Find the digital tools that will help grow revenue and scale your business

Marketing, sales, and support are now digital. There is no getting away from it. For businesses, it’s much cheaper to invest in digital tools that will increase efficiency and quality rather than find new headcount to do a similar job. There are many tools that should be part of your marketing technology (martech) stack. Your marketing team needs to know what's working and what isn’t, sales need to find new ways of building relationships and customers expect to be supported through digital channels. 

How can digital tools help in B2B marketing?

Pressures on marketing are increasing, we need to find ways of being more productive and increasing marketing ROI. Our customers are encountering our business across dozens of channels and platforms. Despite the increase in demand, marketing teams aren’t growing, so we need to do more with the resources we have. Having the right Martech stack is the only way any business can hope to survive. 

The benefits of having the right technology include:

• Consistency - maintain consistency across multiple channels. For example, using a tool to manage social media helps broadcast messages consistently across all channels.
• Quality -  increase the quality of output, as long as they are used properly. For example, email marketing tools will often allow you to check how your emails appear and how likely it is to get through spam filters.
• Productivity -  increase productivity because they help us streamline our work. For example, landing page tools support branded templates avoiding the need to re-create entire pages every time.
• Customer experience - improve the experience of prospects and customers. For example, by using the right tools we can personalize the experience our prospects and customers have on our websites ensuring it fits their needs better.
• ROI - increase the returns on market activity because they allow us to automate many repetitive tasks.  For example, a marketing automation tool can automatically nurture prospects across the sales journey, avoiding the need to set time aside to send emails individually.

Does my business need marketing technology?

Businesses now operate in a digital world and it's impossible to succeed without using the right technology and using it better than your competitors. It's not just about buying more tools and investing in the next shiny object, you need to actually leverage these investments in a smarter way than your competitors. Your competitors are buying the same solutions, Digitally.co can help you use those investments better. 

Why aren't businesses making the most of their Martech investments?

• Awareness - there is a lack of awareness of the many tools available. There are potentially hundreds of tools to fit every need.
• Cost -  the assumption is often that digital tools are expensive and that the most expensive tools are the best, neither of which are true.
• Integration - digital tools need to be integrated to yield the most benefit. For example, integrating your website with your web analytics tool. This integration becomes daunting for many businesses.
• Skills - while it’s true digital tools need a level of expertise many are designed with the novice user in mind and even for the more complex tools there is often an onboarding journey.
• Wrong tools - by far the most common issue digital tools is that teams invest in the wrong tools and then fail to use them. There are many tools that perform similar jobs, but businesses need to find the right fit for them and that's often not the most expensive one available.

The importance of marketing technology for B2B businesses 

B2B businesses often deal with complex sales that take months, if not years. Purchases are made by teams of experts who are comparing every aspect of your offer to that of your competitors. The B2B buyer journey is also changing rapidly. Buyers are doing their own research and contacting vendors much later. Buyers are fully leveraging B2B technology to gain a winning hand. Among the many other benefits, marketing technology (MarTech) helps B2B businesses support the complex customer journey. Digital tools can help you engage with prospects earlier, offer more value and build closer relationships with decision makers.

Can small businesses benefit from marketing technology?

Having the right digital digital tools may sound like something that doesn't matter to the small B2B business trying to grind out leads, but in fact, it's more important to the small business than any other. Imagine for example having a tool that manages your sales funnel in the background so you can focus on closing leads. Such tools exist and they are more beneficial to the SME with small or no marketing team than it is to a large corporate.

For the small business digital tools are often about saving time and becoming more effective. Many small businesses don't have a marketing team, it may instead be the founder responsible for marketing besides many other duties. So it's crucial that a small business is able to optimize productivity and use B2B technology to support growth. You could use Martech in your small business for:

• Social media automation. Making it easier to post content across multiple channels.
• Content discovery . Save time by leveraging content that is already generating engagement.
• Landing pages. Point people at relevant pages, created using easy-to-use page creators.
• Sales funnels. Take prospects on a journey from landing page through to sales engagement, with no manual intervention.

How would a large enterprise use marketing technology?

Large enterprises also need to be effective with their time, however, there is often someone with specific responsibility for delivering certain tasks. Unlike the small business, someone managing social media wouldn’t also set up emails. In large businesses, the challenge is responding with agility and providing a personalized experience for prospects and customers. Small businesses enjoy being close to the customer, large enterprises are often detached and the customer may feel they are dealing with a faceless organization. Example use cases for digital tools in large businesses include:

•  Personalization. Making your website more relevant to individual and visitors.
• Support. Cutting costs and improving the quality of customer support.
• Marketing automation. Improving the lead pipeline through lead scoring and nurture.

Digital tools, sales tools and marketing technology are nothing new. However, it’s amazing the number of organizations that invest in the wrong tool. The tool they buy is often great, it can do the job. The problem is it’s the wrong fit for the organization. Investing the right technology can transform your marketing, investing in the wrong ones can drain both money and time.