8 Types of MarTech Tools Every Demand Marketer Needs

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Marketing technology now accounts for 33% of marketing budgets, according to Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2015-2016. B2B marketers specifically are investing heavily in tech to automate processes, engage new audiences, gain insights into marketing’s effectiveness and deliver increasingly innovative customer experiences. But there are literally thousands of marketing tools to choose from, and when the MarTech landscape looks like it does today, it’s hard to know where to begin.

At Integrate we have the advantage of working with (and learning from) hundreds of demand marketing pros – customers, partners and friends. Earlier this year, in conjunction with Matt Heinz at Heinz Marketing, we set out to recognize 40 top demand marketing pros, and in doing so obtain a more thorough understanding of what makes a demand marketing rock star.

We asked the Game Changers to list their three most essential marketing tools. Interestingly, many of them had a lot of tools in common. And where there weren’t exact matches, there were definitely consistencies as to the types of tools demand marketers need to have in their toolbox in order to keep up in today’s marketing landscape.

We thought it would be helpful to highlight these tools in and categorize them so you can more easily determine which types are most beneficial for you to investigate. The categories are below and here’s a SlideShare overview of the most essential 25 MarTech Tools Used by Demand Marketing Game Changers.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the heart of B2B marketing organizations. More than half of B2B companies have already invested in marketing automation, and the adoption rate isn’t slowing down.

With dozens of marketing automation platforms (MAPs), choosing the right one definitely comes down to each business’s individual needs. For the #B2BGameChangers, there were two clear choices that rose to the top: Marketo and Oracle Eloqua. These are both best-of-breed marketing automation platforms that will help your company up its demand marketing game.

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Top-Funnel Automation

The automation journey doesn’t stop with a MAP though. Marketers are investing heavily in top-of-funnel marketing tactics to capture new prospects and get them into marketing automation, but these efforts are typically manual and disconnected from core marketing systems. The top of the marketing funnel marketing is in desperate need of automation.

Demand marketing game changers recognize this and are taking steps to automate top-of-funnel marketing processes and connect them with marketing automation. This enables them to fuel their databases with a constant stream of new prospect data that they can nurture into new customers.

Analytics Software

Analyzing marketing performance is vital when it comes to improving your outcomes. According to Forrester’s “2016 B2B Budget Plans Show That It’s Time For A Digital Wake-Up Call,” only 21% of B2B marketers believe they excel at using data and analytics to execute digital marketing effectively, and 51% admit they aren’t sufficiently prepared to accomplish this.

The biggest struggle in this area seems to be attribution. The majority of B2B marketers report that they struggle to attribute program spending to revenue results and 33% of them say attribution is among their top 3 challenges.

Full Circle Insights seems to be the preferred software among #B2BGameChangers when it comes to solving the attribution challenge.

Content Experience Platform

Content – from infographics and eBooks to videos and webinars – is an essential ingredient for B2B marketers to engage prospects and customers. But content marketing doesn’t stop at creation. Uberflip talks about the 4 pillars of content marketing – creation, experience, distribution and insight.

There are a number of content experience tools that will help increase reach, improve engagement and measure effectiveness, but wading through the sea of content marketing software can be a quarter-long focus in and of itself. LookbookHQ, Vidyard and ON24 are changing the game for companies like Intel and Microsoft. They could be worth adding to your stack.

Website Marketing Tools

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Modern marketers must be able to rapidly capitalize on insights in order to deliver smarter and more personal customer experiences through their websites, landing pages and forms. To keep up with the pace of change, marketers need to be able to launch and test ideas quickly. And to delight today’s customers, personalization is a must.

Advocate Marketing

Customer advocacy is about mobilizing your customers and audience to tout your greatness on your behalf. It can be a powerful tactic to amplify reach and impact. Laura Ramos at Forrester offers some great tips on choosing the right advocate marketing software. But according to the game changers, there’s only one choice: Influitive.

ABM & Predictive Intelligence

While not all marketers have reached this level of sophistication, account-based marketing and predictive intelligence are the advanced tactics on the horizon for many B2B marketing organizations. Demand marketing game changers need a set of tools to help develop and execute holistic ABM & predictive strategies.

Find out which ABM & Predictive Tools Maria Pergolino of Apttus and Jen Metz of Oracle are using in this SlideShare.

Sales & Collaboration Tools

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Last but certainly not least… Marketing can’t thrive on an island. In order to maximize value to your organization and your customers, you must think beyond just standard marketing tools. It’s important to identify ways to better support sales success and collaborate both within your own team and with others.

So whether you’re talking about a sales enablement platform like Highspot or a project collaboration tool like Trello, I encourage you to think outside the box to find beyond-marketing tools that will expand your effectiveness.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Triniti Burton
Triniti Burton is Marketing & Communications Director at Integrate. Once upon a time a sales rep, she now handles all things marketing and focuses tirelessly on infusing the often gray world of B2B tech with as much color as her colleagues can handle.

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