Choosing the right stack of MarTech solutions can be a difficult task for B2B marketers, especially for those working in cybersecurity, who may have a more complicated sales cycle, changing regulations, and other obstacles.
From MarTech tools for SEO to tracking the sales cycle, we’ve asked expert cybersecurity marketers what their most indispensable solution currently is and compiled them in this list. Not every tool will be applicable to every digital marketer, but these expert insights could help you figure out what tool may be a worthwhile investment for your organization.
WordPress is one of the most used site-developing solutions out there, with an estimated 64 million websites currently running on the platform. From communicating your brands’ identity through pillar page customization to building out blogs, WordPress is a great tool for B2B marketers to tell their story.
WordPress is my foundational platform for storytelling. Since I published my first WordPress post in 2011, I can’t tell you how many blogs I’ve written or websites my various teams have designed. By teaching myself the basic principles of HTML using WordPress, I’ve created a career in marketing plus helped startups grow at scale.
Lauren Patrick, VP of Marketing at Curricula
71% of customers expect companies to be able to communicate with them in real-time. How can that be accomplished? Conversational marketing platforms, such as Qualified. Qualified lives directly on your site with their chatbot feature to help boost pipeline, while directly syncing with Salesforce for easy organization.
Qualified (a Salesforce–tied conversational marketing platform) has become a huge asset for us at Alation. We’ve had quick internal buy-in from our SDR team, have generated SAL numbers that we hadn’t seen with a previous vendor, and are beginning to tie it into different facets of demand gen (like ABM, paid, email marketing, etc).
Justina Logozzo, Senior Marketing Manager, Website at Alation
Mutiny allows marketers to easily personalize websites, from identifying inbound site visitors to serve them the most relevant experience to allowing you to create 1 to 1 personalized pages for target accounts. Personalization is becoming a key area of focus for B2B marketers, with 50% saying their organization has made it a company-wide strategic initiative. So being able to create personalized experiences at scale and test what works best can be extremely powerful.
Mutiny is indispensable for multivariate testing as well as improving conversion rates via personalized experiences. I have been fortunate enough to utilize the tool at both SecurityScorecard and AlphaSense where I’ve seen very positive results.
SEMRush
Semrush remains a very popular platform within the SEO community. The platform has a wide array of powerful tools, from keyword research to competitor analysis to PPC analysis, there are plenty of ways you can effectively leverage this platform for SEO and beyond.
SEMRush is the workhorse of my SEO toolbox — I use it on a daily basis for position tracking, monitoring changes in SERPs and competitive research.
Phoebe Fasulo, Director of Digital Marketing & Web Strategy at AlphaSense
Quickbase
B2B cybermarketers are unique in that each organization can have a completely different sales cycle, approval process, team structure, and much more. This can make it difficult when finding a MarTech solution that can fit their exact needs. Enter: Quickbase’s “low-code” application that allows teams to build custom apps specific to their unique needs.
The Marketing and Communications team at BARR Advisory serves as the internal creative services agency for our team, and as such, we needed a project management tool that met our unique needs. We created a custom app through Quickbase to better manage our marketing workflow. Frankly, we don’t know how we lived without it for so long! The app, called creativeBARR, allows associates to submit detailed creative requests viewable to our entire Marketing and Communications team. From there, we assign each project and move it through customized stages to completion. It has proven to be a great way to increase efficiency and transparency.
Michelle Smith, Director of Marketing & Communications at BARR Advisory
HubSpot is a CRM platform widely used by B2B marketers. Their solution provides marketers with in-depth reporting, sales abilities (such as, meeting scheduling), easy integrations, and more. HubSpot also offers a wide range of learning opportunities for those wanting to get started with HubSpot or inbound marketing in general.
Hubspot is key in monitoring our campaign performances and tracking lead conversion in real-time.
Eliana Vuijsje, Marketing Director at Adaptive Shield
Marketing Automation Platforms Like Marketo and Pardot
It’s no secret that cybersecurity marketers are busy people, so being able to automate repetitive digital marketing tasks can be a huge help. Marketing automation platforms (MAPs) can allow marketers to automate certain tasks, such as social media posting, for increased efficiency and a better customer experience.
One of our favorite solutions at BlueVoyant is our marketing automation tool (we use Pardot, but our team kindly argues with each other on what’s the best tool every week – mine is Marketo). From housing our database, nurture flows, and automation rules, marketing automation truly owns the story behind a prospect. Being in cybersecurity marketing is not always easy, and often tough to reach prospects, so it’s increasingly important to remain compliant with the most up-to-date regulations and respect your prospects’ privacy, which is just another role played by a MAP. Too many times this function gets overlooked, but their role has never been more important.
Jeff Aldorisio, Director of Digital Marketing at BlueVoyant
MarTech Tools That Drive Intent Data
Buyer intent data tools help B2B cybersecurity marketers gain insight into how and when prospects are interacting with a brand, what assets are performing best, which messaging resonates with the target audience, and more. These tools are often used in conjunction with ABM campaigns and can result in higher quality leads because the interest and intent can be more easily seen. There are many intent data platforms and tools out there, check out this list for more information on a few.
Intent data. For us, it’s been a way to level-up content syndication and add another dimension to the concept of SEO.
Mike Fleck, VP of Marketing at Cyren
Hotjar is a MarTech tool that allows marketers to gain insights into how their website is performing in a visual way, through heatmaps, recordings, feedback pop-ups, and surveys. They keep a focus on end-user privacy, which is very important for cybermarketers when considering a new tool to integrate into their MarTech stack.
Hotjar is a necessity. It allows us to see which web pages are performing better than others and how we can improve by displaying heat maps and video recordings. It helps us to strategize ways to optimize the overall experience of our website.
Suzanne Peck, Marketing Coordinator at nFront Security
The importance of a tool like 6sense goes back to #3 on this list – intent data tools. 6sense uses intent data and insights combined with AI to help create personalized experiences for customers throughout the buyer’s journey. Utilizing 6sense to reach customers at every step of the buyer’s journey is crucial for cybermarketers who tend to have longer sales cycles and may need to nurture leads more throughout the pipeline.
The one indispensable MarTech solution that we are consistently leveraging is 6sense. We are able to reach buyers earlier in their buying journey, but also provide them a more personalized content experience based on their interests and pain points. We used to rely on the form fill to qualify leads and that simply didn’t generate enough pipeline for our selling organization. We can now pass accounts to sales with a lot of valuable intent data and help them prioritize accounts that are actively in the market.
Aida Kamber, VP of Growth Marketing at Code42
For the final indispensable MarTech tool, we have a fun one! Memes! Jon-Eric Cornellier from Blumira summed up why he finds memes can be a helpful tool in his work life.
The Imageflip Meme Generator – I know, I know, memes!? Look, I’m sick of using stock photos, or searching for an icon that has some related symbolism. I work on a small team. We need images for speaking engagements, internal presentations, social posts, blog images, Slack shenanigans; why not use memes? At least most will stop to read it in the hopes it makes them laugh. If it doesn’t, well – then it had the same impact as a stock photo… So yeah. Memes.
Jon-Eric Cornellier, Marketing Director at Blumira
Final Thoughts on MarTech Tools for B2B Cybersecurity Marketers
MarTech solutions and tools can be very helpful for cybersecurity marketers, both internally and externally, but the amount to choose from can be overwhelming. Whether you’re looking for tools to help you with content, SEO, or even simply to be more organized – there are a sea of choices so use this list as a guide in your search. Many of these tools mentioned offer free trials and demos that can help you decide if it is the right fit for your needs.
Our Associate Director of Digital Marketing, Andrea Cruz, recently spoke at CyberMarketing Con 2021 where she dove into achieving higher conversion rates on LinkedIn Ads! Check out this recap of her session here to learn more.
Feel free to reach out to us on Twitter if you want to let us know what your favorite MarTech tool is, or contact us today to learn more about how we could help your organization!
