){kind=small}
When you’re coming into a company or deciding to kickstart your growth, you’ll need a set of B2B marketing tools to help you with high-impact tasks, generate ROI, and boost your productivity.
In this guide, we’re not going to list hundreds of tools for every type of task. Instead, I’ll show you some of the essential ones that any B2B marketer can use to drive growth and hit their goals.
Let’s jump in.
What are B2B Marketing Tools?
B2B marketing tools and software cover a wide range of tasks and use cases.
The tools we’re going to look at in this guide will cover both inbound and outbound B2B marketing use cases. From building landing pages to running targeted cold email campaigns, we'll show you the essential tools any B2B marketing team needs.
Avoiding Marketing Software Overload
Most B2B marketing teams usually end up managing multiple subscriptions for tools with overlapping features, and different levels of impact on the organization.
One or two of your tools will deliver seriously high ROI, and the others will simply be “nice to have” but with little tangible value.
Stay focused on only subscribing to B2B marketing tools that help you solve a problem and hit your marketing goals. This is the best way to avoid software overload that leads to unnecessary costs and complications.
Features to Look for in B2B Marketing Tools
1. Helps You Solve a Specific Problem
The number one rule when choosing your B2B marketing tech stack is that you need a reason to buy a tool. Don’t just start using it because you saw it in this guide, or in another company’s top recommendations.
Consider what problem you need to solve, and then look at the tools that can help you solve it. For example, if you want to optimize your organic traffic, you can look for SEO tools. Or, if you need a way to connect with high-level decision-makers at Fortune 1000 companies, you might consider using a cold email tool to reach out to them.
You’ll end up with a set of tools that you use regularly and drive real business results.
2. Can be directly attributed to ROI
B2B marketers need to tie their actions to ROI – or a similar business-critical metric.
When looking at tools, evaluate how they’ll fit into your marketing workflow and what stage of the sales funnel they tie into.
Before paying for a new tool, it’s useful if you can clearly state:
Why you need a particular tool
How it’ll fit into your workflow
How it will affect ROI
If you can make these points clear, it’ll be easy for a CFO or your manager to approve the purchase request.
3. Allow You to Scale and Collaborate with Your Team
Over time, your B2B marketing department will grow.
You’ll hire new team members or outsource work to freelancers and in those cases, it’s vital that your B2B marketing tool stack enables you to do that.
Look for tools that let you add new team members and collaborate with ease. For example, if you’re sending outbound sales emails, you’ll need an outreach tool that lets your whole team see if your sales prospects are replying, and keep track of which team members are handling which accounts.
If the B2B marketing software you’re considering has strict limits on the number of people allowed to use the tool it’s going to quickly increase your costs and add unnecessary complexity to how you manage campaigns.
5 Best Outbound B2B Marketing Tools
1. QuickMail
Powerful email outreach software to help B2B marketing teams run cold email campaigns that start conversations.
Every B2B marketer will need an email outreach tool. Whether it’s to run a cold email campaign to a new market segment you’re testing or to run a link-building campaign, email is the best channel to strike up a conversation with a cold recipient.
QuickMail lets you quickly build multi-step outreach campaigns to engage with your prospects using personalized emails, even at scale. Each email can be personalized using attributes like someone’s name, company name, or anything else you want to include in your email.
You can schedule automatic follow-ups, so if someone doesn’t reply to your initial email, QuickMail sends an automatic reminder - considering 55% of replies come from a follow-up, this is a powerful way to boost your reply rate.
On top of having everything you need to send outreach campaigns, QuickMail integrates with a deliverability tool called MailFlow. You can use MailFlow's cold email warm-up tool and deliverability tests to ensure your emails always reach your recipient's primary inbox.
QuickMail lets you send emails at the same time from multiple inboxes and can be used by as many team members as you need.
It’s the best way to send cold email campaigns that get replies – try out QuickMail with your free trial here.
Pricing: From $49 per month
Key features:
Send personalized cold emails that get replies
Personalize every email you send using attributes
Add multiple inboxes and collaborate with your team or freelancers
Integrates with your key B2B marketing tools, including CRM platforms and Zapier
2. BuiltWith
Identify qualified prospects and target accounts based on the technology they use on their company website.
BuiltWith is a prospecting tool that’s going to be useful for anyone running outbound campaigns with cold email or on LinkedIn.
The tool shows you all companies using a specific technology on their website, which can be a powerful way to narrow down your prospect list. For example, if you sell to companies using HubSpot to host their blog, you can run a search and all of those websites will appear.
You can then reach out to decision-makers at those companies with a highly personalized cold email, start a conversation, and learn if they'd be interested in your product/service.
The main downsides of BuiltWith are the price tag and that data can become outdated over time, so always double-check the accuracy before you reach out to someone.
Pricing: From $295 per month
Pros:
Easily identify companies that match your ideal customer
Export lead lists to a CSV so you can filter through in Sheets or Excel
The database contains almost 700 million company websites and 60,000 technologies
Cons:
Expensive, so best for companies running regular cold outreach campaigns
Doesn’t always surface company decision-maker email addresses
3. AnyMail Finder
Quickly find verified email addresses for B2B decision-makers and export them to your prospect list.
AnyMail Finder is an email-finding tool to help you source verified contact emails for sales prospects and leads. This means you don’t need to waste your time reaching out to catch-all emails like “contact@company.com” or going through gatekeepers to get to the decision-maker you need to contact.
It’s vital that you always use verified emails as it will reduce the number of bounces. AnyMail Finder shows you the source of the email addresses on the system so you can verify the accuracy, which is going to reduce the number of bounces you have in each campaign and improve your email deliverability.
An email finder is an essential part of a B2B marketing toolkit, and while there are a variety of other options, AnyMail Finder is a reliable choice.
Pricing: From $49 per month
Pros:
High accuracy rate and makes it simple to find verified emails
Only pay for verified emails and duplicates aren’t charged
Email finding credits roll over into future months
Cons:
Users on Capterra say the main negative point is that email finding credits have an expiration date
Other similar email finding tools available
4. Pipedrive
CRM to track your marketing and sales leads through your pipeline and keep on top of every email.
A CRM like Pipedrive is often seen as being reserved for sales teams. In reality, your B2B marketing efforts need to be directly connected to your sales function, and a CRM is as much a marketing tool as it is a sales tool.
You can connect Pipedrive with your other marketing tools and it makes it easy to see the acquisition source for leads and track how they’re progressing through your pipeline.
Pipedrive also connects with QuickMail through a native integration so you can synchronize your contacts between the two platforms and stay on top of every lead in your marketing pipeline.
Pricing: $14.90 per user per month
Pros:
Great set of features that rivals even more expensive CRMs making it ideal for B2B sales teams
Integrations with a wide variety of marketing tools
Integrates directly with QuickMail so no need to build custom integrations
Cons:
Some users on Capterra say the email nurturing tools aren’t as powerful as standalone email sequence software
5. TexAu
Automation platform made for B2B growth marketers that lets you create powerful workflows.
TexAu is an automation platform designed for marketers. You can tap into their library of pre-built automations, connect them to the tools you need, and start running them.
For example, you can automate the process of sending LinkedIn InMail to a list of LinkedIn profile URLs you have in a spreadsheet or scrape LinkedIn profile visitors and save them to a CRM to then reach out to in the future.
TexAu is like having your own marketing VA and is perfect for any team looking to save time on repetitive tasks.
Pricing: From $29 per month
Pros:
Build automation workflows that would otherwise take hours of developer time
No coding knowledge necessary
Email notifications and Slack bot to notify you when tasks have been completed
Cons:
No guarantee that your accounts on platforms like LinkedIn won’t be restricted when using external automation tools
Limited to the existing set of automations
5 Best Inbound B2B Marketing Tools
1. Unbounce
Landing page builder that you can use to quickly deploy landing pages optimized for conversions.
Unbounce is a landing page builder for B2B marketers that makes it simple for anyone on your team to create landing pages and track conversions from your paid ad campaigns.
It’s perfect if you have a hypothesis to test around messaging, landing page design, or audience targeting as you can create multiple variations of a landing page, then A/B test them against each other to learn what your audience cares about most.
If a landing page performs well, you can save the template and re-use it in the future, or continue to optimize it.
Unbounce integrates with most B2B marketing tools so it’s simple to make it a core part of your workflow.
Pricing: $90 per month
Pros:
Excellent way to test landing page ideas and get detailed analytics into page performance
No-code solution to avoid marketing needing developer time
AI-copywriting tool included to help you speed up your copywriting process
Cons:
Expensive solution, so make sure you plan why you’ll use it first
Initial setup time is required to integrate it into your tech stack
2. Ahrefs
Keyword research tool to help you plan your inbound B2B marketing strategy with real data.
Nearly every B2B marketer will need to consider SEO at some point. When you do start creating your SEO strategy, you’ll need a keyword research tool to help you find topics and keywords people are using to search for solutions to problems you can solve.
Ahrefs can also help you spot your top competitors for valuable search terms, identify opportunities for link building, and track the performance of your own website and content.
If you’re planning to invest in building an organic inbound traffic system, it’s an essential part of any B2B marketers toolkit.
Pricing: From $99 per month
Pros:
Base your SEO strategy on real data
Tools to help you spot opportunities to create landing pages, blog posts, and content
Identify trending content in your industry that you can use to find ideas
Cons:
Pricing is based on usage and becomes expensive if you need to use it regularly
Doesn’t always include data for low-volume keywords that might be relevant to your industry
3. Drift
Nurture every website visitor with a personalized website experience and automated customer support.
Drift started as a simple chatbot solution, and now offers a suite of on-site marketing tools that B2B marketers can use to proactively engage with website visitors and leads.
You can create different playbooks that trigger Drift to start when audiences matching any criteria of your choosing - such as acquisition source or landing page URL - land on your website.
The playbooks can display specific message sequences to engage your visitors, and your most relevant team members can jump into the chat and make sure the leads have everything they need.
If leads have questions, they can ask your team directly in live chat and you can help resolve any objections they have.
The main downside to consider is that Drift can have the opposite of its intended effect on your website visitors. If a decision-maker lands on your website and wants to chat with a real sales rep or support agent in live chat and they’re greeted with a long automation sequence, they may want to consider an alternative. Keep your chat sequences focused, and prioritize bringing in team members over simply automating the process.
Pricing: Free plan available, pricing details available upon request
Pros:
Connects with all major sales and B2B marketing tools
Create custom message sequences for website visitors based on visitor attributes
Highlights buying signals that your visitors and leads are showing on your website, such as visiting the pricing page or reviewing feature pages
Cons:
Users on Capterra highlight the UX can be difficult to figure out
Premium pricing and best for B2B marketers at established or fast-growing companies
4. HotJar
Website heat mapping and visitor recording tool to optimize your visitor experience.
HotJar is a website analytics platform that helps you identify how your visitors engage with your landing pages and on-site content.
Once you install the code snippet on your website, you can see how far the average visitor scrolls on your pages, popular buttons they click or interact with, and session recordings for qualitative feedback.
HotJar also gives you the ability to build on-page surveys that you can use to gather helpful feedback, such as NPS scores. You can then send that feedback to your marketing team and they can use that information to make updates to your messaging and marketing campaigns accordingly.
It’s most useful when used for a specific purpose: for example, tracking heatmaps of how people engage with landing pages that you’re running paid traffic towards.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $31 per month
Pros:
Gives you qualitative feedback on how users interact with key landing pages on your site
Simple to install and only requires one snippet of code to be added
Identify opportunities to improve conversion rates and optimize the user experience on your site
Cons:
Users on Capterra say that it can slow down your website so make sure to check performance isn’t affected after you install it
5. Zapier
Automation software that B2B marketers can use to automate any part of their day-to-day workflow.
This isn’t specifically an inbound marketing tool, but no guide on marketing tools would be complete without Zapier. It’s a powerful automation platform that B2B marketers can use to automate almost any part of their workflow.
For example, if you want to get a Slack notification when you get a new reply to your outreach campaign, you can set it up in seconds. If you want to create new deals in Pipedrive when someone clicks a link in your QuickMail emails, you can. If you want to publish a new Tweet when a new blog post goes live, you can set that up too.
Zapier is a no-code solution, so it’s perfect for marketers that need to get things done quickly, and it's going to save you hours of back-and-forth conversations asking your developers to build new custom workflows you need as part of your day-to-day workflow.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $19.99 per month
Pros:
Connect almost every software tool on the market and build custom, fully automated workflows
Comes with pre-built suggestions that can be set up in seconds
Requires the software you want to connect to have enabled a Zapier integration
Cons:
Despite being no-code, there is still some onboarding and setup time required to become familiar with the process
You sometimes need to re-authenticate permissions to avoid automations breaking
If you need multiple team members on the same account, pricing starts at $299 per month
Wrapping Up: Essential B2B Marketing Software
These tools for B2B marketing are going to help you set up your marketing operations and give you everything you need to drive growth at your company.
You’ll be able to handle outbound campaigns using cold email and LinkedIn outreach, and easily manage leads through your pipeline with a CRM.
As well as that, there are tools to help you optimize your website experience, improve conversions, and generate more inbound marketing leads.
For most teams, these are going to be the perfect foundation to start from.
If you’re ready to start sending cold emails that start conversations, QuickMail is for you - click here to start your free trial today.
