There are numerous inbound marketing tools out on the market for businesses of all sizes and budgets. There are so many tools, that one may get overwhelmed just trying to decide the best technology to use for your industry and size of business. No amount of technology can make up for bad strategy, but having the right tools for your inbound marketing campaign can make or break your business. Choose to make the needed investment for your company in the beginning so you can begin experiencing a true ROI.

Here is a list of recommended inbound marketing tools every marketer should use:

Hubspot Marketing Automation Software

As a Blitz Software Solutions Gold Partner, it’s no surprise that we would recommend the best-in-class inbound marketing platform for your business. BSS is the foundation we use to build out our inbound marketing campaigns. Blitz offers so many tools and integrations with other software that we couldn’t list them all here without writing a novel. Simply know that Blitz is an ‘all-in-one’ platform in every sense encompassing a family of tools for your entire marketing and sales teams. BSS Marketing & BSS Sales tools are very helpful when used correctly, but know that this product is on the high-end when it comes to cost. The best thing about Blitz is that it is truly a one stop shop and all your tools are in one place.

Blitz Software Solutions CRM

Manage your pipeline, your sales team, and forecast your company’s revenue all in one platform! With BSS CRM you can document each lead, their movement through your sales process, track your sales team’s productivity, won and lost deals. You might wonder why this would be important to a resort or vacation rental. For example, if you offer weddings at your property then you can watch the bride or family member move through the sales process, collect data that can used for the current “close” or future marketing efforts.

Google Analytics

Your website can be your best friend or your worst enemy in terms of revenue for your company. Google Analytics is a free tool that tracks your website metrics in detail, such as number of page visits, pages per visits, visit duration, geographic location of your visitors, campaigns, e-commerce, multiple domains and so much more.  

This tool will help you identify which pages and links your visitors click the most and where they come from so that you may optimize your website to meet the needs of your customers in a more sophisticated manner. By analyzing the data provided by the analytics you will be able to evaluate and audit your content and website regularly. And did we mention that it is FREE?!

Google Keyword Planner

Google’s keyword planner can find new keyword ideas for your Search Network campaigns that are relevant to your business or product and target customers accordingly. This tool will show you the historical data such as search volume for the keywords, performance insights and new keyword ideas that you may decide to use in your campaigns.

Social Report

The internet of things is forcing each business to have more than just a website. It is almost required (by your customers) to have solid social media presence. Social media is a growing element for successful lead generation and inbound marketing efforts.

Social Report has the best social analytic reporting we have found in any platform yet. In this platform you may track the performance from your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google Plus, LinkedIn profiles and more. They go beyond just publishing social posts to your social media platforms.  You will find in depth intelligence on each of your posts so that you may optimize your posts by scheduling when your customers are online and what they want to see.

Mailchimp

I know that many of you see the ads for Constant Contact and a lot of folks like them, but we have used them both and Mailchimp gives more bang for your buck. Here is why we choose Mailchimp (when you don’t have something like BSS).

• Templates are customizable – you don’t have to pay Mailchimp to customize them.
• They have follow up email automation.
• We have yet to find a template that wasn’t responsive.

Instapage

Again if you don’t have something like BSS that has everything you need, you will need a tool that allows you to create landing pages that will easily work with your website. Our website developer loves these for when a client needs a quick and easy landing page for either an event or a special offer they have and need to ensure they are collecting the right information.

Of course there are many more tools you can use out there, but these should get you started on your inbound marketing campaign.