Nine companies B2B marketers should know about

You’re a marketer, we’re marketers. It’s good to share the things we like.

Here are nine companies you ought to know about. They all help marketers make more money for their companies; they’re all great at what they do; and they’re all Velocity clients – which says a hell of a lot about their judgement and commitment to quality.

Is this just an exercise in back-linking and backside-licking? Ummm: Yes. But we’re also massive fans of these companies. We can’t market what we don’t believe in and we really believe in these guys. Get to know them and you won’t be sorry:

EPiServer is the world’s best Microsoft.Net Content Management System. It’s incredibly easy for developers and editors and it does things no CMS even thinks about doing (it’s essentially got a marketing automation platform built in). If you’re a .Net shop, EPiServer is a no-brainer. And if you’re not, it’s still the best CMS out there.

Reevoo is the social commerce platform that helps brands and retailers harness the power of the crowd. It starts with ratings & reviews but goes way beyond that. This company is hot – and for good reason. If you collect ratings & reviews the old-fashioned way (sitting back and waiting), you need to upgrade to Reevoo.

Elateral helps major global brands localize and automate their campaign creation and deployment. Their Marketing Services Cloud helps companies like Coke, Mercedes and Cisco – if you’re big and in tech, FMCG or automotive markets, these guys are for you. It’s what Gartner calls Marketing Resource Management and Forrester calls Enterprise Marketing Management and we call a bloody clever way to get campaigns into the field and through the channel quickly, inexpensively and on-brand.

Econsultancy is the world’s best digital marketing community. They’re publishers of top-notch content like best practice reports and buyers guides; they do digital marketing training and qualifications and skills development for whole teams; they do great events like FUNNEL 2011, the B2B marketing event; and they have a killer digital marketing blog. Not a member yet? Shame on you. We really rely on these guys and use our membership in some way almost every week.

Marketo needs no introduction from us. They’re the hottest of the marketing automation and demand generation and revenue performance management software players. They also publish lots of great content for B2B marketers like the Definitive Guide series.

Baynote does dynamic personalization for e-commerce. It’s software that turns visits into conversions using the wisdom of crowds. Very clever.

MediaPlex is the ad server for brands that want a better return on their online display advertising and search advertising budgets. Unlike the vanilla ad servers owned by the giants, MediaPlex is incredibly customisable and comes with a team of marketing super-geeks who really know how to squeeze every last conversion from any online budget. Nobody gets online advertising better than these guys. Dell and Betfair benefit from it every day.

Smallworlders do intranets for distributed marketing teams – agencies, client-side brand teams and internal comms teams. Their Sandbox platform is ready to go when you are. Some huge names use Smallworlders as a smart, full-service alternative to all those DIY Sharepoint sites that never really work. Need an intranet fast with all the bells, whistles and social media stuff? You just found it.

MobileIQ is a mobile app and mobile website developer (they did the BBC News app). They also own PressRun, the tablet publishing platform that turns print magazines into fully interactive tablet experiences. Incredibly cool stuff, backed by a great team.

Looks like we’re developing something of a Marketing-That-Targets-Marketers practice here at the Velocity campus and sports-complex.

If you do get in touch with any of these excellent companies, say hi from us. No, we don’t get a commission, but we do get a warm fuzzy feeling without the hangover.