The Ultimate Tech Stack Guide for Small B2B Marketing Teams
In the 12+ years I've been marketing for SaaS, I've tried what feels like every tool out there. That's a bit of an overstatement, but throughout my career, I've typically been the first marketing hire—the person tasked with not just building out the department but also building out the tech stack. From budgets of $50k to $1M per year and teams of 1-20, those early days are crucial for getting the department set up with the data, workflows, and automation required to hit KPIs.
I've put together this guide of affordable, effective tools I've used for years to save you from endless Googling and sitting through (painful) demos for tools you don't need.
PS: For any marketers out there tackling the role of an SDR until you have a sales team onboard, I've got you covered too 🙌
Website (where marketing owns it)
I'm assuming that your company already has a website in place, but if not, or if marketing has the opportunity to move platforms, I highly recommend the following:
Webflow - This platform makes editing content and design elements easy once built. Though, it does require engineering to build it out initially unless you're already a Webflow expert.
Squarespace - Another straightforward platform to use if you need a quick, beautifully designed site that makes it easy to add/remove marketing landing pages.
WordPress - the old tried-and-true platform, Wordpress isn't always incredibly intuitive for editing designs and adding/removing pages, but it's solid enough to fit your needs.
Marketing Landing Pages
For individual marketing landing pages for gated content, event registration, etc., I highly recommend utilizing Hubspot so it all flows into your CRM.
For event registration, however, your event platform likely has that built-in (see event platforms below).
CRM & MAP
Hubspot - My #1 recommendation for getting your first CRM/MAP setup is to go with Hubspot. It's incredibly easy to get started with. It goes deep enough into the early-stage marketing operations you'll need for lead capturing, account scoring, and list building while also integrating into other platforms you'll be using for ABM, sales, and general business operations. Plus, their blog and customer support are top-notch, so you can quickly get an answer if you're unsure of anything.
Other tools I'd recommend:
Email Marketing
Hubspot - Again, intuitive to use Hubspot for emailing to tie in with your CRM, and my favorite feature is to build out the emails to match specific workflows and automation that match where your prospects and customers are in their journey in addition to the fantastic marketing promotions you'll be sharing for events, content and product news.
Other tools I'd recommend:
Account-Based Marketing
Rollworks - I am a HUGE fan of Rollworks for ABM. Sure, tools like 6Sense and Terminus are the ones you hear most often, but when you're a small team or a company just looking to get started with ABM, Rollworks is THE BEST. Not only is it affordable and one of the few (at least at the time of writing this) that integrates with Hubspot, but they also provide VIP-level account management and customer service. With Rollworks, you have someone there to help you set up your account, target lists, account scoring (Tiering A, B, C, etc.), and campaigns and they provide bi-weekly/monthly/quarterly calls to help you review and optimize to hit your goals.
LinkedIn - With Rollworks, you can also include LinkedIn targeting in your account at a small additional cost. However, I've also found it super easy to use LinkedIn on its own to identify target account lists, build contact lists and run ABM campaigns that suit your goals, whether 1:1 or 1:many. It's no secret that LinkedIn is the pricier of the social platforms to advertise on, but if your audience is active on the platform, then it's a highly valuable space to run ABM. If your sales team has Sales Navigator, you can also identify lists with your SDRs and work together to build out the campaigns and sequences.
Intent Data
Rollworks - Rollworks has intent data from Bombora built into your account, so you can quickly have both in one place.
Bombora - Probably the most well-known of intent data providers, Bombora is your new best friend for tracking accounts in the market for what you're selling.
Target Account Data
Depending on your company structure, you might not yet have a sales team armed with a target account list. Or you might be tasked with developing a new target list for various ICPs or segments. Whatever the case, you'll need a tool to help you identify the accounts to match the demographic and technographic information you're looking for.
Apollo.io - A relatively new tool, Apollo is excellent for building out target account data and TAM. It's incredibly intuitive and has excellent data to filter by to create your ideal lists. Depending on the technographic information you need, they may not have everything, but they are always open to adding that to their product roadmaps.
LinkedIn campaign builder - To start building an account list, you don't always need to pay for a data tool from day one. LinkedIn makes it incredibly easy to refine your target accounts using the campaign builder while launching your campaign. Ideally, you want an idea of your target audience and personas before you're at the campaign execution stage, but once you have your ICP defined, LinkedIn can make it easy to find accounts that match it.
ZoomInfo (if your sales team already has it in place) - A pricier option, ZoomInfo is great if your sales team is already using it. From my experience, it has some of the deepest technographic data (especially for DevOps compared to other platforms!) and great enrichment data. However, if you're focusing on emails and phone numbers, other tools are more accurate with this (Apollo, Lusha, etc.).
Cognism - Another great option similar to Apollo.io. I’ve not used Cognism directly but have heard great things from others.
Direct Mail Automation
Postal.io - When I was searching for a platform that serviced digital and physical gift sending outside just the USA, Postal was the one that kept coming up. If you're looking to send gift cards, virtual event packs, or physical gift sends, Postal.io lets you instantly send from one platform. One of my favorite features of Postal is their Magic Link pages which are great for events. You can set up a page per campaign or event that your marketing and sales teams can send out and offer a gift to any known or unknown prospects, customers, and attendees. All they have to do is put in their details, which will instantly ship wherever they are.
SwagUp - Postal.io also integrates directly with SwagUp, where you can instantly create, store and send branded swag packs and executive gifts and monitor spending and delivery in one place. With SwagUp, you can choose packs already put together by their incredible team, or you can build your own pack. Like other platforms I've recommended here, you also get direct access to their incredible customer success team, who can help check item availability and costs and to help bring new items not yet listed on their marketplace.
Other Marketing Automation
UTM.io - All of your UTMs in one place without needing multiple spreadsheets. Need I say more?
Buffer - A tool I've used for years, Buffer makes it super easy to automate social media scheduling.
Bit.ly - One we’re all likely using by now, Bit.ly is a tried-and-true option for shortening your URLs across campaigns (including ones created in the above UTM.io).
Podcast & Video Recording
Riverside - This is an awesome tool if you're looking to create engaging video or audio content without needing video editing skills - especially podcasts, interviews, or pre-recorded webinars.
Loom - If you're looking for a more async solution to share demo recordings, how-to's for your team, screen recordings, or anything else, Loom is incredibly easy.
Scheduling
Hubspot - If you're using Hubspot for your CRM, this is yet another great feature you have access to that lets you keep your entire marketing funnel in one place.
Calendly - Likely one you're already using, but if not, Calendly is great for scheduling different types of meetings with you or creating meetings for your teams to round-robin who attends.
Squarespace - If you're using Squarespace for your site, this is an affordable add-on to make it simple to manage your entire user journey in one place.
Chatbot
Having a chatbot on your website makes it easy to direct visitors to the correct department (sales or support) or resource (book a demo, blog, documentation, etc.).
Hubspot - Yet again, something that Hubspot can include in your CRM/MAP package, Hubspot's chatbot feature is just like everything else they provide - easy to create and implement. Plus, all the collected data will be included with all your other marketing data, so you have one place to develop and generate marketing reports.
Intercom - Intercom is another tool I've used at many startups I've worked with. It's particularly significant if you have a more technical product that prospects and customers have many questions about (this was the case, for example, when I worked in DevOps). You can be more advanced with Intercom than Hubspot, creating different chatbot journeys for prospects vs. customers and specific ABM accounts when they visit your site. And if you're a PLG company, you can add Intercom to your platform to set up product walk-throughs for new user onboarding.
Product Announcements & Site Banners
Getting product or marketing announcements front-and-center on your website should be easy and require minimal engineering effort. To help you get started, I highly recommend the following:
Intercom
Convertkit
Squarespace
Webinars & Courses
Demio - New-ish to the market, Demio is perfect if you need a webinar platform on an affordable budget to test out virtual events for your company. The platform can be designed to match your branding and includes engagement elements to utilize before, during, and after the event, such as polls, document sharing, and on-demand viewing.
Podia - If you plan to run a course, you’ll likely need somewhere to host it. Podia makes it super easy to build and manage online courses in one place. It’s also incredibly affordable!
Creative Assets
Canva - Even if you don't have a designer bone in your body, Canva can help you ensure your marketing (and sales) materials are on-brand and attention-grabbing. You can also easily share projects with teammates and external designers to help keep everyone aligned.
Creatopy (formerly Bannersnack) - If you don't have an internal designer or if you do and don't want to have them change one word in every single ad copy, Creatopy is fantastic. You can create ad sets in one go, editing a single design element across all sizes at once. This tool is a must-have if you're running multiple campaigns or testing ads across various ABM accounts.
Figma - A bit more in-depth than the other tools, Figma is great for creating workflows, charts, wireframes, and any other design outline for the team. I recommend this if you work closely with product or design teams.
Scribe - Easily create step-by-step guides.
Analytics & Insight Research
Google Analytics - An oldie but a goodie (and crucial). Get this set up early, and make sure you're building out the reports and goals for measurement often.
Fathom - A new one I've heard a lot about but have yet to try myself, Fathom is focused on security.
Hotjar - If you want to see what visitors are doing on your site, install Hotjar. You can watch recordings of visitor activity on your site and see drop-off points with page-by-page heatmaps.
Wynter - Depending on where you're at with your website, messaging, and product-market fit, getting insight into how all of these resonate with your personas is critical. Wynter lets you run tests of all of this across your personas to get their direct feedback and input. It's a game-changer for sure! But it is a bit pricier depending on your budget.
SEO & Content
Content is a critical channel for any good marketing strategy, so having the right tools to make it a success is just as important. To get off the ground, I recommend the following:
Project Management
Notion - Great if you want all of your documents, notes, and discussions in one place rather than digging through Google Docs, Drives, and Sheets.
Monday - My personal favorite out of the productivity tools for project management, Monday makes it easy to manage action items and timelines for everything from your to-do lists to major cross-functional projects.
Other tools I'd recommend:
Asana
Engineering-heavy org? Jira
Bonus: Sales & Outreach
Interseller - If you're doing some outreach on behalf of your ABM efforts, Interseller is incredible for building out contact lists with their handy LinkedIn Chrome Extension and creating personalized and effective sequences. As a non-sales person, this was a great tool to ensure accounts and contacts were followed up with around campaign and event engagement.
Qwilr - Easily build out proposals in one platform.