2020 was perhaps the most challenging year for many businesses.
In response to the pandemic, new strategies were developed, and old strategies were revamped in hopes of increasing growth and combating less than steady revenue.
The latest data from the Content Marketing Institute’s 2021 B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report shows that 79% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy. Of those, 70% made some level of adjustments to their strategy because of the pandemic.
The pandemic really tested the resiliency of business owners like you. Fortunately, there are software and marketing tools you can include in your arsenal to help your business bounce back and reach your set goals this year. The only problem is that there are so many options to choose from, making the entire process a daunting task.
Let’s make the search a bit easier by sharing ten software tools that you need to add to your stack this year.
10 Must-Have Software Tools
1. Virtual Team Collaboration Software
In this time of the pandemic, several companies have started operating partially as virtual teams, if not entirely.
Keeping everyone on the same page while working in different locations, however, can be challenging. According to Mural, virtual teams face challenges in communication, team relationships, and task management. Lack of focus and productivity also seems to be a problem.
Having virtual team collaboration software in your arsenal can alleviate these pains of not working physically with your team members by providing an efficient communication avenue, transparent task management, and organized workflow arrangement.
Project Management
According to The Virtual Hub, project management tools give your virtual team a way to collaborate on projects by sharing documents, timelines, and status updates. They also help to improve productivity among team members by letting them discuss issues in real-time.
The software tool Front does just that. It offers shared email functionality that lets you combine emails, apps, and teammates into a single view and create the workflows you need to power more impactful work.
With Front, you can create shared inboxes so you can manage messages as a team. You can also tag your teammates on emails and work on drafts together. Because everyone can see who is working on what assignments, projects move smoothly with a lesser possibility of making mistakes.
Time Tracking Software
Monitoring your office-based employees’ attendance and productivity is easy because you can see them in person. That’s not the case with remote employees. You don’t know if they’re working ardently behind that computer screen or just slacking off.
Time tracking software helps you monitor how much time you and your team members are spending on specific tasks and projects.
The insights it provides allow you to evaluate your priorities and make changes if necessary. It will also help you gauge whether you’re getting your money’s worth based on your remote employees’ output.
Freshbooks has these functionalities and more. This cloud-based time tracking software tool tracks working time, creates invoices, and provides very detailed reports. Plus, it has an easy-to-use interface, and it functions well on your desktop and mobile phone.
2. Video Editing Software
According to a report published by Animoto, 93% of businesses got a new customer thanks to a video they shared on social media.
Why? Well, video content is both informative and entertaining. It effectively drives traffic to your website and converts them into leads and customers.
Video creation software tools like Animoto can help you produce a high-quality video using images, video clips, and music.
In addition to the standard video editing features, Animoto also gives you over one million stock photos and thousands of licensed songs you can use to create your videos. It also lets you add a logo as a watermark to your videos to raise brand awareness.
3. Webinar Software
Webinars are extremely effective in generating leads because they’re more accessible than traditional seminars and can attract more people who have a great potential to become customers. They also allow you to communicate with your audience before, during, and after your presentation.
Livestorm is a good webinar software tool to add to your stack because it lets you pre-record webinar content or do live business presentations, depending on your preference. After the webinar, you can track and analyze the data using the platform’s analytics tool.
4. Social Media Listening and Engagement
An effective social media listening tool shouldn’t only track when your brand is mentioned on social media but also allow you to track keywords, phrases, and your competitors so you can find opportunities to leverage for your business.
SentiOne helps you identify unhappy customers and address their issues. On top of that, it collects data, like mentions, in time charts, gender recognition, geolocation map, reach estimation, and influencer search, which you can use to optimize your marketing strategies that boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.
5. Email Marketing Automation
To build quality customer relationships, you need to communicate with them regularly and on a personal level. One way to do that is through email marketing.
Email marketing automation software allows you to send a targeted email at the right time and with the right context.
BenchmarkONE’s easy-to-use platform helps you achieve this by allowing you to segment your email list, automate email drip campaigns, and personalize each email you send.
It also saves your precious time by letting you know who your hot prospects are so you can focus on selling your products.
With BenchmarkONE, you get access to a robust library of email templates you can use to make your emails more attractive and encourage your subscribers to take action.
6. Client Onboarding Software
According to Thought Industries, a poor client onboarding process causes 52% of new customers to leave within the first 90 days.
For people to understand how to use your product effectively, you need to accept the helping hand of a client onboarding software tool. An example of this is Appcues.
Appcues helps turn your product into a growth engine by converting new users into fans. It offers an automated and personalized onboarding experience to the user so you can show the right experience to the targeted user at the right time.
7. Analytics Software
Marketing analytics provides you with the data you need to further optimize every campaign you launch and reach your set marketing goals.
Analytics software offers profound insights into customer preferences and the latest trends. Once you know what your potential buyers like, you get a higher chance to convert them.
KissMetrics is among the first software tools that come to our mind when we talk about analytics. This efficient marketing analytics software tool allows you to track user behaviors and insights to improve and optimize the content you publish on your website and social media channels.
8. SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of making it easier for your potential customers to find you on Google and other search engines.
According to Backlinko, links ranking number one in Google’s search results receive an average CTR of 31.7% and are 10x more likely to be clicked than those listed below.
Moz Pro can help you to achieve such success. This all-in-one SEO tool focuses on improving your rankings and search engine visibility.
It helps you to strategically target keywords that your possible visitors would be interested in. It also ensures that your page content has the maximum potential to rank for your target keywords and recommends specific improvements.
9. Omnichannel Commerce Software
The number of online shoppers increased by 27% as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To fully cater to these consumers, many businesses have turned to omnichannel commerce – a multi-channel approach that provides customers with a seamless shopping experience, regardless of where they start and end their transaction.
BigCommerce is a software tool that provides eCommerce businesses with multi-channel integration tools so you can easily transform your social media accounts into “branches” of your online store, making it easy for your customers to buy from you.
10. Customer Support Software
Good customer support helps increase your customer retention rate, which, in turn, generates more revenue for your business because repeat customers buy more than new customers.
One way you can ensure your business is providing your customer with quality support by answering their queries promptly through customer support software like HappyFox.
HappyFox can help you maintain your customer’s satisfaction by assisting you in taking care of their needs. This practical help desk and customer support software solution handles all inbound requests in one ticketing system. It also offers a secure help desk with SSL integration and 24/7 support at no extra cost.
Key Takeaways
Adding any of these types of software tools to your arsenal can boost your team’s productivity and reach your marketing goals this year.
Of course, introducing and implementing new technology in the workplace would mean that your team will have to learn how to use it and maximize its potential. For this reason, don’t introduce several software tools at once. Otherwise, the change can stress and overwhelm your team resulting in the underutilization of these tools.
Give your team enough time to learn and adjust to the new software tool. Take advantage of any onboarding services that the developers may offer, and make sure that your team attends. That way, your team will fully understand how the new tool benefits them and their workflow.
While adding any one or all of these software tools can significantly help you and your business meet your marketing goals, remember that they are just that: tools. You still need to ensure that you have a clear understanding of your target market and provide them with the right content for each stage of your marketing funnel. Only then can you maximize the potential of these software tools.
Author Bio
Kevin Payne is a content marketing consultant that helps software companies build marketing funnels and implement content marketing campaigns to increase their inbound leads.