23 Resources Every B2B Marketer Should Know About
UPDATED 15/07/2020. Latest additions placed at the top of the post. Bookmark this page and return regularly for updates!
Throughout the COVID lockdown I’ve taken a deep dive into literally hundreds of resources to help improve my skills and meet CPD requirements. One thing struck me on this journey: there’s a rich landscape of content out there for B2B marketers, but the best stuff is buried in places you’d probably never look.
To help you polish your skills, here’s a summary of my favourite, most useful resources for B2B marketers (both on the client side and the agency side).
Sprout Social Insights
Social media has caused one of the most seismic shifts in marketing since the widespread adoption of the internet itself, but B2B marketers have been slow to adapt. Sprout Social provides a goldmine of value for B2B marketers through its selection of free marketing toolkits and playbooks. Boasting the latest social media tips, tricks and strategic guidance, Sprout Social Insights will help even the most seasoned B2B marketer make improvements to their marketing game.
Copyblogger
Copyblogger provides guided training to help marketers buff up their content marketing skills. As with most companies that rely on content to generate revenue, Copyblogger offers a library of practical (and free) resources such as a weekly podcast and free training guides. For any of you looking to take things to the next level, the content marketing masterclasses start at around £120 (USD $150).
Quick Sprout
Quick Sprout contains over 600 guides, reviews, and insights for B2B and B2C marketers to upskill and improve their knowledge in pretty much every area of marketing. From novice to pro, the content is mostly free and covers things like SEO tactics, email automation, website building, content marketing, social media, and much more. Take a look; you won’t regret it.
Google Digital Marketing Tools
Google’s digital marketing tools have been designed to help improve your marketing, web performance, analysis digital experience, and more. Discover how your brand stands up against the competition (and what you can do to differentiate) with the Competitive Analysis Checker. Use the Culture and Trends Tool to learn what your potential customers are engaging with and searching for right now. Access a wide variety of free consumer insight resources to help with campaign planning.
Conversion Rate Experts
It might seem odd to promote a competitor, but these guys are THE number-one expert in their field globally, and their site will certainly add value to your learning.
CRE provides conversion rate optimisation services to help businesses improve the conversion rate of a website and boost its profitability. As part of their content marketing strategy, the company offers a wide range of hugely valuable (and free) resources such as their bestselling ebook Making Website Win. There’s also a tonne of useful stuff in CRE’s resources section about the psychology of buying online.
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog
A must-have resource for any B2B marketing professional, the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog is brimming with the latest research, tips and advice specifically for B2B marketers, and it’s updated roughly twice every week. The site, which is free to access, also provides a daily and/or weekly round-up in the form of an email newsletter which you can subscribe to here.
TechCrunch
Whilst not exclusively for B2B marketers, TechCrunch offers the most up-to-date news about business technology and the changing biz-tech landscape. If you’re a B2B tech marketer, you’ll find most of what TechCrunch has to say is particularly relevant to your job role, and every now and again you will stumble across a nugget of gold that will leave you feeling inspired.
The HubSpot Blog
HubSpot is a CRM solution that I absolutely love using. The HubSpot blog, which is free to access, is filled with useful content and resources aimed at helping B2B marketers improve their campaign performance and learn about the latest in B2B tech, strategy, and insights.
HubSpot also offers free training courses and certification for users of its platform (which is also free to use on the Basic CRM plan), covering things like marketing automation, social media and inbound marketing.
Drift
Drift provides conversational marketing software for B2B marketers. If you don’t know what conversational marketing is yet, head on over to Drift’s website to find out more; it’s packed with plenty of fantastic resources that cover niche areas of B2B marketing such as ABM, funnels, digital strategy and email marketing.
BuzzSumo Content Discovery Tool
With content marketing becoming so prevalent in B2B, it’s crucial to bring your a-game to the party if you want to generate awareness with prospects. BuzzSumo helps B2B marketers understand what types of content are most likely to resonate with an audience by looking at millions of data points. The output will tell how likely a content concept is to generate strong results.
Ahrefs Academy & SEO Blog
Almost every successful B2B marketing strategy relies on some aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO) to be successful, which is why the Ahrefs Academy and SEO Blog is such a valuable resource for B2B marketing teams looking to hone their skills. The site provides a wealth of training and resources to help marketers understand the fundamentals of SEO, such as how to build citations, the importance of site speed, and blogging best practices.
Canva Design School
Canva is an app that lets you design anything no matter how good (or bad) you are at graphic design. The Canva Design School is overflowing with free courses and tutorials to help you improve your design skills and get to grips with the most current visual trends. Much of the content is video-based and extremely easy to follow.
Marketoonist
Tom Fishburne is the CEO of Marketoonist, a comical yet hard-hitting cartoon sketch series about the trials and tribulations of the marketing industry. Tom is an inspirational marketing leader who’s featured in various TED talks and high-profile publications. This resource probably isn’t one you’re going to improve your skills with, but it’s highly entertaining and worth bookmarking for future inspiration.
Famous Campaigns
Famous Campaigns is a site dedicated to celebrating the best in innovative PR, social media, marketing, advertising, and creative communications. It’s a place for marketers to procrastinate and get inspired. It’s a place B2B marketers can find some creative direction for their next campaign theme or marketing initiative.
AdFreak
Hit a brick wall coming up with ideas for your latest campaign? AdFreak is a collection of the most daring and comical ad campaigns of the moment. So, take the boring out of B2B and get some inspiration from the masters of industry.
Google Trends
See what’s trending right now with Google Trends, an up-to-the-minute feed provided from the vast repository of information known as ‘The Google Data Centre’. Discover what’s trending globally and in your area and find out what people are searching for in your industry right now.
Think with Google
Get the latest industry research and insights across the marketing industry from Think with Google. The site covers things like advertising tech news, general marketing strategy, inspiration and insights.
Ubersuggest Keyword Tool
Imagine being able to reverse engineer your competitors’ SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing strategies. Ubersuggest provides valuable insight into the strategies that are working for others in your market so you can adopt them, improve them, and gain an edge.
The Moz Blog
Get the latest SEO and content marketing insights from the industry’s top dudes. The Moz Blog contains advice, research, how-tos and insights to help you level-up your marketing skills and knowledge. A simple content filter lets you view content by skill set (for example blogging, branding, SEO or design).
LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com)
Previously known as Lynda.com, the course material on LinkedIn Learning is, unbelievably, included free when you subscribe to a LinkedIn Premium or LinkedIn Learning membership (£24.98/month at the time of writing). With a standard LinkedIn Learning membership, you’ll gain full access to over four thousand courses covering everything from B2B marketing to building a photography studio in your office.
Content Marketing Institute
The CMI provides a huge selection of useful resources about content marketing, from the basics through to nuts and bolts of content marketing strategy. The site includes valuable content marketing research, events, and podcasts. Non-members can access most of this great content for free and it’s largely all relevant to B2B marketing today.
Seth Godin’s Blog
Author and former .com business legend Seth Godin is known as one of the industry’s great minds, and for good reason. Seth has written seventeen books on marketing, advertising, and business leadership. He’s also featured on our home page, just in case you didn’t notice! Seth’s blog contains a wealth of useful information for B2B marketers looking for some inspiration.
BONUS: B2B Funnel Talk
A bit of self-promotion here. Part one of our two-part blog on how to build an effective B2B marketing funnel using remarketing (AKA the ads about a product or service that target you after you visit a website). You can access part one here and part two here. Enjoy!
