5 Tools B2B Marketers Should Be Using in 2015

Keeping up-to-date with the latest marketing tools and best practices can be exhausting. For some marketers this can feel like an almost impossible task!

Choosing the right tools can take your b2b tech marketing to a different level. Being able to scale, automate and speed-up many activities is key, but there are so many tools out there and it’s highly likely you are pushed for time when it comes to doing the research.

We understand your pain and know this can be frustrating. So, in the spirit of lending a helping hand, we have listed a few of our favourite marketing tools here with some best practice insights that should help you save time and increase campaign success:

Since the demise of Google Reader and other tools, a host of RSS readers and aggregators have sprung up. Feedly is perhaps one of the most intuitive and widely used. It also integrates with a range of other content tools.

Extra tip: using an app like Pocket in conjunction with a feature-rich reader allows you to save articles for reading when you don’t have access to an internet connection. Pocket strips out all the nonsense, leaving you with just the article itself and related imagery and videos.

If This Then That (IFTTT) is a particularly useful tool for automating tasks across a range of platforms. Using a simple ‘trigger and action’ system you can create ‘recipes’ to make your life easier, like auto-posting to your social channels whenever a new blog is published, or adding a new contact to your email address book when someone subscribes to your monthly newsletter. With a wide range of ‘channels’ and ‘integrations’ the opportunities are endless.

Trello is your ultimate ‘to-do’ list. Feature rich with an engaging UX, this free tool is perfect for both personal task organisation, but also rivals larger tools like Basecamp when it comes to project management. Use it to organise your daily routine and cut down on manual admin work

Similar to other readers, Flipboard’s mobile app also allows you to pull in your social newsfeeds and create custom ‘magazines’ to easily view and flip through content.

Although you can pull content in from social feeds such as Twitter and Facebook the main use of Flipboard is still to curate content using RSS. This allows you to subscribe to your favourite sites and also industry influencers that create magazines that are public.

Another great use for Flipboard is that you can connect it to Pocket which can then be linked to your buffer account using IFTTT so you can share across all your social channels using your buffer schedule

Publishing to your various social media platforms and individual LinkedIn groups can be a tiresome task. Making use of HubSpot’s social publishing too (or similar function in your marketing automation platform) allows you to share blog posts, links and other assets across multiple groups at once. You can also schedule posts ahead of time, allowing you to ‘bulk share’.

Ultimately, there isn’t one right way to set yourself up for best practice success. We’ve covered some of our favourite ways to stay abreast of information online, but there might be other sources that work better for you. The principles of prioritisation however still apply even when dealing with physical media, trade events and conferences.

Most of the tools we’ve mentioned can be used in conjunction with each other in myriad different ways, and most have great communities always trying to improve efficiency and productivity. The important thing is to build a system, and stick to it.

5 Tools B2B Marketers Should Be Using in 2015