B2B Marketing Technology Stack (Martech)

As marketing becomes more digital and data-centric, the number of large and small companies catering to this sector has grown exponentially from around 150 in 2011 to 9900+ in 2022. The tech stack covers the entire customer lifecycle, and has increased marketing's ability to target customers at a much more granular level. Below are some of the core software that is essential to B2B demand generation.

Inbound: Leads generated through inbound activities (drawing customers to a brand or product) have one of the highest conversion rates and CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). They also cost less.

Outbound:?Leads generated through Outbound activities (promoting products through paid advertising) have lower conversion rates than organic/inbound campaigns, but they can be optimized to be top performers.

Marketing and Sales Qualification:?Once a lead has been created (ex: form fill or an event registrant), there are many more steps that have to be followed before it can be converted into an opportunity. The first step involves scoring the lead based on activities and behavior to ensure that it is qualified enough for a SDR (Sales Development Representative) or BDR (Business Development Representative) to follow up on. The SDR/BDR rep or 3rd party agency can then reach out to the prospects and further qualify if an opportunity exists or not (ex: 'BANT – Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline’ or similar frameworks). Opportunities are then handed over to sales to close the deal. With e-commerce (especially for lower-value order products), the lead times are much shorter due to self-actualization and automation.

Analytics:?Test and learn is one of the key principles of Demand Generation. It is important to track the customer journey from the first touch; all the way to a closed-won or e-commerce sale. Data can be captured on multiple platforms but aggregating them into a visualization platform will give a clear picture of what content and campaigns are working or not.

Martech Stack: A more comprehensive list of software can be found at?Chiefmartec. There are many and it can get confusing. My suggestion is to start with the core software and scale up based on the needs.