10 Must Have Marketing Tools To Add In Small Business Growth Strategies!

12 May 2022

Marketing is an essential part of business growth because people will buy your service only when they know about your existence. And people will know about you only when you promote your business on various platforms where they are looking for your product or services. Therefore, marketing tools play an essential role in spreading brand awareness.

Digitization has provided an equal platform for every large and small business; all you need is the right knowledge and skills to use marketing tools to grow your business.

What are Marketing Tools?

Marketing tools are techniques, strategies, and materials used by marketing specialists of brands to create, enhance, and promote their products and services in order to expand their visibility. They are used for market research, generating leads, data analysis, content creation, SEO, and other categories of marketing.

To increase productivity and make marketing time cost-efficient, there are various marketing tools in the form of software that helps you with various activities related to marketing.

Here We Have Listed Ten Must-Have Marketing Tools:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools

HubSpot CRM
Zendesk

Social Media Tools

Buzzsumo
Buffer

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools

SEMrush
Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension

Content Creation and Design Tools

Canva
Adobe Spark

Lead Generation Tools

Unbounce
Instapage

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools

These tools let you interact with your customers through data analysis of gathered information. They compile data from various communication channels such as the company’s websites, calls, emails, live chats, and other marketing materials posted on social media platforms. The data analysis helps a business know about customer behavior, their needs, and demands to provide them better services, which is an integral part of growing a business as they help to form business growth strategies to retain customers and drive sales.

1. HubSpot CRM: being free, every small business can have access to this incredible free tool. The tool saves a lot of time for the sales team as it gives you complete visibility of your entire sales pipeline on a clean and visual dashboard. It lets you connect to the prospects through free meeting scheduling, live chat, email templates, click-to-call functionality, and more.

2. Zendesk: it is an easy-to-love sales tool that will boost the productivity of your sales team, make data-driven decisions, and deliver enhanced customer experiences. Additionally, you can build and manage a pipeline that aligns with your business.

Social Media Tools:

social media helps to expand enormously, as most of the world’s population is an active member of at least one social media platform where you can connect to them on a personal level. Therefore, it is highly important to manage what you post and how your followers respond to your content. Social media tools help you schedule your posts and get the right analytics from the posts, even from the channels where it can be hard to get the information.

3. Buzzsumo: The tool explores premium content that can help you get more likes, links, and shares. It analyses a vast amount of data to enhance your social media marketing strategies. Moreover, it helps you find influencers who can be an asset to your campaign. Another most important feature of the tool is that it tracks comments and trends to make a real-time connection with your audience.

4. Buffer: it is one of the most affordable and intuitive tools to manage your social media activity. It analyzes the data, helps your plan and schedule your posts, filters out important comments, and responds quickly to them. Additionally, it lets you track down your activity and analyze your progress to make better strategies.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

SEO is an integral part of digital marketing, as only an optimized website of content is visible on the search engines such as Google, which are the primary gateways for customers to enter a conversation with your brand. Therefore, you need SEO tools to manage and plan various SEO-related tasks such as keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page ranking.

5. SEMrush: It is an award-winning tool used worldwide as a single platform to do SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC, and social media marketing. Specifically for SEO, it uncovers millions of local, and national keywords, analyzes any domain’s backlinking profile, tracks your SERP position on a daily basis, and runs technical SEO audits.

6. Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension: this add-on browser is easy to install and is compatible with both Chrome and Firefox. The extension shows monthly search volume, CPC, and competition data of keywords on multiple websites. Therefore, it will save you time that you can utilize to strengthen your business growth strategies.

Content Creation and Design Tools:

Content such as social images, logos, blog posts, or eBooks is the most influential way to attract people’s attention to your brand. And there are many tools to create them.

7. Canva: the tool lets you create professional designs with premium features such as brand kit and background remover. It lets you can plan, create, and edit the content on your own or with your team. Additionally, the Built-in comments feature helps you communicate, work, and resolve suggestions in real-time. Therefore, with Canva, you can create world-class designs and share them with the world in just a few clicks.

8. Adobe Spark: it is a collection of three web/mobile apps, namely Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video, to allow the creation of social graphics, flyers, logos webpages, videos in various themes, and other types of content in no time. It has thousands of templates that any beginner can use to create effective content.

Lead Generation Tools:

To expand your business, you need to generate leads, and it is the most challenging part of marketing. Lead generation tools will help you make the lead generation process easy and simple as their automated features increase the process of conversion.

9. Unbounce: with this tool, you can launch overlays on top of any web page that has a call-to-action feature. You can customize the triggers and targeting rules to choose who sees the offers and when. This feature helps to make your brand reach the relevant audience whose chances of conversion are maximum. Additionally, you can personalize your overlays by making your copy adaptable to what your audience searches for.

10. Instapage: the tool lets you create and optimize relevantly, on-brand, mobile-responsive post-click landing pages and experiences without the help of a developer. It helps to increase visitor engagement and conversion with unique landing page experiences for every ad and targeted audience.

The main motive behind using these tools is to enhance the productivity of your sales department. You can make the best use of these marketing tools by hiring an expert who knows them in and out to save your time by focusing on your product and services and letting them do the rest of the job.

The best part about these marketing tools is that they are affordable, and some of them even offer free trials and templates. So, even if you are short on funds, you can still make use of these marketing tools to grow your small business.

Author Bio:

Joe Martin is a long-time contributor in the tech industry as a leader at Adobe, CMO of CloudApp, and SVP at Scorpion. With his business and marketing degress from Utah and Stanford and his work in tsech he brings a unique balance of strategy and execution to help businesses large and small grow.

Arnab

Arnab is a professional blogger, having an enormous interest in writing blogs and other jones of calligraphies. In terms of his professional commitments, He carries out sharing sentient blogs.

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Getting The Most Out Of Your Email Campaigns By Getting The Audit Right!

Excerpt: Delivering email campaigns that perform exceedingly well requires effort and email audits help you get closer to better ROIs. Read on! So half of the year has gone by smoothly (well, almost), your brand’s making money, your workflows are automated, and your email marketing campaigns are doing well. Wait, yes, pause at the last part of the sentence. Are they really performing optimally? To get a clear understanding of the efficacy of your email marketing campaigns, no matter how great and well-automated they might be in your perspective, you NEED to run audits twice or thrice every twelve months. If you meet an email marketer over drinks, they will probably have a lot to say about their KPIs and how the click-throughs are not making the cut. So how can one ensure that their email marketing efforts don’t go down the drain? The answer is quite simple indeed: execute email marketing audits to unveil your strengths and weaknesses, areas of improvement, and those that are doing just fine. In the blog that follows, we will delve into the different kinds of email marketing audits that one can conduct and ways to go about executing them. Let’s get cracking! The Kinds of Email Marketing Audits That One Can Conduct In simple terms, an email marketing audit is a deep analysis of the various factors that contribute to the success of an email campaign so that you know what’s working and the areas that need to be tweaked. The following are some kinds of email audits that you can carry out; each of them focuses on different facets of the email. 1. Email Content & Design Marketing Performance Audit One of the most common kinds of audits, here you delve into your various KPIs (CTR, CTOR, etc.) to get a holistic understanding of the email campaign’s performance. The aspects that you need to look out for are: Subject line: Try to keep them personalized, crystal clear, non-sales, and within the range of 40-45 characters, optimized for mobile viewing. Please steer clear of spammy words such as “earn quick money” or basically anything that sounds too good to be true. Preheader text: It should be related to the subject line, albeit not repetitive. Header: First impressions are often long-lasting; cliched though that may sound, it does hold some weight. The header text next to your logo should be noticeable, clear, and in alignment with the brand ethos. Email copy: Grammatical errors and typos are a major turn-off. No wonder brands invest in the best copywriters to churn out good copy, even in the age of AI! Keep it crisp, clean and deliver maximum value in minimum words. CTA: The Call to Action buttons are the ones that can make or break the ROIs. Keep the design and text in tandem with the brand guidelines, easy to spot and click, devoid of broken links that lead nowhere! Graphics: When crafting an HTML or interactive email, ensure that the graphics render well across devices and the visual hierarchy is maintained. Conversions & Engagement rates: This is the litmus test of your email campaign. Are your emails good and engaging enough to keep subscribers interested, or are there more hits than misses? The KPIs should spill the beans on this one. 2. Email accessibility audit When crafting your emails, if one overlooks the critical aspect of disability, you might fail to foster inclusivity with your campaigns, thereby risking losing the patronage of your subscribers. Keeping email accessibility in mind is absolutely essential, and is something that all email marketers should perpetually strive for. Ensure that there is no sensory overload for those with visual disabilities by keeping a simple and clean email layout. For those living with tactile difficulties, make the CTA buttons larger to ensure greater clickability and visibility across a range of devices. Remember to check for alt text in images to simplify things for users deploying the services of a screen reader. 3. Deliverability Audit You might have the best of Salesforce email templates (or Hubspot; whatever rocks your boat) and check all the above aspects, but if your email campaigns fail to reach the intended inboxes, all your efforts will end up in vain. To check for email deliverability issues, one needs to check the following aspects; Clean email list devoid of incorrect email ids Email Authentication HTML code failures Domain reputation Blocklisting Spam traps IP address 4. Compliance Audit This would include checking the level of compliance of your email campaigns with the guidelines and requirements of CCPA, GDPR, PECR, etc. 5. Email Code Audit Here, one would evaluate and carry out a code clean-up, fix bugs (if any), and ensure the incorporation of the best practices in email coding. One would also conduct tests to see how well the email renders across different email clients and devices. 6. Design Audit In this kind of audit, one would review the emails from the design and aesthetics viewpoint and check how consistent the layout is with the branding guidelines. The different elements one would generally bring under the lens in this kind of audit are checking for the right use of white spaces, design patterns in accordance with the heat map, fonts, logo, layout, graphics, etc. 7. Automation Audit Here, one would check automated email campaigns to see if everything is in order, such as API triggers, templates, links, rules, customer journey maps, etc. One can either carry out all these audits or create a bespoke audit plan that includes permutations and combinations of the different kinds of audits mentioned above. Steps For Conducting The Perfect Email Audit Now that we are privy to the kinds of email audits that one can carry out, let’s move over to getting started with the process of what’s going well and what’s lacking in your current email campaigns. Firstly, you need to begin with drafting a clear set of goals. Much like in other areas of life, the lack of well-defined goals in sight can very well be akin to sailing in a rudderless ship, and frankly, no one wants to be aboard such a ship! You could begin by jotting down the kinds of audits you’d want to run on your existing campaigns and, based on the purpose of the audit, figure out your bespoke learnings and takeaways. Then, you’d like to create a list of measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will be evaluating to check the health and effectiveness of your current campaign. These may include: Unsubscribe rates Open rates (albeit not a very effective one as per Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature unveiled in the WWDC conference held on 7 June 2021) CTR (Click Through Rates) CTOR (Click To Open Rate) Spam complaints Conversions Email client & device assessment You can create a spreadsheet to maintain a record of your audit. Here’s what you can document: Name of the email campaign Date deployed (not applicable in case of automated emails) Name of the audience segment Subject line Soft bounce rate Hard bounce rate CTOR CTR Conversion rate Unsubscribe rate You can modify the contents of the spreadsheet as per your unique requirements. One can also diversify the main spreadsheet by adding tabs for different kinds of emails, such as promotional, transactional emails, etc. Once you have your data in place, you can and should proceed with the data analysis. Begin with scanning all the metrics and specifically scrutinize those that fall on the extremities of the curve. The ones that did really well and the ones that missed the mark. Proceed with asking yourself the following questions, Are the subject lines and preheader texts enticing enough? Will I click on them if I receive them in my inbox? Is the visual hierarchy of the email in place, or does it look too cluttered? Does it offer a personalized experience to the subscriber? Does the email copy offer value to the reader, or does it appear too salesy? Does it cater to specific buyer personas and age demographic, or does it appear mass-produced with no specific target audience in mind? Is the cadence too annoying for the subscribers leading to higher unsubscribe requests? Are the CTAs visible, quirky, and enticing enough to get users to click on them? Are your emails accessible to users across the entire spectrum? Wrapping It Up While there are a number of tools available in the market to help you conduct email audits, and you can always request colleagues for a fresh eye perspective on your campaigns, if you’d rather have experts analyze the game for you, that’s possible too! Email Uplers will not only help you analyze your existing campaigns but also deliver interactive emails from scratch attuned to your specific needs. Do drop by for more information! Read Also: Should You Consider Outsourcing Your Brand’s Marketing Campaign? Your Ultimate Guide To Creating SMS Marketing Campaigns Content Marketing Campaign Strategy For Small Business

Why an Automated Sales CRM Platform is What Your Business Needs

CRM software (or customer relationship management software) refers to technology that companies use to manage and analyze customer data and interactions. By using CRM software, companies hope to improve customer relationships, increase sales, and increase customer retention. If you’re starting a new business or have an established company and want to see your sales increase (and who doesn’t?) then integrating a CRM software might be just the ticket. The perfect sales tool The value of CRM software can often be misinterpreted. Often, employees may perceive the adoption of CRM software as a way to police their activities as opposed to an invaluable piece of software that will help them meet their sales quotas. CRM software will allow your team to consolidate all customer data into one easy-to-access and read section. From contact information to communication history, everything is one easy location. This makes serving customers easier and faster. How will automated CRM software help my business grow? New technology means new ways to promote further and grow your business, and automated CRM software is no exception to the rule. An automated customer relationship management system is all about making it easier to manage customer interactions. By doing this, you will notice that you will be saving tons of time on collecting information since all that will already be stored within the CRM platform. When you’re dealing with customers and attempting to make a sale, the last thing you want to do is a waste of time. If you’re forced to exchange information between sales reps and scramble to find information, your customers (either current or prospective) are likely to get frustrated. Using CRM software streamlines your connection to your customers by making sure that every authorized user within the company has access to the same information, all in one place and all at the same time. Knowing other people have access also helps encourage more active input by employees about any new conversations or interactions with a customer. Automated CRM software can help automate some of the more tedious tasks, like adding form submissions to lead lists. This will free up your employees for more hands-on tasks. Integrations with automated CRM software While automated CRM software can do things like automatically record and store email, phone interactions and even social media interactions, the automation possibilities don’t stop there. If you automate your sales with Spiro's CRM, you will get the benefit of the program guiding your sales team through the sales process, offering suggestions for further actions, like creating contacts or reminders and automatically highlight inconsistencies in the pipeline. This will mean less wasted more, more successful sales, and more accurate reports. SalesForce Automation You can further expand the functionality of your CRM software with SFA tools. When SFA tools are integrated with a CRM platform, they can help make it easier to navigate the sales process and offer improvements. SFA will help track every interaction with a customer, which helps make sure that your marketing efforts are optimized for the best possible results. This will help streamline sales operations by allowing SFA tools to monitor the entire sales funnel. Read Also: Top 10 Features To Have In Marketing Automation Platforms CRMDialer: A Zoho Alternative Three Essential Techniques To Form Lasting Customer Loyalty

Content Marketing Campaign Strategy For Small Business

Nowadays, content marketing can be found just about anywhere online. It might be challenging to distill the meaning of a commonly used term and figure out how to apply it to one's own small business when the term is bandied about so carelessly. However, for today's owners of small businesses, content marketing is not only an option but also a necessity. Many business owners find that the problem of marketing their brand is practically insurmountable because they have limited resources and there is a lot of competition. In point of fact, sixty percent of these companies all businesses do not have any web presence whatsoever. According to a report published by the market research company Aberdeen Group, content marketing can be an effective solution in this situation because it can lead to conversion rates that are six times greater in comparison to non-users. Content Marketing Campaign Strategy For Small Business: In case you haven't heard of it before, content marketing is a strategy for spreading the word and interacting with consumers through media like blogs, podcasts, videos, and social media posts. The goals of a company's content marketing strategy are to increase brand awareness and trustworthiness. Here's how to begin a content marketing strategy for a small business if you're a marketing novice. 1. Identify your target demographic. It's counterproductive to put out something that no one is interested in reading. If you want to successfully market to your target demographic, you need to learn as much as possible about them, their preferences, and how they make purchases. There are a variety of methods available for gathering information on your target demographic. Conducting surveys among your current clientele is one approach. Inquire about their thoughts on your company, offering, and messaging as a whole. During this step, it is important to gather as much information as possible on your target audience. Finding out demographic details like average age, gender, income, and spending habits might spark ideas for your content. Share surveys via social media or email to encourage participation from customers who would not otherwise hear about them. Also, you might use an incentive like a discount code or a freebie. Make sure your survey is concise enough that people can complete it in a few minutes while yet providing you with useful feedback. 2. Create a website with a primary focus on conversions. A website serves as the hub of your overall content marketing effort. You'll lose potential customers if you try to save money by cutting corners here. When more than half of your customers look into your company online before making a purchase, it's crucial for your business, no matter how big or little, to have a solid online foundation. It's not easy to make a professional website if you have no experience in copywriting, coding, or web design. If at all possible, hire experts. Details, details everywhere: these are what make or destroy a website. Consider the importance of speed as just one example. If it takes more than three seconds for your website to load, you risk losing a significant portion of your audience. Lack of mobile optimization, boring web text, malfunctioning features, and perplexing navigation are additional causes of high bounce rates on websites. When it comes to your website's success, your choice of hosting provider is crucial. You should take your time to decide which one to use. 3. Make sure that your content is easy to find. The greatest method for a small business to achieve its content marketing goals—increased sales, new customers, or brand awareness—is to provide content that people can use to better their own lives. Once you have identified your target demographic and launched a stellar website, you can turn your attention to developing engaging content to entice new users. Although you want clients to gain insight into your business, you don't want to come off as pushy or self-promotional. Customers may get quite dissatisfied as a result of this. Instead, focus on writing about the business sector, relevant research or statistics, or helpful tips for advancing your company's goals. Incorporate keywords and phrases that lead readers directly to the content they need. Never start a content creation project without first conducting thorough keyword research; this is the bedrock of internet marketing. The Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for this. Analytical tools can help you decide whether to promote content via paid search, organic search, or a combination of the three. The Content Template tool in SEMrush examines your rivals' organic search data to inform you of the best keywords to utilize, the optimal content length, and the best places to obtain backlinks, as well as assisting you in selecting the platforms to focus on. In the end, the value that branded content conveys is what matters most. It's important that the information you provide points out a specific issue and provides helpful, personalized suggestions about how to fix it. 4. Put your content out there. What you're looking for is already in your possession. Currently, what should be done? You won't have to worry if you're one of the rare people who have a massive email list, a sizable, devoted readership, and an army of passionate admirers. But if you're a small business owner like the majority of those out there, you know the hardship of trying to bring in new customers. It resembles a convoluted form of courtship. Connection, a real want to aid, and true and ongoing participation is the content marketing equivalents of roses, dinner, and a movie. Pro Tips: Don't be reluctant to use paid promotion. Don't be afraid to use paid advertising to market your content if you have invested in its creation. While organic traffic acquired without spending a dime is invaluable, there is much to be gained by combining the strengths of content marketing and more conventional forms of advertising. Conclusion There are several ways in which businesses of all sizes can profit from engaging in content marketing. Trust in the brand, purchases, and repeat business are all boosted if this is executed well. A content marketing strategy for a small business is a complex undertaking that requires careful planning and execution. It may make a tremendous difference for your small business with some preparation, investigation, and a concentration on producing high-quality content. There is a learning curve associated with content marketing, just like there would be with any new company endeavor. Try not to be too hesitant. Never be too proud to try and fail. The finest information tends to be repetitive. A progressive content marketing strategy that strives for content excellence rather than simply more noise can be achieved through a focus on development and evaluation. Read Also: Role of Promotional items in brandingThis Is Why Social Media Is Essential in the B2B Sales ProcessHow To Improve Your Social Media Branding By Getting More Instagram Followers And Likes

10 Must Have Marketing Tools To Add In Small Business Growth Strategies!

What are Marketing Tools?

Here We Have Listed Ten Must-Have Marketing Tools: