When it comes to marketing, there are a number of tools and techniques that should be considered for any type of advertising. This includes paying someone to advertise on your social media pages for you or even using social media ads to promote your business. As we explore these various types of social media advertising tools and see how they should be considered, we will also look at specifics about each one.
Fanpage Karma
Fanpage Karma is all about competition. Compare two fan pages by entering their names or IDs and see which ones comes out on top.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
You and your sales team want to sell your product or service — not fight with messy spreadsheets, cluttered inboxes, or clunky tools that slow you down. That’s why using a Customer Relationship Management System — also known as a CRM — is essential. Not only will it help your sales team manage relationships, but a CRM will also give you a place to deliver those leads you generated to your sales team.
CRMs are such an essential part of any good marketing and sales team that we think everyone should have one. That’s why the HubSpot CRM is completely free.
Featured CRM Tool:
1. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM automates the tasks salespeople hate and takes minutes to learn — not months. That means doing more deals and less data entry.
Other CRM Tools:
2. Zoho CRM
3. Zendesk
4. Pipedrive
Online Advertising Tools
If your team is making investments into PPC ad campaigns on platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it’s probably a bit of a hassle to manage all the different ad campaigns you’re running across each different network. Besides just managing them, you then have to try and report on the results of all of them. What a struggle. Luckily, there’s tools for that.
Featured Online Advertising Tool:
5. AdStage
AdStage takes the hassle out reporting on all of the PPC campaigns you’re running and puts it all in one place. AdStage helps you automate, create, and manage your campaigns across all of the major PPC platforms, then allows you to report on your results. With visual features and powerful automation tools, AdStage is a must for PPC experts and newbies alike.
Other Online Advertising Tools:
6. HubSpot Ads Tracking Software
9. AdRoll
10. WordStream
Social Media Tools
Social media managers know the pain of posting that perfect social media post only to have a follower find a typo a minute later and call you out. For marketers, using a social media tool to schedule all of your posts (so you catch those typos beforehand) is a must. But it also helps to get the right analytics from your social posts, especially on channels where it can be hard to get that information.
Featured Social Media Tool:
11. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is the perfect tool for marketers to grow their brand on Instagram with easy-to-use analytics. It’s not always easy to know what’s working and what’s not on Instagram. But, as the second most popular social channel and one that’s quickly approaching first most popular among some age groups, it’s a channel that marketers can’t afford to miss out on. Try Iconosquare now to maximize your Instagram analytics and optimize your brand Instagram channel for success.
Other Social Media Tools:
12. Buffer
13. Hootsuite
14. BuzzSumo
Data Reporting and Analytics Tools
Most tools that automate some of your marketing strategy will also provide reports that allow you to see and present your campaigns’ performance to other employees in your company. What if you want a more holistic look at the health of your marketing?
Featured Data Reporting and Analytics Resource:
From the efficiency of your content calendar to the effectiveness of your lead-generation methods, Digital Marketing Tuner offers a helpful overview of all of your latest marketing activities.
Developed by OverGo Studio, an inbound marketing agency and HubSpot Agency Partner, Digital Marketing Tuner guides you through a brief survey where you can submit basic information about your company’s content volume, email open rates, website traffic, and more. The tool then sends you a detailed report in which you can better visualize your team’s strengths and weaknesses so you can make even better decisions for your company moving forward.
Other Data Reporting and Analytics Tools:
62. Google Analytics
64. Databox
65. RavenTools
Content Creation and Design Tools
In the world of content creation, there are admittedly tons of different tools you could use to create various types of content. Whether it’s social images, logos, blog posts, or ebooks — the options and tools are endless.
That said, a newcomer among the Adobe Suite of tools is winning the hearts of many marketers, including this one, for its ease of use to create stunning webpages, awesome videos, and eye-catching graphics. The best part? It’s completely free and impossibly easy.
Featured Content Creation Resource:
22. Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is a suite of three web or mobile apps — Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video — that allows marketers to easily create graphics, webpages, and videos in a variety of themes in minutes.
You can completely avoid the hassle of page layout, video editing knowledge, or a CMS and start creating content that looks remarkable immediately. For example, we use Spark Page at HubSpot to create some of our online guides and promote them with Spark Videos and Posts. You can too!
Other Content Creation and Design Tools:
23. Venngage
24. Piktochart
25. Canva
26. Recordit
27. Kap
28. Adobe Color CC
Social Media Scheduling: Buffer
Great, paid options if you can swing it: Sprout Social, MeetEdgar
Perhaps our best time-saving tip for social media marketing is scheduling posts ahead of time for your social profiles. You can batch the social media marketing process: Do all your curating and composing all in one go, then spread those updates out across the next day or week.
How we use Buffer: The forever free plan at Buffer lets you connect a profile from each network (one from Facebook, one from Twitter, etc.) and to schedule ahead 10 posts for each network. If you share three posts per day, that means you can stay three days ahead all the time.
We’ve found a lot of value in the hand-picked content suggestions (thanks to Courtney who finds all that great content!), which are easy to read then add.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Whether its keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page rankings, every marketer needs a go-to tool for planning what content to create and how to optimize it for SEO.
Featured SEO Tool:
16. Ryte
Marketers need tools to plan which keywords to rank for and making sure the content they create actually meets their goal once created. Ryte is the ideal tool marketers can use to make sure their SEO efforts are having a real impact on their marketing strategy.
Other SEO Tools:
17. Ahrefs
18. SEMrush
19. Moz
20. Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension
21. HubSpot Content Strategy Tool
LikeAlyzer
LikeAlyzer provides you with recommendations and feedback on your company’s presence on Facebook based on metrics including presence, dialogue, action and information.
Followerwonk
We hope you’ve already heard of Followerwonk, one of Buffer’s many partners in amazing social media data. In addition to offering lots of super useful data about timing on Twitter, Followerwonk also has some other neat Twitter features, like the ability to compare followers of different accounts like so.
Lead Generation Tools
If you’re in the mood for demand generation, you probably have your eyes on the prize: converting anonymous website visitors into contacts with email addresses that you can successfully nurture. Landing pages are a must for capturing lead information on important offers and opt-ins.
Featured Lead Generation Resource:
42. Unbounce
Thanks to a drag and drop interface, Unbounce lets you quickly build mobile responsive landing pages without developer assistance. The tool also integrates with a number of different CMS platforms and software.
With Unbounce Convertables, you can also launch targeted overlays on top of any web page, each with a dedicated call to action. Customizable triggers and targeting rules give you control over who sees your offers and when so you can serve the most relevant offers to the right audience.
Other Lead Generation Tools:
43. Leadpages
44. Instapage
45. HubSpot’s Landing Page Builder
Conclusion
To survive in today’s competitive digital marketing landscape, you need to be intuitive, social media-savvy, and persistent.
Most importantly, you need to be a jack of all trades. Apart from knowing all the digital marketing and advertising tips and tricksas a marketer, you must learn and use a wide range of digital marketing tools to save time and make your work more efficient.
Whether you’re analyzing off-page backlinks or developing a content marketing strategy, these tools will help you not only focus on the aspects of your job that really matter, but also maintain your sanity.