We're all familiar with the basic tools that can help you execute your inbound marketing strategy. There are, of course, the elements that you yourself control: your website, blog, eblasts, landing pages, etc. Then there are third-party resources that you or a colleague manage; most obviously Facebook comes to mind, as well as other social networking platforms. Beyond this immediate pool of resources are other great tools, mostly free, that can optimize your marketing efforts and save you time in the process.
HubSpot Signals. The industry's inbound marketing leader, HubSpot provides a host of products, including an end-to-end platform to help you manage your marketing workflow. Products include blogging, email, landing pages, sites, SEO, and social media management. We'd particularly like to call your attention to HubSpot's "Signals" app, which sees and tracks who opens your emails. It integrates with your email platform like Microsoft Outlook, it provides concrete insights on reader actions. For example, the app can tell you that "John Carlson opened your email 'Signed Contract,'" or "Nicole Donohue is viewing 'Pricing' on your website." All in all, it provides extremely powerful data that can inform your email marketing efforts. Oh, and you can try it for free as well.
Google Drive. Most of us have a Gmail account, but some of us may not have properly utilized Drive, Google's cloud-storage software. It's simple and free to anyone with a Gmail account. Drive allows you to store documents on the cloud and share access with your colleagues. Previously, marketers would download and access documents from an in-house server and then have to re-upload it. This process was time-consuming and lead to "version-control" issues, whereby different marketers entered data in an unstructured way and unwittingly creating errors and redundancies. Drive helps to minimize this risk while saving the document in the cloud in real-time.
Twitter. Most folks view Twitter as a platform for personal communication or celebrity gossip. However, the platform offers many helpful tools as well as reasonably-priced ads for small businesses.
Feedly. This app is a news aggregation site that enables you to continuously collect content that is of interest. More importantly, this content can help drive your blogging strategy so that you'll never be stricken with a case of writer's block.
StumbleUpon. Similarly, StumbleUpon s a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles. You can simply surf the site to find content that resonates with you or more importantly, sign up and post your blogs so other readers can see them, thereby increasing your exposure.
Dropbox. Dropbox, much like Google Drive, provides hosted storage on the cloud. Odds are it's cheaper than storing data on your in-house servers; at the least, they offer free storage plans that can benefit small firms. Check out their pricing plans and see if it makes sense.
GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting is a web-based platform that allows you to conduct video calls with colleagues and prospect anywhere, anytime. So rather than booking a flight to Cleveland in February, you can simply dial up and chat with a customer on your desktop or mobile app. It can save money in travel costs while helping to develop stronger relationships with customers and prospects.
Looking for more helpful apps to optimize your inbound marketing efforts? Contact us for a free consultation.
