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Social Media Marketing for Business

Tina Courtney-Brown

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August 19, 2013

Top 10 Must-Have Marketing Tools in Today’s Digital World

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Marketing online is serious business, and without tools that support your mission, your campaigns don’t stand a chance. While you could wade through the massive volume of marketing tools currently available in this dynamic and fast-paced space, we aim to simplify the process by presenting you with today’s best suite of products.

You already know about must-haves like WordPress, Google Analytics, and SEOMoz – keep reading to find out what modern tools you may not be aware of that can literally change your business life for the better.

#1 – KISSmetrics

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KISSmetrics takes an innovative approach to site analytics. Instead of tracking vanity metrics (think pageviews, time spent, bounce rates, etc.), KISS looks at the data that actually impacts your revenues. Relatively speaking, this revolves around people, i.e. your customers, and how they interact with your site. KISS highlights important figures like conversion rates, lifetime customer values, churn rates, and average revenues per user. If you’re not already tracking this data, KISS will revolutionize how you look at your metrics.

#2 – Scribe

There aren’t many programs in the marketplace that actually help you be a better online marketer, but Scribe succeeds where most others fail. Scribe helps you create top-tier SEO content targeting your selected keywords, which helps you drive oodles of organic traffic. The result is more sustainable, long-term growth. What’s more, Scribe is aces at helping you create better online content that tells the precise branding story you are after.

#3 – Raven Internet Marketing Tools

Comprised of over thirty unique and powerful programs and features, Raven Internet Marketing Tools offers a bundle of invaluable resources. Included in the mix are extremely useful social media marketing tools, content management assistance, excellent analytics, PPC campaign management, robust reporting, and perhaps their best offering, a really well done set of SEO management features. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for your online marketing, Raven may be just the ticket.

#4 – Qualaroo

Most analytics simply provide quantitative data, without revealing the story of your visitors.Qualaroo helps you decipher things like why visitors are not converting, why your shopping cart is frequently abandoned, and why your refund rates might be increasing. Qualaroo focuses on customers, not numbers, and the result is the ability to maximize traffic and convert more visitors to paying customers.

#5 – SalesGenie

SalesGenie is an online marketing tool that provides high quality sales leads that aim to help you generate new and better prospects for your business. It assists in providing a unique brand of marketing intelligence that in turn helps you research the competitive landscape and understand what’s working (and what’s not working) for both you and your competitors.

#6 – MIXRANK

Speaking of competitors, if you’re not spending ample time sizing up the competition, you’re missing out on valuable feedback and information. We all have to channel our inner super-sleuth to uncover the data that makes a difference when trying to understand our competition, which isn’t an easy path. Queue MIXRANK – a savvy tool that enables you to uncover where your competition is advertising, and where they derive the bulk of their traffic. As such, it provides a whole host of new inspiring ideas of where you can do the same.

#7 – Unbounce

These days, smart marketers send traffic en masse to landing pages, not their homepages. Conversion rates tend to be substantially better through this method, but it can require more development juice to create. That’s where Unbounce comes in. This tool enables marketers to create beautiful landing pages without the need for developers and designers. You can create, customize, and publish pages in very little time to support your campaigns, without needing to rely on other team members to execute.

#8 – SendGrid

Email – for many marketers, it’s the thorn in their side. And yet it’s nearly impossible to move the needle on your site’s success without mastering the art of email marketing. Email is used to gain new customers and keep existing ones informed and engaged. For acquisition, it is especially challenging – as we all know, if you’re mailing a massive list, many will perceive it as spam, potentially damaging the success of future sends.

In comes SendGrid. This tool helps to maximize your chance of landing in a user’s inbox. What’s more, SendGrid allows you to build sends based on action triggers, like newsletter signups, site registrations, and related activity. The best part about this invaluable email tool is that it vastly simplifies email marketing, thanks to an intuitive user interface and a myriad of powerful features. Stats are equally robust, and you don’t need to be a technical genius to learn how to master it.

#9 – ProTexting

If you’re looking for an effective and affordable way to expand your marketing reach through SMS, it’s definitely time to check out ProTexting. This service allows you to create text-to-win contests, to develop two-way conversations with clients, and to send out mass texts and manage lists effectively. ProTexting is one of the most comprehensive and easy to use text message marketing services available. If you’re going mobile, it’s a great tool to help you go big.

#10 – IFTTT

IFTTT stands for “if this then that.” This fantastic tool lets you automate social media sends to networks like Twitter and Facebook, receive email notifications every time you make a sale, get text messages when your competitors post new content, and so much more. IFTTT is a highly customizable marketer’s dream that allows you to set protocols that trigger communications based on specific actions. And you can automatically post content on networks like Instagram, Pinterest, and Dropbox without ever going to the sites themselves. It’s a great consolidation tool for those looking to create better time management.

See any must-have tools that you rely on missing from this list? If so, please educate us in the Comments section!

This article was originally published on SiteProNews. Reprinted with permission.

Tina Courtney-Brown

Meet 

Digital producer, game designer, Internet marketer and staff writer for SiteProNews, one of the Web’s foremost webmaster and tech news blogs, Tina Courtney-Brown has been shaping online businesses since 1996. She’s produced and marketed innovative content for major players like Disney, as well as boutique startups galore, with fortes including social media, SEO, massively multiplayer games, social networks and project management. Tina is also a certified Reiki practitioner, herbalist, nonprofit director and true cooking diva. Learn more at her personal website, or find her on Facebook and Google+.