What separates best-in-class marketers from all others? Is it talent? Work ethic? Maybe creativity? Or the way they use technology like marketing software?
We can speculate on all three, but we’re sure about at least one thing they do differently than the rest:
A report from the Aberdeen Group, titled “The State of Marketing Technology 2016: Controlling the Chaos,” reveals that popular marketing software is more widely used by best-in-class marketers than all others:CRM: Best-in-class: 76%, All others: 76%Video conferencing solution: Best-in-class: 67%, All others: 59%Email service provider: Best-in-class: 64%, All others: 61%Marketing automation platform: Best-in-class: 58%, All others: 50%Print materials & solutions: Best-in-class: 52%, All others: 50%Data visualization solutions: Best-in-class: 52%, All others: 33%CMS: Best-in-class: 52%, All others: 51%
The same can be said about fringe and emerging technologies, except in the case of SEO solutions.Post-click landing page software or optimization platform: Best-in-class: 45%, All others: 32%Content marketing platform: Best-in-class: 45%, All others: 30%Visual editing/design tools: Best-in-class: 42%, All others: 38%SEO services & solutions: Best-in-class: 42%, All others: 47%Social listening/analytics solution: Best-in-class: 42%, All others: 22%Event marketing/management solution: Best-in-class: 42%, All others: 21%Contact data/business intelligence solution: Best-in-class: 33%, All others: 27%Banner/display ad solution: Best-in-class: 33%, All others: 29%Project management technology: Best-in-class: 33%, All others: 26%Retargeting ad solution: Best-in-class: 30%, All others: 19%
In total, data shows that best-in-class marketers rely on an average of 7 technologies, mostly integrated to form an effective marketing stack.A collection of specialized but unconnected solutions: Best-in-class: 13%, All others: 34%A collection of specialized solutions with some integrations: Best-in-class: 33%, All others: 34%A mostly integrated system of complementary solutions: Best-in-class: 40%, All others: 23%A highly integrated system or “cloud” of complementary solutions: Best-in-class: 14%, All others: 9%
“But guys,” you might say, “that’s because top marketers have deeper pockets. With more money to spend, it’s not surprising they out-adopt smaller teams with lower budgets.”
That’s not a bad guess, but Aberdeen’s Andrew Moravick says it’s untrue. Nearly 85% of best-in-class marketers belong to companies earning less than $50 million annually.
Instead, he claims, it’s “rather because these savvy marketers are much more effective in identifying the right technology tools they need and excel in using them effectively.”
For those of us who aren’t industry leaders, that’s not easy to do. If you’re part of a team trying to find the right marketing software to accomplish your business’ goals, use this cheat sheet to navigate the ever-growing, always-confusing, maze of technology the way the pros do.1. Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)
With each phone call from a sales rep, every email from a marketer, your prospects (hopefully) inch closer to your ultimate goal: purchase. But, keeping track of them at every stage of the customer journey is no easy task.
When was the lead last contacted? Do they prefer email to phone? What’s the next step in follow-up?
Most times data like this ends up buried in a spreadsheet or lost on a company laptop. With a CRM, entire marketing and sales departments can track every interaction between customers and their business, and maintain relevant communication throughout the buyer’s journey.
What it’s used for: Monitoring and tracking customer relationships
Top marketers adoption rate vs. all others: 76% to 76%
Popular tools: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot CRM, Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), Zoho CRM2. Video conferencing solution
Today, remote teams are more popular than ever, which means so are video conferencing tools that enable face-to-face meetings over the internet. Whether you use them to vet potential clients, interview freelancers, or collaborate with team members, they’re a powerful addition to any marketing stack.
Usage: Collaborating and meeting face-to-face virtually
Top marketers adoption rate vs. all others: 67% to 59%
Popular tools: Google Hangout, ClickMeeting, join.me, Skype, Adobe Connect3. Email marketing software
After all these years and updated technologies, email is still marketers’ most valuable channel, producing $38 in ROI for every $1 spent. Service providers like MailChimp and Constant Contact allow teams to segment their leads and customers to send highly relevant messages used to nurture them to sale.
What it’s used for: Nurturing leads to conversion, transactional messaging
Top marketers adoption rate vs. all others: 64% to 61%
Popular tools: MailChimp, Constant Contact, Campaigner, Campaign Monitor, GetResponse, SendGrid, Mandrill4. Marketing automation software
Providing personalization at scale isn’t easy. Your team is only so big, and it has to keep up with a continually growing customer base. Marketing automation was created to help businesses take a hands-off approach to offering relevant buyer experiences.
Tools like Autopilot allow you track the behavior of anonymous visitors to your website, then guide them all the way to purchase with automated, personalized messages across channels like SMS, email, and direct mail.
Usage: Automating marketing tasks throughout the customer journey while maintaining a personal touch
Top marketers’ adoption rate vs. all others: 58% to 50%
Popular tools: Autopilot, Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua5. Print material and solutions
According to software solution Priint, more than 25% of touchpoints in the customer journey are relevant for print. Offline marketing collateral like brochures, pamphlets, direct mail — anything you can brand and use to inform and entertain your customer — are still relevant today.
In fact, according to a 2016 report from Content Marketing Institute, the most used paid advertising mediums by B2B businesses rank as follows:
With still so many marketers relying on print materials to guide prospects through the customer journey, it’s crucial for businesses to have a way to turn their digital content into print-friendly formats. Plugins from technology like Priint allow marketers to integrate creative tools from Adobe to quickly automate the transfer of online designs to offline mediums.
Usage: Converting your digital content into print-friendly formats
Top marketers’ adoption rate vs. all others: 52% to 50%
Popular tools: Sitecore Print Experience Manager, Priint: Suite6. Analytics and data visualization solutions
At the heart of every marketing technology ecosystem should be a powerful analytics tool. Without the ability to measure the performance of your marketing efforts, you’ll have no idea if your campaigns are producing positive ROI — which, according to industry reports, is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today.
Who’s visiting your website? How are they interacting with it? What are prospects paying attention to? These are all questions that analytics and data visualization tools can answer. It’s no coincidence that the biggest disparity in adoption between top-notch marketers and all others is in this category.
What it’s used for: Measuring the performance of marketing efforts
Top marketers’ adoption rate vs. all others: 52% to 33%
Popular tools: Crazy Egg, EyeQuant, Google Analytics, Kissmetrics Analytics, HotJar7. Content management software
Back in the early days of the web, you had to know your way around the “back end” of a website to publish and edit any online content. Coding know-how and programming experience were a requirement for anyone who wanted to develop web pages. Today, that’s no longer the case. Tools like WordPress and Drupal allow you to build websites and post content to the internet in minutes without any prior coding knowledge.
Usage: Publishing content to the web quickly and easily
Top marketers’ adoption rate vs. all others: 52% to 51%
Popular tools: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Wix, Squarespace8. Post-click landing page or website optimization software