As marketers, we use tons of marketing tools every day to streamline processes and automate just about everything. The various different goals that have been achieved for different industries through the help of these tools is astounding. Especially in an agency with clients representing every and any industry you can think of. I’m talking everything from remanufactured compressors, to hospitality, to finance, to specialty products like pickles, high-end planters. eCommerce and the list goes on. So it’s no surprise that I rely on my marketing tools more than anything.
Yeah, I know what your thinking. “ Dang girl, how do you keep everything straight and organized?” Well honey, pull up a chair and kick back because boy do I have some secrets in my back pocket.
First, let’s talk automation.
This is my FAVORITE part of the job! I sure love me a good workflow, lemme tell ya. Sure it takes some time to plan out the goals you want to achieve, the actions you want to take, and the triggers that make those actions happen. But once you figure out the hard part of identifying all your different triggers and actions, you just set everything up once and BOOM! You’re done! No need to email every single person individually that downloads an item or remember to update the lead status of a contact every time they complete a new action – your automation system will automatically handle that for you. Just don’t forget, like everything in marketing, tweaking has to happen every now and then.
Who doesn’t love cutting their workload in half with simple automation? (Seriously, I’m curious. Is there anyone out there that wouldn’t want this?) So now it’s time to choose an automation platform for you. In my experience, I’ve worked with software such as HubSpot , ActiveCampaign , and Sharpspring . But there are plenty of others out there like Marketo and Campaign Monitor .
All are great choices and offer a variety of different service options to meet your company’s needs. While I don’t intend to be biased in any way, but the cold hard truth is we all have a favorite. My favorite just happens to be HubSpot. What I love the most about HubSpot is the visual display of the chart. I’m such a visual person, it’s so easy to just plug and play. Plus, the automation possibilities are endless! If you can think it, HubSpot has a way to do it. Just take a look at these workflows I created and awe in the complexity for yourself.
Okay, okay, okay, I can see the look of terror on your face from here. But I promise, with the step by step tutorial, you’ll be making workflows that wow in no time. All it takes is a creative mind and a kick-ass automation software.
Now that we’ve covered automation, let’s switch to social media.
If you’re not already seriously social, well then that’s just a whole other conversation then. But for those of us keeping up with the times, we seriously love social media! It’s already so fun and easy, but there’s still a way to simplify it even more.
A tool that I love to use for social media is Social Report . While there are tons of other platforms similar to Social Report, such as HootSuite , HeyOrca , Buffer , and plenty more, this is my fave. What I love most about Social Report is the approval process. This makes managing social media for an agency a piece of cake! (And the folks at Captevrix sure love cake!) Once you have all your posts scheduled, your client can hop in the system, review all your posts and approve them to be scheduled right then and there.
On the other hand, if there is a post that may need some editing, your client can either make the edit if it is small or include what needs to be changed when rejecting a post. How easy is that?!
Alrighty, now that we’ve pretty much cut all our workload in half with these amazing marketing tools, what are we going to do with all this free time?
We’re going to track and analyze all our data, duh!!
Now before you start groaning because data is so “time consuming” just hold that thought. You don’t think I’ve got a time saving tool for that too? Let me introduce you to, SEMRush .
SEMRush lets you track and monitor your entire online presence. I’m talking everything from keywords to organic and paid search, to competitors, to backlinks and referrals. In addition to all of that you can run a site audit, view an on-page SEO check, position tracking, social media tracker, even brand monitoring.
Just think of everything Google Analytics can do, but without all the headache and confusing training. Data is wonderful and all, but it means nothing if you don’t understand how to use it. It’s important to be tracking your campaigns and ensuring their performance is stellar, which is why tools like SEMRush (if you aren’t using HubSpot) takes all the hard work you’ve done and ties it all together with a nice and neat little bow.
Every business is unique and so are their problems. But with these tools, businesses in any industry can plan, implement, and track their online marketing strategies. With these tools, the marketing possibilities are endless. All you need now is to get those creative juices flowing!
Search By Location
**Update to my tools!!!! Our VP which is always on the look out for tools that make our lives a little easier and push our performance to the next level found this snazzy little tool!! Let me introduce you to vpnMentor!!!
Not everyone understands the incognito search or has the ability to change your IP address for search results. This tool has made yet another dream come true for the hardcore digital marketers out there! This tools helps you understand what the results would be when any end user searches your keywords in any browser, country or language. This is HUGE for folks that market in various languages and abroad. If you are as serious about digital marketing as I am, then you certainly want to check this out!
