If you’re in the B2B sphere, you know the value of digital marketing. But if you’re also an entrepreneur, you’re probably working under a restrictive budget, constraining your funds on potentially risky expenditures such as new sales and marketing efforts.
And more than that, you can’t afford to look unprofessional – meaning you want to avoid tacky digital watermarks, stale templates and anything else that gives off the wrong impression about your brand.
And then there’s the issue of overlapping duties. Luckily, entrepreneurs are best positioned to align their sales and marketing teams and cultivate an office culture wherein both work off each other, flying in the face of traditional systems that disconnect the two. The best part? That model fits neatly into businesses running with a tight budget.
So when it comes to software tools, you can tackle them from the perspective of a triple-whammy: these are the best products to align your sales and marketing teams, show off a professional front and keep things under financial control.
Adobe Spark
Is a full-time graphic designer too costly for your budget? Don’t want to wait for your freelancer to get back to you? Adobe Spark is a brilliant, free, easy-to-use design software that allows you to simply create memes, inspirational quotes, videos and slideshows in minutes. The developers update it frequently, and in the last year alone it’s improved vastly, with many of its initial glitches gone and a wider array of fonts and styles now available.
The best part for digital marketers may be its social templates. Create a banner ad, and you can resize it for Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, making sure nothing gets awkwardly cut off on the sides.
Google Analytics
Obvious? Yes. Necessary? Definitely. Google Analytics is the go-to cost-free analytics software on the market right now, and it’s a savvy marketer’s dream.
With Google Analytics, you can find out your website’s sore spots, hone in on weak pages, pinpoint your successful blogs, evaluate your calls to action and determine which acquisition avenue is your most successful. It’s a complex beast, but it’s hugely necessary to steer your digital presence in the right direction. You (or someone on your team) should check it every day.
Unbounce
If you’re in need of a landing page builder (which most businesses are), Unbounce is the best choice. This long-heralded software allows you to create well-designed, optimized landing pages with optional pop-ups, contact info, social handles and submission forms. All pages are SSL encrypted, and you don’t have to touch your website’s code. Drag-and-drop tools make the design process easy, while A/B testing and analytics encourage you to tweak it as you go.
Landing pages are an absolute must for every B2B business. Unlike some of the other apps on this list, Unbounce isn’t free. But pricing starts at just $79 per month, and if you weigh that versus the costs of a full-blown web developer, it’s a no-brainer.
Attach.io
Ever wonder if that client ever actually opened that proposal you sent? Attach.io adopts that innate social curiosity we’re not accustomed to from platforms like Facebook Messenger and iMessage (“It says she saw this three days ago! Why the heck hasn’t she responded?!”) – and brings it into the B2B universe. This tool can track what email attachments get opened and even which pages of a PDF get read.
This is a great insight, not just because it feeds into the very social anxieties that are driving us all nuts in the digital world, but because it actually tells you which of your clients or leads are engaging with you. Attach.io creates engagement reports based on the percentage of a document viewed and time spent with it open. This qualifies your leads on a whole new level. Pricing starts at $9 per month, though you’ll need a higher-level subscription for custom branding and the analytics dashboard.
NetLine
Having trouble finding enough leads? Automated lead-generation tools can be tricky, but some services are worth checking out if you need a boost. NetLine lets you set your overall budget and offer up a lead magnet in the form of a piece of content you’re looking to promote, and in a matter of hours it churns out qualified leads you can work with.
The downside? It can be a pay-to-play tool. Since you pay for the quality of the leads, entrepreneurs with smaller budgets may find it frustrating. Like Google Adwords, NetLine can be a bit of a money pit if you don’t know the ins and outs yet. But it’s worth investigating for those moments you’re feeling lost in the sales cycle – and its adherents swear by it.
Hunter.io
This is a brilliant time-saver for salespeople looking for specific email addresses. Sign up for an account that costs a grand total of $0 per month, and Hunter.io will track down every associated email it can find. You can also input (again, for free) individual names and address to find that person’s email address – and if it can’t be found, Hunter.io will create a “best guess” based on the template that domain often uses (e.g., firstnamelastname@url.com).
Hatchbuck
Sure, we’re biased, but Hatchbuck’s integrated sales and marketing tools will make both teams’ lives significantly easier. We promise. With CRM and email automation all in one place, you can keep tabs on those leads you’re attracting and capturing with every other tool on this list. With Hatchbuck at the hub of your marketing stack, your business will have the tech tools you need to grow sales and scale.
