We all know that marketing to business owners is tricky. B2B marketing is unlike B2C marketing because you are not talking to only one end consumer. You are marketing to several decision-makers and end users within the organization who will benefit differently from your products and services. Statistics show six to ten people are involved in a B2B buying cycle.
However, in principle, B2B marketing follows the same strategies as B2C marketing. Educating customers through email marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing are some of the major strategies. Email marketing is implemented by 84% of B2B marketers, with 75% using social media marketing and 69% using content marketing.
Staying on top of these marketing channels can be difficult without the right tools. This blog presents an ultimate list of the best B2B marketing software that can help elevate your marketing campaigns.
The Ultimate List of B2B Marketing Software You Need to Grow Your Business:
The Best B2B Marketing Software You Should Use
SEO and Content Marketing Tools
Educating customers is critical, especially for B2B brands with complex sales cycles to convince customers to go for their products and services. These content marketing tools ensure that you deliver the best content possible that customers find and love.
1. Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence
Social media is more than just creating posts about your products and services. It’s a treasure trove of consumer insights to help you identify what your customers want. Brandwatch understands this and has developed its tool to be a robust source of consumer intelligence assisting brands in listening and understanding what people are saying.
It’s an excellent platform for gaining deep insights into various customer segments and using those to develop your next products. There are also the usual functions of any social media marketing tool, like scheduling posts, engaging with audiences, and campaign analytics. Brandwatch’s plans are designed depending on your needs, such as consumer intelligence, social media management, and the full suite of services. Prices are unavailable online, but you can book a meeting to get a quote.
Email Marketing Tools
The email inbox is still widely used by B2B buyers and remains an excellent avenue for B2B marketers to appear right in front of their target customers. The following tools will help you successfully manage your email marketing campaigns.
2. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo is not your average email marketing platform. It combines chat and CRM into the equation to better engage with your clients, especially when they need you most. Brevo also provides an easy-to-use landing page builder and sign-up forms so you can build a cohesive email marketing campaign faster.
You can use Brevo to manage transactional emails, WhatsApp campaigns, SMS marketing, and push notifications. Its CRM tool lets you manage your leads pipeline and connect it with an automated marketing workflow so you can send timely reminders and follow-ups to get leads moving down the pipeline.
Check out the plans here. They have a free plan that lets you discover Brevo’s amazing features and send 300 emails per day.
3. Omnisend
Email is one of the primary communication methods for B2B marketers to reach their audience, with 64% of B2B marketers saying email helped them achieve business goals. Omnisend is an all-in-one email marketing platform that can help you create high-converting personalized emails that you can send to customer segments using an automated workflow. You can also combine email with SMS and other communication channels since Omnisend lets you manage all these channels in one intuitive platform.
Omnisend has a limited free plan which lets you enjoy all of its features for a maximum of 250 contacts. You can check out the rest of their plans here.
Lead Generation Tools
Highly qualified leads are the lifeblood of any B2B business since these prospects are the ones that they’ll nurture and nudge toward the sales funnel. The following lead generation tools will help you capture and convert the right leads for your business.
4. SEMrush
When you think of SEO and content marketing, the first thing that comes to every B2B marketer’s mind is SEMRush. The platform is well-known for being a leader in the world of SEO, having evolved constantly along with the changing SEO landscape.
But aside from its SEO features, like its robust keyword research tool, comprehensive competitive check, and backlink analysis, it also has a full suite of digital marketing tools designed to help you run successful digital marketing campaigns.
Its SEO features are divided between general SEO and local SEO to help you focus your marketing initiatives. It has separate tools specific to content marketing, such as Topic Research and SEO Content Templates, to ensure you produce content that ranks well.
It also helps with social media marketing with scheduling tools, a unified inbox, and social analytics. As a comprehensive tool, it can be more pricey than others, but the investment is worth it for those looking for an all-in-one solution. You can check out the plans here.
5. Surfer SEO
When building your online content, it must be optimized for SEO to rank in search engine results. And with the proliferation of AI SEO tools, optimizing for SEO is easier than ever.
One of the leading AI SEO tools is Surfer SEO. It helps you research the ranking topics and formulate the best content to discuss them. You can use the tool to optimize content and ensure they are at par with the top-ranking search results.
Surfer SEO gives you weekly SEO insights to help you stay on top of trending and relevant keywords so you can keep your content fresh and never run out of ideas. It also has an SEO Audit tool that helps you identify SEO errors so you can correct them before publishing your content. You can try Surfer SEO free for seven days, then choose one of their several monthly plans.
6. HubSpot
HubSpot isn’t just a content marketing tool. It’s a complete digital marketing suite built to help brands succeed with their inbound marketing strategy. Compared to outbound marketing, content marketing produces 3x more leads and costs 62% less.
HubSpot has perfected the art of harnessing the power of content marketing with its various tools aimed at helping brands capture, convert, and retain customers. It’s a powerful software that lets you manage your content creation strategy with its advanced content management suite.
It also helps you create beautiful landing pages and integrate them with a robust CRM. Further, it enables you to continue delighting customers with a built-in customer feedback and ticketing tool.
HubSpot comes with a free tier with limited options. But they have a wide range of monthly plans that cater to any business size.
7. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a leading social media marketing platform that integrates all your social media channels and provides customizable feeds so you can easily monitor and manage these channels. This is the ideal tool for the busy B2B marketer who needs to keep tabs on how customers interact with campaigns across various social media accounts.
You never know where your customer will leave a comment or message, and Hootsuite’s message inbox consolidates every message, mention, and comment, so you never miss a conversation. You can also use Hootsuite to schedule posts in advance or bulk upload a series of posts across multiple channels.
You can try Hootsuite free for 30 days. Check out their plans here.
8. Unbounce
Creating effective lead generation strategies is crucial for B2B businesses to have a steady stream of customers interested in purchasing their products and services. Unbounce is one of the best landing page builder software for B2B brands.
It helps you create optimized landing pages that will turn prospects into leads and sales. It has an intuitive interface with a drag-and-drop editor. Its best features include AI-powered templates, automated SSL encryption, and high-converting sticky pop-ups.
You can try their features for free for 14 days and then commit to a paid monthly or annual plan. Check out their prices here.
9. Zopto
LinkedIn is the primary social media for most B2B brands, especially since it allows you to find and reach key decision-makers in a company. For B2B marketers, this means you must be on top of your LinkedIn lead generation strategies.
Using a LinkedIn lead generation automation tool like Zopto is one way to do just that. Zopto helps you generate new business leads and manage multiple profiles. You can use it with LinkedIn’s Recruiter and Sales Navigator accounts so you can easily switch between finding the right talents and the right customers.
Automating lead generation in LinkedIn is challenging because the platform bans bot-like behaviors, but Zopto guarantees that their algorithm mimics human behavior, so you don’t get flagged. Zopto also integrates with various marketing tools and lets you run unlimited campaigns to harness the power of A/B testing. To learn more about Zopto and its plans, check out its website here.
Marketing Automation Tools
B2B marketing processes can be complex, and having a marketing automation tool, whether a simple project management tool or a robust enterprise software, can help you seamlessly manage teams and their output.
10. Monday.com
For marketing teams, efficient workflows are necessary for ensuring campaigns get off the ground and run smoothly. As such, using project management tools that foster team collaboration is a necessity than a “nice to have.”
Monday.com leads the pack in helping marketing teams create logical workflows to manage various aspects of their day-to-day operations. It lets you customize the app to match your workflows, so your team is not bogged down by inflexible solutions that don’t match their native processes.
It works with every type of department, including marketing teams, helping you stay on top of the progress of individual campaigns and quickly identify which tasks are lagging. You can use it to manage your content calendar, track your campaigns, manage digital assets, streamline the creative approval process, and more.
You can use a limited version for free, but to fully grasp the full potential of Monday.com, you should get started with a free trial of the plan most appropriate for your team.
11. Pardot
Salesforce Pardot is an enterprise marketing automation tool that works seamlessly with Salesforce CRM so your sales team can effectively capture the leads from your marketing campaigns. It works using cookies that track the behavior of your leads and allows you to know when is the right time to engage with them.
With Pardot, you can also measure your inbound marketing initiatives to refine your strategies constantly. You can watch a demo of Pardot from the Salesforce website, but you have to be a Salesforce user to integrate the solution.
Marketing Analytics Tools
Constantly measuring the performance of your marketing initiatives is vital to their success. In a rapidly changing business landscape, not knowing the latest trends is risky. Analytics tools will help you remain relevant and identify upcoming trends so you can stay ahead.
12. Google Analytics
When it comes to measuring and analyzing data, nothing beats Google Analytics. It can track everything on your website and help you understand your customers. It’s the most comprehensive tool any marketer can use, and the best part is that it’s free. And if you’re running Google PPC ads or search ads, Google Analytics will give you robust data sets to help refine your targeting and optimize your advertising spend.
13. Kissmetrics
While Google Analytics is enough for most businesses, you may discover you need deeper user-based insights. Kissmetrics helps you achieve this using enterprise-level features that won’t break your budget. Kissmetrics tie each data point to a real person instead of just relying on page sessions. This helps you identify customer behavior so that you can make accurate business decisions.
How B2B Marketing Software Works
B2B marketing software is designed to help you effectively manage different aspects of your B2B marketing campaigns, such as:
Lead generation
B2B marketing software can help you identify potential customers by collecting data from various sources, such as social media, email lists, and website traffic. This data is then analyzed to determine patterns and opportunities for outreach.
Email marketing
Once potential customers have been identified, B2B marketing software can help businesses create targeted email campaigns that are personalized and relevant to each recipient. This can help increase open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
Social media marketing
B2B marketing software can help businesses manage and track their social media presence, including posting content, engaging with followers, and monitoring mentions and conversations.
Analytics and Reporting
B2B marketing software typically provides detailed analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing businesses to track the success of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions about their marketing strategies.
Marketing automation
Some B2B marketing software includes automation features that allow businesses to streamline their marketing processes, such as lead nurturing, segmentation, and scoring.
Final Thoughts
B2B marketing software are powerful tools for B2B brands looking to improve their marketing campaigns. By using data-driven insights and automation features, you can create more targeted and effective campaigns, resulting in increased lead generation and sales.
B2B marketing software can also help you stay organized and track the success of your campaigns, allowing you to make data-driven decisions about your marketing strategies. Incorporating B2B marketing software into your marketing efforts can help you streamline your processes and achieve better results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are B2B marketing platforms?
B2B marketing platforms are software solutions that enable businesses to market their products or services to other businesses. These platforms typically offer tools for lead generation, email marketing, social media marketing, analytics and reporting, and marketing automation, among other features.
What is the best B2B software?
There is no single "best" B2B software, as different businesses may have different needs and preferences. Depending on your focus, you can find B2B marketing tools for email marketing, content marketing, lead generation, social media marketing, and marketing automation.
Some popular B2B software solutions include HubSpot for content marketing, Hootsuite for social media marketing, Omnisend for email marketing, and Unbounce for lead generation. Evaluating different options based on your business needs and budget is important to land the optimum technology stack suited to your needs.
What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing?
B2B marketing is geared toward selling products or services to other businesses or organizations, whereas B2C marketing is focused on promoting products or services to individual consumers. B2B marketing typically involves longer sales cycles, more complex decision-making processes, and a focus on building relationships and trust. B2C marketing, on the other hand, often involves shorter sales cycles, emotional appeals, and a focus on mass appeal and brand recognition.
