A marketer is only as good as the tools they use.
That’s easy to say, but it glosses over one of the real challenges that small business owners must face. With so many marketing tools to choose from, how do you know which ones are worthwhile?
It’s a good question – and I’m here to help with the answer. Here are 10 marketing tools that you aren’t using yet, but should be.
#1: Meltwater
Meltwater is a tool that lets you accomplish several marketing goals at once. With it, you can:
o Monitor your brand in real time, including tracking brand mentions
o Identify your best-performance keywords
o Find the latest trends that apply to your business
o Analyze your marketing campaigns
o Create drafts of your publications days, weeks, or months in advance
Best of all, it collects all your results in one place so you can easily compare and evaluate your data and adjust your marketing campaigns accordingly. Pricing is based on your needs, and you can fill out their form to get more information.
#2: Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a tool that Google created to help businesses keep track of the latest information that’s relevant to your brand. You can log in to Google Alerts using your Google ID or Gmail address. Then, you can set up alerts as you choose.
Here are some of the things you can do with Google Alerts:
o Track mentions of your brand
o Track activity related to your top keywords
o Track what your competitors are doing online
This is a free tool, and a good marketing option for beginners who want to wrap their heads around the web activity that’s most relevant to their companies.
#3: Simply Measured
Simply Measured is a social analytics tool that’s owned by Sprout Social. You can use it to dig into the activity on your social media accounts. For example, you can:
o Discover what interests your audience
o Learn which content is driving engagement and interest
o Identify emerging trends with advanced social listening
o Collect detailed analytics to help you fine-tune your marketing campaigns
Simply Measured is one of the most powerful social analytics tools available. You can learn more and sign up for a free trial here.
#4: Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights is a tool that Facebook provides to its business customers. It offers marketers an impressive collection of analytics and statistics that can help you fine-tune your Facebook ads. Some of the information you’ll get includes:
o Gender, age, and geographical breakdowns of your audience
o Information about how people are finding your page
o Data about the people who click through to your website
o Breakdowns of your ad spending, including each ad’s reach and engagement
o Information about which posts perform the best
It’s a deep well of information you can use to refine your Facebook ads – and you can apply the insights to your advertising on other platforms, too. Facebook Insights is a free tool. You can access it by clicking the Insights tab on your business page.
#5: Promorepublic
Promorepublic is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to schedule your posts easily across multiple platforms. They also provide some cool content creation tools, including:
o More than 6,000 handcrafted templates
o More than 100,000 images
Their services are broken down into self-service and full-service, and from there you can add options that include social monitoring and intelligent ads. There’s a free trial available for the self-service model. You can get more information here.
#6: AdEspresso
As its name suggests, AdEspresso is like a shot of caffeine for your advertising strategy. They have a huge gallery of advertising examples you can browse online. (As of this writing, the gallery was being updated, but they also offer free eBooks with sample ads. You can find them here.)
They have tools to help you create, manage, and analyze your ads. They also have a great blog and other educational material to help you perfect your ads and grow your business. You can get a 14-day free trial. After that, they have multiple tiers available, which you can learn about here.
#7: Promo
Promo is a video creation tool that even people with no video production experience can use to create professional-looking videos to post on their websites or social media. Users get access to:
o A library of tested video templates to use
o Access to thousands of images
o Tools to help you create videos perfect for Facebook, Instagram, and more
o Top-notch customer service
You can get a free trial, and after that they have three plan tiers to choose from. Find more information here.
#8: Canva
Canva is one of my favorite content creation tools. They offer an impressive collection of things to help you create memorable social media posts, including:
o A library of professional templates for everything from Facebook posts to newsletters
o Easy drag-and-drop design features
o A huge collection of images and graphics
o Photo editing tools
Canva is simple to use even for people with no design experience. Best of all, it’s completely free. You can create an account by signing up with Facebook or Twitter. Learn more here.
#9: SpyFu
SpyFu is an espionage tool for marketing. Using it, you can track your competitors marketing activity, including:
o Every keyword they buy on AdWords
o Every ad variation they’ve tried
o Every rank change
Using it, you’ll get a huge amount of information that you can use to piggyback on your competitors’ ideas and – just as importantly – find holes in their marketing strategies. They offer three plans and all of them come with a 30-day, money-back guarantee. Learn more here.
#10: Hemingway App
Hemingway App is an editing tool that can help you improve the quality of your written social media posts and ads. When you plug text into the app, it will highlight it to show ways of improving it. For example, it targets:
• Overly long or complex sentences
o Long words
o Adverbs and weak phrases
o Passive voice
You can format your text right from the toolbar. It’s a free desktop app and you can see examples of how it works and download it here.
Honorable Mentions
There are two more tools that just missed making the top 10 – but I’m feeling generous, so here they are:
1. Answer the Public – a keyword research and data visualization tool that you can use to generate content ideas
2. IFTTT – a free tool that makes it simple to sync your marketing across multiple devices
Both are excellent and worth checking out.
Your tools are waiting…
The tools I’ve mentioned here are my very favorite marketing assistants. You may not use all of them, but I encourage you to check them out and add a few to your toolbox.