White-label platform: The ultimate guide to using a white-label marketing platform (Updated 2023)

If you’ve landed on this page, there's a good chance you're a B2B marketing solutions provider—a marketing agency, media company, SaaS company, etc—in need of a white-label platform.

Take a tour of Vendasta's all-in-one ecosystem for companies selling to local businesses. Check out the Vendasta Platform Guide.

So, you want a platform to streamline your own sales and marketing, automate your funnel, scale your company, and double your profits all without having to reinvent the wheel? I like where your head's at. Keep reading, and we’ll show you what a white-label platform can do for your business.

Note: this is a no-BS post. We’re gonna give you the straight facts on white-labeled platforms and arm you with core knowledge so that you can make an informed investment.

Let’s jump into it.

Table of Contents

• What is a white-labeled platform?
• White-label marketing automation
• 7 Core white-label platform functionalities
  1. Wholesale white-label software
  2. White-label CRM
  3. White-label project management
  4. White-label client portal & reporting dashboard
  5. White-label lead generation
  6. White-label services
  7. White-label proposal software
• The best white-label agency platforms
• A comprehensive white-label platform

What is a white-labeled platform?

A white-label platform, or white-label marketing and sales dashboard, is a piece of software that's designed to automate the sales and marketing funnel for marketing services providers looking to scale. The platform is built and designed by one company and resold to a second company to be rebranded and used to streamline sales and marketing. As a white-label platform, it is completely customizable to fit your branding.

White-label dashboard platforms come in all different shapes, sizes, and even names. Some call it a white-label marketing platform or a white-label sales platform. Others call it a white-label marketing dashboard or white-label SaaS. Others might group it into white-label marketing software or white-label business software. The good news? It’s all these things—but, to avoid confusion, we’re going to refer to it as a white-label platform.

White-label platforms are designed to either partially or fully automate your sales and marketing initiatives. The best kind of white-label dashboard platform a marketing service provider can invest in is one that can streamline the sales funnel—from prospect, to close, to upsell—and that covers the full marketing stack.

White-label marketing automation

Think of white-label marketing automation as an AI-powered white-label marketing dashboard for your business, coupled with robust marketing automation tools for your clients. The idea is that automation removes redundant and repetitive tasks for you as a product or service provider, as well as complicated marketing tasks and workflows for your local business clients. And since it’s a white-label marketing platform, it has your logo and branding on it.

The cold hard truth: In most cases, “marketing automation” is a buzzword that has led to many folks believing that they can simply switch on a marketing machine and have it be self-reliant. This isn’t true.

In general, “marketing automation” refers to tools designed to automate certain key tasks like email, social media posts, web forms, chatbots, and more, for businesses that want to free up precious time on these tasks.

In the white-label world, however, “marketing automation” goes far beyond the standard marketing functionality that your clients are familiar wtih. It also encompasses task automation, reporting, sales, and more for businesses like yours that want to scale, but need more organizational tools and assistance selling your core marketing offering. That’s where a white-label marketing platform can help.

Below, we’ve listed the 7 marketing automation-driven functionalities that you need in a white-label platform.

7 Core white-label platform functionalities

The following white-labeled platform functionalities are available across a broad market of offerings. Depending on your needs, you may only be looking for a specific solution, or you may be looking for something more comprehensive. You might just find something that you didn’t even know you needed!

1. Wholesale white-label software

White-label software, in this context, is a digital marketing product developed by the white-label platform provider for you to rebrand, re-price, and resell under your brand. Without having to develop proprietary software in house, you can benefit from that brand-elevating effects of selling software with your logo on it. This kind of software, available to your clients on your white-label dashboard platform, comes with two key benefits:

1. It scales. Big time. You don’t have to develop the products in-house or outsource it. You save costs, time, and probably a few hairs on your head. Ready-to-sell, instant-on products are what the majority of your competitors are selling, so you want to have them available on your white-label marketing platform, too.
2. The ROI model is bulletproof. You purchase products at wholesale costs, rebrand it, and resell it at your price point. Some white-labeled platforms will only charge you when you sell something—no monthly subscriptions, no onboarding fees.

Here’s a list of the most common types of white-label products being sold by marketing providers to local clients:

1. Social media marketing
2. SEO
3. White-label ecommerce platforms
4. Reputation management
5. Listings management
6. Digital advertising
7. Graphic design

2. White-label CRM

A white-label CRM is a pipeline/client management dashboard that allows the company using it to brand it as its own. This dashboard would feature your logo and company information on it. It’s 100% yours. White-label CRM tools allow your salespeople to track their opportunities from prospect to close, and allow your sales managers to review overall performance and create accurate projections. You can use your white-label CRM to see your pipeline at a glance, making it easier to forecast and make profit projections.

Leverage AI to identify engagement opportunities using your white-label CRM. Your salespeople will never have to stress about ill-timed follow-up calls and ineffective touch points. Powerful tools like activity tracking, email logging, probability analytics, intelligent contact management, KPIs, and critical notifications all mean that a white-label CRM is sure to bring you closer to the clients that matter most.

And remember, having your brand showcased across all of your tools positions you as a leader among both internal and external stakeholders.

Check out Vendasta’s CRM!

3. White-label project management

White-label project management helps B2B marketing providers to track their tasks and stay organized across a breadth of unique clients, each with unique marketing challenges. No white-label dashboard platform would be complete without a built-in project manager to give your staff the technological edge they need to manage their complex schedules and super-serve your clients.

Your team needs a task manager that can:

1. Remove complicated technicalities from tasks like claiming listings.
2. Organize projects across various collaborators and stakeholders.
3. Establish approval and revision processes on completed work.
4. Intelligently manage due dates and timelines to ensure that your employees are never stuck wondering what’s next.
5. Show proof-of-performance on demand for staff and clients alike to measure and benchmark their successes.

Give your CEO the scalability that he desires, your staff the time-saving organization they need, and your clients the top-tier service that they deserve. It’s all possible with the right white-label marketing platform.

Explore Vendasta’s white-label Task Manager!

4. White-label client portal & reporting dashboard

Unlike traditional CRMs, white-labeled platforms need separate login portals for the end user (your clients) and the purchaser (your organization)—or, in other words, a client portal for your white-label marketing dashboard.

If you operate in the B2B space, something like a traditional HubSpot platform for marketing won’t give you the client-facing functionality that you need to strengthen your brand and build credibility among your clients. To build authority and project a higher level of professionalism, you need something under your brand that your clients can log into to monitor their account.

Your clients want to see these elements in a client portal:

1. ROI reporting. Nothing is more powerful than a proof-of-performance statement that clearly exhibits the value that you are bringing for your clients.
2. Automation. There aren’t enough hours in the day to build comprehensive reports for ALL of your clients. You need a client portal that automatically generates reports that clearly demonstrate your value, whether it’s last week or this month.
3. Digital store. Your clients don’t have time to shop around for solutions, and they need more help than they realize. Your organization needs a simple way to showcase its offerings. The answer? An online store that your clients can access at any time. Each client login should also allow your clients to add or remove offerings with the click of a mouse.

The more products you can offer your clients, the stickier your relationship will be. According to the Vendasta Churn Study, SMBs who are sold one product have a retention rate of 30% after two years, while two products show an increased retention rate of nearly 20%, and four products show a retention rate of 80%. Supplement your offerings with clear proof-of-performance and your clients will have no reason to ever doubt the value you bring.

Check out Vendasta’s client portal, Business App!

5. White-Label Lead Generation

White-label lead generation is the process of leveraging a rebrandable tool, app, or service to attract qualified prospects to your offering. As an agency or media provider, lead generation is likely one of the most difficult challenges you face.

But… what if you had a tool that you could slap your logo on and use to measure the entire breadth of a prospect’s online presence? Imagine the unforgettable sales presentations you could deliver. That’s exactly how white-label lead generation can help your agency.

Best-in-class white-label lead generation and prospecting tools will allow you to collect insights on core digital marketing metrics such as:

1. Listings. Determine what listing sites local businesses have their location and contact information on, and identify platforms where errors in this data exist.
2. Reviews. Take a macro look at the businesses online reputation across some of the key platforms such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, Glassdoor, etc.
3. Social Media. Measure social interactions, impressions, clicks and other critical metrics across the top social platforms to draw conclusions on a prospect’s social presence.
4. Website. Website performance is the life-blood of many local businesses, and arming yourself with an understanding of traffic and load times can make for a great conversation starter.
5. Digital Advertising. Is the business running paid ads? What platforms are they running, and how are they performing as compared to industry averages?
6. SEO. The voodoo of online marketing. Identify key opportunities for prospects to grow their online presence and rank on keywords that will generate real traffic and real conversions.

With these insights from white-label lead generation tools, it becomes easy for agency sales reps to start difficult conversations with local businesses and showcase the value they can offer on day one.

Explore the Vendasta lead-generation tool, Snapshot Report!

6. White-label services

White-label services are professional services that a team of third-party experts will complete on behalf of you and your brand to help your agency scale faster. Using a white-label agency platform to resell valuable digital marketing services makes it easy to overcome in-house expertise in these fields.

Rather than having to hire more staff each time you want to add a new service to your portfolio, you can have instant access to pros who can deliver on your behalf. Reselling white-label services unlocks the the ability for your agency to scale rapidy, with a repeatable formula for success and none of the risks or costs associated with hiring and onboarding. By using a white label agency platform to deliver services, you can free up valuable time to focus on white label lead generation and sales.

White-label service providers generally follow a Do-it-With-Me (DIFM) approach, working in conjunction with you and your teams to ensure that work is being completed in a timely manner and meeting all client needs and quality expectations. This way your team can still be involved as much as they want to be, without needing to do all the heavy lifting.

Common white-label service offerings include:

1. Digital Advertising. PPC advertising is a key component of any successful marketing campaign today, and it is generally too complex and time-consuming a task for your SMB clients to handle internally. The best digital advertising campaigns run across multiple platforms and require regular monitoring to ensure ROI is being delivered and PPC KPIs are being met. Thanks to white-label digital advertising solutions, you can rely on advertising pros using the latest technology to ensure your client’s campaigns deliver results that keep them coming back month after month.
2. Website Creation. If you have clients with websites that look like they’re stuck in the 90s, then it might be time to enlist some professional web help. A poorly designed website is hurting your clients by limiting their conversions and conveying an unprofessional image. With a white-label ecommerce platform that includes web design and branding services, you deliver slick landing pages, responsive ecommerce sites, and more. Because professionals are building and developing the sites, you can count on them being fast and optimized for conversions.
3. Review Responses and Requests. Reputation management is a critical front in helping your clients establish themselves as trustworthy and reputable in their niche. However, it can be a tedious process requesting, managing, and responding to reviews across more than 100 platforms. By reselling white-label reputation management services, you can help your clients land more clients, boost their retention rates, and create an online reputation that helps them meet their goals.
4. Social Media Content. The right social media presence can help your SMB clients attract and engage with their target audience exactly where they are: online. Thanks to white-label social media services, you can leave it to the experts to create contect and craft messages that are just right for your client. Plus, they can handle the day-to-day management of social media accounts, which is itself a very time-consuming process.
5. Listings Management. The more reputable websites your client is listed on, the more discoverable they will be online. Creating listings and managing them to ensure they are consistent across all databases is a task best left to white-label listings management experts who can ensure your client’s data is accurate and consistent across the web.
6. Content services. Reselling white-label content services means that you can deliver fantastic blogs and website copy that is on-brand and industry-focused for yoru clients at scale. Great writers can be hard to find: by using content services from a reputable white-label agency platform, you can submit work your clients will love, every time.

7. White-label proposal software

Submitting professional proposals is an important step in the process of converting your prospects into paying customers. The best proposals not only communicate pricing to your clients, but they provide a peek into just how organized and professional your agency is and how easy it will be to work with you.

By using white-label proposal software, you can create effective, on-brand proposals with a few clicks. The best options will also include integrations with your white-label CRM and white-label marketing dashboard. These simplify the processes of creating proposals, generating invoices and orders, sending status notifications, and other administrative tasks.

Instead of generating a proposal from scratch every time, or manually typing in every line item that you want to include, you can pull directly from your platform and have pricing auto-populate. You can also create a completely custom template to reuse, or start with a ready-made template and add your branding. This ensures your clients receive a professional-looking proposal, every time.

Follow-up emails can easily get buried in your clients’ inboxes: Instead, use your white-label proposal software to communicate with your clients directly in your shared white-label dashboard platform. If they have questions or comments that need to be addressed, this can easily be done in the dashboard, creating a simple, frictionless experience for your clients.

The best white-label agency platforms

The best white-label agency platforms can deliver everything you need to run your agency successfully and blow your revenue goals out of the water.

With a robust white-labeled platform like Vendasta’s you’ll have access to internal tools and solutions that enable you run your agency, and customer-facing products and services that deliver serious results for your clients.

When it comes to the internal tools that make growing your agency a breeze, the best white-label agency platforms will include:

• White-label lead generation to help you identify the best leads in your area, saving you time that you might otherwise spend on leads that aren’t likely to go anywhere
• A white-label marketing dashboard with tools to help you get in front of your prospects with the right message at the ideal time
• A white-label CRM to help you stay on top of your pipeline and ensure you don’t let valuable opportunities go cold
• Intelligent sales tools to help you close deals
• Access to industry experts who can deliver white-label services on your behalf
• A vast range of white-label SaaS reseller products and services you can resell, so you can create custom-tailored solutions for each of your clients while keeping your costs in control

Meanwhile, your clients benefit from a convenient, easy-to-navigate client dashboard, being able to purchase many solutions from a single vendor, and having their services delivered by experts who can maximize their ROI. Whether they need a white-label ecommerce platform or a whole new SEO strategy, you can deliver it all through your white-label agency platform.

With the right white-label agency platform, you can unlock a repeatable, scalable profit-generating model for your agency.

So, which white-label platform should you choose? Take a closer look at our platform.

A comprehensive white-label platform

Depending on your unique needs as a marketing product or service provider, you may require certain platform components or offerings more than others, and there is a market full of solutions available for you. However, if you are looking for an all-encompassing solution to meet all of these core needs and truly delight your clients, then you need to explore the Vendasta platform.

At Vendasta, we like to call this offering the “agency in a box.” Why? Not only are you provided with a suite of products and services to resell, but you are also provided with a sales and white-label CRM and marketing platform that were built for agencies and media groups that service the local business market.

Core functionalities of Vendasta’s white-label platform include:

1. Snapshot Report. Gain insights into a local business’ digital footprint, all from your white-label marketing dashboard.
2. Marketing Automation. Formulate intelligent drip campaigns that will ignite your leads.
3. Sales CRM and Pipeline. A dashboard to manage it all and analyze unique sales opportunities.
4. Marketplace. A network of ready-to-sell apps and services.
5. Business App. A powerful reporting interface in your white-label marketing dashboard for managing your clients’ experience.
6. Task Manager. A center to manage all ongoing and scheduled tasks so that you don’t ever miss a task for a client project.