15 Must-Have Marketing Tools for 2015 If you don't have the budget to assemble a top-tier marketing team, you'll need some great tools to take your marketing to the next level.
By Sujan Patel Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The "if you build it, they will come" plan won't get your business seen in 2015. The fact is, 50 percent of companies plan to increase marketing spend in 2015. So what will you do to get exposure and grow your business this year?
If you don't have the budget to assemble a top-tier marketing team, you'll need some great tools to take your marketing to the next level. To help you reach your marketing goals this year, I've put together a list of 15 must-have tools to get you started.
1. BuzzSumo
Fifty eight percent of business-to-business marketers will increase their content marketing budget in 2015. To ensure you're spending your content-marketing dollars wisely, use BuzzSumo to research the content your audience really wants. Just enter any keyword or backlink into BuzzSumo and you'll get a detailed report showing how well previous content on that topic performed.
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2. Mention
Want to keep track of what people are saying about you and your competitors? Mention helps you track key phrases and brand names, in real time, so you never miss out on a conversation with current and potential customers.
3. Autosend
If you want to personally reach out to each person that joins your website, you can with Autosend. Autosend helps you automatically send personalized, targeted email and text messages to every customer based on what they do on your website. So anytime a customer joins, makes a purchase or even looks at a particular FAQ question on your website, you can proactively send a personal message to them.
4. Ducksboard
Tracking how many people join your mailing list, subscribe to your service and buy your products each day can be exhausting -- without the right tool. Stay on top of your most important analytics from every service you use in real time with an all-in-one dashboard such as Ducksboard.
5. ReferralSnip
A 2014 study showed that 85 percent of small businesses get customers through word of mouth. If you don't want to miss out on lots of new business, create your own referral program with a tool such as ReferralSnip, which helps you set up a referral program in under a minute. You just enter a few company details, design your snippet and your customers can start referring new customers to your business online.
6. Oktopost
Managing your social media presence doesn't have to be hard. With social-media tools such as Oktopost you can share your content, manage conversations and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns easily, in one place.
7. Picreel
Just because people visit your website doesn't mean they actually convert. In fact, according to Bounce Exchange, 96 percent of all website visitors will never return. This is why it's key to optimize your website with tools such as Picreel, which helps you capture visitors when they're leaving with customizable exit offers.
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8. VWO
VWO is an A/B testing tool that helps you determine what's working on your website, and what's not. You can use VWO to test things such as which headline, website design or website copy your visitors respond to best.
9. Tropical
What do tools such as your help desk, email-marketing software and customer-relationship management have in common? They all hold your customer's data. If you want to bring all of that data together to create a full profile and timeline of each customer and their activities, use Tropical.
10. Socedo
Wish you could find and qualify leads on Twitter? You can with Socedo. Just enter keywords, hashtags or any other search criteria, and it'll return a prospect list. Socedo even helps you automatically favorite tweets, follow prospects and send direct messages to start a conversation.
11. Canva
Fine, you're no Photoshop pro. That doesn't mean you can't create beautiful marketing graphics in minutes with Canva, which helps even the most graphically-challenged create everything from social-media images to presentations, for free. You can use its templates, store everything online and even access stock images to include in your work.
12. Ope.nr
Ope.nr helps you add a call to action to any link you share on social media. Now everyone that visits the link you share can be redirected to your site with a unique call to action.
13. Uberflip
Instead of sending visitors away from your site, use Uberflip to share a curated list of your content on your website. With Uberflip you can create targeted calls to action inside your content to convert visitors into customers.
14. FullContact
Marketing is all about creating personal relationships. But that's hard to do without lots of relevant data. Enter FullContact, which provides the real name, photo and social-profile links of every contact. Now any time someone signs up on your site, you can reach out with all the information you need to build a lasting relationship.
15. Person
Customer personas help you create targeted marketing campaigns. But what helps you create those customer personas? A little framework called Person, which helps you visualize your target customer by inputting their gender, likes, behaviors and goals in a simple-to-read layout. Person also lets you share your newly created customer personas, which makes it perfect for sharing with teams and other marketers.
What other tools would you add to this list? Add them as a comment below!
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