Elizabeth (and Martine); 
Thanks for posting this great article - good because it focuses attention on the right places within the framework of Inbound Marketing Automation. We find many people believe that the answer to the problem of generating more leads, is to simply install some tools. But the truth is that the process of using the tools, and indeed the process behind your entire Inbound Marketing campaign, is critical. 
And this process must begin with a marketing strategy. May seem “old fashioned” when thinking about Inbound, but unless you know what you are selling, to who, and how and when and where, and something about your competitors and a fair amount about your ideal prospects, your chances of success are not high. 
For example: Choosing the right keywords, the ones which you hope your prospects type into Google, is a marketing exercise. The phrases, after all, are your online brand identity. Armed with the strategy, it may be easier for you to think of your Inbound Marketing Automation as consisting of 4 sub-processes. 
1) Attract more visitors to your website through SEO, Social Media Marketing, and, if needed, PPC 
2) Engage their attention with industry leading content (website copy, white papers, videos, podcasts). When doing this, as you suggest, ensure that you model the content to match your prospect's buying cycle: content to create awareness of your solution at the early stages (as a generic technology and thus not "salesy". And then to design additional pieces of content which become more and more specific about your actual solution. In other words, this later content is aimed at convincing someone weighing up his or her shortlist of companies, why yours is the best. So a very "salesy" document or video. 
3) Convert visitors by getting their names and email addresses in return for your valued content. Grade their profiles (each time they visit ask them a few more questions) and score their digital footprints (their activities on the site), to rack up points. Keep them in your funnel by automatically nurturing them around their buying cycle, educating them automatically with multi-touch drip email campaigns cultivating them from cold lead to hot prospect. This is how you keep the more than 70% of them who are interested in your solution, but who are not now ready to buy, in your funnel. 
4) And when their Grade and Score reach your target levels, automatically feed these prospects directly into your CRM and notify the assigned sales rep (based on product or territory or whatever…). Your sales reps will love this part – no more cold calls as they person they call knows them from the emails, and the sales person knows the prospect from the Profile and activity on site. 
Our website contains a library of white papers, tools, videos and an extensive glossary, all covering the above in more detail. 
www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca 

Hi Eric, 
 
Thank you for the comment. I have visited your website, and Gossamar has some great tools to help B2B marketers jump into the marketing automation process at all stages. It looks as though you have had experience with marketing automation all over the globe. How does North America compare to other parts of the world in terms of how they’re taking advantage of the marketing automation process? It also looks like you have some similar services as HubSpot. How do you think you compare? 
 
Thanks again for the comment! 

Hi Elizabeth; 
Thanks for the kind words. I'll answer your questions in this comment. 
1) North America ranks higher than many countries in Europe in terms of implementing marketing automation tools. But if you check out our latest blog post, you'll see that Europe tends to do more online searching than we do here in NA. Which implies that there is more opportunity for marketing automation - but the differences are not large in general terms. 
2) We are in fact a HubSpot reseller and were asked by them to be one because we help people implement the tools which they sell. As I mentioned in my first comment, the process is the key and HubSpot doesn't advise people on this as it has to be tailored to suit each company. One has to analyze the company, its needs and objectives, existing processes and its readiness to change (or the degree of pain leading to a desire to change). And then design the process and tools as a cohesive system to make the whole work better than the sum of its parts. And HubSpot recommends us to people to do all this, using the HubSpot tools. 
Hope this helps - thanks again for the comment.