[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Tags – Marketing Management
Getting your marketing right has multiple dimensions.
You need to begin with understanding the message that you want to convey; leading to choosing the avenues that you’ll be exploring and based on where your target audience hangs out; and finally, you should be able to measure your progress and how to improve your results.
Previously, we have extensively covered the avenues, as well as the message you need to be delivering. This includes:
- An Alternative to Sending Irrelevant Marketing Content & Killing Prospects
- When SEO is not for You – A Value and Prestige Approach
- Another Meaning of Diversification – Widening Your Horizon
- Pursuing Purposeful Marketing – A Chat with Ian Morris of the EHL Group
- To Associate or not to Associate? That is the Question
- The Unspoken Negatives of Social Media for Business
- Driving Sales through Social Media? Think Again
- Why You have to be on Social Media – Learning from a Doctor’s Story
- Employees Using Social Media? – Moving away from Micromanagement
- How Powerful is Social Media for Business? | Brand Development
However, more recently, we have been improving and applying our understanding of tracking and progressing our marketing efforts. And, the results have been amazing.
So, here are 8 tools that we use for our marketing management needs.
1) Google Analytics
Probably the best known, even business leaders who have limited understanding of traffic and marketing, view their Google Analytics from time to time.
But, what does it mean to check your Google Analytics?
When set up properly, Google Analytics can answer quite a few questions for you. For instance, with a bit of extra tracking, you will know exactly where your traffic is coming from.
However, you can improve the value you can get out of Google Analytics with a bit of data visualisation, providing you the platform for directed decision making regarding your marketing, and even business efforts in the future.
2) Google’s Data Studio
Along the lines of data visualisation, Google’s Data Studio comes in quite handy.
And, there is a simple reason for going that one step extra with Google Analytics. Google Analytics was merely created to capture data. Yes, it will give you a graph here and a visual there, but there are limits to what you can decipher out of all this.
Data on it’s own can be difficult to make sense of, even if it is coming from a single platform, e.g. your website or a Facebook page. To begin, a singleton view of data is not enough to make powerful decisions and you need to bring together all or at least more of your data, make sense out of it, and then use it to make decisions.
So, Data Studio goes one step further by bringing in all your data from social media, website and even spreadsheets and presents it visually.
Best of all, you no longer need to share pictures or snapshots of graphs that can’t be customised. If needed, you can share particular, dynamic data with your team, so they can choose what they see, including date ranges and defined sources.
3) Shield App for B2Bs
Given that we are sharing our own experience, this suggestion is quite specific.
90% of our leads come through LinkedIn. And, if you are a B2B business, the same could be the case for you.
However, merely using LinkedIn will do little for you, especially when you are extensively using it to post, engage, and build relationships from.
So, we suggest using Sheildapp.ai.
With dynamic reporting and aggregated metrics, you will be able to make sense out of how your posts are performing, while tracking network growth. From here on, your job is tweaking your approach to better utilise what you have learnt out of the data.
On a related subject, if you would like to convert more leads into sales, please check our video below:
4) Calendly
Your marketing objective will most likely be to increase conversations with potential clients.
However, as you can imagine, your team will be talking to multiple prospects, just before the point of putting them into their diaries for a more formal coming together.
Now imagine sending a couple of open slots to a potential client for a meeting, and by the time they come back to you the slots are not there anymore. This is not only unprofessional, but may also kill the prospect of fixing another time with this potential client.
Even if the end result is not so severe, you are all losing time on admin tasks that can be automated.
With Calendly, you can send a link to a potential client where they can book themselves in for a meeting, based on what available times are available. In addition, Calendly also integrates with any of your regular calendars, making sure that there are no double bookings.
Even further, if after booking a time with you, the potential client is not available anymore, Calendly allows the link users to reschedule as per their availability. Once again, you have saved yourself from doing all that admin stuff, and wasting time on too much back and forth movement with a client, just to schedule a chat.
On the basic, free version of Calendly, you can set a confirmation email for any bookings that are made. While, on the pro versions, you can set reminder emails and even text messages to be sent as reminders for the meeting, once again saving you from doing the extra bits that you need to take care of for a meeting.
5) Hubspot
This is one tool that you can use for more than one purpose.
At the most basic level, you can use Hubspot to send professional emails. Even the basic, free version comes with useful templates that you can use as per your requirements.
However, more importantly, you can use Hubspot to track the progress of your campaigns, whether they are email related or any progress reports that you need to track.
At Axies Digital, there are a few key things we use Hubspot for
- A) Staying connected and up to date
- B) Attaching notes – You can’t expect to remember everything related to a target with so much happening in the work environment
- C) Sending emails and analysing open rates and click through rates. This gives valuable insights on the content the audience is interested in.
- D) Embedding forms and capturing info provided by website visitors
6) Trello
Another tool for internal use, Trello can be a lifesaver when you need something done.
Allowing you to track multiple topics and tasks, that you can tick off as you go, Trello is a tool that makes communication within a team happen without uttering a word.
Imagine all the time you can save on telling a team mate that something is required, you reminding them to complete it by a certain time, then completing the task and then getting hold of you, just to let you know that the task has been completed.
On Trello, you can add any tasks that need to be done, with the option to specify boards by a list of projects. In addition, you can even allocate rows to a specific team member, and then add sub-boxes to deliver any information as the need be. When you add a new task, the team members get a notification and the same happens when the task is completed and ticked off; you get a notification.
With Trello, you can keep things moving without being interrupted unnecessarily.
Just keep in mind that Trello works better with smaller teams, usually under 15 members. For bigger projects, you may want to consider alternatives, e.g. Jira or Monday.com.
7) Semrush
Given that our main focus is SEO, we have always needed a tracking tool that eliminates the need to manually check how our campaigns are performing.
From suggesting what to do to improve your pages to checking daily how your rankings are coming along, Semrush is a real time saver.
Add the fact that Semrush can track 100s of keywords and even measure your performance against your competitors, and the tool becomes even more impressive.
Further, you can also integrate your social media accounts with Semrush and get even more data on how your website is performing – all quite handy.
8) Google Suite
At the end of all this effort, you need to know where all your files are, along with the confirmation that everything you do is secured.
This is where Google’s G Suite comes into play.
With encrypted files and more storage than you’ll ever need, G Suite is where all our information is held.
In addition, G Suite also allows us to share folders with external sources, e.g. our clients have 24/7 access to their information that we are holding. Once again, this eliminates the need for untimely messages when someone wants to view something.
And, more importantly, clients have the option to check what is happening with their resources, any day, any time, allowing us to fulfil our promise of complete openness.
Get social with us by connecting on Linkedin:
Taseer (Taz) Ahmad – Click Here
In addition, we have a free course. See our available marketing courses here[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
