This article has been contributed by Anand Kansal.
We are in a different era to years gone by. No individual or business can survive without the internet.
With the power and support of the internet and globalized economy, businesses across the world have flourished. Did you know that there are 28 million startup businesses in the United States alone? That can seem scary when we think about the competition that represents.
If you happen to be one of those startups, you are most likely searching for a magic potion that gives you a competitive edge, because you definitely don’t want to end up among the 80% of businesses that fail within 18 months.
OK, relax. This is not the end of the world. We are here to make your start super smooth and successful with the top 10 marketing tools that have transformed businesses. From streamlining your marketing and sales efforts to boosting your website engagement with interactive content, these tools are everything you are hunting for.
So, are you ready to transform your business?
Let’s begin!
10 Best Online Marketing Tools to Use in 2020
1. Outgrow for Effective Interactive Content
There is a reason this list starts with interactive content. It is because users today look for value before properly investing their time or money in a product or service. They demand quick solutions for their queries or issues. And, what’s better than quizzes and calculators?
Users find it interesting and often useful to take personality quizes, use calculators to find out their EMI, or enter contest giveaways to discover if they’ve won that freebie. Outgrow offers trending interactive elements that you can easily integrate with your website.
Not only that, Outgrow is a great lead generation tool that assists with list building strategies.
Thankfully, designing calculators and quizzes with Outgrow demands no coding skills. Just drag and drop and you will be done!
MyBalto, a French e-Commerce company for pets, used Outgrow to create an activity calculator for dogs. The calculator allows users to calculate the amount of calories their dog needs to eat by asking questions around the dog’s weight, height, age, breed, etc. It further displayed recommended products that are suited to their dog.
And guess what? Adding this simple calculator generated Balto more than 1,500 visits to their website and almost 100 leads in a short time.
2. Aweber for Effortless Email Marketing
Regardless of the kind of business you run, you need to get Aweber. Why do we say that? Email marketing is used by thousands of B2B and B2C businesses. So, you should opt for an email marketing tool from day one.
Aweber has long maintained its position as one of the top email marketing tools, boasting millions of customers.
With Aweber, you can create, send, analyze, optimize and report your email campaigns on a single platform. You can also see what content works best for your emails or ads, to keep you on the right track.
3. HubSpot for All-in-one Marketing Solutions
When we talk about marketing and sales automation, HubSpot is a familiar name. It is a brand that has established its position for its all-in-one marketing software.
Right from the beginning stage of attracting visitors to closing the loop with conversions, HubSpot beautifully connects the entire marketing funnel experience.
Be it blogging, SEO, social media, lead management, marketing automation or analytics, HubSpot doesn’t leave any stone left unturned. So, if you are an entrepreneur with a finger in every pie, this is the tool you need.
Amanda Nielsen, from New Breed, said that they used other well-known marketing tools like Pardot and Marketo before HubSpot. However, nothing matched the customer experience HubSpot provided. With HubSpot, they saw a 99% in traffic and 100% increase in customer conversions.
4. Autopilot for Personalised Customer Journey
Understanding the customer conversion journey is no joke. Each customer and their buying behavior is different. And, that is where Autopilot comes in.
With its unique features that help segment customers and create automated journeys for them, Autopilot efficiently converts leads into customers.
With Autopilot, you can plot the entire customer journey map with the help of their drag and drop canvas. This way, you can develop a personalized customer journey by setting actions and conditions for every trigger. This is the perfect tool to understand and take control of your customers’ decision-making journey.
With Autopilot Insights, ShipMonk delved into the trivial details of their customer journeys and were able to analyse and optimize on what was working for them. They further connected their sales department to the nurture journeys in Autopilot.
5. ConvertKit for Blogging Solutions
Are you a blogger? If yes, we know how overwhelming managing multiple functions can get!
How about a tool that understands your process?
ConvertKit is one such marketing tool. It is essentially an email marketing block, but don’t underestimate it. It’s an impressive feature-packed tool, custom-designed for all kinds of bloggers.
The focus of content creators should always be, of course, content creation. Hence, ConvertKit makes processes like sending customized emails, segmenting and tagging your audience, monetizing your list and even selling online courses, easy.
You can now offer giveaways for subscribers, bonuses for new signups, or an email course for subscribers. Do whatever you do, but in the best way!
Barron Cuadro, a fashion blogger, used ConvertKit to convert his expertise into a successful business, now Effortless Gent, that helps men dress for success.
6. Drift for Customized Chat Support
As important as one-to-one communication is, we can’t deny the fact that attending to every online visitor is nearly impossible. This is why chatbots exist. Chatbots are currently trending as they add a human feel to your website.
Drift helps personalize customer experiences by tapping and delighting visitors on the website with conversational messaging that’s customized and timely.
What’s more, the Drift Campaigns and Conversations dashboard helps to track the traffic on your website and access the performance of your Drift campaigns.
Sculpt’s Josh Krakauer said that Drift did wonders for them by moving cold prospects into the consideration stage by answering their questions while they were actively browsing their website. Interestingly, they mentioned that they tried HubSpot’s live chat tool briefly before Drift, but options to hook someone into a chatbot were limited.
7. ActiveCampaign for Powerful Marketing Automation
Which is that one marketing tool that gives utmost relief to the marketers? A marketing automation tool that takes care of the monotonous tasks for them.
ActiveCampaign is one such savior. It can simply automate sending messages, site and event tracking, Facebook custom audiences, setting up automation goals and maps and much more.
While the Automation Goals will help you set specific goal actions and track their performance, the Automation Map will connect all the automation activities for you to access in a single window. It chalks out bottlenecks and suggests solutions. ActiveCampaign is a power-pack tool that will convert your leads into customers in no time.
Desmistificando achieved a 50% recovery from their abandoned carts with ActiveCampaign’s email automation. They also witnessed doubled email open rates and an 18% sales increase.
8. Keap for Improved Sales Automation
Every business process boils down to sales. Hence, setting up the sales automation process for your business is crucial.
It can easily automate sending messages, scheduling appointments, managing your sales pipeline, organizing CRM, and handling payments.
The pipeline feature is an interactive way to track and manage your leads throughout your sales process all in a single view. You can even trigger email sequences automatically when your lead transitions from one sales stage to the next.
Home Painters Toronto used Infusionsoft and witnessed 300% growth. They describe Keap as a “second salesperson” that automatically sends personalized communications to every lead.
9. Clearbit for Better Customer Segmentation
Data today is flowing from every nook and corner. But, smart marketers know the value of qualified data.
Clearbit understands what’s important to you and automatically updates your sales records with accurate and verified contact data. With filtered data in your database, you will have better insights into your prospects and higher chances of conversions.
The platform helps you set up smart lead scoring and segmented lists, so you always deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. Moreover, this tool makes targeting super convenient by sending alerts when key contacts visit your site.
Clearbit also helps enrich new signups and users by transforming them into complete user profiles.
Using Clearbit X, Frame.io saw their Facebook Ads custom audience match rates more than double from 15 to 50%, just due to better segmentation and targeting.
10. WebinarJam for Seamless Webinars
Videos and webinars are some of the top trending visual content mediums at the moment. Moreover, they are the only mediums that have the capacity to engage customers for 50+ minutes. It is also interesting to note that webinars convert 19% of viewers into purchasers.
WebinarJam has great features and offers training videos at every step to help you out. Moreover, it provides a live chat option for users to have their queries addressed quickly.
WebinarJam makes things super convenient as every webinar is recorded and can be sent to those who missed it.
Dr. Kevin Polk, the founder of The ACT Matrix Academy, used Webinarjam to take his webinars to the next level. To his surprise, he started getting more registrations, more conversions, greater autonomy and less stress in no time.
And, if conversion rates interest you (they should!), Dr. Polk saw an 800% conversion rate of sales per webinar. Now, that’s a significant number.
Which Tools Will You Start With Right Now?
In the world of marketing, you will always find new tools and trends. But, is it possible to keep up with them all? Probably not!
So, a good approach is to go with the top marketing tools that suit your business and have fetched significant results for similar businesses.
You may be hesitant to begin with, but know that the stakes are high. This list of top 10 marketing tools will set you just right so that the journey ahead is smooth and systemized.
So, over to you.. Would you add any other tools to this list or have you tried some of these? Leave a comment below and you might just help a fellow marketer!
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