Business-to-Business (B2B) marketers manage various tasks throughout the day. They should measure results, develop strategy, meet deadlines, and execute deliverables without getting distracted. So, how do they juggle all of those responsibilities?
When it comes to B2B marketing and sales, your marketing technology stack can make a difference in efficiency and productivity. Plus, it keep things up-to-date for you. So, if you’re a B2B marketer who wants to streamline sales and marketing, below are some of the solutions you should consider:
1. Project Management Tools
In terms of critical B2B activities, it’s tough to achieve a real return on investment (ROI) until you focus on alignment and break down crucial business goals. Since there are teams involved in running a business, it’s best to keep all your teams on the same page when working on a project. With this in mind, a project management tool may come in handy to streamline efforts and coordination, thereby enabling better results and reducing conflicts.
Project management tools are often used to create better planning, where you can schedule tasks among the team members and link the deadlines to them. Such tools also provide an overview of the projects and data registered in a single interface.
2. Content Marketing Software
For B2B companies, content marketing plays an essential role in building brand awareness, connecting with customers, and improving search engine visibility. As you start to advance your content marketing strategies, there’s a need to measure, implement, and plan your content marketing campaigns. In this case, you’ll need to use content marketing software.
A good content marketing solution can help increase your conversions by helping you deliver valuable content to the right group of audience at the right time. With this, it’ll help build trust and nurture your leads.
3. Accounting Software
Accounting and financial processes are some of the most crucial operations that businesses perform, which serve as the primary backbone of business activities. Therefore, having a solid B2B accounting software solution is necessary. With this solution, you can improve, accelerate, and streamline accounting-related processes, which can deliver measurable and dramatic value to your business.
One of the best things about using accounting software for B2B companies is that it helps maintain compliance. A good accounting solution allows you to keep up with the regulatory standards with its features, such as transaction tracking, reporting and analysis, data management, and auditing. It also ensures data accuracy, which reduces the errors caused by tedious and manual data entry.
Accounting solutions can also increase staff productivity by reducing the burden placed on your finance team members. With their functionalities, it’s possible to automate routine and manual tasks and help you stay updated with your taxes.
4. Sales Management Software
Another solution to consider if you want to streamline your B2B marketing and sales is sales management software. Designed to help increase lead conversions and simplify sales activities, it has more to offer for B2B companies.
With sales management software, it provides you a great view of your customers. It offers accurate customer service, sales, and marketing information to your business, so your department stays organized and in sync. Sales management software enables you to make well-informed decisions based on up-to-date and real-time information with detailed customer preferences and characteristics.
Since data is easily projected and managed in sales management tools, it’s also not impossible for B2B marketers to generate accurate sales forecasts. This can provide great relief for all sales managers.
In addition, sales management software makes it simpler to determine qualified leads and focus on them. You and your sales team can monitor the progress and status of your sales and of your leads because the information you need can be viewed in a single interface. The best sales management software comes with a drag-and-drop feature that allows you to manage your sales and organize leads based on their status.
5. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solutions
CRM solutions aren’t strictly sales tools. B2B marketers may use these tools for several tasks, such as targeted marketing, campaign management, and audience segmentation.
With the right CRM solutions, there are various benefits you can enjoy. One of these is better visibility. A CRM tool can give your team members effortless visibility over where your prospects are in the pipeline, providing them a better view of what leads are more likely to convert.
CRM solutions also reduce the admin burden of your B2B sales team. With their features, you don’t need to spend more time nurturing low-prospect leads and pulling together data, which may result in new holes in your sales funnel. For this reason, all your efforts are more targeted, which improves your marketing and sales alignment.
CRM also provides opportunities to leverage customer data profitably. It can help improve your sales funnel and turn it into a profit-driving and actionable tool.
6. Marketing Automation Software
While CRM is what most B2B marketers prefer for sales, it’s also an excellent idea to consider marketing automation software. It helps B2B companies to streamline the marketing and help refine all marketing strategies based on the performance and data. It also automates daily tasks, such as social media posting, emails, and lead generation activities.
While marketing professionals use marketing automation tools frequently, it’s essential for the sales team as well. It helps your sales team members automate sales, mainly when there’s a lengthy buying process.
7. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Software
ABM has helped many B2B companies to build personalized and scalable marketing campaigns. It also allows companies to take an account-specific approach and measure the results against the set key performance indicators (KPI).
To achieve great results with account-based marketing strategies, you should back them with an ABM solution that will provide accurate data. With a well-defined target audience and data, your marketing team can better evaluate and categorize leads using ABM, enabling you to boost your lead generation results.
8. Video Conferencing Software
As B2B companies manage expenses in the pre-sale method, one of the contributors to the costs is demos and meetings at client sites. For this reason, businesses prefer video conferences for online meetings and sharing their offerings.
Video conferencing tools also help reduce communication issues with remote clients, stakeholders, and team members. With today’s pandemic, many conferences and events are called off globally. As a solution, more businesses arrange video conferences instead.
Several tools also come with audio recording and screen sharing features for an excellent user experience. With the different paid and free tools available for video conferencing, searching for the best one for your needs can be both stressful and time-consuming. So, make sure to choose wisely to meet your communication needs when doing sales and marketing activities.
9. Social Media Management Tools
When it comes to B2B marketing and sales, social media is a powerful tool. This is especially true if your company works with different clients using various social media channels daily. Unfortunately, social media management isn’t as easy as writing a short post with a beautiful photo. To achieve success, you need to have strategy, precision, creativity, and tactics.
Luckily, you can use some social media management tools to efficiently and easily manage your content across various channels. Depending on your needs, most tools can give you a hand in community management, social listing, reporting, and publishing content.
With a social media management tool, you can also schedule posts ahead of time. As a B2B marketer, it can be challenging to post on every social media platform. It’s not only time-consuming, but you also need to craft the type of content suited for the platforms to grow your business and reach your goals.
By using a social media management tool, things will be much easier for you since it’s possible to visualize what you’ll be posting and align them with your goals. It also saves your time and keeps up with the round-the-clock nature of social media. So, if you don’t want to spend more time publishing content on social media channels manually, it’s time to invest in an excellent social media management tool.
Even if this kind of solution is an additional expense to your business, it can help you achieve your B2B marketing and sales goals. Just be sure to use the tool that will fit your needs.
10. Customer Service Software
The other solution that can help streamline your B2B marketing and sales is the use of customer service software. This tool can help ensure smooth outbound and inbound communication across various channels and resolve problems.
The best customer service software often includes tools for live chat, help desk, ticket management, and customer service. Such improve customer experience helps you generate new leads.
At present, there are many customers service tools you can consider. They vary by platform type, scale, compatibility, features, and industry use. However, if your budget is tight, you can first start using the free ones for your marketing and sales tactics.
Conclusion
Engaging with potential customers is never easy for most B2B companies. Fortunately, with the solutions above, you’ll be able to streamline your marketing and sales, making things easier for you. While it’s not the complete list, it’s an excellent start. Implementing new technology for your business processes might seem challenging, but it can help your company grow over time.
