Marketing is becoming an ever more complex discipline. Software can help to provide relief. It supports you in the planning, implementation and analysis of strategies as needed. The selection of programs is huge. In addition to specialised online marketing tools, you can also choose from full-service solutions. Here’s a brief overview:
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Online marketing tools: what can such programs accomplish?
Behind every successful B2B marketing approach is a clear strategy. At the same time, this strategy has to be flexible and be able to quickly adapt to new or unexpected challenges. Keeping a tight hold on the reigns, however, is not always easy, especially considering the many – and above all digital – communications channels.
Online marketing tools can help you control complex processes from the start to the finish of projects much easier. Ideally, they help you prepare and implement automated processes and document or monitor the success of your marketing. When leveraged correctly, they save you time and money, enabling you to deploy valuable human resources for other tasks.
Content marketing tools: generating content
Content most suitable for the target group is essential – not just, but above all, in online marketing. Which is why many employees and projects across nearly all hierarchical levels handle this topic. A good content marketing tool serves as a central working platform and brings all stakeholders together – even external agencies or sales partners on request. This enables you to plan projects and fill them with content as a group effort.
But such programs can do much more. Here are a few examples of key functions:
- Research
- Concept creation
- Production
- Accounting
- Distribution
- Community management
- Mobile app
A broad range of options is offered by programs such as:
Keyword research: finding the right words
Connected closely to content is keyword research. Its results are essential for the creation of websites, their URL structure and types of pages. This is especially relevant in the B2B segment, as customers have higher standards and are looking for precise answers to their concrete questions. Ideally, keyword tools should provide:
- Target-group-suitable keyword lists
- A ranking prognosis of the respective website
- Relevant data on search volume, competition and clicks
- Monitoring
- Analysis
The big-name search engine Google offers several free tools for this purpose. These include the Keyword Planner from Google Ads, Google Trends or Google Search Console. Other providers charge fees for their service; however, they offer more comprehensive and profound functions. Such marketing tools include SECockpit and SEMrush.
On-page analysis: fixing errors
In addition to the selection of the right keywords, it’s important to consider the technical optimisation of your website and a comparison with the competition. Tools for on-page analysis serve these purposes. They discover errors and inadequacies which have a negative impact on the success of your website and can cost you high ranking positions. They cover essential functionalities such as:
- Website analysis
- Checking website architecture, duplicate content, images, external links
- Text optimisation
- Page-speed monitoring
- Server analysis
- Ranking analysis
- Competition comparison
- Error reporting
Examples of on-page analysis tools are:
Email marketing tools: personalising newsletters
Emails continue to play a significant role in online marketing – despite successful social media channels like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. A plus of email marketing is its relatively easy shipment of personalised newsletters. They are important, as recipients in the B2B segment usually have little time and are therefore interested in short, precise content. What’s more, the tool enables you to conduct complete performance measurements of emails. This is a huge benefit – after all, Facebook does not allow full access to customer data. Powerful email marketing tools also offer these services:
- Interfaces to standard CRM systems and CMS
- Template and landing page editors
- Reporting
- Multichannel marketing
- Responsive design
- App connection
- Live chat tools / chatbots
Examples of email marketing tools are:
Full-service solutions: everything from a single source
Instead of using individual programs for the above-mentioned functions, companies can leverage all-in-one systems. They combine several functions in a single online marketing tool and largely enable the automation and analysis of marketing tasks and processes. They assess activities on social media channels, for instance, and factor in data from cloud platforms as well as mobile end devices as part of the analysis.
They take care of content marketing, CRM integration, campaign management and lead generation, to name just a few. In this way, their users profit from an extensive Big Data base. The benefits for the user:
- B2B customers’ behaviour can be holistically retraced.
- The service can be adapted better to needs.
- The marketing ROI can be tracked better and optimised.
The market for such all-round solutions is becoming bigger and bigger. Here are a few of the most well-known and highest-performing marketing tools:
