Top 10 Marketing Tools Every Startup Should Use
As a marketer, your main role is to transform marketing dollars into sales. But truth be told, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of facets you are responsible for in a marketing campaign to make that happen.
From social media to content marketing, digital marketers today operate in a dynamic and multivariate environment. As various aspects of digital marketing need to connect in order to deliver a more streamlined and impactful campaign. This has resulted in an undesired increase in the effort needed to manage the process. In addition to this, marketers must also mine marketing data consistently to increase the effectiveness and profitability of the marketing campaign.
As such, we’ve compiled a list of 10 popular marketing tools and software (in no particular order) to do the heavy lifting and perform a multitude of tasks with ease, allowing you to focus on what you love about marketing. Let’s dive in!
- Rebrandly
- Google Analytics
- Moz
- ClickMeter
- Intercom
- HubSpot
- SmartKarrot
- MailChimp
- Optimizely
- Salesforce
Branded Links: Rebrandly
Rebrandly does much more than just shorten URLs. Rebrandly is the leader in branded links. It’s the most complete and reliable link management platform on the market. The solution provides the easiest way to create, measure, and manage short URLs with a custom domain name. It’s free and helps you get set up in minutes. Learn more about Rebrandly here.
Website Analytics: Google Analytics
Google is the undeniable leader when it comes to marketing data analytics and tracking for your website – and while it’s true that their Analytics solution is not the most comprehensive one on the market, it’s free and intuitive to use, plus it’s integrated with popular marketing tools such as Google AdWords & Visual Website Optimizer (VWO).
Suitable for both amateur and professional marketers, Google Analytics allows you to perform segmentation & filtering, gain access to actionable insights, and optimize your conversion rates. It can be easily implemented via Google Tag Manager or Content Management System (CMS) plugins to start tracking your website data almost instantaneously. Learn more about Google Analytics here.
SEO Optimization: Moz
Implementing an SEO strategy is often seen as a complex process that requires strenuous manual efforts, and this has deterred many website owners from even considering it. However, using a comprehensive SEO tool like Moz can help you thrive in an ever-changing SEO environment that has a multitude of ranking factors.
Moz offers a suite of SEO tools that allows you to perform in-depth keyword research, link tracking & analysis, campaign reporting & tracking, and competition analysis. It allows you to continuously optimize your SEO campaigns while identifying additional opportunities to attain higher ranking positions. Although Moz is a relatively pricey option, it has undoubtedly some of the best tools on the market to improve your SEO campaigns, making it worth every penny. Learn more about Moz here.
Track & Optimize Marketing Links: ClickMeter
Ever wondered how your marketing campaign is performing? Would you like to have more flexibility and options with your marketing links (both internal & external)? ClickMeter helps marketers take control of their links to maximize their conversion rates. With its intuitive user dashboard and interface, you can easily manage, track, shorten, redirect or split-test your links to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Have a quick look at what ClickMeter can do, and start tracking by signing up for a free account today.
Customer Engagement: Intercom
Considering how much of your customers’ behavior you can track and analyze nowadays, it’s vital to use a data-driven approach to guide them through the buyer’s journey in order to optimize your conversion rates. Using a tool like Intercom can help you to learn more about your customers, allowing you to follow up on them more effectively through emails and in-app messages. Learn more about Intercom here.
Growth Platform: HubSpot
HubSpot is a leading growth platform that consists of marketing, sales and CRM software – all in one! This truly is a must-have tool for any marketeer as the combined effect of having all of your data and growth activity in one place can unleash tons of creative automation possibilities. Use this tool to send out email marketing campaigns, build landing pages, lead management, SEO, marketing automation and so much more. Learn more about HubSpot here.
Customer Success: SmartKarrot
Mass-Mailing: MailChimp
Email marketing is an evergreen marketing channel that helps you to nurture & follow up on your leads effectively. MailChimp is a beginner-friendly email marketing tool that helps businesses to manage their email campaigns in a cost-effective manner. From automating your marketing messages to tracking your email analytics, MailChimp is highly recommended for anyone looking to get started in email marketing. Learn more about MailChimp here.
A/B Testing: Optimizely
The main problem with today’s A/B testing tools remains their intuitiveness and ease of use – which is why Optimizely stands out so well. It is a well-integrated tool that truly manages to remove the clutter and annoying aspects of the process, allowing you to focus on optimizing your customer experience and increasing conversions. With no coding required, you can perform either website or mobile app testing to truly make every experience count and convert with with tool. Learn more about Optimizely here.
Blog: WordPress
Among all the Content Management Systems (CMS) that can help you set up your own blog or website, WordPress has become the benchmark for simplicity, flexibility and ease of use. You will never have to write a single line of code, and countless community-made & professional plugins mean that any feature you need is just one click away. WordPress is well integrated with a plethora of marketing & payment software, allowing you to turn your website into a marketing machine, online magazine or E-Commerce site with ease. Learn more about WordPress here.
Sales Automation: Salesforce
Taking the manual work out of your sales and follow-up process is one of the best things you could do if you want to focus on what matters most – customer relationships, and Salesforce is the industry-leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool for this job. Salesforce caters to both large and small businesses, its intuitive user interface allows you to manage your sales process, sales representatives and leads to ensure that the right actions are taken at the right time, minimizing missed opportunities. Learn more about Salesforce here.
Wrapping up
So there you have it — the top 10 marketing tools in our opinion. Hopefully, this list has inspired you to try out some of these ones. Let us know in the comments below if we missed one of your favorite marketing tools.
Related reading:
- How to mask URLs in affiliate tracking links
- 5 Awesome Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Generate More Sales
This blog post is about:
- Top marketing tools
- Marketing tools for startups
- Digital marketing
- 10 top marketing tools
Originally published: April 3rd, 2015.
Updated: October 14th, 2020.
