysis. This is why both MAP’s offer very different core features to provide effective Marketing Automation.
Features that you would generally find in a:
B2B MAP:
→ Lead scoring, Lead nurturing, CRM integration
B2C MAP:
→ Retargeting, Retention marketing, Multi-channel engagement
4. Process vs. Experiment:
B2B Marketing Automation will stress the concept of one-to-one marketing, focusing on relationship management. It is more structured in its approach and looks to transition a known customer further in their life-cycle. MAP’s in B2B businesses would necessarily try to solve a problem for a known customer (backed by detailed CRM data) and by answering a very particular pain point.
B2C Marketing Automation is more experimental in its approach. Marketers try to enhance the back of the mind awareness via consistent, targeted branding over multiple communication channels. A MAP would look to segment vast datasets into meaningful segments and create personalized campaigns to enhance conversions.
5. Pricing:
B2B MAP’s are mostly priced based on the number of leads/contacts that they wish to manage for a client. On the other hand, B2C MAP’s pricing is affected by the amount of data captured for a particular user (both anonymous and known). Therefore, the pricing structure is led by the number of users that are to be tracked.
As you can see, Hubspot offers its B2B MAP based on the number of contacts that you wish to manage. This number will rarely be vast, as a B2B company’s customer base won’t be very massive (more than five digits). For a B2C company, you can’t have this as a feasible solution because your target market can be enormous (millions and quite possibly billions of consumers).
For starters, WebEngage offers its B2C MAP for 199$ per month for up to 10k MAU (monthly active users). As you can see, the pricing structure is more suited for B2C businesses based on the number of active users that can be tracked.
In case you were wondering about automating your brand’s marketing activities, you can consider some of the information in this article for reference.

The story originally appeared on the WebEngage blog. Check it out here.
