With multiple diverse platforms to target, intense competition, and jaded audiences, B2B marketing is not getting any easier. Getting a talented team together is crucial, but nowadays there is only so much humans can do in marketing without the help of some strong tech.
59% of marketers foresee an increase in automation budget over the upcoming year. Marketing software platforms are non-negotiable in automating critical marketing tasks, helping you reach more prospects faster and achieve the best possible results.
But it’s not just about injecting cash into a few different software tools and crossing your fingers that you’ll get a return on investment. You need to understand which marketing areas benefit from automation and what tools deliver the capabilities you may not have yet in your team.
What is B2B Marketing Software?
B2B Marketing Software is a range of tools and platforms designed to automate or improve B2B marketing tasks. From lead generation to email marketing and social media, this type of software enables speedier action, easier collaboration within or across teams, and more personalized customer communications.
As your marketing goals get more ambitious and your audience becomes more challenging to reach, this software enables you to focus on core strategic and creative tasks. While your team is focused on brainstorming new demand and lead generation ideas, B2B marketing software will help you with more complex or routine tasks, such as analyzing complex data, mapping out customer journeys, or scheduling social posts across channels.
Types of B2B Marketing Software
B2B marketing software can be categorized according to the primary function it serves:
- Social Media Management software lets marketers view, schedule, and post content for various social media platforms within one integrated hub. Some tools like Oktopost offer additional features like employee advocacy and social listening.
- Analytics software monitors your KPIs. It helps you make sense of the data to see whether you’re meeting your objectives.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps you manage your databases of information about leads and customers, helping marketers better understand and communicate with them.
- Demand Generation software makes it easier for marketers to create content and experiences that engage audiences and boost interest in your brand.
- Email Marketing software covers subscriber management, design templates, message scheduling, engagement tracking, email verification, and other functions needed for email marketing campaigns.
Benefits of B2B Marketing Software
By putting together a marketing technology stack consisting of relevant and useful software, you improve the overall efficiency of your marketing efforts. Some key benefits are automating manual tasks, generating higher-quality leads, and providing meaningful analytics to help optimize your content.
When you’ve got the right software solutions, your marketing and sales teams can work together more effectively. The desired result is more conversions and higher ROI for every marketing dollar you spend.
The Top 10 B2B Marketing Software
Social media management
1. Buffer
Buffer is an intuitive and straightforward social management tool. If you need to perform cross-platform publishing and have a low budget, then Buffer is the tool for you. This tool enables B2B businesses to queue various content forms on multiple platforms and browsers, even on the go.
Best For
Small businesses with limited budgets.
“My favorite feature of Buffer was the calendar. It allowed you to seamlessly ensure you had full-day coverage across all your social channels. This allowed me to stay organized and make future planning for my posts a breeze!”
Price
From $0 to 100$ per month for agency accounts with 10+ channels.
2. Oktopost
The only social media marketing solution built specifically for B2B companies, Oktopost integrates with the most widely used CRMs and other third-party tools. It assists marketers in orchestrating social media campaigns across multiple platforms while monitoring their leads and tracking KPIs.
Best For:
End-to-end social media management, including analytics and customer behavior.
“I was trying to find a tool to fully manage and optimize social media to drive my business forward in a scalable and measurable way. The tool is easy to use, and I didn’t need any onboarding or extra training. Through Oktopost, I could manage all my social media across all channels and easily track my content.”
Price
Available upon request.
Analytics
3. Google Analytics
A must-have for any digital marketer, Google Analytics is easy to use. It offers powerful, adaptable features for tracking your website traffic, conversions, and anything else you need to know about who’s visiting your pages and where they came from. For the $0 price tag, you can’t afford to launch a campaign without it.
Best For
Looking to understand web traffic and user behavior on your website.
“The best part about the platform is diving deep into the user behavior of website visitors. It generates insights such as user drop-off points, bounce rate, and detailed info about their device, among many excellent capabilities. Indeed, an exceptional analytics tool!”
Price
Free
4. SemRush
Semrush is widely used in B2B marketing for its robust analytics capabilities. Its key features include advanced keyword research, SEO audits, and backlink tracking to help businesses improve their Google visibility. You can also connect your SemRush account to Google Analytics and Google Search Console for detailed traffic and competitive analysis.
Best For
B2B teams looking to invest in SEO.
“Semrush is a powerful tool for SEO and marketing insights. It offers in-depth analytics and comprehensive data that help us stay ahead of the competition. The user interface is intuitive, and the customer support is responsive. It has been instrumental in improving our online visibility and driving more traffic to our site.”
Price
There is a free version with limited features and three paid plans: Pro at $139.95 per month, Guru at $249.95 per month, and Business at $499.95 per month.
CRM
5. HubSpot
Small businesses needing a robust CRM solution that won’t drain their budgets should check out HubSpot’s free platform. It integrates with a wide array of third-party tools and includes features for content creation, analytics and reporting, ad tracking, and email management. With its extensive sales features, HubSpot is also ideal for tracking customers down the demand generation funnel and categorizing leads.
Best For
Small businesses that are looking for an easy-to-use customer management tool.
“With HubSpot, we can see the complete lifecycle of a customer from lead to close, and our teams can own the customizations needed to get their job done. We have had 100% user adoption and couldn’t be happier.”
Price
Free, up to $1500/month for the Enterprise version.
6. Salesforce Marketing Cloud
HubSpot and Salesforce have always been hand-in-hand as two essential CRM tools for any marketeer. Salesforce Marketing Cloud, in particular, offers a range of features to track customers through the sales pipeline, automate nurturing campaigns, and access advanced analytics.
Despite being data-heavy, Salesforce security ensures all your customer data is protected. This tool integrates with apps such as Google Analytics and Slack, improving communications between sales and marketing teams.
Best For
Improving sales enablement and lead generation activities.
“Salesforce Email Marketing enables our GTM teams to be precise and data-driven when generating campaign strategy, targeting audiences, and producing content. Salesforce’s email marketing suite lets us personalize and target our personas at scale.”
Price
Typically, basic plans start at around $400 per month.
Demand Generation
7. Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder is a handy tool for finding new leads. It sifts through your website visitor data to identify which companies are checking you out, where they came from, and their intentions — even if they never interact with your forms or other capture methods.
Best For
Finding rich website analytics.
“Leadfeeder plays a pivotal role in our lead generation program. With a Salesforce integration, we can understand activity related to target accounts and engage them accordingly. Also, by implementing our Mailchimp EMS, we can see when campaigns push specific accounts and contacts to our site vs. Google and paid search.”
Price
Free for the Lite version, premium starts at $55/month.
8. Zoom
Zoom was the killer app of 2020, and four years later, its capabilities continue to grow. This video conferencing tool has been facilitating everything from cocktail hours to kindergarten classes to high-stakes discovery calls — and now that everybody has it, it’s perfect for video marketing. B2B marketing teams can use it to host webinars and create video content, improving demand generation efforts.
Best for
Creating quick, easily sharable video content.
“Of all the video conferencing tools out there — and there is no shortage of them, either past or present — I have to say that Zoom works probably the best as far as logging in and everything working.”
Price
The basic version is free, and the pro plan costs $14.99 monthly. Higher-tier plans are available for additional capabilities.
Email Marketing
9. Mailshake
Built to manage cold email campaigns, Mailshake is easy to integrate into your existing systems. It lets you create messages, schedule mailings, and engage with your contacts within a dashboard interface.
Best For
Automating cold email outreach.
“Mailshake works like it is supposed to. The best feature is the list cleaner, which helps ensure deliverability and is critical in sales engagement.”
Price
From $25 to $85 a month per user.
10. Mailchimp
Mailchimp can take your email marketing to the next level, offering customizable email templates, advanced customer segmentation, and automated workflows for lead nurturing. Additionally, Mailchimp can integrate with e-commerce platforms and social media channels to improve customer engagement and increase audience reach.
Best For
Businesses with various customer segments that are looking for robust automation and speed.
“Mailchimp is so easy to use. It is a set-up-and-forget type of solution. I create an email campaign, schedule it to send, and then review the analytics. There is so much automation built in to help me save time when creating email campaigns. The import/export function for contacts is straightforward to use.”
Price
Mailchimp’s monthly pricing starts at $13 for the Essentials plan, with higher-tier options available.
Get Your B2B Marketing to Work Smarter
As trends, platforms, and technologies rise and fall, effective B2B marketing is constantly changing. The one thing that doesn’t change is the need for more innovative campaigns that get better results—and that’s where B2B marketing software offers an easier, more efficient way to do it.
Automating your B2B marketing campaigns with software solutions is one of the best ways to find promising leads for your sales teams. Using the right tool for the right job will set your B2B marketing efforts up for sustained success.
If you’re looking to improve and automate your social media efforts, Oktopost is a complete social media management solution designed for B2B. Aside from automated post-scheduling, it enables you to access rich customer behavior analytics and leverage innovative features such as social listening and employee advocacy. Explore more here.
