Kelly Shermach, Content Strategist
It’s almost Thanksgiving and in the spirit of the season, we thought we’d serve up and share something special for you, our valued reader. It’s something every B2B marketer needs…tools. We have some favorite B2B marketing tools that we will bow our heads over a turkey for any time of the year. Here are seven of our favorites. Enjoy!
1.
This SEO analytics tool tells you just how marvelous you are by giving you a keyword dashboard, ranking data, a digital intern that crawls your sites for search obstacles and pings you to fix them, post haste. When marvelous is not enough, Moz helps make you exceptional, with webpage optimization and link opportunity suggestions. We at Content4Demand celebrate the start of every weekend with Moz’s Whiteboard Friday YouTube videos.
2.
An interactive software platform like Ceros makes the execution of content marketing an integral part of the results, and the results are better than those from static infographics and eBooks. Interactivity resonates with users and inspires them to talk about or even buy your products or services. We are also SUPER into the content engagement statistics we get with the platform…time spent on site, page views, device usage. Cheers to you Ceros—we’ll take a second helping of you every day!
3.
This multi-purpose platform brings static PDFs to life bring enabling links to multiple content assets that you can flip through or navigate by sections. Your audience can dive deeper into sections they care the most about and zoom-in on stats and charts that catch their eye. Most importantly, you get all the data about the asset’s use. If your target isn’t engaging with the content, you can make enhancements on the fly to drive better ROI. Another Uberflip option allows you to organize your content in a “hub.” (Check out what one of our all-star clients Cox Media developed) If used correctly, Uberflip can help you catch your audience’s attention and keep it there through uber-connected and easily-reorganized content streams.
4.
When resources are limited but competition is tough, companies of all sizes can benefit from influencer marketing. If you engage a few key VIPs and inspire them to propagate your message, you gain access to their followers and trade on their reputation for your lead generation efforts. BuzzSumo’s tools help you find relevant influencers and measure your content performance, as well as that of your competitors. As you walk a mile in someone else’s social footprint and make your own tracks, your social marketing savvy can help you develop smarter content strategies and may even win your team a bigger marketing budget.
5.
With Trello’s tools — Pinterest-like boards, lists and cards — you can organize project materials in visual formats, then share them with a project team or the broader company community. Comments and attachments added to cards, and integration with the business applications you already rely on make your teamwork more effective and efficient. Definitely not your grandfather’s project management toolkit, Trello enables continuous, even real-time process improvement and enforces team member accountability. You’ll wax nostalgic as you flip through projects you’ve completed, actively visit projects in process and make plans for projects that still exist only as twinkles in your marketing eyes. Trello can be shared broadly in an organization. Think about engaging your sales team, for instance, with early information about new content. It may start them talking about the common questions or concerns they hear from customers or prospects. That pays off in more relevant content.
6.
Adding interesting graphics to emphasize your content improves user experience and makes some missing white space more tolerable. As a graphic creation and stock image repository, Canva pops with visual content enhancers, through which you can communicate a deeper understanding of your audience. “A picture paints a thousand words” isn’t just a lyric from the ‘70s, you know. Plus, data becomes much more digestible with graphic representations. And perhaps the biggest benefit of all? Canva relieves your design team from the most tedious projects. No more, can you swap this image or can you change this word. It’s not InDesign or Illustrator, but Canva helps all marketers build graphics, call outs and promo images in a turn key way. Save your most complex projects for your design team and let Canva handle the rest.
7.
Do you know your editorial voice? Is it right for your brand? If so, your content should make conversation in that voice with clients and prospects. Natural, authentic writing doesn’t sound like marketing or a sales pitch. It shouldn’t scream, “Give us your money already!” Hemingway follows Papa’s example and helps you deliver honest, clear content. It Identifies common mistakes such as illogical sentence structure, grammatical errors and adverb addictions. If you also need a copy/paste cure, Hemingway puts you on the wagon with easy text import and export among software applications.
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So that’s our top seven B2B marketing tools. There are so many more tools we are thankful for, but we wanted to share the resources and platforms we thought would help you the most. Curious about any of the tools we’ve mentioned?
Contact our Director of Marketing, Steve Voith; he is available for questions and brainstorming.
Thank you for reading our post and a happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, from Content4Demand!
