23 top time-saving marketing tools to win more business in 2020
In today’s fast-paced, highly-competitive environment, marketers have no choice but to work quickly. With so many tasks to keep up with — audience research, content creation, social media activities, search engine optimization (SEO), and more — it’s easy to get behind. Fortunately, there are marketing tools that can help you save tons of time — without sacrificing results.
Hootsuite makes it easy to automate your social media marketing, with features such as:
- Scheduling
- Monitoring
- Content curation
- Analytics
- Team management
- Security
- Boosting
The scheduling is a life-saver. Platforms like Twitter require constant posting to reach your audience. Hootsuite empowers a set-it-and-forget-it approach to posting that lets you reap the rewards of consistent posting without the headache. Learn more about Hootsuite.
Google Alerts allows you to “monitor the web for interesting new content,” meaning you can:
- Keep up with news about your organization.
- Keep up with news about your competitors.
- Monitor trends on topics that matter to you and your audience.
Try Google Alerts for yourself.
Video marketing is a great way to connect with your audience. In fact, 53% of people said they want to see more videos from marketers. But not everyone has the resources to create videos.
With Lumen5, that’s no longer a problem. You can use existing content to create videos — no camera, microphone, or crew required. Simply add a url or copy and paste text, pick your images and music, and you’ve got a shareable video your audience will love. Learn more about Lumen5.
Social listening is a key part of any marketing team’s job. It allows you to understand your audience’s wants and needs, identify which product enhancements would have the biggest impact, and turn unhappy customers into raving fans. But while many teams monitor Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, Reddit is often neglected. That’s a huge mistake. Reddit is the third most popular website in the U.S., and it deserves your attention.
TrackReddit provides real-time tracking and alerts when a phrase of your choosing is mentioned. You can track discussions about your organization, your competitors, or key topics of interest. Learn more about TrackReddit.
Want to increase your Twitter following but not sure where to start? Narrow helps you build your follower list “by interacting with Twitter users that are talking about the subjects relevant to the audience you want to attract.” It also offers audience research tools. Learn more about Narrow.
Wondering where your next viral marketing campaign will come from? BuzzSumo can help you decide. This tool allows you to identify articles that get shared at an astounding rate. Find out what’s gaining traction, and use the trends to your advantage. Learn more about BuzzSumo.
Keeping up with your competitors can be challenging, but Owler automates the entire process. Receive daily emails that let you stay up to date on your competition. Learn more about Owler.
Creating high-value, gated content is a great way to capture leads and build an audience. Leadpages allows you to quickly set up pages where readers can enter their contact information and subscribe to your email list to access your most valuable marketing assets. Learn more about Leadpages.
Keeping up with the latest news around topics that are important to your organization is key, but many times, marketers have to look through multiple channels — Google, social media, etc. — to get the information they need. Feedly allows you to track the topics that are most important to you in one central location, so you don’t have to waste time looking through various sources. Learn more about Feedly.
Recording interviews is a great way to keep up with information from internal subject matter experts and external thought leaders. You can then get transcriptions to create written marketing collateral like product brochures and blogs or audio content like podcasts. Audacity allows you to capture recordings from a USB mic or Skype conversation. It even has editing tools so you can edit out background noise, add music, and more. Learn more about Audacity.
Gong is a tool that records sales conversations. While it’s typically used to train new reps, marketers can use it to better understand what questions prospects and customers ask when thinking of purchasing a new solution. Learn more about Gong.
Tagboard allows you to track hashtags across multiple social media outlets. This can help you curate content and engage in better social listening. Learn more about tagboard.
Marketing involves a lot of collaboration. Whether you’re creating e-books, brochures, or proposal content, chances are you need help from product experts and other SMEs. Slack allows you to easily message any member of your organization. You can even set up channels for specific departments or projects where each member can communicate in real time. Learn more about Slack.
SEO is a great way to grow your audience, but reaching the first page of Google is challenging for many organizations. Fortunately, Google has a tool that allows you to quickly identify which keywords you should target. You can see volume of searches per month for specific keyword phrases, as well as how much competition there is.
If you’re not sure where to start, the “Find new keywords” section can crawl your url to see which keywords you have the best chance of ranking for. Learn more about Google Keyword Planner.
Similar Web can help you get intelligence about your own or your competitors’ websites. You can analyze:
- Traffic
- Traffic sources
- Referrals
- Organic and paid keyword rankings
- Display advertising
- Website content
- Audience interest
- Competitors and similar sites
There’s also a compare feature that lets you see how your website stacks up against your competitors’. Learn more about Similar Web.
Want great graphics to go along with your well-researched, high-value content? Canva has you covered. Canva is a graphic design tool for the artistically challenged. It allows you to quickly create beautiful imagery without a designer. Learn more about Canva.
Testimonials are a great way to show off what your business can do. In fact, 72 percent of people say a positive review or testimonial makes them trust a business more. But finding customers who want to sing your praises can be challenging.
Fortunately, Yotpo makes it easy to incentivize, collect, and display customer testimonials, so you can reap the benefits, without distracting from other priorities. Learn more about Yotpo.
Keeping up with social media can be exhausting. How do you come up with enough topics to keep your audience consistently engaged? Quuu might be the answer. This tool provides social media content suggestions, as well as content scheduling and recycling, so you can keep your pages filled with highly engaging posts. Learn more about Quuu.
Infographics are a great tool for any marketer. They help your audience quickly digest important content, and they get a lot of shares on social media and other websites (which is great for gaining SEO-boosting link authority). Easel.ly lets those without graphic design skills quickly create stunning infographics. Learn more about Easel.ly.
Nothing keeps an audience engaged like interactive content, but who has the time — or technical skills — to create it? With Thinglink, everyone does. This tool empowers marketers to transform their static content into a dynamic, interactive experience. Learn more about Thinglink.
Having trouble thinking of a new angle on a topic you’ve covered a million times? Portent’s Content Idea Generator suggests compelling headlines that can inspire you to take your content in a new direction. Try Portent’s Content Idea Generator for yourself.
As you can see from this list, there are tons of marketing tools available to save time. But if you use multiple solutions and they don’t integrate, you’ll end up spending that saved time on duplicate data entry … and you’ll run the risk of introducing human error. Zapier connects your marketing tools so you can use them efficiently and focus on the most important aspects of your job. Learn more about Zapier.
RFP360 can absolutely save time when responding to RFPs. With a Knowledge Base filled with accurate, up-to-date RFP information, RFP360 helps you quickly create proposals — without bugging your internal SMEs. Learn how RFP360 can streamline proposal generation at your organization.
As RFP360’s marketing director, Barri is responsible for the strategy and execution of branding, content marketing, and demand generation activities. She has more than five years’ experience in marketing leadership for high-growth software companies. Her goals include turning RFP360 into a household name and eating a hotdog at every baseball stadium in the United States.
