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While marketing isn’t rocket science, it does have its own requirements for success. Namely, ongoing education, time, and tools.
We truly believe the average layperson can do a great job with their marketing given the willingness to learn and the time to invest. Thanks go ever-changing algorithms, both can be challenging. Additionally, if marketing isn’t your zone of genius, then it makes sense to outsource these tasks.
When it comes to the tools you use to market your business, it is more a matter of preference. There are so many available, that it really comes down to details on what you use and why.
All marketers have their favourite tools – these are ours.
Shared in alphabetical order.
Adobe Creative Suites
Adobe offers a full meal deal with apps for photo editing, video editing, document creation and more. All with a wide variety of fonts, filters and effects.
DashThis
Every month, DashThis automatically sends us an analytics report – one simple report per brand – that includes EVERYTHING. Website stats, MailChimp numbers and Facebook insights as well as numbers from Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. Automatically.
DepositPhotos
We use DepositPhotos for unique images and videos. Their purchase plans are quite affordable and they offer regular deals on Appsumo.
Feedly
We keep our inboxes clutter-free with the help of Feedly. Rather than subscribe to all of our favourite newsletters, we get their latest articles by subscribing via Feedly. It’s very nice to be able to read them all in one place.
Freshbooks
This accounting system is simple and intuitive to use, lets me take photos of receipts to upload from my phone and allows us to invoice clients in both Canadian and US dollars.
Google: Gmail, Drive, GSuite
We use Google’s documents, spreadsheets and presentations for all our word processing needs. We also use Gmail, whether is’s accessing multiple domain emails via one inbox or using GSuite’s Business platform. We love it for being a steal of a deal, for allowing us to stay super organized with multiple inboxes and for their send later options to keep correspondence to business hours.
BONUS: Chrome Extensions! Wappalyzer lets us know tools the site is using and it’s CMS, ColorZilla can give us hexcodes from colours on webpages, Awesome Screenshot is a screenshot tool, Facebook Pixel Helper confirms which pixels are embedded on the page, and Keywords Everywhere tells us how much traffic the keywords on a page or search receive.
Grammarly
Even the savviest speller needs a wing person. Grammarly’s got our back when it comes to semicolons and spelling and even tone. This is especially important when we’re writing for American vs our Canadian clients!
Interact Quiz Builder
Companies that invest in lead generating quizzes experience a 300% lead increase on average when they switch out their lead magnet. Plus, creating a great quiz can help you learn about the people on your list, segment your audience and provide personalized value.
Planoly
Planoly is an approved Instagram partner that allows us to auto-post to our accounts, save hashtags in groupings and schedule stories as well as our feed in advance.
We used to save interesting sites and pages to our internet bookmarks but, to be honest, it was sort of a black hole with never a link visited again. With Pocket, we can save and tag links for future review. Not only does Pocket remind us weekly of our saves, see Zapier below for a neat way of loading your social media scheduler.
Rocketium
This video creation software is easy and intuitive. Rocketium includes modern templates, graphics and even music, perfect for social sharing and ads.
SiteGround
We manage our websites with SiteGround hosting solutions. They offer affordable plans, excellent customer service and their dashboard is easy to navigate. Most importantly, they help keep our sites secure.
Socialpilot
We love that we can connect up to 50 different profiles to our social media scheduler, on all our favourite platforms including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and not just Facebook but Facebook Groups, too. Plus, their RSS Feed feature means we can curate content within our scheduler.
Tailwind
Pinterest’s algorithm encourages a TON of posting and, while we enjoy losing ourselves in the pretty pin rabbit hole as much as the next person, we don’t love giving away our precious time like that.
Tailwind allows us to schedule multiple pins per day to be automatically posted to our boards. Once a month, using the Chrome extension to schedule multiple pins simultaneously, we play in Pinterest and fill up our queues.
Plus, Tailwind offers ‘Tribes’, where like minds can connect and share pins. They are a great way to build relationships!
Do you know how to embed hidden pins on your website? Learn here.
Trello
This project management tool organizes your projects with Kanban-style cards and lists for tracking tasks. There are also ‘power-ups’ you can employ for Gantt charts, Google or Slack connections and more. Our personal favourite is Butler! It lets us automate recurring tasks such as monthly reminders or adding checklists.
UpDraft Plus
We keep our websites safe with this backup, restore and clone plugin. It’s an automatic process, too, to ensure that we’ve got a fresh copy of our sites no matter what happens.
Zapier
Realistically, rote tasks get forgotten. And complicated tasks become dreaded. Zapier connects your apps and software to make rote, complicated tasks happen automatically without you having to lift a finger. Here are a few of our favourites:
- Share articles from Feedly or Pocket directly into our social media scheduler
- Post approaching Google Calendar events to a Slack channel
- Copy new entries from a Google spreadsheet into new cards on Trello
Zoom
Our clients are all over the world and we meet with them on a regular basis. Zoom allows us to connect face-to-face, no matter where we are.
If you have any questions about these tools or you’d like a tour behind the scenes, let us know. If they aren’t the tools for you, we’re also happy to share our experiences with other resources. Leave a comment below and we’ll connect!