9 Resources That Marketing and Sales Teams Are Using in 2016 Start with Unomy, Mention, GrowthList and six other tools detailed here, and see where they take you.
By Anna Johansson Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Whether yours is a small business or enterprise-level organization, digital marketing and sales strategies are the most important tasks you can do to pave the way to growth.
Related: 7 Online Marketing Tools That Are Totally Worth the Investment
While there are many different strategies and opportunities here, a huge marketplace has opened up for sales and marketing tools. Thousands of businesses in fact have created proprietary tools to help their customers streamline and simplify the process of marketing and selling their own products.
Unfortunately, the result is a watered-down marketplace where businesses like yours are forced to vet any tool before deciding to adopt it. But the following list of some the top sales and marketing tools worth considering in 2016 may help.
1. Unomy
Are you tired of piecing together fragmented sales tools in order to accomplish certain tasks? With Unomy, this is no longer necessary. This sales intelligence platform helps sales teams in B2B companies sell smarter, faster and more effectively. Unomy can be used to identify new prospects, build targeted prospect lists, prioritize leads and opportunities and glean insights about potential partner companies.
2. Mention
In our age of social media, when millions of messages are being sent out into cyberspace each day, it's more important than ever that businesses have a proper method in place for listening to what people are saying about them. Mention is that method. With Mention, you can track key phrases and brand names in real time so you're always on top of what people are saying. Thus, you know how to have meaningful conversations with sales prospects and leads.
3. GrowthList
If you're a B2B business that relies on having a consistent stream of sales prospects at your fingertips, you may find GrowthList helpful. Billed as a sales tool for startups, GrowthList is actually helpful for small and mid-level businesses, as well. It features a comprehensive database of more than 5,000 B2B tech companies that are currently in growth mode, along with pertinent details about them. Plug them into your sales funnel, and get started.
4. BuzzSumo
You don't need anyone to tell you how massive the content marketing industry has become. The vast majority of businesses are increasing their budgets each and every year, yet few are doing what it takes to improve the quality and relevancy of their content. With BuzzSumo, you can do that. This powerful research platform lets you identify quickly the topics, keywords and ideas that matter.
Related: 15 Must-Have Marketing Tools for 2015
5. Socedo
Twitter is a powerful social media platform that's underutilized by most businesses. In addition to using it as a marketing and branding tool, you should also be using it as a resource for finding and reaching out to sales prospects. With Socedo, you can qualify leads on Twitter by entering things like hashtags and keywords into the search bar. The tool returns a customized prospect list and helps you to follow up.
6. Reply
The Reply tagline says it all: "Send cold emails that feel warm." From inbound to outbound emails, Reply helps businesses automate their communications with prospects who are early in the sales funnel without making things feel impersonal or irrelevant. Whether you're sending a sequence of emails or looking for in-depth analytics, Reply is a versatile tool that adds a ton of value to any sales team.
7. DeepCrawl
When was the last time you paid attention to your website? While social media, content marketing and landing-page development often take up a lot of a digital marketer's time, you can't forget about onsite SEO. With DeepCrawl, you can quickly analyze your website's architecture to understand and fix a variety of technical issues affecting your SEO performance -- and thereby eating away at conversions.
8. Google Analytics
If you haven't started using Google Analytics by now, then you're missing out on a major opportunity to understand who your audience is and how to connect with its members. From measuring website performance and tracking conversion goals to learning about your target market's demographics, Google Analytics is the powerful free tool that does it all.
9. Salesflare
Few things are worse than missing out on a follow-up opportunity with a qualified prospect. The Salesflare platform integrates with Outlook, Gmail, and mobile devices to ensure that this never happens. From inputting data to following up, this tool covers everything.
Put the right tools to work for your biz.
As a businessperson with aspirations for your company's growth, you can't afford to waste your time messing around with tools and resources that don't propel your business forward. That's why it's important that you select the right ones from the beginning, and implement them strategically in ways that aid your current processes and workflows.
Related: 8 Powerful Tools to Amplify Traffic and Boost Sales
Start with the tools mentioned in this list, and see where they take you.
