B2B marketers manage a number of competing tasks throughout the day.
They must execute deliverables, meet deadlines, develop strategy, and measure results—all while avoiding distractions. This begs the question: How does one juggle such a variety of responsibilities?
We’ll let you in on a secret: Your marketing technology stack makes a world of difference when it comes to marketing productivity and efficiency.
In today’s blog post, we discuss 31 B2B marketing tools you can’t live without. Keep reading!
CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms aren’t strictly sales tools. Marketers can leverage CRM tools for a number of tasks, including audience segmentation, project management, campaign management, and more targeted marketing. Of course, some CRMs are more useful than others. Here are a few top choices:
HubSpot
HubSpot, marketers can build targeted lists and automate things like email campaigns and lead scoring. For marketers on the go, the mobile version of HubSpot provides instant access to metrics at-a-glance. With the tap of a smartphone, access important marketing analytics.
Salesforce
Marketers can utilize Salesforce’s automated lead management and scoring capabilities. The robust reporting options display important marketing metrics at a glance: Pipeline by account type, leads driven by campaign, top marketing channels, and unspent marketing dollars. Traveling marketers can even tap into the Salesforce mobile app to manage leads on the fly.
ZoHo
ZoHo comes equipped with a user-friendly interface and a variety of features for a lower a price point: Email marketing tools, marketing gamification, lead management, and comprehensive reporting. Third-party integration with Google G Suite and Office365 allows for seamless emailing and scheduling. The mobile app version means B2B marketers can keep an eye on leads and reports from any location.
Team Collaboration
Whether peer reviewing copy, sharing campaign results, or sending project updates, B2B marketers can fuel productivity with team collaboration tools. In fact, a Stanford study shows the mere perception of working collaboratively can motivate people to perform better on a task (source). Ready to supercharge your marketing team’s performance? Let’s review the top collaboration apps for B2B marketers:
Slack
Rather than dealing with the back and forth of email, B2B marketers can message coworkers directly or use the channel feature to organize conversations. Channels provide a central place to crowdsource ideas, ask for project updates—or simply lighten the mood with a few well-timed GIFs.
Slack also integrates with other tools in your marketing tech stack. Use these integration capabilities to pull quick reports directly into Slack and send instant updates on campaign performance or web traffic.
Google Drive
This suite of Google web tools lets B2B marketers collaborate on team files in real time. Here’s a quick example: If you manage a corporate blog, you can outline blog post ideas with Google Sheets, collaborate on blog post drafts with Google Docs, and present a blog traffic analysis with Google Slides. Since changes save as you type, marketers no longer have to fear losing documents.
CA Agile Central
Let’s face it—without a central place to track projects, marketing assignments can easily get lost among crowded inboxes and to-do lists. CA Agile Central provides marketers with a single location to plan projects, assign work, and track assignments from start to finish. Marketing teams can use this tool to stay up-to-date on design work, blog assignments, and more.
Market Intelligence
Market intelligence tools pull and organize data from a variety of sources into one location to help B2B marketers make more informed, strategic decisions. Let’s explore some of our favorite market intelligence tools:
ZoomInfo
We might be biased here, but ZoomInfo’s market intelligence platform gives marketers a strategic advantage over their competitors. Marketers can leverage our extensive contact database to target ideal B2B buyers by industry, title, company location, job function, and more. With millions of direct dials and email addresses on hand, you can easily fill the gaps in your contact database. The result? Highly-targeted, marketing campaigns.
BuzzSumo
If you’re looking to conduct research for SEO and content marketing campaigns, let us introduce you to BuzzSumo. This web application leads you to the latest online content, most-shared articles, and key influencers around specific topics and keywords– a neat way to find new content ideas. Another benefit is the competitive analysis feature. Just type in a competitor’s URL to discover unique insights such as influencers, backlinks, and top-performing content.
Survey Monkey
Survey Monkey provides valuable survey capabilities to collect audience insights and aid your market research efforts. Conduct surveys to measure brand awareness, generate product feedback, and uncover customer buying trends. Additionally, publishing the results from original research can position your organization as an authority within your industry.
Social Media Management
Marketing and social media go hand-in-hand. In fact, 95% of B2B marketers use social media as part of their digital marketing strategy (source). So which tools do marketers rely on to get the job done? Let’s explore three favorites:
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a popular social media management app that cab be used to track social media campaigns, referral traffic, and conversions to measure engagement and lead generation.
Sprout’s comprehensive social listening features help marketers measure brand awareness, monitor relevant keywords, and identify influencers with high follower counts. And, Sprout’s competitor analysis functionality helps marketers benchmark their performance.
Bambu
Research shows company branded messages reach 561% further when shared by employees compared to branded channels (source). Bambu, a G2 Crowd leader for employee advocacy software, helps marketers raise brand awareness by providing an easy platform for employees to share content through.
This tool provides employees with a curated feed of pre-approved content, along with text suggestions for social media promotion. The platform even includes a leaderboard to provide employees with an additional incentive to share content.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch helps answer the important question– what is your audience talking about? Use this app to understand your target audience on social media, track and find relevant social content, and identify important influencers. Brandwatch can even analyze the use of emojis and brand logos.
Event Marketing
91% of over-performing businesses place a greater emphasis on live events as a marketing channel, compared to underperforming businesses or businesses performing as expected (source). With that in mind, which tools help marketers manage and market live events? Let’s review:
Bizzabo
The marketing features can help you design event websites and promotional emails, retarget attendees who don’t finish the registration process, and provide incentives to encourage attendee referrals. Further, marketers can dig into marketing campaign insights to determine which channels are most effective at driving registrations.
Eventbrite
B2B marketers can use this tool in two ways: To manage an event or simply find industry events to attend. For event planning, the platform integrates with a large number of marketing tools such as Salesforce and HubSpot to streamline workflows. In addition, mobile management features let you track ticket sales from any location.
Calendly
As you identify qualified leads at an event or trade show, you can use Calendly to seamlessly schedule sales appointments. And, this tool integrates with marketing and sales apps, such as Salesforce, so you can update CRM records as meetings are scheduled.
Email Marketing
If you’ve worked in marketing for any length of time, you know email can be powerful. But which tools do marketers rely on to get the job done? Here are four crowd favorites:
Oracle
Oracle Eloqua helps B2B marketers set up automated nurturing emails, build customized emails, and create targeted lists. It handles the management of leads, campaigns, and social media to streamline marketing workflows.
Litmus
Litmus provides a number of handy web tools to streamline the email development process. Create emails using a web-based editor, dig into email analytics to inform strategy, and fix issues that could leave your marketing emails unopened.
The checklist feature helps marketers QA emails for performance issues, such as broken links, missing text, and slow-loading images. This tool integrates with popular email service providers and marketing automation tools.
Sigstr
Put simply, Sigstr turns email signatures into a marketing channel. Marketers can assign custom signature content for specific departments or teams, make automatic updates across the company, and measure success using analytics. The account-based marketing features let you tailor content to specific accounts, industries, and regions.
SalesHandy
This email productivity tool provides recipient engagement data and a nine-stage automated follow-up process. It also has some helpful features like smart email templates, attachment tracking, and built-in email verification, which ensures higher email deliverability.
Neverbounce
Neverbounce is a real-time email verification and list cleaning service serving businesses of all sizes. From startup to enterprise, Neverbounce helps protect sender reputation and increase email deliverability. They also offer automated services that conduct near-daily cleaning and a variety of integrations for seamless data transfers.
SEO
As companies look to grow their web presence, modern content marketers must be familiar with SEO best practices. In fact, 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority (source). Here are three essential tools to help marketers tackle SEO responsibilities:
BrightEdge
This tool leverages AI to recommend actions that can drive improved search engine rankings. Think of it as a personal data analyst who sends a list of tasks. The app keeps you updated on backlinks, keyword rankings, and traffic channels. Digital marketers can use Brightedge to improve organic reach, boost brand awareness, drive website traffic, and develop high-performing content.
Ubersuggest
Need fresh ideas for blog content? Enter, Ubersuggest – Neil Patel’s free keyword idea tool. Marketers use this app to find new long-tail keyword ideas in seconds. Simply type in a word or string of words to get started. Then, filter by search volume, CPC, or Adwords competition to find top keyword opportunities. Refine the results further with the negative keywords and filter options.
On a related note, Neil Patel will soon release a new free tool that works like SEMrush, a popular competitor analysis tool. Here’s how it will work: When you type in a URL you’ll see total traffic, top pages, and top keywords – essentially letting you spy on the competition.
NinjaOutreach
Modern marketers know natural link-building practices are essential to establish online authority. NinjaOutreach simplifies this task, helping marketers quickly identify high-quality bloggers and publications within target industries and locations. Automated follow-ups help marketers schedule mass outreach campaigns for guest blogging and social sharing opportunities.
Website
Website analytics help marketers understand the customer journey. These tools answer top-of-mind marketing questions, such as: How are prospects finding my website? How do visitors interact with my web content? These valuable insights help marketers create an action plan to optimize content marketing offers, website copy, and much more. Let’s review three helpful website tools:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a G2 Crowd leader for best digital analytics software. Marketers typically rely on three main features of GA– acquisition, audience, and behavior.
Amplitude
This tool tracks user engagement, retention, and conversion across digital applications. Marketers can dig into product trends across segments or they can use the platform to make adjustments that keep users engaged across multiple products.
Google Search Console
Formerly known as Google Webmaster tools, Search Console is a free service from Google that helps marketers understand their company website health and search-ability.
Writing and Editing
It’s no secret: Marketers must be strong communicators. Fortunately, there are multiple tools that can work as personal writing assistants, ensuring marketing content is easy-to-read and error-free – which in turn will speed up your editing process. Let’s review three must-know tools:
Hemingway App
Ernest Hemingway is famous for his concise writing style, so as you can guess, the Hemingway App strives to make writers’ copy simpler. To get started, simply paste text into the free tool to find out your readability score. The app provides suggestions to simplify hard-to-read sentences, eliminate the use of passive voice, and cut down on adverbs and complicated words.
Grammarly
Grammarly double-checks grammar, spelling, sentence structure, style, and even plagiarism. Just paste text into the grammar checker to find and fix errors. And, the free browser extension can detect copy mistakes right in web apps and browsers.
Atomic Reach
Sometimes, marketers can lose sight of the content that really resonates with their audience. Enter, Atomic Reach. This AI-powered web app scores content and provides actionable tips to drive more conversions from readers. Marketers can use this app through a browser extension or WordPress plug-in for easy accessibility.
Industry News and Inspiration
B2B marketers know keeping up with the latest news and best practices can be a full-time job. Fortunately, many web and mobile apps can automate this process. Let’s review some top picks:
LinkedIn is the social media channel of choice to reach business prospects and generate leads. In fact, 80% of social media B2B leads come from LinkedIn (source). Beyond the lead generating benefits of LinkedIn, this platform also helps marketers stay in-the-know. B2B marketers can curate their feed, follow topics and influencers related to their company’s niche, and join industry groups to get new ideas.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts send digital content to your inbox based on specific keywords or industry topics. To put it simply, this handy web tool does online research for you. You can also use Google Alerts to keep an eye on your competition, track key influencers, and monitor brand mentions.
Marketers can use Pocket to bookmark ideas and inspiration in one central location for content planning. It can be used for anything—blog topic ideas, design templates, industry research and more. Gone are the days of having 15 tabs open—Save articles, videos, or images directly from a web browser or news app to access later. Use the tagging system to organize articles and content into categories.
Final Thoughts
And there you have it—the ultimate list of B2B marketing tools. From writing content to performing research, to collaborating with your team, these tools can help you work efficiently through a long list of marketing tasks.
To learn how ZoomInfo, the leading B2B information database, can connect you with your ideal buyers, reach out to our sales team today.