Once in awhile it's great to refresh the go-to list of marketing tools. I find this exercise invaluable to do every 6-9 months, and thought I'd share what I most recently came up with.
For startups it's critical that tools aren't chosen just because "everyone does it", but because….
- They won't break the bank
- They won't require an army of interns or paid employees to manage them
- They won't take light years to get up and running (we-don't-have-spare-time at startups)
The logic around this hit list is by the more obvious – budget and growth stage – but the back-end filters were cost, scalability and relevancy rank (e.g. do they get my business, are they cutting-edge but proven).
No Budget, Just Launching.
LaunchRock
No website, no problem. LaunchRock provides great landing pages designed specifically to tell the world you're coming soon and collects email addresses (a critical piece to building beta user groups). The page also points visitors to any social networks or blogs you might have live to tell more about what you're offering (our about to offer) to the world.
AboutMe
Are you a consultant or small agency? AboutMe is a no-cost solution to building an eye-catching info screen about what you do, services your provide and where to learn more. Call it LinkedIn on steroids, by just being more visual and allowing for more (visual) personalization than a social network profile. And again, if you're still short a website, this gives someone somewhere to go learn more about you.
Tout
Need a :15 second video to showcase a new product or to develop a "welcome message" for new users? Tout is free. Just download on your iphone, iPad or Android device. Even the celebrity crowd is in love with it, with users such as "Live with Kelly", Erin Andrews and Dr. Oz. The simple interface and brevity make it the perfect tool for snippet videos on zero budget.
Involver
If you've kicked off your Facebook fan page, you're probably already seeing the page can be a little stale with out some plugins for Twitter, a blog, Flickr photo streams, etc. Involver is a great (free) solution for a couple basic apps. And as you grow, you can grow them from more robust iframe options and Klout Coupons (my personal favorite).
MailChimp
Starting to collect email addresses from your website, blog or some social channels? MailChimp has a great, simple framework for sending professional emails to your subscriber fan base. It scales based on number of subscribers and provides some turnkey social messaging tools – like "share on Twitter", "post on Facebook" and analytic plugins if you're already using Google Analytics to track engagement and conversions from emails that you send.
A Little Budget, But Still In Early Stage Proving It Out.
Hubspot
Have a website up and running, but not sure what do to next to optimize it? Check out Hubspot. I am probably one of Hubspot's biggest fans, having co-authored Get Scrappy with Mike Volpe in 2009. But they genuinely continue to deliver awesome digital solutions for startup marketers. From SEO tools for that new site you've built, to site analytics, to email automation to lead gen scoring….it's hard to not take-a-peek and even try for free to see if could help drive value at the get-go. And best of all, it's simple to use. And where it gets more technical, they have amazing customer support and account management to get your through hurdles.
Hootsuite
Is that social networking for business starting to become a chore? Unfortunately, the need to share content and comments will always be there. To that, you might as well spend $5.99/month and start scheduling evergreen topics (e.g. topics you know in advance you will have to share) and build reports to showcase the most relevant KPIs about Twitter, Facebook. Both are great time savers and help you build a stronger case for why social marketing is a critical lifeline for your business. And starting early is better than later in the business cycle.
Peoplebrowsr
Social sentiment is the next gen of analytics. And Peoplebrowsr provides an affordable qualitative and quantitative lens, in near real-time, on how people perceive your brand, your competitors and what user communities you're resonating with. Talk about a powerful tool to inform next gen messaging, positioning and to even educate product development. Not to be overlooked.
iCharts
Starting to feel the time suck of aggregating market research or user insights in Excel, summarizing in a chart, building a deck in PPT and then (finally) getting it posted internally or on Slideshare?
While iCharts may not be PowerPoint or Slideshare, it does allow you to dramatically shorten the time it takes from data collection to data visualization via chart (or mini info graphic) in a blog, website, press release or social network. Try it. We all know the power of visual marketing tools, and this is one on-the-cheap tool for doing so.
Have a Decent Budget, But Maintaining a Scrappy Approach?
For the most part, all of the above. For at least a good year or so, you should have little to adjust other than additive resources like creative assets, lead management and customer life cycle tools to tie into earned and paid media efforts.
Cheers and good luck!
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