Top 16 Marketing Tools For Aspiring Marketers

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Business marketers are often wearing many hats and managing multiple responsibilities and tasks, ranging from social media to content creation. This can be overwhelming at times.

There are tons of apps or services to help almost every marketing activity. Yet, as helpful as such tools are, the number of apps available can make it confusing to figure out which ones you need.

Worry no more. In today’s post we will try to guide you through the maze to find the best apps that suits you and your business need.

1. Idea Generation and Organisation: Feedly, Mention, Trello, Zapier

The best marketers don’t live in a bubble. They constantly absorb information and analyse the latest trends. With so much content being shared each day, it’s important to stay organised so that you don’t miss out on key opportunities. Tools such as Feedly and Mention let you track topics based on the news source or the keywords that you choose. They help you to not only monitor the conversations happening around your brand but also generate new ideas for your own content. Once you get down your information sources, it’s time to modify your daily activities so that you work smarter, not harder. Trello lets you organise all your information on a visual dashboard and share it with your coworkers, making collaboration more centralised and efficient. You can then increase your productivity even more by cutting down on manual, repetitive tasks by connecting all the apps you use with Zapier.

2. Content Creation: Creads, Fotolia Instant Collection, GoAnimate, Pixlr, Qzzr, TextMaster, Unique Sound, Wistia

Content marketing’s role is becoming increasingly important for marketers. On average, B2C marketers are working on 13 different content initiatives, making it vital to manage resources as effectively as possible.

For years, content has evolved from simple blog posts to a variety of formats, including infographics and videos. Brands have become publishers, and they are using different tools to create the content themselves, without relying on specialised agencies and big budgets.

Graphic design, video production, and written content have become more accessible through online platforms that either let you do it yourself or use a crowdsourcing model to minimise the role of the middleman.

Marketers who want to get hands-on with content can use tools such as Fotolia Instant Collection to find modern stock photos that have an “iphonography” look, and then use Pixlr to edit or add text to the images for their blogs or newsletters. They can also create Buzzfeed-style quizzes through Qzzr to engage with their audience in a fun, casual way. The more ambitious marketers can use GoAnimate to make their own custom video and share it using Wistia for lead generation.

Although those tools make it easier to create content, you may not always have the time to do it yourself. Crowdsourcing has become a popular alternative to hiring an agency. With an increasing number of freelancers working on these online platforms, the choice of talent has grown to the point where it’s easy to find the right person or team that fits with your project.

3. Social Interaction: Buffer, eKomi, GetResponse, Tweepi

Creating content is only half the work, as you also don’t want all of your hard work to be lost in a content graveyard. Social sharing has become an art, and successful marketers are using a slew of tools to make sure that their efforts have the biggest impact. One of the most popular social sharing tools is Buffer, and for good reason. It not only automates your posts across social networks but also shows you the best times to publish. Twitter is undoubtedly one of the most popular marketing resources, and Tweepi helps you to manage your Twitter network to increase your reach and connect with influencers.

The businesses that get the most engagement from their content don’t just stop at social sharing. They create an entire ecosystem around their content using tools such as GetResponse to make their own landing pages, forms, and newsletters with a drag-and-drop interface.

When you put yourself and your content out there for the world to see, you’ll inevitably get a response. eKomi helps manage customer feedback to help you increase your creditability and even improve your Google search rankings.

4. Visitor Conversion: AB Tasty, Buzzstream, Keywordtool.io, Moz

Using search engine optimisation, marketers are optimising their websites to attract new visitors and convert them into customers. They’re using a combination of Moz tools to analyse and improve their websites, Buzzstream to manage link-building, and Keywordtool.io to identify relevant keywords. After all that work, you’re not done yet: It’s important to test and tweak the layouts and messages of your emails and website to find what works the best. AB Tasty is useful for getting hands-on with your A/B testing without needing a degree in statistics.

Conclusion

The top takeaways from the popularity of these tools are that marketers are finding innovative ways to improve their workflow, including for creating content themselves or finding freelancers online.

Marketers have a lot on their plate, and the workload just keeps growing. The ones who will succeed are those who are continuously testing new ways to make themselves more efficient and their marketing activities more effective.