As technology expands, so do business solutions. The recent growth in MarTech reflects the increasing need for businesses to leverage technology to enhance their marketing efforts.
B2B marketing funnels and sales cycles are notoriously complex. They require nurturing strategies to convert potential customers. So, implementing the right MarTech could provide a significant competitive edge.
In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of MarTech in your B2B digital marketing. Keep reading to learn more about what tools you need in your MarTech stack. But before we dive in, let’s first explore what MarTech means.
What is MarTech?
Since its coinage in the 1990s, MarTech has become an integral part of marketing initiatives.
Now, with digital transformation reaching an all-time high, the MarTech landscape shows more promise than ever. With introduction of gen AI technology and sophisticated automations, there are now tech solutions for most business needs.
MarTech (or marketing technology) encompasses the software and tools marketing teams use to maximise their marketing efforts. This technology streamlines processes through the automation of time-consuming tasks, helping marketing departments everywhere easily reach their target audiences.
MarTech vs AdTech
Although MarTech and AdTech sound similar, the difference between them is the difference between marketing and advertising. Where MarTech manages, measures, and optimises marketing campaigns across touchpoints, AdTech delivers, targets, and measures online advertising campaigns. It’s important to note, however, that AdTech can be a part of a MarTech stack, but not vice versa.
What’s a MarTech stack?
A MarTech stack is a collection of software that manage the workflows and daily tasks in the marketing process. Just like a stack of pancakes, each layer in your marketing technology stack depends on the one below it. Ideally, the software in your MarTech stack complement and integrate with each other. Having all your tools and software in one place is easier than having to perpetually switch between platforms and apps.
Benefits of MarTech
MarTech stacks are specific to your business needs. Moreover, it should tackle every stage of the funnel, from awareness all the way down to conversion and beyond.
The overarching benefit of MarTech is, in a nutshell, enhanced efficiency. A good, well-aligned B2B MarTech stack helps:
- automate processes
- centralise data and workflows
- optimise campaigns through real-time data and analytics
Ultimately, it aids in achieving better engagement and conversions in B2B digital marketing strategies.
Thus, investing in MarTech and using it effectively could result in significant ROI – emphasis on “using it effectively”.
Like any other marketing initiative, adopting without a plan could have the opposite effect to the one desired. Indeed, a 2022 Gartner survey found that marketing professionals only use 42% of their MarTech stack’s capabilities. This already a significant drop from 58% just two years prior.
The ROI of an efficient MarTech stack
To increase ROI, marketers need to critically assess their businesses’ needs and compile a MarTech stack accordingly. While every company has unique requirements, here are some basic questions you should ask yourself before implementation:
- What are my business goals and how can a MarTech stack help me achieve them?
- What is my budget for building and maintaining a MarTech stack, and how can I allocate it effectively?
- What types of data do I need to collect and analyse, and how can I do this efficiently?
- What tools do I currently have in place, and what gaps do I need to fill in my MarTech stack?
- What features and functionalities do I need in my MarTech stack, and how can I prioritise them?
- What is my team’s technical expertise? What level of support and training will they require to effectively use the tools in my MarTech stack?
- How can I ensure that my MarTech stack integrates with other systems and tools that my organisation uses?
- How can I ensure that my MarTech stack is scalable and adaptable to changing business needs?
- Even with advanced MarTech tools, they are still only as good as the people using them. The good news is that, when used strategically, your MarTech stack can provide enormous value.
This brings us to the types of MarTech you should consider for your B2B digital marketing strategies.
Types of MarTech for B2B digital marketing strategies
Content Management Systems (CMS)
CMSs are platforms that facilitate the creation, organisation, and management of any type of content. They are a crucial part of any content marketing strategy. Most of them offer:
- editing tools that enable content organisation through hierarchical structures and search/filtering functionalities
- publishing capabilities with scheduling and version control features.
- templates and themes for website design or customisation
- user management and permissions for collaboration
- SEO optimisation features
Even more, some of them support content distribution across multiple channels, such as social media and email marketing.
Dusted recommends…
- WordPress: the most popular CMS in the world. Open source and free to use, it has a large community of developers and users. It’s the best choice for businesses of all sizes to create a wide variety of websites.
- Umbraco: an open-source CMS known for its ease of use and flexibility. If you’re looking for a CMS that is easy to learn and use, this might be the right choice.
Sitecore: a commercial CMS that businesses of all sizes use to create and manage their websites. - Webflow: a cloud-based CMS that allows you to create and manage websites without any coding knowledge. It offers a drag-and-drop interface and the ability to create responsive websites.
- Squarespace: well-suited for small websites. It has a user-friendly interface with pre-designed templates. Ideal for beginners, this platform offers easy customisation and hosting for creating visually appealing websites without dealing with complex technical details.
Social Media Management
Social media management helps you efficiently oversee and optimise social media channels for marketing purposes. By employing specialised software platforms, you can:
- streamline social media activities
- monitor performance
- engage with the audience
- evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns
Dusted recommends…
- Hootsuite: it encompasses an array of digital marketing methods to effectively engage with audiences and automate social media activities.
- Buffer: it caters to individuals, small businesses, and larger enterprises. It offers set of tools to streamline social media management and improve online presence.
- Sprout Social: a subscription-based platform for businesses of different sizes. From small to large, it helps them them enhance brand presence and drive engagement with their target audience.
- HubSpot Social Media: part of the HubSpot ecosystem, this is an inbound marketing and sales software solution. It provides tools and features to help you manage and optimise your social media presence effectively.
Digital Advertising
Digital advertising helps promote products, services, or brands. It works by delivering targeted ads across touch points like websites, search engines or social media.
This form of advertising uses various techniques like display ads, paid search reach or social media ads. It heavily relies on data-driven strategies, enabling marketers to track and optimise their campaigns based on performance metrics.
By leveraging audience segmentation and targeting, digital advertising can help:
- reach your desired audience
- increase your brand’s visibility
- drive website traffic
- achieve marketing objectives
Dusted recommends…
- Google Ads: a powerful platform for businesses to target their niche audiences and generate leads. It helps reach potential customers at various stages of the buyer’s journey and across different digital channels.
- Facebook Ads Manager: allows you to create, manage, and optimise your advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.
- LinkedIn Advertising: allows you to create and run targeted advertising campaigns to reach a professional audience on LinkedIn.
- AdRoll: specialises in audience targeting and retargeting. It provides tools to run effective online advertising campaigns across multiple touch points.
Targeting and personalisation
Targeting and personalisation are two key strategies that deliver relevant experiences to specific individuals or groups of users, also known as your audience segments.
First, targeting identifies specific groups of people who are most likely to be interested in you product or service. By understanding user demographics, interests and behaviours you can define the desired audience. So, it allows you to focus your efforts and resources on reaching the right people.
The next step is personalisation. This refers to tailoring the content, recommendations, offers, or overall experience to meet these groups’ unique preferences and needs
Dusted recommends…
- Optimizely: a testing and optimisation platform delivering personalised digital experiences through a suite of features. These features optimise websites, mobile apps, and other digital touch points, improving user engagement, conversions, and overall customer experience.
- Adobe Target: a comprehensive testing and personalisation platform offered by Adobe Experience Cloud. It allows you to optimise digital experiences, run A/B tests, and deliver personalised content to website visitors.
- Dynamic Yield: an AI-powered personalisation platform that helps you deliver individualised experiences to your customers across various digital channels.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
CRO aims to improve the percentage of website or app visitors who convert into customers or take desired actions. It involves:
- analysing user data
- evaluating the user experience
- conducting A/B and multivariate testing
- personalising content
- optimising the conversion funnel
- continuously iterating based on data and user feedback
By focusing on CRO, you can increase your ROI, improve marketing effectiveness, and drive your business’s overall growth.
Dusted recommends…
- VWO: a conversion optimisation platform that helps you improve your website and UX through testing and personalisation.
- Crazy Egg: provides visual insights and heatmaps to help you understand how visitors interact with your website.
- Google Optimize: allows you to run tests to optimise your website and deliver personalised experiences. It integrates seamlessly with other Google products to provide a comprehensive view of website performance and user behaviour.
Social Listening and Monitoring
By social listening, you analyse online conversations and mentions of a brand across digital marketing channels. You can do it by tracking specific keywords across various social media platforms and online channels.
This provides a comprehensive view of how customers perceive your brand (or a similar brand). This way, you can play into the way your audience communicates and behaves in future campaigns. It’s an important part of market research that involves:
- monitoring social media platforms, blogs, forums, news sites, and other platforms
- extracting relevant insights about your brand’s reputation and customer sentiment
- tracking industry trends and competitor activities
Dusted recommends…
- Brandwatch: it helps you gather and analyse data from various social media platforms to gain valuable market insights.
- Sprout Social: this is a social media management platform. While its primary focus is publishing social media content, it also provides tools to monitor and analyse relevant conversations.
- Mention: this is a social media monitoring and brand tracking tool that. It helps you analyse your online presence, and track brand mentions.
- Hootsuite: this is a popular social media management platform which also provides social listening and monitoring capabilities.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRMs help businesses manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.
They provide a centralised database for customer information. CRM tools also help manage customers’ interactions in relation to sales pipelines and marketing campaigns. This way, you can analyse their behaviour, track sales and marketing performance, and identify opportunities for improvement.
Dusted recommends…
- Salesforce: this is a cloud-based CRM platform that helps you manage your sales, marketing, customer service, and other core functions.
- Zoho CRM: helps businesses of all by managing customer interactions, tracking sales activities, and automated workflows
- Microsoft Dynamics 365: this combines various business applications, including sales, marketing, customer service, finance, operations, and more, into a unified platform.
- HubSpot CRM: this is a cloud-based CRM platform for businesses of all sizes. It helps manage customer relationships, track sales activities, and organize their sales pipeline.
Web Analytics
Web analytics solutions show website traffic, visitor behaviour, conversion rates, and other important data. They help you collect the following data on website visitors:
- the number of visitors
- their geographic location
- the pages they visit
- how long they stay on each page
- other activities and interaction with your website features
Dusted recommends…
- Google Analytics: it works by implementing a tracking code on your website. This gathers valuable insights and data about your visitors, their actions, and the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts. At Dusted, we have recently helped our clients upgrade and master GA4.
- Adobe Analytics: it empowers businesses to gain deep insights into their digital performance, customer behaviour, and marketing effectiveness.
- Matomo (formerly known as Piwik): this is an open-source web analytics platform. Unlike other popular tools, it offers a self-hosted solution. So, the user can install the software on their server, providing more control over data privacy and ownership.
- Mixpanel: provides insights into how users interact with your web and mobile applications.
Email Marketing
Email marketing allows you to create and send personalised emails to your subscribers and track campaign performance metrics. These platforms have features like managing email lists, creating templates, testing, segmenting, personalising, automating, and reporting. These marketing tools help create targeted email campaigns.
Dusted recommends…
- Mailchimp: this is a popular platform for email marketing and automation. It has tools to create, send, and track email newsletters, automated campaigns, and targeted messages.
- Constant Contact: helps you make, send, and track email campaigns, and manage other online marketing tasks.
- Campaign Monitor: enables you to create, send, and track email campaigns. It offers tools to connect with subscribers, create personalised emails, and analyze campaign results.
- ActiveCampaign: this is a more advanced email marketing platform that offers a variety of features, including email automation, segmentation, and analytics. It’s a good choice for businesses that need a more robust email marketing solution.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Companies use SEO MarTech to optimise a website’s search engine visibility in order to increase its organic search traffic. You can use these software tools to analyse and improve your website. This will help boost its search engine rankings and drive traffic from a highly competitive search engine market.
The tools focus on technical and content-related aspects. Some key features include website audit and analysis, keyword research, competitor analysis, on-page optimisation, link building, content creation, and performance tracking and reporting.”
Dusted recommends…
- SEMrush: this is a tool for digital marketing. It helps find keywords and improve website elements. It also fixes technical problems and analyses backlinks. Additionally, it allows users to learn from competitors and monitor keyword rankings.
- Moz: offers SEO tools to help improve search visibility and optimize websites for better organic results.
- Ahrefs: this is a widely used SEO tool that analyses backlinks, search traffic, and keyword rankings for websites.
Case studies: effective use of MarTech
Now that you know the types of MarTech and their benefits, you might think it looks good on paper (or, in this case, on the screen). But how does it look like in practice?
We can answer this question by looking at B2B companies that successfully converted leads. They achieved this by using a successful MarTech stack and using it effectively.
- Autodesk, a leading software company, uses email marketing to stay in touch with customers and prospects. They send out a variety of emails, including product updates, sales pitches, and customer support information. Through their successful email marketing campaigns, the company has seen a significant increase in customer satisfaction and retention.
- Adobe uses social listening to see what people are saying about their services. This way, they recently identified a trend of customers complaining about the difficulty of using its Creative Cloud software. So, they leveraged this information to create a new tutorial that showed customers how to do it. As a result, they saw a significant decrease in customer complaints.
- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a global IT services and consulting company, uses a CMS to manage its website and other digital assets. The CMS allows TCS to easily create, update, and manage content without the need for specialised technical skills. This helped the company improve its website’s SEO, which has resulted in increased traffic. The CMS has helped TCS create and manage content and social media, making it easier to connect with customers and partners.
In conclusion
The importance of MarTech in B2B digital marketing strategies cannot be overstated. MarTech helps B2B companies with data management, personalization, customer engagement, and multi-channel marketing. It makes these tasks easier and more effective for businesses.
Ultimately, a strong MarTech stack can provide a significant competitive edge in B2B marketing by enhancing the marketing funnel, sales cycles, and nurturing strategies to convert potential customers.
Why do you need website integration?
Websites are a vital part of a successful marketing strategy: they are the place where all your potential customers or clients are funnelled and converted. Some websites offer a truly immersive user experience, with their easy navigation, live chats, up-to-date information, and personalised content.
To create websites with features like these, you need to have all your technology harmoniously working together. This entails integrating your MarTech into your website, which can help you track your visitors’ behaviour and understand their interests. By developing a website informed by your users’ preferences you’ll successfully appeal to your target audience, which should ultimately provide you with a competitive advantage and an increased ROI.
So whether you are already using MarTech or are thinking of doing it, one thing is for sure – your marketing software needs to be integrated into your website.
This is where we come in.
Dusted is a specialist strategic branding, activation and digital agency. We work with some of the most ambitious, innovative and game-changing businesses in the world, blending strategy, creativity and technology to solve their branding and multi-channel activation challenges.
Get in touch to discuss how we can help you assess your current MarTech stack and, most importantly, decipher the data and insight it generates.
