As a small business owner, you constantly have to be aware of back-office operations, project management, marketing and promotion, and what your competitors may be doing. You also know that out of all of this, marketing is probably the most important thing on your to-do list. Without proper and effective marketing, you might not receive any customers or clients, no matter how good your business, products or services may be.
Thankfully, advancing technology and access to thousands of apps at just a few clicks of a mouse (or on a mobile device) means you can easily equip yourself and your team with a multitude of useful marketing tools. Save time on repetitive tasks, improve communication with employees, clients, vendors and customers; and simultaneously improve your marketing campaigns.
Here’s a look at five useful tools that offer a variety of benefits for every small business.
-
Spokal
Inbound marketing automation for WordPress, this advanced tool helps you manage your inbound marketing with ease, saving time through user-defined automated settings. Use their intuitive online editor to create marketing content for social media accounts and websites while Spokal handles the technical details.
The aim of this app is to increase website traffic and social brand recognition. The app enables you to easily and automatically share content you’ve created across a variety of social networks, and advanced customization options provide you with ultimate control over how the content is viewed.
-
UberConference
This popular conference calling service is useful for much more than simply setting up online conferences. The feature-rich and easy to use interface makes UberConference an excellent tool for marketing new products or services to clients and vendors, setting up press conferences, or promoting sales and special events.
Other features included in UberConference that further advance your marketing efforts are the ability to view LinkedIn profiles and other details of invited conference attendees. Setting up a conference call with a few or thousands can be done within seconds, and the easy to use interface makes it easy for anyone to quickly attend without difficulty.
-
SnapRetail
SnapRetail aims to help local retailers engage customers and drive store traffic with their SaaS marketing automation solution. You’ll save a large amount of time developing marketing campaigns by being able to choose from a multitude of existing campaigns and strategies, which you can then tailor to your specific needs. Pre-written posts from various social media sites are readily available, as well as promotions that can be set to run on certain dates (set by your preferences) across whatever social media platforms you desire. There are even pre-written email templates for email marketing and promotion.
-
GetResponse
Email marketing can be daunting. GetResponse makes it simple. GetResponse is an email marketing platform which features drag-and-drop email, landing page creator, advanced email analytics and more.
If you receive a lot of customer inquiries, this handy app can do the heavy lifting for you; leaving you time to focus on business without getting bogged down with customers all day. Responding with action-based offers, GetResponse can fulfill a variety of customer needs and you can sort responses according to various preferences and subscriber lists. The GetResponse app provides you with the ability to set up several different campaigns, so that you can allow for a birthday promotion on one campaign, and a newsletter signup option on another.
-
Azuqua
Azuqua enables you to create business processes spanning multiple cloud services in minutes, no code required. For example, if your company name is mentioned on a social media site such as Facebook, Azuqua can automatically respond with a post.
A wide range of trigger events can be defined using this app, and the app can also work in conjunction with several social media apps, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Trello, and more, making it a very versatile app.
There are obviously thousands more apps available that can help you in your marketing efforts, and some apps will of course be more suited to your needs than others. The above apps focus mainly on online actions, where the majority of business marketing efforts now take place as more and more consumers utilize their mobile devices for shopping and product research.
Feel free to start with the above list of apps to see how they may benefit your small business, and then seek out more to further expand your online marketing efforts and improve your chances for online business success.
This article has been edited and condensed.
Peter Davidson works as a senior business associate helping brands and startups to make efficient business decisions and plan proper business strategies. He is a big gadget freak who loves to share his views on latest technologies and applications.
© YFS Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Copying prohibited. All material is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this material is prohibited. Sharing of this material under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International terms, listed here, is permitted.
In this article
